CHAIRS IN GARDEN, INSPIRATION THURSDAY

Sitting area, photo image courtesy of sunsetliving.com

OK, we will admit, we've never even sat our butts in one these Adirondack chairs.  Therefore, we have no idea how comfortable they are but (or is that BUTT?) they have always appealed to us.  In this picture that I found online I like how they are just casually placed by this tree and then there are even some pretty tulips shooting up.

We haven't gotten to the point of decorating the landscape like this, mainly because the landscaping is still a work in progress.  For now, our siting around is on the porch, but when we get ready for that point, I think this might be the first quick setup.  Simple, relaxing, and a nice focal point in the yard.

Be inspired! 

HOMEMADE EVERYTHING PBJ

 Recently, we made some peanut butter in our Vitamix using only roasted peanuts.  I told 2nd Man that we already had the homemade dewberry jam so all we needed was some homemade sandwich bread.  A few days later, he decided to take me up on the challenge.

Homemade white bread...

Check.

Homemade peanut butter...

Check.

Homemade dewberry jam...

Check.

Cut two slices of bread and spread one half with peanut butter and the other half with dewberry jam.

All homemade PB&J sandwich

Put the two halves together, cut it in half and serve with a cold glass of milk (sadly NOT homemade but at least organic and hormone free, ha).

Gooey, luscious, memories of childhood.

It's truly comfort food.

YELLOW FLOWERS MAKE US SMILE

Nature provides us color when we least expect it.  These lovely yellow flowers are springing up all over the place.

When I mow, they are all along a lot of the paths.  Of course, as I mow they make me smile.  Definitely 'zen'.

And when we go for a walk around the property, they are popping up in fields and are definite smile makers there too.

Prairie Coneflower

Here is a close-up.  I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like a species of wild coneflower.  They grow just like a regular coneflower does and I think I found them in the Texas wildflower database.  It's called a Prairie Coneflower.

Yellow flowers are happy flowers!

A YEAR FROM NOW, VINTAGE POSTER SUNDAY

A Year From Now...vintage poster image, courtesy of NYPublic Library

Now this is an interesting vintage poster.  It dates from WWII and was put out by the General Electric Corporation.  They put the posters up around the factories that were producing products for the war effort in order to remind employees that time was valuable and to work hard.  There were several about time management and maximizing output and so this one, I would assume, was more to remind them not to regret a year from now what they didn't do today.

Of course, as with most of these posters, this one is so appropriate today, it reminds me of the motivational posters you see in businesses.  It just needs an Eagle flying, or a mountain climber, LOL.  But seriously, it does make us think...what will you wish you had done today, a year from now?

Hope you are having a great weekend!

It's hot here and we're staying inside.

OMG IT IS HOT

Sometimes, you just have to know when to say...

..."I've done all I can possibly do today"...and today was that day.

It was just so unbelievably hot, there was only so much I could do outside in the heat. 

Went to the farm early in the morning, stayed until about 4pm but not much got done.  I did mow everything, that's always good, even in the heat I do enjoy that but the work in the garden just ground to a halt about midday.  It was just dangerously hot, our heat index was in the 110+ degree range.  They were warning everyone outside today to beware of heat exhaustion.  I understand.  

I will readily admit that less time was spent here in the yard...

...and more time was spent here on the porch, consuming large amounts of water.  So much for weekend plans.

ANTS ARE FASCINATING

We were roaming around at the farm recently and noticed this line in the grass.  I thought it was odd as I hadn't really noticed it before.  So we followed it...

...it meandered around a tree and along the driveway.  So we followed it some more...

...then it veered off into the grass for a few feet until it ended at...

This large, red ant hill!

Now these aren't fire ants, though they do bite, but they are large and fascinating to observe.  I find it amazing that they have followed along the same route so frequently that it's created a visible path.  Or do they 'clear' it, much as we might clear a path through a bunch of trees to create a road or highway?

Red Ants

We left them alone, they've worked too hard, LOL!  Speaking of working hard, it's off to the farm for me, 2nd Man has to do some stuff in town and since I haven't mowed the grass in two weeks, we'll have to see how much it's grown.  Hope you have a great weekend!

