When Do Ice Cube Trays and Carpet Go Together?

Anytime you've got a garden....

If you read my 365 Days in the Moonshine Capitol of the World blog, you'll know I scored these room-size pieces of carpeting at my favorite church rummage sale this last weekend.

While I would love to have cream-colored carpet in my livingroom, it's not going to happen (4 dogs and red clay backyard -you do the math), but my garden is another story.

While the blueberry patch (picked the first ones this morning BTW) is mulched with straw, the rest of the garden has red clay, so I scrounge all the used carpet I can find, then cut it into strips, turn it upside down (fluffy carpet side down, stiff backing side up), and lay it down for paths.

It lasts for years, looks neat and tidy, mulches the plants and helps them keep their roots moist, keeps the weeds out, and is either free or very, very inexpensive (each of these large pieces ran me $5). Much less expensive than buying bags of chips or decorative mulch to make paths.

And once you've made the garden paths, your plants grow big and healthy, until its time to....

Harvest your herbs! This year I'll be chopping fresh leaves of basil into small pieces, then dividing them into ice cube trays. Fill each space full of herb, then add water. Freeze.

When the water is completely frozen, pop the cubes out into a large ziploc bag. This winter, whenever you need fresh basil (or any other herb you choose), just take a couple cubes and drop them into your soup or stew.

If you have basil, oregano, marjoram and sage you have all the ingredients for Italian seasoning. You can either freeze a fresh Italian blend in ice-cubes and have them ready to go, or, dry your fresh herbs (in the oven* at temp up to 180, for approx 4-5 hours or until completely dry), and then use this recipe to make your own seasoning:

2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried marjoram
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried sage

Combine all ingredients; store in an airtight container.

Use less of this mix than you usually would since home-grown is a lot stronger than the processed stuff in the store.

*Using the microwave for drying is not advised - instead of drying the leaves, it actually cooks them, and the quality and taste are poor.

See - carpets and ice cube trays. What's not to love?

This Tornado Is Brought To You By....

This is what our porch looks like during 70 mile-an-hour straight line winds, with sideways rain coming towards the camera . There is no bright shining light off to the lefthand side of our front porch - that was the daylight bouncing off the sheets of rain.

These pics were taken about an hour ago when we had severe thunderstorms move through. The area east of us is still under a tornado watch, and damage reports are coming in. Our county is under flash flood watch, and people to the south and north of us had hail up to the size of a small chicken egg. Trees and limbs are down, and one tornado sighted about 5 miles away stayed on the ground for 100 yards or so, with boats being blown and flipped over on the lake.

Just prior to the storm, the sky turned a deep dark black - an impressive black - a Halloween black with clouds swirling in clockwise layers, enough to give the Minnesota in me a bad feeling

Halfway through the storm, the rain is coming down sideways and simultaneously filling the gutters and blowing up out of them at the same time. The splash you see here is just the blow-back. Up inside the porch, on top of the column, the baby birds and their mama are sitting tight down in their nest, hoping for the best.

Our neighbor's house was almost completely hidden in the rain, except for this brief moment in between cloud bursts.

We were lucky - I checked the yard and we have no trees or limbs down, no damage to the garden (blueberries are out dancing in the rain - there are no words in blueberry language for "too much rain" - which is good, since they've gotten almost 5" in the last three days), and the greenhouse is just fine. The immediate neighbors all appear to be fine, although my parents are without electricity at the moment, but that's normal for their area in any storm (and they'll probably be back up within the day).

Welcome to Tornado Season 2009 - here we go again.

Invaders and Heat Waves

Looks gorgeous doesn't it? An entire crop of potatoes -red and russet - mixed with towering horseradish plants to ward off pests, specifically Japanese beetles.

