Summer Begins

Hello friends!
This will be a long "catch-up" post since I haven't had the time to write. Between getting the garden in, Joe coming home from the desert, and my youngest son's move to Vancouver, life has been hectic!

The big news in our family was the Ring Ceremony at Annapolis that Hiathan, my grandson, attended with his girlfriend. We're already planning our visit to Annapolis and Washington DC this time next year for his graduation. I can't believe how fast time is flying!

Prices in Annapolis during graduation are CRAZY high! But we're going to be spending at least 3 nights there. We've made reservations in Washington DC for the week before in order to visit the Smithsonian. I've been there once before, when my eldest son was 18 months old. He's now 55! So it's been a minute!  

We're toying with the idea of walking the Camino again, just the two of us, after Annapolis, but haven't yet made a firm decision.

As summer gets it's start, the weather has been crazy here in Oregon. We've gone from 60 degree weather to 90 degree weather and back down to 65 in the matter of days. My garden is so confused!

I made the mistake of starting too early this year. I figured since I wasn't walking the Camino, I'd get my plants in the ground sooner. But what I ended up doing was stunting the growth of some. 

Tomatoes, lettuce, peas, garlic, and onions did fine. 

Tomatoes and Peppers. The peas will come out next week.

Onions are bulbing nicely

My little pear tree has pears this year!

Eggplant is barely making it.

Figs are looking great. Gauze bags are to keep Mr. Jay away!

Green beans had a rough start because of slugs,
but are doing ok now.

Dried leaves on garlic tells me I can harvest in the next 2 weeks.

My eggplant got eaten alive by slugs, and the cucumbers and squash were so stunted I've had to pull them up and start again.  I learned it's best to WAIT, not on a DATE, but for the weather to warm up consistently, which still has not happened here in my town.

Beets remain a mystery to me. They just refuse to grow for me. Turnips have nice full tops, but no bulbs and I'll be harvesting and freezing the greens next week. Yesterday I harvested peas and will freeze them today. I pulled up about half of the plants to make room for new cucumbers - and the rest will come up next week. 

Blackberries and Golden Raspberries and Strawberries are happy as can be, and producing a LOT!  I need to get out there today and harvest. We're picking them every other day now. We've already begun freezing them. My rhubarb is a lot larger this year and I've already made a couple of rhubarb/strawberry pies!  YUM!

Besides the garden, I've been doing a lot of art.  I've had fun creating needle felted animals. Here are a few photos of those:

My son's dog, Marley.

Hare

Raven

Fox

I tend to flit from project to project, so when was weary of needle-felting, I moved on to making greeting cards. Here are a couple of the latest. You can see more in my Etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/AnnieCarvalhoArt

Well, I guess that's about it for now.  Michael is bringing my "grand-dog" Jean Luc over this morning for a couple of days. He's a beautiful (and funny) Golden Retriever who I love and it will be fun to have him here to keep me company (and keep me walking.)

I hope you're having a wonderful summer!

Stay cool!

Love,

Annie

Snowmen in March

 Well, I got my turnips, peas, lettuce, broccoli and beets in.

And then it snowed!

I had to laugh - everything survived and most of the seeds are coming up. But to take my mind off the weather, or rather maybe to embrace it, I began a project for NEXT Christmas. I'm going to make some caroling snowmen. I got the idea from another felter - I asked her permission to use her pattern and she said yes. 

Here is my first attempt. Still a little fixing to do and he needs his right arm - but I think they're going to be cute as heck!

Looking forward to felting his buddies!

I poked my head into the Camino Santiago forum yesterday. 
I see they're having horrible flooding in Malaga and southern Spain. Glad I'm not walking. Joe and I still haven't decided if and when we'll walk again, but we have decided it will be alone and not with a group. Too many tourists and not enough pilgrims - I wonder if it will ever get back to normal? 

Anyway - stay warm  -  Spring is just a few days away!

Hope you're having a Blessed Lent!

Love,

Annie

Sunny Day Gardening

 Today was sunny for the first time in a while. I gathered up every trash can and bucket I own and drove to the park to pick up free wood chips to put between my garden boxes.  After shoveling chips and using the wheelbarrow to unload them, my back told me I was done for the day!  But I got about half of the garden done so tomorrow I'll get up early and finish and post a photo. It looks nice and will hopefully make it nicer to work out there without the muddy walkways. I'm also hoping it will keep the weeds down. 

I bought some worm castings and other things to add to my garden box soil. I have a pile of compost on a tarp that I'll mix all of it into tomorrow and level up the boxes for planting.  I'm sorry I gave away my worm farm - and I'm thinking about investing in another one. But when I was pulling weeds out there, I found LOTS of worms, so maybe I don't need it. We'll see.

Last autumn, I bought "cover crop" seed and planted it. What a waste. Probably got maybe 6 plants in each box instead of a cover crop. I won't make that mistake again!

Once I get the bark dust in and the boxes topped off, I'll transplant the rest of my romaine lettuce and my broccoli!  I'm getting so excited for Spring!  YAY!

I'm working on a special order I got in my Etsy shop. It's a cremation urn box for a lady who describes herself as a Dead Head and it's pretty cool!  Here is a photo of the top:

I guess that's all the news for this week. 

As always, Life is GOOD and I'm grateful for every day!

