Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled beets...

  And they were beauties. lol  One of my favorite things, and I have been out of the home canned ones in my pantry for a couple of years.This year I broke down and bought a 25 lb bag from a local gardener...for some reason I have not had good luck growing them in my garden here...yet. Probably need to work on the beds a couple more years and then they'll be grand. That's the thing about lasagna gardening...every year the beds get better and better, the compost gets richer and richer, and the garden gets magnificent.

   I'm only here blogging because  I'm stalling. I have a bushel of peaches in the kitchen screaming my name, a tub full of assorted peppers, tomatoes, green beans and okra that need tending, and a house that's too dirty for words.  My body hurts...I feel like a 90 year old woman...neck, shoulders, legs, ankles, knees...everything is stiff and sore from standing in front of my sink for hours on end. I'm on the lookout for one of those thick rubber restaurant mats to put there...too late to help much this year, but it will be a godsend next year. 

  My freezer is full.  My pantry shelves are nicely stocked.  After the peaches I am doing today and tomorrow, I will start making some chutneys and chow-chow relishes with all the green tomatoes. My friend Cathy has a recipe for green tomato pickles that uses the ones that are small and don't get the chance to ripen at the end of the year. I may try that.  I am going to make peach peel and pit  jelly with the remains from the peaches. I had this once and it is marvelous. And makes me feel better about throwing away all those juicy peels and peach pits!  Using them once  will make it easier to toss them into the compost/chicken coop. You just throw them into a big pan, cover with water and boil until it turns a light red color. Pectin, sugar and lemon and VOILA!  A beautiful and tasty jelly. I NEVER make jelly, because it's too much work...all that cooking and straining and yuck! I do make jams, mostly peach and strawberry and blackberry.  And apple butter every year. Once, years ago,  I scoured all the thrift shops, collected those little glasses that pimento spread comes in (clear glass, half pint (or less) with a cut star on the glass) and made assorted fruit juice jellies and put together Christmas baskets for all my friends that had a small tub of honey butter, jellies, and a loaf of bread.. I lined the baskets with festive Christmas dish towels, put a ribbon on the handle, and sent them off. Everyone loved them.  I always forget how many people do not get homemade things...

  I'm exhausted.  Yesterday I was shot and didn't do a thing. Today I will pay for that, lol.  I'd better get busy...those peaches aren't going to peel themselves.  They are gorgeous too...I may can some of them...I love the look of a canned peach, but I like the taste of them frozen. Freezing is much easier too.

  The Irishman is going on a camping outing this weekend. I'm not going...it will be nice to have the house to myself. This is a local AA campout that happens every year and we always go for part of it and he always  camps. My busted up body doesn't allow me to do that anymore...and it's little cabins with horrid beds. I don't mind not going ...and will often go up for the Saturday evening bonfire and speaker. may not even do that this year.  We'll see...

  Okay.  Enough with the lollygagging!

  I'm off to commune with the peaches...

Namaste.

How Does Your Garden grow ????

My gardens grow all willy nilly. In any given season, there are lettuces and onions and 'Maters and squash and corn all growing up and around each other. I plant flowers all interspersed with my veggies too. Zinnias and marigolds and nasturtiums...all blooming away and giving the bugs something else to think about. This picture has potatoes and zinnias and radishes and lettuces and ...something else over there. lol There are garden gnomes and whirligigs and little plaques that stick in the ground and say things like, "The Earth laughs in Flowers." There are butterfly houses and toad homes and all manner of practical art to be found out there. And as always, at least one lazy cat sleeping in the shade of the green bean trellis.

I am writing this garden post tonight to psychically combat the winter. It has been grey and foggy here for almost 5 days. I need sun!!!!!!!!! I need to be reminded that spring is on it's way, that it comes every year and that the darkness won't last forever. The garden catalogs help. Looking at pictures of my gardens help too. I'm feeling better already.

I plant in raised beds that are not nice perfect rectangles, sided in by boards. I do a jig called Lasagna Gardening, where you lay organic materials down on top of each other and build it up, up, up. In the fall we start putting leaves out there. And at the beginning of winter, we empty out the series of compost bins where the chicken manure and used straw from the coop goes. There is also a bin that is all kitchen scraps. We (in a good year) put cow or horse manure (preferably horse) on the beds too. Then we cover them with black plastic and let 'em "cook". We also have a barrel composter that you crank to turn. All this good stuff goes on the garden beds. I generally start about 2/3 of my seeds in late March, in trays in the back bedroom or out in the mudroom, depending on if we're having a warm or a cold winter. It all breaks down into some of the most beautiful dirt you've ever laid eyes on. We do our part and God does his part. It's a good partnership.

I love working in the gardens. I love the smell of dirt, I love to wander out in the early mornings of summer and have a handful of cherry tomatoes or sugar peas for breakfast. Mahatma Gandhi said " To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." I believe that...there is a very old and primal part of me that revels in putting plants and seeds into the earth and watching them grow. I was made to grow my own food...



Time for bed. Early day full of stuff tomorrow. Pre-op tests and then off to pick up some cookbooks from a Freecycle ad. WooHoo! It'll be like Christmas!!!!! I have no idea what they are or who they're by...only that they are all hard cover books. If you have never checked out Frecycle.com...you might wanna. It's a program to declutter AND keep things out of landfills. Just put in your town name...


Namaste...I shall dream of vegetables and sunshine...