CAT ON ITS BACK, FELINE FRIDAY

Hobart cat laying on his back

Hobart doing one of his favorite things...just layin' around.  

Sigh, our cats do indeed have such a hard life....NOT!

He also does have this habit of flopping over at your feet, on his side, and he loves to have his back rubbed up and down.  Then he flips over for a belly rub.  We just have to be careful not to overdo it because then he gets crazy, ha.

More later this afternoon!

PRETTY FLOWERS, INSPIRATION THURSDAY

Flowers and fence, image courtesy of southernliving.com

Just some pretty color mixed with the greens and of course a great rustic split rail type fence.  I'm in a flower kind of mood lately.  Just enjoy looking for pictures of flowers in a rural type setting.  Someday they will come in handy as we begin the process of planting along fences around the property.  

I like this color palette as well, green of course and then the yellow, white and pink flowers are a nice combination.  

Be inspired!

RAISED BEDS, MULCH AND THE BATTLE OF WEEDS

Oh, so it's going to be like this huh? Little weeds popping up here and there?  Well I can take care of that!

BOOM!  Gone!  Just like that!  That'll teach you!

Whoa, wait, where did YOU both come from?

Sigh, it's going to be a never-ending battle of weeds in the mulch but at least, at this point anyway, it's going to be easy to pull them up...?

Whoa, not so fast.  A few weeks after those first photos, weeds and grass are sprouting up everywhere.

They are coming up almost faster than I can keep up.  Oh wait, did I say "almost" faster?  They are coming up faster than I can keep up.  Sigh.

Weeds in a raised bed

We have always said our blog wouldn't shy away from the missteps either, and here is one of those.

Yeah, it was easy in the beginning but not so much now.  This is one of three raised beds (empty beds, no veggies) that have gotten totally out of control.  Imagine this times three.  Notice there is even some weed block cloth (albeit not enough) on the surface already.  On a daily basis, I'm sure I could keep them at bay, but on a weekend basis, it's just as I said, a never ending battle to keep them out.  We want to stay organic so I don't want to use Round Up, but I'm afraid we might not have any choice.  I've tried vinegar but it's not working.

I'm going to use the bricks I recently gathered up that were scattered around the property and put a covering of some sort on there and see what I can do to eradicate the jungle that is rapidly taking over the beds.  It's my fault for not covering them to begin with but now I have to figure out a solution that will work.  I'm gathering up newspapers from people at work to put down, any suggestions on how to smother the weeds out easily?  

QUILTED STUFFED ANIMALS

Quilted stuffed animals

These are a couple of stuffed bears that my Mom found once upon a time.  They aren't family heirlooms or anything like that, I think she found one at a tag sale and another at a thrift store, but we like them.  They are on the guest room bed at the farm, which contains a lot of my Mom's favorite pieces of furniture and her favorite colors, pink and yellow.  We were going to get a few pillows but...

Farmhouse guest room bed

...every time we look at them on the bed, it makes us think that they seem kind of lonely.  So, we'd like to add a few more.  I'm sure I could find some on eBay or Etsy but I'm not sure what they call these?  They are handmade of course and made using scraps of fabric just like you would find on a quilt.  Does anyone know what they are called, in general, so that I could find more online?

HARVEST MONDAY JULY 21 2014

Every Monday, Daphne's Dandelions hosts "Harvest Monday" where bloggers can post their harvests.  Click her link above to see what others are harvesting and see below for what we harvested this week:

First up, herbs...

Herb harvest

As always, a great haul of herbs.  Oregano, chives, basil, some flat leaf parsley I forgot to photograph.  We've just been keeping them in the fridge in glasses of water and they stay fresh during the week and we use them up when we're cooking.

Then veggies...