Love, 

Annie

Sourdough and Garden are Both Coming Along

 This has been a weird week. I won't go into details but there was some sadness at the first part of the week. It lasted for about 24 hours - then I shrugged and moved on. I'm getting good at that in my old age. It's been a difficult lesson but dang, the sailing is so much smoother once you realize what really IS important in life!

Since surviving cancer, I wake up every single morning with a prayer immense gratitude for one more day of life. 

I LOVE my life!  

One day last week I heard a noise outside. It had been snowing all night. I went to the front door and opened it and there were two smiling men from my church, busy shoveling the snow from my walkway! That really made my heart happy - to know people do care about me. It was such a good feeling!

I'm excited for Spring to come! I think Joe and I are going to put in a couple more garden boxes. 

I had big plans for winter and some of them manifested - but I decided it was more important to take my time each day and just enjoy whatever I was doing instead of rushing through, so some projects are still on the burner.  I have some writing I want to do but I've decided that is something I can do this summer on camping trips to the mountains and the coast. 

Yesterday I baked 2 beautiful loaves of sourdough! It's the only bread I can eat here in the USA, and it was so expensive to buy, I decided I'd make it myself. I tried for a while last year, but wasn't too successful.  This winter I'm trying two different methods for making the starter.

My loaves still aren't perfect but they're good enough for me and I'm pretty excited to watch as they get better each time.  I sliced the round loaf and put it in the freezer and forgot to take a photo, but here is the sandwich loaf. It is SOOOO good!

I bought this beeswax bag to keep it in. 
I really like it and it was SO big that I was able to cut it in half and make covers for small bowls with the leftover. 

I made one batch of bread and made a giant mistake.
I was reading a recipe where you could make either one loaf or two.

I put all the ingredients for TWO loaves into the bowl but only added the water for one loaf. So the dough was crazy thick and heavy.

I didn't want to toss it, so I worked a bit more water into it, then pinched it off into buns and froze them. I took one out of the freezer, thawed it, then flattened it and baked it in my Air Fryer oven.
It puffed up like a ball, but baked just fine and gosh it was good!

So now if I just want one or two small pieces of hot bread, I can just take these out of the freezer, let them thaw for an hour, and bake them. 

YUM!

I spent two days working on the Freeze Dryer.

It was not holding a vacuum. 
I called Harvest Right and they had me upload the info onto a flash drive and send it to them. Then they called me and told me I needed to update the programming, which was a pain in the kazoo.

After 6 failures, I realized it wasn't working because the flash drive I was using was too large. Weird, I know, but the smaller 8 G worked and FINALLY I got it updated. Then I ran a load of scrambled eggs I had been holding in the freezer since last week when it failed to dry and voila! Aren't they pretty?

My garden plants are growing taller by the day. 
The lettuce will be ready to transplant in about a week.
Here are two of the pots - probably about a dozen plants.

I have two more pots growing.

I moved my broccoli into individual pots yesterday also, and I ordered more pots. Tomorrow I'll move the tomatoes and peppers into separate pots - it's exciting!  I went out into the garden this morning to cut some kale and the crocus are blooming! Spring is on the way!

I made a pot of Portuguese Kale Soup for dinner.

Oh my gosh, it was good.

I'm so happy my kale grew right through the snowy winter!
It had fallen over and I thought it was a goner,

but it just kept on growing...

I'll be sure and plant one or two more of these this spring!

I still haven't finished the sculpture of Marley.

But it's getting close.

Maybe tomorrow... 

Well, I guess that's it.

Have a great week, everyone!

Love,

Annie

September to February

Lots going on. Joe left for the desert before Thanksgiving so I've had the house to myself.  I've done a lot of needle felting - hoping to get my projects into my Etsy shop soon. Here are some of them:

Doe and Fawn

Raven

Chickadee and Mouse

Sleeping Fox

Red Fox

Hare

Cockapoo (my son's dog Marley)

I've been trying to stay healthy.  I bought a specialty yogurt maker and have been making and eating L Reuteri yogurt. I'm feeling a lot better.

I've also been making sourdough bread.

Sourdough starter

The garden is beginning to wake up. We are having freezing weather this week and then it will be time to take the straw off the beds.

The celery is alive!

The sage, rosemary, and lavendar all made it through the winter!

The giant kale I bought in Spain made it through and is still producing!

The garlic is up about 6 inches in all 3 beds.

The strawberries are peeking through.

I've started new plants in the house. Leeks, onions, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and more!

 I'm really looking forward to Spring!

As far as trips go I may be going back East to visit Rob again. I thought about another trip to Kauai but have decided against it until they get the air controller issue sorted out.  

No trips to Spain planned though Joe would like to go one more time. If we do, we'll go alone and take a route that's less traveled.

I guess that's all the news. 
Stay warm and toasty!

Love,

Annie

 

 

 

 

 

Albuquerque and on to Arches

 I planned on spending the night at the Albuquerque Elks facility. But the hosts were gone and it was dark with absolutely NO light and I kept hearing noises. It was pretty creepy and they weren't planning on returning until after midnight. I didn't feel safe, so I left and stayed at a gas station. Next morning, on to Arches National Park.

I was told online that I could drive into the park and camp.

But that was not true, so I scrambled to find a hotel.
Next morning I was up before dawn and into the park
to watch the sunrise. 

People walking up with flashlights.

From here I headed back home. I was exhausted. I think I'd like to take the trip again, but maybe with Joe to help with the drive or after I rest a year. For now, I'm happy being home. 

Next post is what I've been doing since home.