Tag Archives: planting garden

A Few Days

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Saturday, May 19, 2018

Today I learned that it is not wise to wear crock type footwear on chilly rainy days. Puddles in parking lots, when the temperature is hovering around 10C, are just waiting for the unsuspecting Crock wearer. I will not be a Crock wearer on another such day, nor will I be unsuspecting.

Tonight supper consisted of leftover homemade pizza, and seedless grapes for dessert. I love fast food pizza, ordered and pickup up, but only on the first day. It looses its appeal when reheated. Homemade pizza is good the first night, and just as good the second or third night. The real bonus for me is is that homemade pizza crust contains no sodium, so that a few slices of pizza won’t put me into sodium overload. Although I love it, I don’t put pepperoni on pizza, it is too high sodium. I do like a bit of low-sodium bacon cooked and crumbled on my homemade pizza, with sweet onions, sweet peppers, and mushrooms. I use my homemade Red Pepper Sauce as well, no sodium in that. The cheese, well, it is the cheese I have to watch, high in sodium, and in cholesterol. The biggest drawback to homemade pizza is that I have to make it, but then, so far Attila is willing participant in pizza construction, so it isn’t so bad at all.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Well, I started this entry yesterday and got distracted. It didn’t take much to distract me either. Attila was going to the garden centre to spend a $20 gift certificate he received, so I decided to go with him. Today he will plant the tomatoes, peppers, and rosemary. The compost toilets at the Rideau Camp use peat moss, so a good supply was purchased for the 2018 season. It was raining the during the entire visit to the garden centre, which was only partially sheltered. I wore a parka and heavy winter boots, which allowed me to remain comfortable while I wandered about. It is lovely to spend time around growing things… the labels are a big bonus, suddenly I know what I am looking at.

I have had Food Mills recommended to me numerous times. I recently found a relatively good quality one on sale, a Cuisinart Food Mill. It arrived this past week. I tried it for the first time last night. Attila had unearthed yet another bag of vintage whole tomatoes from the freezer. I removed the stem and ends, popped them frozen and whole into a large soup pot, then heated them up until they were thawed and warm. They were drained, ladled into the food mill, and in about 20 minutes a lovely tomato sauce was extracted. Two 500 ml jars of tomato sauce are labelled and in the freezer.

Who knew!! I am in love with the Food Mill. It is so easy, I wonder at the decades I’ve lived without it. How did I do that? I wish I had listened to all of you who told me about the Food Mill quite a while ago!

The skins and seeds were left in the food mill. I scraped them onto a piece of waxed paper, spread them thin, and place the waxed paper on the cooking rack. I am hoping to place the dried skin and seeds in the blender to create a powder for flavouring. The results may or may not be satisfactory.

The clean up was super easy.

Inspired by last night’s success in the kitchen, pre-dawn found me in back there, beginning preparations for my complete protein Vegetable Soup. I was happily chopping vegetables, sautéing the beef and onions, grabbing the bits of this and that that I had saved over the last week, adding them to the soup pot, when Attila rose with the sun.

Attila is planting his garden today. I watch. I occasionally offer input, but never criticism. Breakfast on the back porch consisted of a toasted bagel, and a banana smoothie. Funny how how food tastes even better when you are watching someone else work! But really, Attila is playing, not working, he enjoys gardening so much.

Well, here it is, almost noon, and I am still sitting in my pyjamas; quite comfortably I might add.

I think I’ll get dressed now, and go wander in the garden, see if Attila wants any help.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

18°C
Date: 11:00 AM EDT Sunday 20 May 2018
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.5 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 18.4°C
Dew point: 12.6°C
Humidity: 69%
Wind: NNW 21 gust 32 km/h
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.”
Thomas Carlyle
1795 – 1881

Eventful

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Our Mother’s Day get together at the country house. This is me, Grandma, and Imp and Elf, the Grandbabies, twins. Tink, the youngest is busy visiting with her Great Aunts and Great Grandmother. May 10, 2015
2015MayGrandmaImpElf

The weekend came, and the weekend went, and it was eventful.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

On Saturday morning at 7:20 a.m. I left the country house and headed down the road towards the little house in the city. The traffic was light most of the trip.

As I was on the last 20 minute stretch of highway, Highway 401, from out of nowhere, a huge white SUV, which was passing me on the left, veered into my lane, about to hit my vehicle at the back of the driver’s door. I caught the movement just out of the corner of my eye, she snuck up on me from behind. I was forced out of the driving lane onto the side of the road, and barely escaped rolling the car. I fishtailed for a bit, and regained control of the car. The SUV carried on as if nothing had happened, then cut into the passing lane and disappeared into the distance.

She could have killed me, and didn’t even notice!

