Michaelmas!

Today is the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel. 
One of my favorite prayers, that I say often, is the prayer to Saint Michael:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle

be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.

And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, 

by the Divine power of God, 

cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, 

who roam throughout the world, seeking the ruin of souls.

Last year, Paul and I planted Michaelmas Daisies in the garden.  I brought some into the house for today.

End of Season Tasks

Last week and this, Paul and I have been tidying up the garden in preparation for winter.  Paul took down our birdhouse for winter storage, we gathered up the tomato cages, and covered some of our perennials.  Paul will run the mulching lawnmower over the grass to collect up the leaves on Monday, when the weather is predicted to be "warm".  We also arranged for Sears to come do routine maintenance on our snowblower. 

Paul and I also went through our canned goods, purging any expired ones, cleaning and sorting.  This was not planned; the upper shelf of our Lazy Susan base cabinet shifted down, needing an adjustment, which Paul took care of.  But I have been meaning to go through it, so all was good.  The trick is to use up all of the duplicates I found and didn't realize I had - how much coconut milk can one person accumulate?!  I see Thai food in our future, maybe some Indian or Caribbean as well.  We are well stocked in vegetable soup for the winter.  It feels good to have that done. 

Sadly, there is a frost predicted for tonight.  So I went out and collected the last of the herbs before they are frozen.  Surprisingly, in spite of some pretty cold and awful weather in the past month, three herbs survived: rosemary, oregano, and parsley.  In keeping with my international cooking, I will also need to make some recipes that use parsley and oregano (Italian, anyone?!).  The rosemary I plan on using to make a rosemary hair rinse (link to holistichabits video/prep instructions here).  Rosemary is great for the hair, and has aromatherapy benefits as well, which apparently one will smell while prepping the hair rinse.

Left to right: rosemary, parsley, oregano

Summer Birdhouse

We found this gorgeous birdhouse on Etsy: A Country Way Shop.  It's really well made, and adds such a nice touch to the garden!

Health Update (Healthy Eating)

So, I have been sick for 2 1/2 weeks.  It started just before I began my healthy living stuff I mentioned in my previous posts.  It just seemed to get worse and worse with each day.  Finally the doctor gave me antibiotics last week.  I also am getting over laryngitis.  I was too exhausted to do much, but during this time the sprouts grew, Paul and I are eating more salads (with sprouts!), and I also tried a healing drink.

But I am finally on the mend.  I still cannot sing due to the recovering laryngitis.  So I doubt I will be able to sing at all for Easter.  This bums me out more than I can say.  Maybe I'll post on those emotions another time.  Today though, I went to ballet class!  So that was a bright spot. (Separate post on that to come.)

Photos:

Pea Shoot Sprouts Growing Nicely

Healthy Healing Drink:

Coconut milk, Manuka honey, fresh ginger, turmeric

I had peeled the ginger and turmeric that went into the drink pictured

Note: the AC vinegar in the back was not part of the drink!

Microgreen Kit

Continuing on my healthy living theme, I recently purchased a Microgreen growing kit from the Window Garden company.  We bought the tray, some pea shoot sprouting seeds, and a "Veg Ledge" that fits on the window with suction cups.

Here's the kit, unboxed

The kit itself came with tray, soil disc, a water spritzer, and sample pack of seeds.  I bought an extra box of seeds with the pea shoots* - that came with three envelopes of seeds and extra soil discs.  

Seeds planted, tray suction-cupped to the window

In about 10-12 days, I shall be eating sprouts!!

*P. S. Although the packet says "Use Entire Packet", I didn't.  It seemed like too much seed.  I used half.  I suppose I will spend more money that way - buying new soil discs, but I want to easily harvest these sprouts.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Winter Produce

We had some abnormally "warm" days at the start of this new year (i.e. 40 degrees).  We were outside working on Tyler's baseboards, and I saw some lovely oregano that hadn't frozen, so I harvested a bunch.  Then Paul reminded me that we still had carrots in the ground. Fortunately only the top part of the ground was frozen. I was able to dig beneath and got about a dozen carrots total once I had completed the harvesting.

Lovely oregano

Carrot peaking out

First batch, in need of a good washing

Spring Gardening (Finally)

After a very cold start to April, we finally have temperatures warm enough to allow gardening. Paul has been very busy starting seedlings (mostly flowers) indoors in the early spring, and has been transplanting them to the garden.  Yesterday we went to buy vegetable seedlings, plus some annuals for color.  I planted them, and it was so easy because Paul had thoroughly prepped the square-foot boxes for me.  So it basically took less than an hour to have my vegetable garden started:

The first four boxes planted, another box in the way back has chives that return each year, 

and Paul's innovative use of old windows as a modified greenhouse can be seen in the back. 

While we were working, a very friendly duck paid us a visit.

We nicknamed her "Soccer Duck".

As I was photographing her, she mistook my phone for food and reached up and nipped me by mistake.  It didn't hurt thankfully.  This photo is right before that, as she is reaching up!

Absolutely Stunning

...a cardinal in our backyard, likely enjoying the new bird-feeder I bought.

A Recent Outdoor Gathering

The temperatures in our area have been a *bit* miserable.  But we were able to eek out a nice cookout one recent weekend.

Robert mans the grill.

Kristin and Ty.

Ty eating corn.

Later, Paul set up Ty's telescope for a little stargazing. (Sorry about the beer placed front and center!)

