Colors

Outside chores are done for today, but there is still about a half bushel of red tomatoes waiting for me to turn them into something.  Most of them will become marinara sauce.  A few will become tomato soup.  More fun with a paring knife coming up.

Have a wonderful evening.

Vacuuming - ugh

Spent the afternoon vacuuming at mom's house.  Mom's approach to housekeeping has always been a bit haphazard, taking the approach that "dust is a protective coating for furniture".  Now since she has trouble getting from point a to point b much less wielding a vacuum cleaner and since stepfather seems clueless about how and when to clean, the responsibility falls to me.  It is quite possible that I found enough dust today to remake Adam.  Pardon me while I ditch these dusty clothes, take a shower, put on clean clothes, do a sinus rinse, and take the evening dose of my allergy medicine a bit early.

Maybe for fun tomorrow I can vacuum my own house after starting a huge batch of marinara sauce on the stove.

Pumpkins Running Amok

 They keep trying to wander toward the sidewalk.

 Then they had to be turned back from passing the second apple tree and heading into the neighbor's yard.

More little ones keep appearing

 and growing

 and growing

and growing

This is the oldest one.

Wonder how big it will get?

What We Have Here Is a Failure to

Pollinate

Ok, so there were a few that turned out alright.

Next year the corn will be planted more in a cluster rather than in a long row.  Prevailing winds seem to have blown a bunch of the pollen away.  There were also a fair number of earwigs in the patch this year.  They might have been eating the silk before the pollen could do its job.

Rainy Day

Yeah!  Today is a day of rest from watering at least.

The garden looks so pretty when it is drenched with water, especially when I don't have to put it there.

It is unfortunate that cabbage looks prettier than it tastes

(and smells).

The beans are trying to catch up to the tomatoes.

 But the cherry tomatoes are still in the running.

If they didn't have roots,

they could try out for the basketball team in the fall.

On the recovery front, the incision site on my shoulder is healing.

The steri-strips are off, and the skin is almost healed.  The deeper tissue underneath is still mending, and reminds me with twinges of pain when I try to do too much.  I am not taking pain medication anymore, because it might mask the pain too much and then I might do something stupid and rip something.  Chores were a challenge last week with the lifting restriction, but the surgeon did not say anything about lots of repetitions with light objects.  Watering was accomplished by tying the garden hose around my waist and walk/dragging it to its destinations rather than pulling it with my arms.  It did take four or five trips to carry in all the pickings from the garden on harvest days.  Little did I realize, surgery recovery would be a practice in forced aerobics.  Unfortunately, since the rest of the time was spent resting and eating, I doubt that any weight has been lost.

Chloe's New Skill

So with being on lifting restrictions the laundry has piled up a bit this week.  Hubby kindly agreed to take a load down to run through the magical scrubbing and drying machines in the basement after the sorting had been completed.  Not wanting to be left out of any activity, Chloe came over to the basket piled high with dirty laundry, took a cursory sniff of the previously worn garments, and then proceeded to wipe her nose on them.  Hubby said it will take a while to get the image of Chloe using his jeans as a handkerchief out of his mind.  I'm just happy she only does it with the dirty laundry, and that she doesn't chew.

Quote From Hubby

"Hey these things are heavy."  (as he scrubs the cast iron pans)

"It's no wonder people don't use cast iron frying pans anymore.  Too many of them in one place could sink a small sailboat."

My reply, "Housewives probably used to have serious biceps from flinging those things around on a daily basis."

Thanks Everyone!

Thanks for all the well wishes!  Special thanks to Ruth and Brigid for their good advice of taking the prescription pain medications to sleep well at night.  It worked.  Now comes the daytime activities which will be very few and buffered by generic Tylenol only.  They will include trying to wash my hair and myself without getting the big bandage wet, making sure that mom gets her shot, visiting the library to get some DVDs to watch, picking the pole beans, and doing the light dishes.  Poor hubby gets all the heavy lifting for the next week, so he gets to scrub the cast iron pans.  Hubby will run a "sobriety" check on me before I am allowed to drive anywhere.  It should be interesting what he devises for the test.

