Reddish-brown the leaves for now
But darkly purple later.
Red wears a crown when leaves fall down
But the Crimson King’s is greater.
I had planned to post this back in May when the leaves had opened up on the tree and it possibly would have made more sense. But there are many things that didn’t go as planned this year. We’re all doing what we can.
I hope you are doing well where you are. Take care.
This is an urchin I saw at the pet store last year. It’s in somber monochrome now, but in the link are some colorful photos of the many creatures I saw on my visit.
I submitted it to Leanne Cole’s Monochrome Madness a while back but never posted it on my own site. Here’s a link to the most recent MM, in case you’re curious.
Same with this photo below. It appeared in MM, but never here.
I like the A to Z Challenge because for some reason it helps me get caught up on posts that I’ve been wanting to do but never seem to get around to doing.
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I’m participating in the A to Z Challenge for the month of April. The idea is to post every day, except Sundays, and end up with one post for each letter of the alphabet. It’s a good challenge to help me to blog every day.
I thought I had written this post last summer, but discovered today that I had not.
So it’s been a few months, and I have forgotten all of the names of the roses and flowers. There are a few flowers whose signs I took a photo of, but unfortunately this peach rose isn’t one of them.
It was a hot Saturday in June, if that helps describe things.
In this shot, the big wavy green leaves immediately above of the small red flowers, and to the left of the pointy flat leaves, are from a horseradish plant (Armoracia rusticana). The spicy, zippy condiment is made from the root of the plant, but I never knew what the greens look like.
The lavender was crawling with bumblebees. I love watching them bumble around, but my daughter would not come near.
Cactus growing in New Jersey? I wish I had taken a picture of the name of this one.
Another pretty but nameless face.
This lovely pale rose is called New Dawn.
This pot containing black petunias was interesting. I had never seen those before.
These roses are called Tiddly Winks!
This Space-Age ornamental onion makes me smile each time I see it.
OK, so that post is about 6 months late, but better late than never.
Let’s pretend it’s summer again.
Turn back time.
Turn it back all the way,
and you can tell me how yours was.
Describe your life and summer to me.
Last year I received two pots planted with something called a Flower Rocket for Mother’s Day. I had high hopes, initially chronicling the growth of the two pots that would eventually lead to “thousands of blooms,” according to the product’s packaging.
My last entry comes from day 48, when nothing much was happening after 7 weeks. Throughout the summer I got maybe 6-8 flowers. I took some pictures, but apparently wasn’t excited enough to rush inside and blog about it.
Here are a couple of those pictures. It seems I couldn’t even be bothered to snap a decent shot of the few flowers that did come.
I suppose these do the job of proving that some flowers happened.
Here’s the maple tree that grew last summer in the Flower Rocket pot. I’m so happy that it survived the winter. I used photos of its tiny, new leaves in my post for Photo101: Scale last month.
I had a bad experience with the Flower Rocket, but to be fair to its manufacturers, it’s possible that my balcony doesn’t get enough sunlight. There’s nothing anyone can do about that. I hope that other people have successful rockets flying to the land of “thousands of blooms,” but it didn’t work for me.
My last post in this challenge is about my fourth canning project from last fall. I made three pints of roasted pickled bell peppers and they were fabulous.
Like the tomato sauce, this second-ever canning project of mine also took a lot of work: first the roasting until the peppers got slightly browned, then putting in a paper bag to cool (this is allegedly supposed to make them easier to peel the skin), then peeling the skin (which didn’t seem to be easy despite sitting in the paper bag), then the packing and boiling.
I used peppers from the farmer’s market, which came in varying shapes, colors, and sizes because they were organically grown. I understand that naturally grown foods do not grow into the standardized, uniform shapes that we see at the grocery store–and I love that….but when it comes to peeling roasted peppers, all that variation was kind of a pain.
While I was swearing my way through the peeling process, I said I wouldn’t make these again. How could they be worth all the trouble? Well, a few months later, after the flavors had mingled and set, I discovered that they are totally worth it. I began adding them to everything and I look forward to more later this summer.