Apparently it doesn't always work. Deep in those green leaves these little guys were busy munching away. These are the dreaded Japanese beetles. The last couple years our area in Virginia has been inundated with them. Twenty miles away, my dad picks 2-3 ice cream buckets a day off his plants, then feeds them to his catfish. He refuses to plant horseradish in his potato fields because it spreads. (I for one appreciate the fact that there's at least one plant I will not be able to kill, no matter what).

This year the horseradish isn't working completely, although (so far) I only have a very few beetles. My technique is to pick them off and drown them, usually while swearing. So far, the only bed they've shown up in is the volunteer potato bed. They must be nearsighted, and haven't located the new potato bed, 8 feet away.

Can you pick out the three separate companion plants here? This is in the new potato bed, right next to the compost bin in the middle. On the far left is a Heavenly Blue morning glory, in the center are the large,broad leaves of the cucumber, and on the right, the long narrow leaves of a potato plant.

The idea is that the morning glory will grow up over the compost bin making a column of gorgeous blue flowers, shading the cucumber while providing them an additional trellis to climb, and eventually covering the full-grown potato plants, shading them from the late summer heat. Both the morning glory and cucumbers have a shallow root structure, so they won't interfere with the potatos and their underground crop.

The heat wave this week means I have to cover the broccoli so it doesn't bolt. The gauzy covering mixed with lots of water means I should get a few more rounds of broccoli yet. (For these plant shade cloths, I go to Walmart and get their $1.00/yard gauze. This was originally white, but several years of use and our Franklin County red clay have dyed it a nice tan-cream color).

The blueberry countdown is started: the five-year plants are loaded, the four-year plants have a modest crop, and the three-year plants are growing and establishing themselves. To guard my blueberries against deer and birds, I randomly sprinkle compact discs around the plants- mostly the ones AOL use to send out for free, but I've been know to pick up cheap ones at yard sales. This is why the Greatest Hits of Guy Lombardi are in my garden, along with 500 Hours of Free AOL.

And for anyone who is wondering, no, we haven't finished the pond/water system yet. The best laid plans have been run amuck by car repair bills.

Going to Hell, Probably in A Snakeskin Lined Handbasket

I have been wallowing in guilt all night because we killed the black snake yesterday.

My father the biologist is not happy with me.

DH is not happy with me (and he helped kill it -they are amazingly hard to kill).

I know it was a good snake (black snakes eat mice, squirrels, chipmunks, rattlesnakes and cottonmouths).

But damn - DD almost stepped on it, freaked her out. It was almost 4 feet long, about 2" in diameter, and was about to go in the puppy door. That means it would be in the house, or at least the back entry. And the back door doesn't fit that tight. Its second location of choice was straight out into the puppy yard.

Black snakes kill their prey by constriction, but if provoked or cornered they bite, and it's painful. Our schnauzers are getting old, one is blind, two are deaf, and one is hard of hearing. Chewy is (cover his ears), not the brightest bulb in the box. He'd try to play with it, which I'm pretty sure is "provoking" if you are the snake.

I don't need bitten dogs, or the vet bills that come with them.

I also have a yard full of black soaker hoses, that all look very much like said snake. And I have to pick them up all the time.

The hoses, not the snakes.

And while we were trying to get to it, it starting climbing and turns out they can go pretty high, and then get up into the tree next to the house, and hang over the walkway.....see where that's going?

So I killed the snake and will probably go to hell for killing A Good Snake.

And never hear the end of it from my dad and DH.

Cassia or Cinnamon, That Is the Question

I went to my favorite spice store (that's how I think of it, but they do so much more there, shameless plug follows below) on Wednesday, and discovered I wasn't buying at all what I thought I had been buying all these years.

Cinnamon is an imposter.

The cinnamon we all know and love, and have covered our toast in and sprinkled on cookies, is actually referred to as bastard cinnamon.

It's true.

My dear friend at The Well knows her stuff (and I googled it when I got home 'cause I couldn't believe it).

The everyday cinnamon is actually the bark of the cassia tree (see beautiful botanical drawing above). It's a relative to the REAL CINNAMON tree, but not at all the same thing.

