Tag: garden

Could You Use a Few More Recipes?

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Natural apple spice cookies!Now THAT’s a Real Cookie
2 cups butter, softened
4 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups honey
3 eggs
2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
4 cups rolled oats
1 ½ cups raisins
1 cup chopped nuts
1 ½ cup chopped apple

Beat butter and honey together. Add eggs and beat. Add half of flour sifted with soda and cinnamon. Stir in oats. Add rest of flour and stir. Add raisins, nuts, and apple. Stir well. Drop by teaspoon on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 375° for about 10 minutes. Makes 10 dozen wholesome cookies that freeze very well. (If you bake these many, you’ll save heating the oven as often and have a ready snack when I drop in to visit.)

MYO Vanilla Wafers
Use any 1,2,3,4 cake recipe

Drop by teaspoon onto greased cookie sheets. Bake at 350° for about 10 minutes. Cool one minute on pan before removing to cooling racks.

 Garlic Popcorn
4 quarts freshly-popped popcorn
1 stick butter
1 clove garlic
salt and/or pepper

Press garlic and set aside. While popcorn is popping, melt butter. Remove from heat. Stir garlic into butter. Pour over popcorn, fluffing to coat all. Add salt and/or pepper to taste.

Compost
Now’s a good time for this recipe.
1 yard bag full of mower trimmings
1 pint ordinary garden soil
1 pint water (opt.)

Place soil and water (if dry) in bag with trimmings. Shake or roll some, to mix. Store until spring. If desired, you may store away from marauding animals, in shed or garage. This will greatly reduce in size, over time, and make wonderful mulch or soil additive.

Okay, there you are–new tips and recipes to cheer you. Cannot wait to post again. See ya soon!

When Enough Is Enough

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Second and Third bouquets of the year

Hellebores and Daffodils

I do not normally ever think there are enough daffodils in my house. Ever.

However, when I think of all the daffodils my beloved has brought me over the years, I get a soft, satisfied feeling I cannot explain.

Fulfilled? Maybe. Or maybe just content?

Anyway, I promised to show you the very first bouquet from this year on the 21st, but I guessed wrong at the date and today is the day!

So, go here, where I am guest posting for a friend,  and see the lovely and very first bouquet of daffs from my beloved, and one of my off-the-cuff stories to go with it. Enjoy!

Spring Beauties!

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Second and Third bouquets of the year

Hellebores and Daffodils

This is not the first bouquet of the year! No! Not at all!

In fact the first bouquet of the year will not appear until the 21st.

Sorry. It’s an unusual thing going on.

But stay tuned and I’ll explain on the 21st. Thanks!

 

One Last Peek at the Peeps!

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Oh they’ve grown! Their little necks are longer.

Longer necks!

Longer necks!

Many more feathers have sprouted.

Many more feathers

Many more feathers

And I’ve seen a comb or two!

Comb

Comb

I think I’ll get off the chickie topic now. Hope you enjoyed. 🙂

Forget Frost on the Pumpkins!

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Look what I got for frost on the pepper patch!

Bell pepper harvest

Bell pepper harvest

Cayenne pepper harvest

Cayenne pepper harvest

Jalapeno pepper harvest

Jalapeno pepper harvest. Cannot breathe around these, hence the bag. But DO notice: many of these are striped with heat stripes!

Thanks to an abundant planting, careful tending, and a heavy frost, my son’s pepper patch yielded all these beauties, for the last pickin’. So glad to get them, as our pepper plants did poorly this year.

Thanks, J&J! And thanks to the kiddos of theirs who picked them. 🙂

Where Is Your Favorite Vacation?

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Alpine Vistas

Alpine Vistas

I live about an hour from the loveliest little spot for a vacation. Seriously, it has EVERYTHING!

