Happy Mother's Day & Weekend

   Good Moring Friday

   Have any of you made a white sauce for pizza instead of the tomato based sauce?  I have a taste for homemade pizza but I need to stick to my new diet which includes no tomato foods.

  I looked around on the internet and found one that looked pretty good but thought I would ask you all if you ever made this?

   We had our workers for a couple days this week so I went into Wal Mart yesterday early to buy large bags of soil for the ground and to fill up my big tubs.  There is no way I could get those down the hill and steps this year-and they picked up two bags each and carried them down-Wow I was amazed by that. They were heavier too I think with all the rain we have had.  I got lucky too as they had what I needed on sale.  Bought 3 cubic feet bags for the tubs and 6 of the 2 cu feet bags of garden soil  The check out person said when I bought it that the soil was selling like hot cakes this week haha

  I am still recovering from an aching back ugh-but I don't need to pick these up-just shovel right our of the bags. I went to work this week digging out weeds to the left of the steps, I want to finish that today and hopefully work with this soil today. After this hope to tackle that mint and cut grass-again-over the weekend.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers

                        

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.

Pretty Day Today

   Happy Friday and upcoming weekend,

      I got myself up and out of the house early this morning. Needed to do an amazon return at the ups drop off at our bank, and I went to the small local grocery store for fresh produce.  Since this store was bought by a company that picks up these smaller family stores-their produce has really improved. Most items are priced well so I would rather buy from them then everything at Wal Mart. I have not been happy with this small Wal Mart since our move to the lake house, and lately their produce goes bad really fast. and I have gotten bad meat-so I will be buying meat at this family store too.

   I was home by 9 am and we had the perfect day-partial sun, less humidity and in the high 70's F so perfect to work outdoors.

    When I got home and got everything put away I tackled the big task of collecting rocks around our property to fill up the big tubs 2/3 full. I had  my friend bring them  over from the woods house  These are perfect for growing plants in, and hard to come by. The ranchers get cattle feed in these and then they reuse them.  She brought  me 5 of them, but I am going to ask her to bring me the rest of them.

   We drilled lots of drainage holes in the bottoms, I added the rocks, and then I save bubble wrap and cut those up and add to the top of the rocks and then the soil. Once set up they are good for a long time, just need to add some fertilizer to them over the years.

  We have had soooo much rain here that I didn't realize it was drowning out my seeds in the bottles. Only seeds growing is my brown cotton-so I planted them in 3 of the tubs. The rest of the seeds were just too water logged and we have had cold nights as well. Also this side doesn't get full sun all day do to the trees. 

  My husband gave me his old camera that still takes good photos and much better than mine.. He was using it to sell on ebay but no longer is doing that. My newest camera is terrible, at my age I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a camera, and I don't have a cell phone.

 This one needs more rocks, but I had to stop working. I took a break for our 2 pm meal and then went back out to see if I could finish these two tubs.

This is the other one that needs more  rocks-I will work on that tomorrow

 I am going to plant indigo seeds in one of these and borage seeds in the other one. I read that I can dry the indigo leaves to dye with later-so I am going to try that.  I don't make an indigo vat but have dyed in the past with fresh leaves. Still a little tricky but I did get a few lovely colors on fabrics.

  The other side-the right side looking at the steps is a total mess, lots of weeds, and since Larry's fall prevented him from finishing the water project-that side is holding tons of water-a real mess. I need to tackle that next week for sure. I may dig up some of the perennials before I lose them and plant over on this side near the tubs til that water issue gets fixed.

  That's it for me,  I have the KC Royals baseball game on they are playing much better this year. The weather shows the next 3 days will be  near 90 F  typical Missouri weather haha

Good Morning Monday-a Little Catch Up

   Good morning Friends,

I am a bit sore but I did manage to get the main things accomplished I wanted to over our 3 day 80's F long weekend-that was wonderful to be outdoors and with no humidity. Although the humidity has moved in today as any time now we have lots of rain coming in over two days. We do need the rain but not so much at one time. The rivers here in this area will be over their banks for sure.