I am feeling a lot better now that I can take vitamins again.  Have to wait until next week to resume the low dose aspirin though; the surgeon does not want me to spring any leaks.  The pain seems to be under control, and the rest is helping with that pulled muscle on the other side of my back as well.  The most discomfort at the moment is being caused by the bandage tape.  Man that stuff itches!  Thankfully, allergy medicine knocks the itching down to slightly annoying, because the bandage is not supposed to be removed until tomorrow.

Went Under the Knife

Had a bit of surgery this morning to remove a lipoma on my shoulder.  Sleeping on it has been causing some numbness in my hand and soreness in my shoulder.  The surgeon said it was about the size of a tennis ball.  The incision site doesn't seem to hurt very much.  The muscle I pulled in my back lifting mom in and out of the shower the last few weeks hurts more than the incision site, go figure.  The last few days were filled with a weeks worth of heavy lifting chores because now I have lifting restrictions for a week.  Yeah, it rained today so the gardens will not need to be watered manually for a few days.  Thank you Lord for opening the skies.

The quandary is this.  Should I even take the prescribed pain medication at all?  If I take it, I cannot drive.  If I cannot drive, then stepfather has to give mom her shot again tomorrow.  I wrote out a detailed instruction sheet with pictures for him to follow.  He called this afternoon asking where all the supplies were, because he had forgotten that the instructions were hanging from a magnetic clip on the fridge.  AARGH!  (And he's the more responsible one of the two.)

Now it is time for hubby to drive me to the store to buy some really big bandages.  We will have such wild times out on the town tonight - not.

Another Day of Trapping

This morning hubby went outside and checked the live trap.  This time it had a little red squirrel.  It must have been really desperate for the leftovers of a rabbit chewed tomato that was in the trap.  Hubby gave the squirrel a deluxe ride across town to the city park that has lots of nut trees.  I don't feel bad about adding to the squirrel population in that part of town, because that is the ritzy area and the folks over there don't keep gardens for food.  Their gardens only have pretty flowers in them and regularly filled bird feeders for wildlife to rob.  Hope the cute little red squirrel enjoys his new home.

Later in the day I came home from taking mom to my aunt's house for a shower and checked the ring of death in the garage.  The ring of death is a small pile of bird seed surrounded by a ring of eight mousetraps.  Six of the eight traps were tripped.  One had likely been dragged to the edge of the garage and its captive had escaped through the crack in the concrete at the back wall.  Another had been dragged four feet away before the vole expired.  A third was found ten feet from the sight of the ring of death; its occupant was quite large.  The other three traps must have just been sympathetic trips.  Chloe so wanted me to give her a vole.  Thankfully, she is reasonably obedient, because my arms aren't long enough to keep the trap out of her reach if she is really determined to jump for it.  Inside the garage seems to be the safest place to put the mousetraps, as long as I make sure all of the traps are accounted for each day.  If put outside, the mousetraps tend to trap birds too-bad idea.

The Vole Population

in my yard has been reduced by two in the last 24 hours.
It normally takes two hits from a mousetrap to kill one of them,
but a rat trap does a dandy job.  Hubby found one in the trap this morning.  This afternoon, the sound of the trap going snap, while I was watering the beans, was music to my ears.

Saw the rabbit that has been eating the cabbage in the front yard this evening when I was picking vegetables.  I tossed something its way, but unfortunately I missed.

Warning

Tomatoes are approaching critical mass.
They are a little ahead of schedule this year.

Had to make some marinara sauce.

The basic recipe is in last year's post of Aug. 23.

It used about half of the tomatoes shown.

The rest need some more time to ripen.

I'd prefer to leave them on the plants to ripen a bit more,

but then there is a risk of them being eaten by rabbits.

Can't complain too much,

that is the reason I planted so many tomato plants in the first place.

The roma tomatoes are producing quite well so far, except for a little blossom rot on the earlier ones due to the dry weather.

Maybe this year the marinara sauce supply will last a little longer.

The recent cooler weather has slowed the tomatoes down a bit,

but only a little.

