Night Blooms

 
 
 
I can't believe I have not posted since Tuesday, but this has been a busy week. We took the Monkeys to Great Wolf Lodge and totally enjoyed outselves. The Monkeys are big enough now that they can do most things by themselves with us just hanging out and watching over them. They had a blast in the indoor water park and we had a nice time riding a few rides with them and hanging out in the hot tub between. We loved it. This trip was a gift from Mamala and it was wonderful.

We made it back and found that my Angels' Trumpets are blooming. The first picture was taken just as the sun started going down. The second was just before dark. The last, unfortunately fuzzy, picture was taken just after dark. I wish you could smell the wonderful scent.

Y'all have a nice weekend.

Morning Glories

 
 
 
 

I have always loved morning glories. My first garden was at our home in Mesquite, Texas. It was off in a little corner of the yard. My Dad put up a fence to keep out the Great Danes and my multitude of siblings. I tended that little garden for about seven years during middle school, high school and my freshman year of college. I grew squash, okra, tomatoes and Heavily Blue Morning Glories. The morning glories were planted against the fence. Next to the fence was my Dad's prized peach tree. Guess where the morning glories went? That's right, straight up into the peach tree. Dad wasn't happy, but Mom wouldn't let him pull them out because it was "pretty."

One day, Magillacutty, the giant and quite mentally challenged, Great Dane got inside of the garden fence and had a party by himself. I weighed maybe 90 pounds. He weighed more that 110. Guess how long it took me to wrestle him out of that little garden? The squash was destroyed, but the morning glories survived.

A few years ago, I introduced another invasive vine into my current garden. Thankfully, it has a predator- butterflies. Every summer, the Gulf Fritillary caterpillars chew down my giant passion vine. This morning, I was surrounded by clouds of these orange beauties. I would like to say that the butterflies will move on and I can clean up that passion vine, but we still had caterpillars at Christmas time last year.

Do not bring seeds of wild morning glories into your garden, no matter how pretty they are. They will be with you for the rest of your life strangling your other flowers and covering up your prized antique rose bushes.

The Last Twenty Hours

I am tired really really tired and here is why. These were the ingredients of my last twenty hours.

Realize at midnight that I didn't have an agenda for the MG meeting
Panic and look for last months agenda to copy.
Find old agenda
Type new agenda
Try to print agenda
Fail
Email agenda
Sign my name on email as Debar.
Give up and go to bed
get up
no time for coffee
go to Ext office
find email
don't find attached agenda
retype agenda
start meeting late
forget the names of interns
Don't follow agenda
Realize agenda is incomplete
end meeting
wait many minutes to sign checks
come home fall asleep for a blink
wake up
go to library
detangle intricate family of library patrons
try to figure out someones email problem
forget son's soccer game
frantically try to help find soccer uniform over the phone
feel guilt there will be no "Mom of the Year" award this year
Go home
Eat
Water plants
Listen to teen say I am bored one billion times
Fight off accusations that I should provide for teens entertainment for 2 hours
Have the pee scared out of me by my crazed husband
Go outside and have a nice quiet talk with crazed husband.

Night y'all.

Tomorrows my day off. Maybe then we can talk about plants.

Yard Long Beans Red Noodle Beans and Dumplings

 

We began harvesting Baby Monkey's yard long beans a couple of days ago. We grow both the green variety and the red noodle variety. The picture above is disappointing. The bean pod that looks black is actually a very beautiful dark red. They stay pretty red when they are cooked unlike other colored vegetables that tend to turn green when put to heat. These need to be harvested everyday. If one is missed, it will turn into something that resembles a lumpy snake. Even then, all is not lost, those can be saved for seeds for next year. Racquel from Perennial Garden Lover showed off her yard long beans a couple of days ago, I just couldn't resist showing ours off as well.

Yard long beans (Vigna unguiculata) are also known as asparagus beans. I have saved the seeds of the green variety for years. I bought the seeds for the red noodle variety from Territorial Seed Company last year. They are easy and a lot of fun for the kids.

We had chicken and dumplings for dinner tonight.