Great-Grandmother

Tyler and "Grammy" last month at a late-summer visit to the Botanical Gardens.  Such a blessing for the both of them that they have gotten to know each other - not everyone gets the privilege of knowing their great-grandparent or great-grandchild.

Pesto From The Garden

We had ciabatta and mozzarella cheese from the grocery, but had forgotten the pesto to go with these yummy sandwiches.  I was going to use plain basil leaves from the garden, but then thought that maybe I could make my own pesto (something I have never done).  We just happened to have pine nuts and grated Parmesan (not fresh like the recipe recommended, sorry!).  I mixed it up ...

...and then we made these wonderful sandwiches (using our garden tomatoes as well).  Delicious!

Fruit from the Garden

After a dreadfully cold winter, a rainy and cold spring, we are exhausted.  However, the plentiful rains were much appreciated by our cherry tree and our raspberry bushes.  We have been enjoying a bumper crop of each.  My friend Dorothy came over with her family and picked four large Ziplock bags of cherries to make "Drunken Cherries" (brandied cherries).  Julie and Grandson picked a huge bowl of cherries for us.  Every day Paul and I go outside and eat raspberries right off the shrub; Paul takes some to work with him.

I finally pitted the cherries, and found the best and fasted way I know of so far: Instead of picking up two at a time and smushing them until the pit pops out, I now stand by two bowls, use my thumb to split the cherry, take the pit between thumb and forefinger and drop into the bowl to the right, put the good part in the bowl to the left.  This is at least twice as fast as my old smushing method.  Then the cherries can be cooked with the other ingredients for cherry pie filling.  (Note: as you are cooking them, observe carefully for any pits that might have inadvertently snuck into the good stuff.  I found five in my pot, in spite of how careful I was.)  The pies were delicious!

Cherry Tree

Raspberries

Homemade Cherry Pie.  Yum!

Thawing Out The Garden

Finally, our area is feeling warmth (i.e. 40° "warm" today).  Tomorrow is supposed to be even better (52°!).  This got me thinking about my garden for the first time in months.  Last week I had gotten an indoor basil kit (when it seemed like it would never get warm - gotta have some fresh veg in the house), and Tyler and I prepared it today:

The Kit

Ty watering the newly planted basil seeds in the cute metal container

After this I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead to the garden center and get some supplies in anticipation of tomorrow.  I wanted to go today while it was colder, because on the first day of the first sign of true warmth in this area, the garden centers are flooded with people.  In spite of the cold though, I donned my boots and at least got started with some prep work outside.  It was great to be outside for longer than a few moments.  My body was in shock from fresh air and exposure to sunlight!

I cleaned leaves and dead stalks from the garden beds.  The soil in the raised beds is loose, but below it is still frozen.  Fortunately I can plant cool-weather crops in the raised soil and not worry about that.  There is still more clean up to do, but at least I got it started.

I mixed up the first batch of a soil to replenish soil lost in the boxes last year.  

I used the Mel's Mix recipe from the Square Foot Garden website (although I use cow manure rather than compost).  I was lucky that Paul had found some packages of vermiculite - very hard to find nowadays.

  

At the center I also bought cool-weather seeds: broccoli, carrots, leeks, romaine lettuce, 

buttercrunch lettuce, spinach, and sugar snap peas.

I also bought a pair of extra-small gardening gloves.  

In case a little pal might want to help me plant.

Quittin' Time!

Summer's Bounty - Rainbow Chard

I usually plant Rainbow Chard in the garden simply because it is pretty (it's sort of scary-looking to eat!).  But as we are trying to eat more healthfully, we cooked some up last night, sautéed in olive oil, onion, garlic, and a little soy sauce.  Not bad!

The Mock Orange Shrubs are in Bloom

So I brought some inside.

Gardening, At Last!

I was thisclose to giving up on gardening this year.  It has been so cold this spring, so much going on in our lives.  But today it was warm.  Paul was off work, and after we did some house painting, we decided to go pick out some plants.  I got going, and accomplished a lot today.

Our plants, flowers and vegetables

Seeds to sow, better late than never (lets hope it stays cool for the peas!)

Peas are sown in the back, a lone zucchini is in front, to take over the trellis and its own cage once the peas are finished, and three herb plants to reflect my new interest in healthy (and tasty) cooking: basil, cilantro, and tarragon (chives are in an adjacent box, they always come up there with no help from me!).

The Swiss chard is sown in the back of this box, two peppers, one green, one red, and in the front corners are tiny marigold plants that came up on their own here and in another square-foot box (I moved them to a more pleasing placement).

We also planted five tomato plants and the flowers, did some weeding.  It was getting dark when we were done.  I'll have to look at it all again tomorrow.  But I'm glad we planted!

Happy Mother's Day!

Lovely Roses

Cherry Tree in Bloom

And in the Tree, a Beautiful Bird

A Pastel Bird Heralding the Arrival of Spring

Beautiful.

A Lily in the Evening

At a recent trip to the Chicago Botanical Gardens, we saw (and smelled!) this lovely lily:

Cook Outs, Frosty Drinks, and Gardening!

It's finally the season for it.  After a very cold spring we are now enjoying fine weather (actually, at times, too hot, and very abruptly too).  Here's what we've been up to:

Paul manning the grill.

Our drinks: Sgroppino (Italian cocktail). Giada de Laurentiis' recipe here.

Hummingbird Garden plants, ready to be planted.