  Larry also finally got help to get the roof on the rest of his dock. We had two people working on it Early in the day the lake was pretty quiet.

 

         Looks like a dock now-it's almost finished finally

I was able to clean up the perennial garden area. I have zinnia and marigold seeds drying now indoors. I wanted to get the flower heads in before the heavy frost last week

   I started to trim back the butterfly bush and decided I better look that up first-glad I did as I am not suppose to trim it back. smiles  I did cut off all the flower stems. I left a few plants that were still blooming as I wasn't sure which were annuals or perennials. I laid out allot of mulch around the plants too We have had two hard freezes in the 20's last week but the lemongrass still looks fine-however around here the lemongrass is an annual plant. I did dry a pretty big bag full for teas I also planted a big bag of large yellow daffodils in this area.

   My other project was to dig up all the grass and weeds that I had killed off and then added in the garden soil-5 large bags I will need to add more next spring. This area has been used by too many people parking here and I wanted to stop that.     Sooo the top area was hard as cement and full of rocks. So difficult to get through. I decided to save time and just skim off all the dead plants-lay them back on top of the ground and then add the soil on top-this should break down and hopefully loosen things up a bit over winter. I will put ground cover plants in here next spring and I am thinking of planting annual seeds like cosmos etc.

   I didn't get to the edging work though-I need rain first for that to loosen up things. so perhaps end of the week or next weekend I can tackle that project before winter.

  Our property line is just past that new sewer system down by the lake (a round plastic green cover on ground) and just in front of the row of trees on the left facing the little road we made down to the lake. So part of this area I worked on is the neighbors-just the top little corner. They gave me permission to do what ever-and will save them needing to weedeat that space.

 A glorious sunrise for my birthday today. sorry these are not in order; the sky was dark and then more and more reds came in, and then greys, purples and pinks-the yellows is the sun behind the clouds.

  We have been enjoying some really beautiful sunrises this month-above photos all taken early this morning.

    I am not making a special birthday dinner today, but I did make up some awesome baby back ribs to enjoy over the weekend. This afternoon I will bake us up a from scratch lemon meringue pie-one of our favorite pies.  Actually I am doing something with our leftover hamburgers that I had grilled on Friday for our main meal at 2 pm So a simple meal for today-I  sautee'd  mushrooms, sweet pepper, poblano peppers and sweet onion-heated up the hamburgers on top of the hot sautee'd veggies. 

Update on this: It is raining pretty good now, so thought perhaps not good to make the meringue on a rainy day-so I looked that up-yep says don't bake this pie on a rainy day, as the meringue will turn out sticky.  Bummer as all the ingredients were at room temperature. Will bake after the rains have moved on.

    I have been enjoying little surprises in my mailbox last week. I also received a couple happy birthdays through email  The small card in the middle is from a friend in Colorado, it's her photo of the aspens beginning to change-she knows I loved Colorado back in the late '70s when I lived there. At peak color the aspen yellows are a lovely bright yellow.  In the front is the too awesome stamped card from Elizabeth along with a couple napkins for me to craft with.

   Thank you all so very much, nice to be remembered-hugs

Happy new week everyone

Good Morning Thursday Soap Making & Catch Up

   Hi Everyone,  I am loving the sunshine and cooler weather. I needed to take most of this week off, as I was getting too tired, with the drive in and it is easier to stand to pack the glass so that has been getting to both of our backs. I had worked on outdoor projects all last weekend too.  

  So these coming weeks, my home needs a thorough cleaning before winter hits-so am taking one room a day to clean.  Then also working outdoors too.

       So much to do here and there it seems.

  Couldn't ask for nicer weather although we could use some rain-but none in sight so far.

