T Stands for Tuesday and Landscape Project Continues

   Wow can you believe it? Our last Tuesday and T for the month of July. I had a feeling when May for me just zoomed on by that the summer would go fast too-and it has so far.

   We are still into some projects, the dock is not finished due to workers not showing up-sigh, we so need to sort things out at the woods house so it can get on the market to be sold-but too hot this summer, I think we will wait til things cool down.  Speaking of hot we are in for another very hot week-closing in on 100 degree f a few days. So thankful we have air conditioning here, I never grew up with it-the price was a luxury back then. and I know many countries do not have air conditioning so I am always so grateful to have it.

   If you enjoy camping recipes or using cast iron-you may enjoy my recipe share for Cast Iron Saturdays. (previous post)  I am making this a weekly post as long as there is an interest. 

    And just for fun and since it's T Day,  I love to follow John Townsend-18th century cooking and baking so wanted to share his recent post-roasting and brewing coffee in the 18th century.

  A couple posts back I shared a couple videos of our landscape project. In the front, I am working on changing all the grass over to flower beds for the hummingbirds and butterflies especially.  Since that post I have worked around 3 hours every day, except Sunday, very early before it gets hot and before the sun reaches this area. I am sorting through rock and concrete. The concrete chunks (from the brick sidewalk project) will go into two areas to help catch rain water and to eliminate weeds in those areas. The rocks will go on top of the concrete. I also want to cut down on grass. I will need to find someone new to cut lawn next year as we are not happy with who we have now. Which is always difficult to find someone.

  A couple photos 

      As you can see I am working on a hill, the last couple days I have been sitting down and using a short handled shovel to dig through the piles. Much better for my back and more comfortable-not trying to balance myself on the hill. It slopes quite a bit beyond the front of this photo.

  I love this old tree stump for character Will set up something for water for the butterflies here.

I use my cleaning bucket for the small pieces. These two piles are rocks, interesting an hour south where our woods house is we had mostly really pretty and textured rocks. These rocks are not very interesting at all-but will cover the concrete chunks.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the plants I bought online. I knew they would be small but they are a little bit smaller than I expected. Very healthy and professionally packed though-netting on the roots-in the first photo.

   These plants-bee balm and lavender were suppose to arrive on Monday but surprise they came in on Saturday. I had called the post office if I could come and pick them up when they came in-otherwise the carrier doesn't come til after 2pm. So I was happy when the post office called me early Saturday morning.  These came from New York which I hadn't realized when I purchased them-a long time in the mail for plants. I ordered one of each color of bee balm and she sent me two plants each which was a nice surprise. The bee balm colors are red, purple and blue.

This is the medicinal echinacea which came from Missouri-they were packed very well too. I just ordered another set of three plants. Thought I would plant this clump all together and then the next plants same way

Here are the bee balm plants and lavender. I am excited to grow more lavender plants too.

  I have them in a spot outdoors where they are in the shade all day til late in the afternoon-I needed to bring them indoors once the very hot sun hit them as the leaves were drooping. Don't want anything to happen to these plants. (smiles) Update: I looked for a shady spot in the late afternoon today and found one-now can keep these outdoors.

  I also found goldenseal plants on Ebay-I was amazed at all the plant choices there-I had checked out a few online nurseries but I got twice as many plants for the same money from these Ebay sellers.  I have a shady spot that will be perfect for the goldenseal I want to eventually get. I love goldenrod (no this has no allergens like ragweed) so may look for a spot for that too-great dye plant for yellows, and makes a nice tea as well. I am mixing in useful herb plants with the perennials that will attract butterflies, hummingbirds, bees. Once things are set up to plant I would like to order ground cover thyme-it is so pretty and I can harvest the thyme as well-and should keep weeds down. I may wait til next spring for that or see if I can plant it in the fall. Zinnias really bring in the butterflies too-so will scatter these seeds around-and then in the fall collect the seeds for the following year-and there are sooo many kinds of zinnias too.

  Over the weekend I wanted to make a zucchini bread-I found a keto recipe that I changed up a bit. It baked up really well-I had used half gluten free flour blend and half almond flour-I don't care for the taste or the bake using only almond flour. I used a keto sweetener but I took notes that it needed much more. My husband doesn't care for breads like this at all, and he for sure would not like this one-flavor pretty bland even though I added extra cinnamon. I liked it though-now it is getting a bit dry so will toast it in a cast iron skillet to finish it up. Makes a nice break with coffee or good for breakfast.

The recipe was using keto chocolate chips, I changed that to raisins that I soaked first so would be moist

I fixed the not sweet enough-haha-with spreadable honey with cinnamon You can just see my water glass in the back left.

A few lake photos

    Those little tug boats move docks around on the water

A sailboat-the first one we have seen this summer so far

This is a huge dock getting moved and it has a wood roof.

Sunrise

A storm coming in

Another Sunrise-this more was a bit hazy

   Oh and the poison ivy saga is almost over. It took a week for me to stop being super nauseated from the steroids after I stopped taking the last two pills. My worse arm still burns-strange, but I am almost back to normal finally-this has taken a month so far to get over this bad case. I hope I never get into poison ivy again-I am spotting it here at our lake home in several areas.

Happy T for Tuesday and Have an awesome new week everyone

PS here is a photo of the creeping thyme