Canning was a fun experience and I’m looking forward to doing more this year. I think I unknowingly chose harder things first and easier foods later: tomato sauce, pickled peppers, apple butter and pickled beets. Now at least I know what I’m in for when I bring home a 45-lbs box of tomatoes or decide to start roasting 7 lbs of bell peppers. It was a fun learning experience.
This post comes as part of the Five Photos, Five Stories challenge sent to me by Nonny Moose. I thought my theme for the next five days would be food, since I haven’t written much about that lately. A theme is not necessary, but for me this is motivation to get caught up on some posts I have been drafting in my mind.
The challenge rules are:
Today I nominate Luke of LukeWymer. It’s a new blog and I hope Luke shows us some more beautiful Irish scenery. There’s no pressure, it’s just for fun 🙂
Nine quarts of tomato sauce was my first canning project. I should have started out with something easier, but I didn’t realize that at the time. Using a recipe in the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, I started by procuring 45 lbs of tomatoes from my farmer friend in early September. As I washed, quartered, and threw them in the pot, I realized that I would need several pots to do the job of cooking them down. I should have started out by throwing them in the pressure cooker/canner, because that’s where they all ended up. The next sad realization was that it was going to take forever to put it all through the food mill. It did take forever. I’m still doing it, in fact, with no end in sight.
I ended up with just about 9 quarts of tomato sauce. Since my pressure canner only holds 7, I just refrigerated the last two jars.
The sauce was delicious! I had read that you can use either citric acid or lemon juice to raise the acidity to safe levels, and I tried a couple jars of each. I didn’t notice much of a difference.
This project took most of the day and it was around midnight when I finally pulled the jars out of the canner and set them on the counter. I could hear the little popping sounds as I fell asleep. It was a lot of work but rewarding and completely worth it. I’m looking forward to doing it again at the end of the summer!
This post comes as part of the Five Photos, Five Stories challenge sent to me by Nonny Moose. I thought my theme for the next five days would be food, since I haven’t written much about that lately. A theme is not necessary, but for me this is motivation to get caught up on some posts I have been drafting in my mind.
The challenge rules are:
Today I nominate Guenny of Together and Apart No More. Guenny, are you up for another photo challenge? There’s no pressure, it’s just for fun 🙂
In the fall I tried canning for the first time. One of my projects was apple butter.
I like apple butter, but maybe not so much that I needed to can three pints of it. It’s nice to spread on toast, but I prefer cherry or apricot preserves. So I decided to try using it in baking, and found this recipe for Apple Butter Gingerbread Loaf (I didn’t bother with the flavored cream cheese).
The recipe was OK, but a bit too spicy for me (I can’t believe I’m saying that but it’s true). I think the amount of spice you add to the bread depends on the strength of the flavor of your apple butter, and mine was quite heavy handed with the delicious fall flavors of ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove. But, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and for me this was too much. If I make this again I will dial down the spices in the loaf.
I also thought the texture was a bit off: kind of light and squishy like angel food, not “bready” enough. I wanted it to have more of a solid, quick bread feel.
I liked the gingerbread warmed and topped with maple whipped cream. (Whip some heavy cream with a bit of maple syrup to sweeten)
I might make it again but will probably try some other recipes too. For now I’m using the apple butter here and there, adding a tablespoon or two to other baked goods just for flavor. And occasionally on toast.
I had planned to post this back in October, but, better late than never.
This should have been posted in October, when I started the draft for this post. Let’s pretend it’s October 29, 2014, and we’ll just call this a backdated blog post.
I made a pumpkin pie in October because I just couldn’t wait another month until Thanksgiving. I also wanted to try making the pie crust with coconut oil instead of shortening or butter. Using this recipe from Baking Bites, I got to work. The result was a beautiful and flaky crust that added a warm coconut aroma to the pie (and kitchen).
Coconut oil is very healthy and I felt great about using it, however, it is difficult to work with. The oil gets extremely hard in the fridge and does take time to come up to a workable temperature. And it also will separate at about 73 degrees, so it can’t be too warm in the kitchen when you’re working with it. I do plan to use it again, but will remember to give myself extra time and patience to work with the oil.
The scraps that I trimmed off of the pie crust made some yummy little roll up cookies with apricot preserves. I would like to make a batch of the crust solely to use for jam-filled cookies.
Cynthia M Voss 