  The small Wal mart garden center nearest me no longer has any garden soil, so Tuesday when I drove in to "work", afterwards I drove into the city we used to shop in. They have a Lowes there so I bought 6 bags of the 2 cubic feet size for the project I am working on now. The Lowe's store and similar type stores nearest to us at the lake is quite a drive and in very busy traffic-so I don't care to do that.         This worked out well this time. Wow the city of Lebanon has grown sooo much, no longer an easy going town-instead bumper to bumper traffic now to get any where in that city. It was just starting to get that way when we moved away. I do miss the many different stores like the Aldi, but I like living near a more rural small town.

  This morning, I decided to get out my melt and pour soap making supplies and make the pineapple sage soap recipe I shared awhile ago. I doubled the recipe to make 16 ounces which gave me several small guest size soaps. I also added in dried lavender from last year to infuse in the warm soap base with the fresh pineapple sage leaves. It turns out a lovely green, so am happy with the results.  Decided to make a second batch of guest soaps just now.

Some photos

   This is the pineapple sage plant  now in full bloom.

This double boiler works out well for melting melt and pour soaps. I use a high quality non detergent all natural base from Wholesale Supplies Plus.  Once the soap is just melted I turn the temperature down very low add the lid-this keeps the soap warm but not too hot-and time for around 45 minutes. I check it off and on and stir, til I get the infused color I want from the pineapple sage leaves.

Pour into molds using a small strainer-Here you can see the pretty green color. 

This is the first batch poured into guest size soaps

I took a few photos of what I am working on outdoors  

    A look up the driveway-after this photo I spent two days trimming those bushes back, so no longer taking up driveway space-that was quite the job.

This is on top looking down. I am using long scalloped edge bricks along the driveway from the bushes to the top  We wanted to prevent people from parking on this spot, and to get rid of the trimming of the weeds and grass too.

This is quite the project-as this ground is hard as a rock, and it has allot of small rocks in it. This is horrible soil. Takes me around an hour to "chisel" out the soil to place one edging piece. I killed off the weeds and grass in this area, so that needs to come out and then I will work in the garden soil, and plant a ground cover and daffodil bulbs-for now.

Breakfast this morning. Larry likes omelets, so I heated up the left over fajita mixture and the sprouted brown rice and chorizo and placed on top -so an open faced omelet. It was good

  For our main meal at 2 pm I am making us Belgium waffles-they are treat since they are full of carbs. I have real maple syrup, and I am going to heat up a no sugar added apple pie filling for a topping.

  Came back to share photos of our Belgium waffles-delicious! We also added cherry preserves

Gluten free 

Larry's wheat

  That's it from me for a bit-

 

T Stands for Tuesday

  Hello everyone,

    Those of you in the States that celebrate Memorial Day-How was your weekend? We do not over celebrate this holiday, but remember the fallen. My husband fought in the Viet Nam war and lost comrades, so it is a weekend to reflect-I think many that fought in wars would feel the same. Although here in the States this the weekend to open up summer for many especially homes on water.

   I didn't make anything special this weekend although I did bake us up peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies. I mostly had to be careful as my lower back is still giving me pain-If I was back in Illinois before retirement in '03 I would know who to visit for help-here not so much.

   Many of you here on T enjoy gardening and/or visiting gardens. Are you familiar with the online site Dave's Garden?  I have visited them on and off over the years and this year decided to sign up for their newsletter. I wanted to share a couple interesting articles.

  This first one Legends and Lore Concerning the butterfly  is a very interesting read so wanted to share it with you. The article talks about cave paintings with butterflies, Native American lore and more. Also attracting the butterflies to your gardens

             Photos from this article

The Hummingbirds Journey  If you enjoy the hummingbird or want to learn more I enjoyed this article too

This newsletter also had an article  Predatory Bugs Good Guys in the Garden This one talked about many I was not familiar with

For my drink share this week-I enjoyed a cup of decaf black tea-which I just recently purchased since I didn't have any in my tea stash

and if interested please visit my last post with a video of the lake sounds and close up hummingbirds, and a little art as well.