Vegetable harvest

This week, it's like a basket from the show "Chopped". Make something out of this, LOL.  Our first eggplant.  Not sure what we can do with just one, ha, but there are a few more small ones on the plants and more blooms.  Also a few peppers and then jalapeños and more cherry tomatoes.  I picked a few that weren't fully ripe so we can let them ripen.  Then we have a few garlic heads!  Garlic didn't do so well this first year, these have been drying.  There are a few more that were pulled at a different time that are still drying, but I planted about 2 dozen seed bulbs.  Pulled up the tomatillo, it was just WAY too big and overshadowing the tomato plants.  There were still small tomatillos on it but I had to sacrifice them to hopefully get more tomatoes.    

And fruit...

Pears

Yes, fruit!  I suppose I should have included the several pounds of dewberries we got earlier in the season but I didn't (next year!).  Anyway, these are pears.  They are pretty good size (hard to tell in the photo).  There is apparently a procedure to ripen them, you have to pull them while hard and then force ripen them.  I'll have to Google that.  Anyway, we are happy to have some fruit.  Figs will be coming soon as well.  Then that will do it for fruit this year.  But the trees are all still growing well and so we are hoping next Spring will be a great year and then every year after that it will just get better!

Vegetable harvest:  2 lb 8 oz

Herb harvest:       11 oz

Fruit harvest:       1 lb 8 oz

_________________________________

Total harvest YTD:  12 lb 3 oz

Happy Harvesting!

P.S. For those who missed it, look at yesterday's post for a weekend update.  Hope you had a nice weekend!

WEEKEND UPDATE

So we went to the farm and had a great weekend.  It was one of those times when I just didn't feel like doing anything, more like relax and enjoy, and that's what we did.

Here are some random pictures to share:

When we pulled up, one of 2nd Family's dogs, Kiska, was hanging out under the porch stairs in a little depression she made in ground.  It's cool and shady.  And she makes us smile, so it's a win/win...

Cloudy and overcast

The weather stayed mostly overcast, which was good to keep the temps down, a bit, upper 80's instead of upper 90's (a regular cold front, LOL).  It looked like rain, we hoped it would, but alas it didn't.

Dry earth

The reason we hoped for rain is this...there hasn't been any measurable rain at the farm in almost two weeks.  Quickly, the ground starts getting parched and cracks open up.  In Houston, parts of the area got a couple of inches last week, we had hoped the farm did too, but 50 miles between here and there had much different weather.

Figs

Figs are doing well, the trees are growing nicely.  I made sure and watered all the fruit trees, about 5 gallons each, just to make sure they are OK through the next week, in case rain stays away longer.

Passion flowers

Passion vines with their beautiful flowers are everywhere, so it's nice to see their unique look peeking out here and there.

Speaking of color, these (weeds?) are growing around the property.  We thought they would be soft but when we touched them, they are spiky and spiny and have sharp thorns.  Not sure what they are but they are pretty and that's fine with us.

Arroz con pollo

We had a big pot of Arroz con Pollo, some black beans with cilantro, homemade flour tortillas and sliced avocado.  It kept us full and happy.

It was a nice weekend!

We hope you had a great weekend yourselves!

Lastly, we want to thank you all for the outpouring of kind words that you all left after Saturday's post.  It warmed our hearts to read them!

FOODS FROM CORN, VINTAGE POSTER SUNDAY

Food From Corn, vintage poster image courtesy of NY Public Library

Here is another wartime poster image that reminded people how healthy and nutritious corn made products were.  During the war, other items such as regular sugar, flour, etc were in use for the troops and in short supply so corn was the 'at home' replacement.  Corn starch, corn oil, corn syrup, amazing how prevalent they are still.

Hope you are having a great weekend, we are good and our hearts are warmed by all your comments from yesterday's POST.  Thank you.

More later today!

COMMENT MODERATION BACK ON

Many of you have noticed that we turned comment moderation back on.  It's not something we did because of spam.  We've moderated older comments for a while now because that's where the spammers usually hit most often.  But current comments on recents posts were not moderated.  Until now.  

No, the reason we did this was because of a couple of hateful comments that someone tried to slip through.  I caught them before they posted.  I won't reprint the threatening slur the person used in their 'name', except to say that it involved bodily harm and the "F word gay slur".  One of the notes asked "How do you live with yourselves?  Disgusting."