This is cassia bark, just before it's ground up.

Into this.

And this is the REAL CINNAMON TREE. In this case, a Sri Lankan Cinnamon Tree (but there are also Chinese Cinnamon Trees, as well as Indonesian Cinnamon Trees).

The REAL CINNAMON has more oil content, and therefore a stronger, more pungent flavor. I got a whiff of REAL CINNAMON on Wednesday at the spice store, and the difference is overwhelming.

I was a chicken - I got the plain old (less expensive) Bastard Cinnamon (they didn't call it that, but I saw it on google and will always think of it that way now), but one of these days I'll try the real thing on my toast.

Shameless plug for my favorite spice store:

http://www.wellofcourse.net/

If you are anywhere near Bedford, Virginia, The Well is absolutely worth a trip. Although I think of it as a spice store, it's also where I get my Rosemary Essential Oil that I add to shampoos and hand lotions.

This whole cinnamon thing has me wondering if everyone but me knew this. What other herbs are masquerading as the real thing, only to be exposed by people much more knowledgable than myself?

Project Completed

Old Puppy Cabana, at the height of its glory

New, improved Puppy Cabana, 99.9% finished:

Lower to the ground, lower roof for more shade, more natural look, with deck still needing to be treated (too humid today).

Side view. Still no puppies test-driving. Perhaps if I leave their yard, and walk discreetly around the garden, they will try it out.

Broccoli needs to be picked before it flowers. The cuke plants in the milk jug are exploding, and will need to come out soon.

The gourds are up. I fear this will be one of those years when ALL the gourds come up.

The volunteer potato/horseradish rows are growing by leaps and bounds. The horseradish is companion-planted with the potatoes to ward off Japanese beetles. Neither of these plants needs special water or soil, they just seem to grow no matter what.The big wide horseradish leaves also shade the potatoes so I lose very few to sunburn (sunburn is what happens to potatoes laying on the surface, and results in green patches. Don't eat those potatoes. They will make you sick.)

This is the planned potato bed, the one I actually planted this year. The compost bin is in the middle, and it has three cuke plants around it, which so far haven't done much of anything (last year they loved it here. Fickle things).

My much-neglected rose bed. Every year I fully intend to clear it out, add to the colors with new rose bushes, plant strawberries in with them, and straighten up the little wrought iron fence that really is there,but you can't see (for all the weeds).

And every year I spend so much time, effort, energy on the food beds that the poor roses get left behind. But they bloom anyways, in spite of needing trimming and pruning.

This year they did get banana peels planted at their feet, which may account for this display.

Drifting back nonchalantly back to the puppy yard, I spot Max trying out the new deck.

If it pleases Max, the rest of them will be a breeze, since Max is the grouchiest Scrooge of all pups.

Max has cleared the way for Chewy to test the other end of the deck. Apparently it's a good spot to sit and dream of rabbits to chase.

Or of blogs to write. All he needs is a laptop.

Too Many Projects

Day Two of the Cabana Re-Building: The whole frame was rotted, so we trashed it. Using treated lumber, the frame was rebuilt, and dropped almost 6" in height. In nine years, our "puppies" have aged, and lost their eyesight. The lowered deck, plus the removal of the sunning ramp, will lessen the chance for sprains and broken legs jumping up and down.

I'm thinking a larger version of this would be nice out in the yard, underneath the pergola I've been wanting.

The base of the roof attachment was rotted out on both sides, so it the legs were cut down, and then rebuilt with treated lumber. Overall, it'll be about 6" shorter, which will increase the amount of shade on the deck.

After taking in the tools, we sprayed the puppy yard with flea repellant, and then made pizza.

Tomorrow: treating the base and deck with Thompson's Water Seal, then reattaching the roof to the deck.

If we get done early enough we're going to see Star Trek.

Yah Memorial Day!