All’s well that ends well though, and here I am to tell the tale!

Attila arrived at the little house in the city on Saturday evening. One of the items we transported down to the little house was our old television set, a CRT, the VHS player, the DVD player, and the cabinet on which they sit. We set that up and decided to take a break, share a pizza, and watch a movie.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Sunday morning, as early as was acceptable, Attila mowed the lawn. Luckily the new mower has a bag attached, that catches the cuttings. He created a pile of cuttings that was over three feet high, by the time he had finished cutting the lawn. Then we did a bit of shopping. We had a quiet evening, eating leftover pizza, and watching Netflix.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Yesterday, Monday, was a statutory holiday, so Attila stayed the night Sunday night, and spent the better part of the day here before heading back to the country house. It was a gardening extravaganza! Attila transplanted the lungwort, the day lilies, and the sedum from the vegetable garden, to various locations in the front and back of the house. Those plants were moved to the vegetable garden just before we dug up around the basement to waterproof it. He then planted the plants I purchased at the grocery store: lavender, big boy tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, and portulaca.

Then Attila prepared soil for planting seeds, the seeds I purchased through Terra. He planted: swiss chard, borage, nasturtiums, red runner beans, pole beans, zucchini, and basil.

Our compost pile, just a heap, but very effective! The cut grass is beginning to break down and lose its chlorophyl.
2015Maycompost
The newly planted tomatoes, alongside the blooming iris, and the rhubarb.
2015MAYgarden

After downing a cup of coffee, Attila was off on his trip back to the country house. He had a good drive, but a piece of Tank’s trim from around the front windshield blew off on the highway, again Highway 401. That highway!! No damage was done, other than losing the trim. No other vehicles were affected. I guess we will have to look into what happened there, and decide if we should try to replace the piece that blew off. As long as everyone is OK, who really cares!

The day was hot and sunny day, and as evening fell, the air began to cool, just slightly. I kept myself busy, to get through the dreaded “we me” emotions. Thankfully they came and then they went.

Yesterday morning I received a call on my cell phone, from a realtor’s office near the country house. They wanted to show the house this afternoon, which they did. The feedback we got was that they liked the house and the property, but that our location wasn’t for them. That could mean so many different things, that it means nothing. I was really impressed that we received almost immediate feedback from our realtor.

Last night I received another message from our realtor, setting up another showing this afternoon.

I like this realtor more all the time!

Terra is going in for surgery this week, and Lares has taken time off work to be with her. It isn’t anything life threatening, but all surgery involves risk, so I will be glad when she is through it and smiling again!

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Well, here it is 5:47 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I am writing at the kitchen table, coffee at my side. It was such a quiet winter, and suddenly it is such a busy spring. Today I will be sorting and purging items here at the little house in the city, making room for another carload of belongings, that I will bring here on the next trip to country house and back. We will be moving from a family size three bedroom house, to a tiny two bedroom house with no closets, and a lot of our belongings won’t make the cut, or the trip south. Even so, room must be made for the belongings that do make the move!

My first task of the morning is to gear up and water the newly planted gardens. Which leads me to comment on the mosquitoes. There are lots of them! Nothing like the mosquitoes we get at the country house, but lots nevertheless. I have been bitten, and can only hope that the mosquito that got me either didn’t carry West Nile virus, or that I have already been exposed, and am now immune to West Nile Virus. When the mosquitoes are bad it is virtually impossible to avoid being bitten. My mosquito resistant clothing is all at the country house! I have the spray here though, and will treat another set of pants and a long sleeved shirt to keep here, then I will have gear at both locations. Usually I keep the mosquito resistant gear in the vehicle I am driving, but with Attila using both vehicles to accomplish various tasks related to the house sale, my gear got stowed in the mud room at the country house.

Attila and I chatted for a little while this morning, over FaceTime. He looks exhausted, and well he might. When I talked to him last night at 9 p.m., he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and was just coming in from loading Tank with a full load to take to the dump. He doesn’t eat because he says it makes him want to fall asleep. He will spend his lunch hour taking the garbage to the dump, and when he is done working at his day job, he will be heading over to work at his part-time job, where he will work until dark. Hopefully, there will not be too many more tasks related to the house sale, so that Attila can have some down time when he isn’t working at one of his two jobs.

The day begins!

Worldly Distractions

Weather

17°C
Date: 8:12 PM EDT Monday 18 May 2015
Condition: Mist
Pressure: 101.4 kPa
Tendency: falling
Visibility: 3 km
Temperature: 17.0°C
Dewpoint: 16.7°C
Humidity: 98%
Wind: SSW 14 km/h

Quote

“As we grow old…the beauty steals inward.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 – 1882