A Dustland Hat, Romance in the Squash Patch and a Cornbread Zucchini Recipe

It is August already! It is still pretty hot and dry here.Nothing too exciting to report. Sadly, there are no great holidays planned to exotic locales or big events to attend but we do live in an area that many come to for their holidays. We are pretty lucky!

Our favourite beach to go for a pre- dinner swim

When our kids were young we used to pack the tent up and go camping. It was always rather exhausting after a week or so but great fun. We all still laugh about some of our trips.Usually (mostly every time) someone would eat too many treats and have too much sun and feel sick in the middle of the night. We'd hear " Dad, Mom I don't feel too well, I'm going to be sick!!!" We would have maybe three minutes to get that child's head out of the tent before everything came up. As we would scramble to get out of our sleeping bags in order to extract a heaving child out of their bag and to unzip the tent zipper, one of us would be grabbing a much needed flashlight.  Click click, the batteries would be dead. Our little goofballs would have run them down playing monster earlier in the evening. Good grief! That would usually be the signal it was time to go home. Often after braving bugs,bites, dirt, sunburns, sleeplessness, rain (it would always rain), sick kids, we would roll back into our sunny valley with our beautiful lake and look at each other and laugh.What were we thinking!?!

Some Knitting

I did knit another Dustland Hat. I love this pattern, it's interesting to knit and easy to memorize.

It has great texture.

I knit it with Tosh Vintage in Antler.

A Squash Update

 I think I have mentioned more than once our problem back yard.I took this picture back in June. Lots has changed since then! Our bales are doing what we want them to-maybe a little too well! My other challenge was this sloped bed in the forefront of the picture. Up to a couple of years ago, most of our yard was pretty shady in the back. Shade was thrown by our neighbour's  massive Cottonwood trees and some Chinese Elms of our own. Our old fence was removed and we jointly hired some tree fallers to remove those old dangerous trees. Subsequently our whole backyard became very sunny. We were really happy about that as now we would be able to grow more things. However what was able to grow in this bed did not survive the new hot dry conditions.

I initially planted a lot of sedums, spurges and sempervivums to help stabilize the bed. They worked quite well and gave lots of texture and some colour and most importantly survived the challenging conditions.With the arrival of Archie, the plants took a huge beating as he raced up and down the bank chasing interlopers and vermin . Now Archie is our daughter's dog but he has lived most of his three years here. Right now he is back being a condo dog with her and he is not too happy about that. (Neither is his best friend, my husband, but that's another story!) Anyway, this spring I was thinking what could I plant that would fill this space, deter his little lordship and survive the hot dry conditions. My brainwave was to plant some squash seeds. I figured they would cascade down and cover up the empty spaces and maybe we would get a few squashes out of the deal too. We thought we'd just go for it and plant a bunch of different types of seeds.When it came time to thin them we just relocated some in the bank to fill in some empty spaces. 

 It did turn out to be a good plan but next time we do not need as many plants.The squash vines are traveling everywhere. (boy you can sure see how much things have dried out in a few months).

Cinderella pumpkin

 

 

Spaghetti Squash

 

 

 

Zucchini and a Pink Banana Jumbo

We have over planted and it is hard to see what vine or squash belongs to what plant. There are a couple of sugar pie pumpkins, two Cinderella pumpkins ,three zucchinis, two pink banana jumbos, a couple of straight eight cucumbers and I think a delicata and a butternut squash. Next year we will obviously space them out and reduce the number but honestly we thought it was a long shot on planting any squash there.

It is that time of year when you ask everyone you know if they would like a zucchini or two or more. Everyone knows someone who wants to get rid  share their abundance. We have been harvesting lots, but Brent did notice that all of a sudden we were zucchini bereft. Now why on earth would we would be worried about this all of a sudden ? Who knows but we were concerned! I read all about this plant, were the bees absent, where were the blossoms? I did not know there were male and female blossoms ( I thought they were self pollinators) and if it is too hot the plant will stop or reduce producing female blossoms and of course the vital role bees played.  It did appear that the few female blossoms we had, had not be pollinated. So I had to make sure love would be found in the squash patch Blossoms only last a morning so it is a brief one morning affair.

 Rolling up my jammie bottoms I sent out to do my match making one sunny morning. As I was... ahem... pollinating the ladies, some bees took exception with my interference in their business. Maybe they thought I was threatening their job security. I was bitten five times around my ankles! (they weren't bad bites more like strong warnings, back off lady!!) Anyways I hot footed out of the squash patch. My husband thought it was pretty funny. I still go out and check things out and help matters along but I am a little more circumspect and no more rolling up my pant legs. Good news, we are back in production.

 My friend Wendy made a delicious Cornmeal Zucchini Bread recently. So of course I had to make one too! The recipe can be found here. I love this recipe, it is so good! The cornbread is not too sweet so it will go with both sweet and savory foods. And it is a one bowl wonder. Yum!! Plus you use up two cups of grated zucchini-bonus! 

Keep Smiling Friends!

Chris 

Irving a BT Cabled Hat and....a straw bale veggie update!

Italian Pink Bicolour Eggplant

I hope I find you all enjoying a great summer's day today. I was watching the weather ( praying for a rain icon to appear) and I couldn't help but notice all the weather extremes our planet is experiencing this summer. It seems that either it's a drought or a deluge in many parts of this continent. I see there has been cool weather in the UK and it is very hot in Southern France. Don't worry, I'm not going on a global warming rant here!