   This coming Wednesday will be the first Wednesday of June for Food Wednesdays. We would love it if you joined in or visited the link ups for great food posts. Over the summer we will be posting once a month on the first Wednesday of each month. Hoping you drop by for a visit.

Happy T 

T Stands for Tuesday & Gardening

  Hi everyone, How was your last week? Here the weather has been all over the place, rain, T storms strong winds, freezes a couple nights, and Sunday in the 80 degrees f with full sun. Monday cool with lots of rain. This is typical Missouri weather though with extremes in temperature changes. We retired in the fall of 2003 and the weather still surprises me-we moved down from the Illinois-Wisconsin border after retiring.

   This post also brings us to T where we share a drink related photo with friends over at our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth-find link in my side column You are welcome to join the link up

  Sunday was such a lovely day that as soon as it warmed up a bit I spent several hours digging out some weedy ground cover over in the area in front of the rock walls. I got most of it done. I also helped move some very heavy concrete pavers for the dock project. Hubs found what he needed used here at the lake. There is allot of them though. He had help loading them in the trailer but we haven't been able to get one of the helpers that he pays to unload them-so we have to do it. Very difficult for our ages and Larry's health but we manage to get it done just takes allot more time to do it.

  I ordered a few more seeds. Since I keep getting into this poison ivy mess-which is still not healed at all, I decided I needed jewelweed. This will grow near poison ivy and oak but I have never seen it at our woods property, and we had allot of poison ivy-oak there but I could see it easily and stay away from it. Here is a link about it and it attracts the pollinators too along with the hummingbirds  This can be a ground cover or a very weedy bush if the seeds are planted close. Needs to be planted in the ground as does not transplant well I also learned that the seeds in the pods are edible These do need a cold treatment-as I am learning most perennial plants do-I may just wait til fall to plant these seeds.

 I wanted to buy a few more of the hummingbird mint plants but the seller sold out quickly. Looking around online these are very expensive around $16.00 or more per plant plus shipping So I searched around for seeds-there are many colors available. The scientific name is Agastache Kudos Hyssop I purchased seeds of red flowers and a packet of mixed flower colors. They look like they will fill in an area nicely with lovely blooms-and the pollinators and hummingbirds love these too.

 My bottle greenhouse are doing pretty well. I still have many that have not sprouted yet-but I have many that have sprouted. and I was able to save up more bottles to finish planting the last of the seed I had for the creeping thyme.

  The ground phlox that I planted (and got the poison ivy and fiberglass) is growing well and even has a few pink flowers already.

  To take notes for this gardening adventure-replacing all grass with perennials here at our lake home- I picked up a Gardening Journal that I am excited about.  I have fallen in love with the flower fairies by Barker and found this 2004 copy for just $5.00 free shipping., said like new. Not sure if this is printed every year with different flower fairies but most of these older editions are selling for around $15.00 and up-I found several on Amazon for $50.00 each-I would say I found a good bargain. 😀  I had bought a lovely book last year that included all of her fairies with poems. I have really enjoyed her book so much.

  I don't have new art photos to share, I did  really enjoy my watercolor-ink exercise with the sheep last week though, and finally did not feel as intimidated with learning how to paint. (if interested can check previous posts)  

   I am liking the idea of using watercolor inks as they can be watered down for different colors too. I decided I wanted to pick up a few colors. I went shopping at a large online site for these inks which has good discounted prices on many art supplies I had been happy with them in the past. However,  when I went to check out what??   $22.00 for shipping just a very few items?   Contacting them about this-they are telling me that watercolor inks are hazardous materials so the companies are adding this additional fee. What??  Told them I won't be buying from them again. I ended up going back to Amazon with free shipping. I did look for and find this general information on the Windsor Newton site, anxious to get these inks now to see if there are any hazard warnings on the labels

  This is what I picked up There are many brands so I went with Windsor and Newton  Reading reviews many really liked these inks.  Also good for dip pens-I think there will be some fun with writing to my slow mail friends in the future with these ink colors. This brand also sells gold and silver ink.