I make chicken stock from 1/2 half an onion, 1 celery stalk, 3 chicken bullion cubes (Mexican varieties are best), pepper, three chicken leg quarters and about a gallon of water give or take. It simmers most of the day and the house smells wonderful. When the chicken is done put it out to cool, skin and bone it then return to the stock. Add extra water as needed.

Dumplings = 3 cups flour, 1 cup shortening, 1/4 cup dried parsley, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 1/2 cups buttermilk. Cut the shortening into the dried ingredients and add the buttermilk. Turn the mixture out onto a cutting board and kneed until the dough is elastic and smooth. Roll it out to 1/2 inch thick and cut with a pizza cutter. I make a diamond shape just for giggles. Add them to the boiling chicken stock in two batches. It takes about five minutes for the dumplings cook through. Stand back so as not to get trampled when the family realizes it is ready.

Disclaimer- I don't really ever measure anything. My grandmothers taught me to cook. They seemed to feel that measuring cups were optional. Things rarely taste exactly the same from batch to batch. The above measurements are fairly close. If the dough seems to stiff add more milk, too loose, more flour. I would rather teach someone how to make something than write down a recipe.

Did you have anything special for Sunday dinner?

Where Aunt Debbi Goes to Work on the Farm

 
 

Today was the big day. I visited Eden's Garden the CSA farm I have joined for a working share. For three hours of work per week during the three growing seasons (approximately 30 weeks) I will get my share. This is a pretty good deal at approximately a $15 per hour exchange and I will love the work. Hopefully, I can one day use what I learn from this farm to help develop a community garden in my own town. This farm is only about 15 minutes from our home and about five from the library. Now I am looking forward to learning and eating.

We love our little garden, but it just doesn't produce enough food for us and I want the boys to experience a real farm like I was able to as a child. That's right kids are encouraged to work. There were little girls running around catching grasshoppers and feeding them to the rooster. This is going to be great for us.

Turns out that the farmer worked at the same nursery I used to work at, just at different times. She says the strongest pesticide they have ever used is Bt. One of the members is a retired engineer and he designed a wind turbine and solar panel set up to run the pumps that move the water from the stock tank to the plants. This is the first time I have ever seen a homemade wind turbine. It is pvc pipe cut into the blades, a metal frame and there are license plates as louvers to turn the blades into the wind. The whole thing is painted green. Gotta show Manly. Maybe he can do it for us here.

Since I stayed up until after 1:00 am last night, after my morning in the library and the farm tour, I was worn out. I took a late afternoon nap and woke up to thunder rolling in. It looked like one storm from the south and one from the north west collided right over our house. The air smelled like electricity and the sky was green. My rain barrel filled up in minutes. We pulled up the overflow buckets and all four of them are full as well as the rain barrel. We had more than 2.5 inches in about 45 minutes. I was so worried about not having enough rain this summer, but the last couple of weeks have been blessedly wet.

Update, news says the middle school across the street only reported 1.67 inches. Can't be true.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Fire and Lemons

 
 

The garden clean up is rolling right along. My mom told me that it looks better than ever. This is high praise from my mom. Audio books have changed my life. I can work for hours and not even notice because the story keeps me entertained.

Tonight I worked for about an hour cleaning up the tomato row. Only two of the plants are still alive. The others were pulled out. Because they had been infected with a fungus, I knew not to compost them. I put them in the little chiminea and set them on fire. Then Middle Monkey burned some old rose canes I had trimmed a few weeks ago. The first picture is the fire.

The second picture is my Meyer lemon tree. Several of the lemons are beginning to ripen. The monkeys are eying them suspiciously. I hope I get a couple for myself.

Tomorrow I go to the meet and greet at Eden's Garden the CSA farm I am joining with a working share. I will post all about it tomorrow.

Have a great weekend.

Captain Garden

 
Here is Captain Garden
Protector of potatoes
Champion of chives
Defender of dill
Warrior against weeds


He is standing on the cedar stump I stole from the neighbors curb.

Feel free to add your own silly knight stuff.

"I say bow to me my little peasant flowers! Kiss my feet and I may feed and water you, Or off with your dead heads! I am tired of looking at your wilted leaves! Bloom or I shall compost you!" By Cindee
Captain Garden, 2009 July 31