Happy First Day of April & Catch Up

   Wow the wind outdoors is total craziness. I was hoping to get back out and weed eat the grass along the lake front but too cold and very very strong winds out there. The sun is shining though-smiles.

  April Fool's day was my farmer Grandpa's birthday. So I have always thought of him on this day. I remember when I was in college I had written my parents a crazy letter and at the end I wrote April Fools-they were not happy haha. 

  There are some major storms going through the country again this week. Here in Missouri looks like floods will occur down by the rivers as we have 4-5 days of rain and storms. I am hoping you on the east coast will not see even more winter. I know my friend in Montana living on her homestead at the base of a mountain range is getting a rough winter with snow still coming down this year.

  I am mentally preparing myself for a very hot summer-which usually follows after a rough winter here in Missouri.

 I started hand stitching the second bag together today. I am doing it a bit different from the instructions that I followed for my first bag. That had left too much open after turned to stitch closed-including inserting the lining fabric. I just left the big curve open on top of bag this time.  Once this one is finished I will mail off the first bag to my slow mail friend in New York. I want to keep one finished bag for reference when I stitch up the next one.

  The photo to the lower right side shows a seam begun to get stitched.

 

 I have been planting a few more seeds in bottles this week. Chives, garlic chives, and from a very old seed stash poppies-which are tricky and what I think is nasturtiums  

  I found a cool site that you can identify seed pods, seeds and seedlings from here  I was surprised that the seeds in question-I forgot to mark a bunch of different seeds-seem to be nasturtiums but it makes sense to me as I used to plant these a lot-they are an edible flower too.

  With all this rain coming in I will probably bring my bottles indoors. The bee balm and snapdragons have popped up now I don't want them to get too water logged.

   I still have lavender seeds coming in the mail. I am not buying any plants at the nursery going forward. Two years ago I spent way too much money, especially on the nicer and larger petunias that I love for my big pots-but these don't do well during a very hot summer here in Missouri. I have never tried growing petunias from seed-any of you??

  After the cold period in the refrigerator I will have echinacea seeds to start and later the blue bells.

Before Larry's accident he mounded up some black dirt down by the lake front near our neighbor to the right. Once I get the weeds out of that I will plant some ornamental grass. Larry thought this might bring in some nesting ducks.

  I found plugs for this one on Ebay and they should arrive this week  I will plant these in a big pot for now when they come in this week This is variegated silver ornamental grass   I would like to put a bench down in this area. If I do the neighbors may use it-but that would be ok.

I haven't made an angel food cake in a very long time. I usually make two cakes-a wheat cake and a gluten free cake. Yesterday I was just up to making one cake so I baked up the gluten free cake-a little tricky with no gluten but it turned out really good. Served with fresh strawberries.

  I also made us a delicious beef soup yesterday. I don't go by a recipe I just (wing it) haha I start with a carton of no salt beef stock, and this time I added sliced thin leeks, potatoes, a dried veggie mix for soups. Then when those ingredients were cooked added a can of organic no salt three beans, fresh thin sliced cabbage, fresh mushrooms sliced-then at the end a can of usa  beef.

Today I am baking up cornbread to go with the left over soup. I have shared this recipe in the past-only uses corn meal no added white flour-sooo good. If you search there should be a link to the recipe here on my blog.

  Happy Fools Day and Happy April-Spring is nearing.

We have Fish

   Good morning Friday, It was nice to see our friend that stopped by this week.  He is a young man that is  also a chef and works as a bar tender sometimes as well and may soon get a management position. He works in Kansas City Mo and lives nearby in Kansas.

  His family owns a small lake home not too far from us and he loves to fish. Mostly for the challenge of large cats and right now he is here for spoonbill.   We met him when we first moved to the lake. I suggested for Larry to find  a fishing partner as I did not want him fishing alone in the boat with all of his health concerns.  So he put it out there on Facebook and that's how we met our friend.  

  The two of them talked for hours and then he says ok if I go fishing-of course.  Not 5 minutes later he says the crappie are biting do you want some for the freezer? I love fish so Yes I say smiles.   He cleaned them and fileted them and they are now in the freezer. He went back out and caught at least 10 more that he put back in the lake. He suggested that they make great tacos so will look into that.

  The first photo is his before cleaning, and I took a photo of the fish in the bucket

   I am hoping to start the weed eater to cut grass today. Will see how my body handles this task.

   I have been quite ill.  The last month or so I thought my asthma was getting worse but instead I have acid reflux which I have heard of but didn't know what it was.  This issue blocks my airways some how in my throat and esophagus and I can't breath.  So the doctor gave me a month of medicine. I searched online to read more about this-and sigh now even more food restraints.  This morning after a week I finally do not have the severe burning in my chest and stomach. My throat is not back to normal quite yet.

      If not controlled this can turn into cancer-don't want that for sure.  So no spicy foods, tomatoes and acid foods are the worse to eat now-so I read up on what the safe fruits and veggies etc are. No chocolate no caffeine which I knew about before-my body spikes with a high b/p reading if I have any caffeine. I did search on Ebay on this subject and bought a couple of books to read.

  On a more fun note-- Yesterday I finished the slow stitches on my second bag, and will begin to sew it into a bag. 

   Happy Friday and weekend!