I wanted to post it and then reply, "just fine actually...we have a home in the city and a home in the country and we are on a journey to self sufficiency for our retirement...thanks for asking.  And you?"  Of course they call that "feeding the trolls" in online parlance, so I didn't allow the comments to appear.

We've been lucky so far.  We have had this blog going strong now for three years and never once heard a negative word.  Instead, we have 480 (and counting) new friends, plus lots of others that comment daily or occasionally or both, and countless more that just pop in to read but don't comment.  Many of you I have come to know through personal emails back and forth off the blog and we consider all of you dear friends.  To be honest, we just don't have time for hate.

We don't even like to watch the news now.  It's all politicians and political parties hating each other.  People hating each other.  Faiths hating each other.  Countries hating each other.  Can't the world just love?  Is that too pie in the sky?  Are my rose colored glasses too big?  Is that really too much to ask for?

The least I can do is make sure this blog has no room for hate and that's what I've done.  So for now, all comments will be moderated so that I don't have to expose all of you to that either.  When you post a comment, nothing will change except that it won't appear instantly.  But don't let that worry you, it will appear as quickly as possible via my computer or phone or tablet.  I didn't really want to bring all of this up here, but we've always said the blog will share the good and the bad.  Fire ants, snakes, garden fails, droughts or heavy rains, plans we didn't get to, those are the bad we expected.

Today we are off to the farm to enjoy our time away from news and negativity.  Hope you all have a great one!
Updates of course throughout the weekend.

Oh, and how do we live with ourselves?

Fine...just fine...life is good!

COLOR IS SLOWING COMING

We planted Knockout roses, only two of them as a test, by the garden gate.  They are blooming and growing.  Because they are drought tolerant, landscapers plant them everywhere in Houston, parking lots, esplanades, driveways etc.

The Texas lilacs, or Vitex/Chaste as they are also called, are all in full bloom along the the driveway.  They are doing well also...in fact, we need to get a few more so the whole driveway is lined.

I can't remember what these are called, they look like and are similar to oleander, but are not poisonous like the oleander is.  They are flowering as well.  We finally have some color!

FELINE FRIDAY

Sydney cat sleeping in sink

This is Sydney, back when he used to sleep in one of the bathroom sinks.  It was really the only one he could get into easily and it was wide enough to accommodate his size.

After a few years, we realized he only did this in the warmer months.  We're guessing because it was cool!  Can't say as we blame him.  We often thought of just laying in the bathtub during a heatwave, ha.

More later today!

INTERESTING FLOWER GARDEN, INSPIRATION THURSDAY

Flower garden, image courtesy of www.housedecorin.com

This is an interesting little random flower garden image I found online.  Can anyone identify the flowers?  I think it's kind of pretty for some reason.  Maybe it's the combination of colors and textures...and the fact that it's a small little space with lots of color and 'pizazz', ha. 

Hope you are having a great week.  It's Thursday, and rainy here and tomorrow is supposed to be even wetter than today.  

Be inspired!

MAYPOPS GROWING WILD

Maypops?  HUH?

Maypop

This is the maypop, also known as the passion vine or passion flower.  The name maypop comes from the fact that in May, when they are green and 'hollow', they can be stepped on and make a popping sound.

Passion Flower

It grows wild on the property at the farm.  Such a BEAUTIFUL flower.

Purple Passion Flower

And, according to THIS WEBSITE, the flowers become edible fruit!

Maypops bearing fruit

Here are some flowers that are still visible behind the fruit that they produced.  Then, the fruit gets larger until it's about the size of a large egg, as below.

Maypop or Passionfruit 

We SO want to eat one, just to try it, but the last couple of years, since we discovered this particular area on the farm that has them, we never seem to get to them before the birds/rabbits/deer do.  According to the website above, wild passion vines are somewhat rare in Texas, so I told 2nd Man that the area they are growing in needs to be sectioned off so we make sure it's never mowed down or cleared.

Now we just play the waiting game I suppose and see if we can get to them after they turn yellowish (a signed of being ripe).  Is this what becomes "passion fruit"?  Or is that something different?  They still aren't ripe, I just checked last weekend, but hoping they do ripen eventually so we can enjoy them.