Let me count the ways:

  • Antiquing. Lots of antique stores for your viewing/shopping pleasure. One huge mall and many small near-museums with absolutely everything. Seriously, I almost hate to share this part of it. I want it all for myself…
  • Horse racing. If you’re into that. I’m not.
  • Art. Galleries galore, including such well-knowns as Kinkade and Chihuly, and several with geological finds that have been made into art, such as geodes. It’s been judged the fourth art-friendliest city in the nation.
  • Riverboat ride with dinner and live music.
  • Al fresco dining in a below ground restaurant–always cool by dinnertime.
  • Real museums, including a Tussaud wax museum.
  • Amazing architecture. Totally astonishing architecture, at every turn.
  • Breath-taking vistas
  • Impeccable groundskeeping
  • History, history, history–built with government moneys, yes, by your great-grandfather’s hands to keep your great-grandmother alive, before we paid people to do nothing.
  • Food. Oh my. And prices that make you want to live there. One whole restaurant devoted to the breakfast of your dreams. On fun place decorated all over with pennies glued to the walls. Another, gourmet and pristine, a sanctuary for its guests and for its workers, who are legal immigrants, escaped from Romania, who wait on you perfectly and cheerily, with charming accents.
  • Hotels. We’re talking, here, of totally expensive, but enchantingly historic, insanely beautiful, antique hotels…
  • And–tada–fountains. Fountains full of water so hot, you can use it to make your tea; so pure, it’s piped to the public straight from the ground, to drink. Famously healing hot waters…

And now you know where it is: Hot Springs, Arkansas.

So impressive, the first time I went there, I was five, and even then, I knew I had to go there someday when I could see the whole thing.

Been there so many times, and haven’t seen it all, yet. Talking about it (to my history-loving heart) is never overdone.

Our Grandfathers' Handwork

Our Grandfathers’ Handwork

For more photos, view here.

For more about Hot Springs, view here, and here.

So…Where is YOUR favorite staycation?

What Do We Get? Rosemary!

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When we are at home,we can do all sorts of things we always wished we could.

I often use my home time to tend, grow, and spread my herbal landscaping plants. A wonderful feeling rises up within me when I stir the earth, something like being in Eden, in my imagination.

Rosemary in Bloom

Rosemary in Bloom

Of all the herbs I tend, of all the herbs I have ever tended, rosemary is one of the easiest. You can find seed for it, but starting rosemary from seed is really rather difficult for the novice grower.

I like to begin with a scion. (Pronounced: sigh un, by those who sell cars or write dictionaries, or sky un, by plant people.) A scion is merely a small branch broken off. With the rosemary plant, the best way is to find a woody (not new or green) sprig and break it off backward, causing a bit of bark, called a heel, to peel along with it.

Well-heeled scions, stripped

Well-heeled scions, stripped

Actually, to be sure of success, perhaps more like six scions would be better. But if you do not already have a rosemary bush, you can have really good success also, by buying a packet of fresh sprigs often available at a grocery. If they look limp, wait for a fresh delivery to buy them. These will be clipped, and not have the heel, but I’ve gotten them to grow, before, using this method.

Strip the leaves (needles) from the lower half of the sprigs and insert them all, stripped end down, into a pot of good soil. Dampen well with warm water and enclose the entire pot and all the contents in a clear plastic bag and tie shut, creating a little greenhouse. Place in a temperate area with good light, but not direct sun, and then wait.

Sprigs in soil

Sprigs in soil

After about 3 weeks, check to see if roots are forming. If so, you may set the plant(s) out where you want them to grow, permanently. That must be a sunny place; on the east or south side of a building is good. If the scions have not developed roots by six weeks, probably they will also be showing some signs of decay and will need to be tossed out. Too bad, but hey, try, try again!

Once you have a rosemary plant up and growing, do not worry about it much. If the weather is really hot and dry it will need irrigation. Otherwise, remember that these plants grow wild from Europe to Australia, so yours will likely be a tough one.

Snow on Rosemary

Snow on Rosemary

Mine has withstood lots of cold and lots of drought, just fine, not to mention kitties playing tag in the lower branches. So fun to cuddle them all perfumed!

Something about owning a rosemary bush makes a person feel like experimenting with Italian cooking, too, so you’ll be glad tomorrow is another at-home day!

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Hooray! My post with a brand new rosemary recipe on it just appeared at Arkansas Farm Bureau’s Taste Arkansas blogsite! Run on over there and see what I’ve been inventing to DO with all these branches! Thanks!