One quart of sauce went on some pasta for lunch.

Three quarts went in the freezer.

And another quart is in the fridge awaiting use in other dishes.

Had to buy some more garlic at the store to get ready for making the next batch of sauce (vampire repellant).

Have you ever noticed that there don't seem to be a lot of Italian vampire movies?

Happy Birthday Mom!

You made it to the big 70,

which is 9 more years than your dad managed

and three more years than your mom.

The gathering was actually a few days ago.

I've just been a bit slow (lazy) about downloading the pictures.

Three of mom's four remaining siblings were able

to come to the party.  The fourth one lives in Indiana.

The commute is rather long, but she called with best wishes.

The party menu was a bit tricky to devise.

How do you make fun party food

when the guest of honor is a diabetic?

Answer: you do the best you can with the freshest ingredients,

(and keep the insulin pen handy just in case).

So the menu included:

Roast pork

Roast beef

Ham

Fresh bread for sandwiches (sliced as thin as possible)

sliced tomatoes

Yellow cherry tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes

vegetable plate containing

purple beans, kohlrabi, carrots, and radishes

sour cream and chive dip

blue cheese dressing

fresh salsa and tortilla chips

and lastly my somewhat futile attempt at making a sugar-free cake

sweetened with stevia

and layered/frosted with stevia sweetened whipping cream

(stabilized with some gelatin)

and topped with shaved sugar free chocolate and cherries.

If I bake another cake next year,

 it will be a sponge cake with extra egg whites instead.

The cake looked pretty but was really-really dense.

Ice cream was the no sugar added variety for mom

and regular for everybody else.

The cake looked better at home but the layers slid a bit on the car ride over to my aunt and uncle's house where the party was held.

Their house is a ranch style with two steps to get inside;

my house is best described as the stair-master.

Mom's older sister can't manage climbing the stairs at my house,

so Aunt Mouse kindly offered her house.

A fun time was had by all sitting around the table talking.

Everybody there agreed that they do not like getting old,

but it beats the alternative.

There were a lot of leftovers, except for cake.

The cook has had a couple days off duty.

Today's Dog Dinner Special

is called scavenger hunt.

That's what Chloe's dinner is called

when the handle falls off the dog food bucket,

 and Chloe's food scatters around the kitchen floor.

Looks like she found all the pieces.

It is a cool rainy day today.

At the moment it is actually pouring.

Finally, the garden is getting plenty of water.

Hopefully, what few apples the trees have will get really big.

Conversation

So hubby came home from fixing mom & step-father's car.
He comes into the kitchen where the smell of beef roast and pork roast is starting to emanate from the oven.

He says, "Smells hot.  Smells good.  What is it?"

My reply, "You're  probably smelling residual odor from the herbs on the outside of the roasts when I seared them in the frying pan."

He says, "Mmm, burnt leaves.  Smells pretty good for burnt leaves."

My reply, "Yes, technically that is the definition of an herb, a leaf used for flavoring foods.  You're funny."

Ah-Choo

Excuse me.

Tis the season

for sneezing.

Ragweed is back.

Time to take medicine,

stop sneezing,

and get the fixings together for mom's birthday party.

Drip Irrigation

Poor man's style.

Poke a couple small holes in the sides of a milk jug at the bottom,

fill jug, and let it drip gradually into the soil.

This is particularily useful on clay soil

that absorbs water very slowly.

For really dry places, try using a 5 gallon pail instead.

Brunch & Life Stuff

Today promises to be another hot, humid day.

Stay cool.

Mom called this morning and wanted the brown sugar back
that I had confiscated yesterday.

Somehow she had managed to buy some at the grocery store,

even though stepfather was probably with her at the time.

Also found a bag of white sugar stashed

in the living room yesterday.

Thankfully, she had forgotten about that one.

It is no wonder why mom's glucose was spiking in mid afternoon; she has been putting brown sugar on her cereal.

Yeah, like if it's brown it is somehow better for her - not.

Surprisingly she didn't yell and get really mad.

Maybe now, she will try the stevia,

that I bought for her months ago.

As the Garden Grows

The garden is growing,

some things better than others.