  Update: Later this afternoon I just got my box of these inks in the mail-and there are No hazard warnings on the box or the bottles.

  During one of the days we had low temperatures with a freeze I was cold so decided to make me a mug of hot cocoa with the mix I made awhile back So this is perfect for my drink share.

We are feeding bird seed on the deck-early sunrise with bird flying off-this is from a week ago, I don't think I have shared this one yet.

Happy T and new week ahead

T Stands for Tuesday Watercolor Practice & Gardening Projects

 Hi everyone, it's been a very cool and rainy past week. I was "getting in the groove" working outdoors in the yard and then the weather put a halt to that. The grass is really starting to grow too despite the cold temps.

   The last Tuesday of March is upon us already, I am ready for April and hopefully a warm up again soon. Welcome to the T group, if you would like to join in the link up- it is in my sidebar with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth.  I would like to thank our hostess for this weekly event, if it were not for T not sure how I would find visitors to my blog here on Blogger-which seems more difficult these days.

  Saturday my two forsythia starts came in the mail. Packaged very well and good looking plants. I found the shop on Etsy and the reviews were all very good, I was very happy with the plants, and they came in Saturday instead of Monday so that was better for the plants. Sunday morning I placed them in a bucket of cold water for several hours-per instructions. These are to spread 10 feet and get up to 8 feet tall, so thinking in a few years they will cover up a bunch of grass

   I always loved the pretty yellow flowers in the spring and I have not had one of these bushes since moving down from Illinois. I recently got a post from my favorite herbalist-Jan The Nerdy Farm Wife on things to make with the flowers.  I did not know that the flowers were edible too. Below photo taken from her site

  My two plants are in the ground  There is not as much full sun on this side of the house that I had thought. There is also areas with solid rock not too far down, so the second plant couldn't go where I wanted it to. Can't see real well but these plants were 2 feet tall with branches, and even a few little yellow flowers

I had this material that keeps weeds out, it will do until I can pick up some nice bark mulch

  I hadn't accomplished much at all last week. Having allot of trouble with my eyes, they just ache and are too dry I think. I did purchase a heat pad of sorts for the eyes which seems to help a little bit. Thinking the allergies could be an issue as well-I needed to stop taking those allergy pills about a month or so ago-bad timing I know-because I believe they were causing the painful leg cramps, and making my body too dry.

   Saturday I used up the last of my water bottles and the bags of soil for starting seeds to plant lots more of the ground cover creeping thyme. I need to save up more bottles for sure. As you can see I added allot more "greenhouses" The yarrow has sprouted so far.

   Of the plants I bought  last year-I was sad that only one of the lavender plants out of 6 survived. I had ordered 3 they did not make it so they sent me replacements and only one survived. Only two of the bee balm plants survived but they do look good and have spread already. Not sure yet if the echinacea plants survived or not as nothing coming up so far. I do have a couple different ones planted as seed in the bottles.  Really hoping I have success with these perennial seeds I am starting I researched them all on how to start from seed-and these all needed a cold treatment first for several months. I would not have known that.

 

    I am going to work on practicing with watercolors at least once a week. I had picked up a couple of books that Kate shared last year.  

   I was using the idea of using India ink and my dip pen for highlights.

  The stems on the right I thought needed more-well this happened when I didn't think about the ink being reactivated with watercolors-so lesson learned  

    Making us our meal on Sunday, I remembered I had an eraser from way back in the 60's (1960) that I thought I might go over it lightly and see what happens, and add a little more watercolor-well now it's a bit better  I think  

   Those of you that paint, do you start over or do you try to fix a mistake?

For a practice session I am happy with the flowers especially.

  My drink share is a cup of herbal tea I have shared in the past. I do like this company's teas

Sunrise over the weekend

Happy T