 The Musquee de Provence pumpkins are running amok.

The green heirloom pumpkins have a pest, soil, sun, or water problem.  Whatever, some times things just don't work out.

It has been a rough year for beans;

the rabbits and voles were very hungry.

Some beans survived,

and as long as the pests don't bite them off at the bottom,

the pole beans might actually produce enough to freeze a few.

The swiss chard came back amazingly well after I chopped it down to the ground.  The tomatoes are coming along nicely but have to be picked when they show any sign of ripening or hungry rabbits gnaw on them.

Sunflowers have volunteered all over the garden.

I let them grow because they attract pollinators, look pretty, and the ones that I tried planting on purpose got mostly eaten by rabbits at the seedling stage.  I did not plan on this particular layout, but oh well, it'll work.

 The front planting bed is packed full.

In the center is sweet corn.

Running in rows on either side of the sweet corn is tomatoes.

We had a serious thunderstorm last night.

If it had not been for the tomato cages that were tied together and holding everything upright,

the corn would have been blown flat by the strong west winds that howled down the street.

The zucchini are alive

but not really running as wild as they should. 

Maybe in a few more weeks we'll get something,

and then we'll wish we hadn't.

The kohlrabi started in the mini-greenhouse are filling out nicely.

Can't say they are a favorite; don't know of anybody that would go to a restaurant if it advertised fresh kohlrabi on the menu.

But hey, they make good, crunchy low carb snacks

that I can take over to mom's house.

And then there's the cabbage.

One of the few vegetables that is somewhat rabbit proof.

In all honesty, I planted it in the hope that some dumb bunny would eat it, get gas, and die of peritonitis because supposedly rabbits can't fart.  It appears the rabbits are too smart, but it might have worked on a few voles instead.  A day after I found two cabbages gnawed to the stem, I found two dead voles lying in the lawn.  Either that, or they went over to my neighbor's house, ate vole poison, and came back and died in my yard.  Thankfully, Chloe has not shown any interest in eating dead animals found in the yard.

Cabbage, the gift that keeps on giving.

I gave extra plants started in the mini-greenhouse to my dad,

and he gave me a giant bag of cabbage back.

Think I'll try making a batch of sweet and sour cabbage topped with fresh crispy bacon bits for mom.  I will let you know if substituting stevia for sugar works out alright.  The basic recipe is pretty simple.  In a large, covered stainless steel saucepan, sautee/steam sliced cabbage until tender in extra virgin olive oil with a bit of kosher salt, a few tablespoons of rice wine vinegar, and two or three packets of Sweet leaf stevia sweetener.  Serve hot with bits of crispy bacon scattered over the top.

I forgot to take a picture of the cherry tomatoes.

They are heading for 6' tall - oh well, another day.

So far nothing has been caught in the trap today.

It has actually been quite nice to have a break

from pest control for a day.

 Rabbits look at my yard and probably think smorgasbord.

Cats look at my yard and think happy hunting ground.

I could swear the gold finches' chirping this morning sounded happier now that the cats are gone.

Cats Update

I called the animal shelter this morning.  The owner of the Siamese mix cat claimed it Wed. morning.  The cat would have gone home Tuesday evening, but the owner did not have the proper paperwork needed to claim the cat.  The shelter did not say what that was, but I am guessing the "proper paperwork" probably involved vaccination records, rabies certificates, and a city cat license (very thinly veiled pet ownership tax).


The shelter worker said no one has claimed the second cat (white and black one), and did not know if it was micro-chipped.  She was not there when it arrived, but heard about it from the other staff and very politely described the cat's behavior as "lively" or something just as euphemistic.  From what I can gather the cat is not adjusting well to captivity, and the opinion is that it is feral.  If it does not adjust, it will be euthanized.  At least it is not roaming the streets at risk of catching and spreading rabies or other diseases throughout the neighborhood anymore.

Seriously, Not Again!

Look what was in the trap this morning.

This one really does look like it is feral.

It went for a ride in a police van.

The officer will return the cage.

Hope we don't catch a skunk or a raccoon next.