I have been knitting a few hats lately. It might seem odd to be knitting hats in a heat wave/drought but they are small projects and I am determined to be ahead of the eight ball where C gifts are concerned. (I am not mentioning that holiday by name, it is the C word for the time being). I figured being well medicated on pain killers may prove a challenge but strangely enough it appears I am a better knitter when I am full of anti inflammatories!! Go figure!!!

Anyways I really like this pattern, it is a basic cabled hat knit with a worsted weight yarn. It knits up fairly quickly. The pattern is Irving, a BT design. I used some Debbie Bliss Luxury Aran. I love this yarn, I have used it before for Skiff-a BT hat and for Bray -my daughter's sweater. I didn't get gauge with it using a 5 mm so I used a 4.5 mm needle . It did make the hat a bit smaller in height, but with all those cables the hat is perfect width ways. It fits me perfectly but for a guy or a woman with a bigger head or lots of hair, I would do an extra cable repeat before I started knitting the crown. I thought of that at the time but I have a habit of rethinking and restructuring patterns a lot and I thought to myself for once knit it as it is written Chris! I also didn't think my brain was working at optimal levels!!!

I really liked how the crown on this hat was designed. I always look at the crown of a hat before I start knitting it. Some crowns look too dorky to me or too saggy or sometimes they are nice but look too girly for a guy. That's just my opinion but this one looks great for anyone and it is formed and shaped nicely. It doesn't have a weird point to it. Yadda yadda yadda, love the hat and will knit it again.

I started another hat and knit a few more inches but I didn't like it, so I ripped it out. After all these years clacking my needles I still find ripping out projects so annoying! But you just have to cut your losses and move on. I have a few more finished hats that I will take pictures of at a later date.

Eggplant blossoms are so pretty!

 At the top of my post was a picture of one of my baby eggplants. We have never grown eggplants before. Now with these bales, anything seems possible. We just can't get over it.

Sweet green bell peppers

Anaheim pepper

Beans, carrots, kale and chard

As you can see it is getting pretty dried out here now. That's OK, come fall when hopefully we get some precipitation, it will green up again. There have been a lot of hits with the bales, but a few misses too. Our radishes didn't bulb up, it could have been weather related too. We have had crazy hot dry spells since May.

Armenian Yard Longs-16 inches

This is an Armenian yard long cucumber. Yes. they can go to 3 feet long! I saw these in a nursery and thought they looked interesting. Bit of an impulse seed selector! I'm much more disciplined with my yarn purchases. I read about them after the fact, and evidently they are quite sweet, like a cross between a melon and a cucumber.t Looks like we are going to have lots of them lol!

Cuke bale

What has been most amazing is our tomatoes. They are insane!

tomatoes

Brent has pruned back the suckers twice now, and they just keep on growing. They are becoming so heavy they have pulled over their cages. Yikes!!

tomatillas

 

 

Hang on dowels!

We have reinforced the cages with some wooden dowels. You can see they are getting quite bowed with all the weight. Next step...rebar? We are getting a daily supply of tomatoes now and they are lovely. No bugs, no blossom end rot, just lovely tomatoes. We have a great climate for tomatoes and the bales keep the roots warm. I think that is a huge bonus for veggies such as tomatoes, eggplants and peppers.

Not too exciting here, hats and veggies. What have you all been up to? how are all your gardens? Do you craft a lot in the summer? Good reads? recipes? trips? I know, so many questions but you are all so interesting!

 Keep cool, keep dry, keep on keeping on and keep smiling!!

Chris

Catching up.....

I have been neglectful of my blog and when I finally sit down to organize my thoughts , I am having huge techie issues . I'm posting on my iPad and I have no idea if this is going to work or not! Please bear with me....

 

June was a busy month. When our kids were little I often though June was as busy as December. Lots of wind up activities, end of school  stuff, summer activities, visitors...etc. This past June we did a lot of yard work  and we were lucky to go on a few garden tours. Lots of beautiful gardens and lovely properties. I thought I'd share a few of the few hundred pictures I took. I don't think I can caption them on my iPad but you will get the idea!

I can see this is going to take a long time to upload several pictures. I'm running short of patience! It's been super hot  ( 40/103) dry (13% RH) and extremely smoky. Our province is tinder dry and there are serious fires everywhere. I'm on the recovery side of some icky oral/dental surgery  that left me speechless temporarily  ( some of you will prob find that quite hilarious) and a bit down in the mouth. I must be getting better as I'm getting a bit cranky with blogger and my pc. They refuse to talk to each other!!  I can get Blogger on Firefox but not my recent iPhone pictures. My cameras software is apparently too old for the new Microsoft and I can't even get memory cards for it anymore. Grrrrrr. I can feel the points of my teeth getting sharper and soon the hair will start growing out of the back of my hands!! On to more interesting things

Straw Bales!!!

The bales are growing like crazy. I don't have recent pictures of them and it's too hot to go outside right now. The tomatoes are just going bonkers, they have been trimmed back twice now for their suckers and it's like they come back stronger . Eggplants are blooming, peppers are growing, tons of beans, kale, and chard. Amazingly the  lettuce has held on well. It's lasted far longer in the bales than in ground. By now lettuce would have bolted weeks back. We have carrots and beets and more beans from our beds. 

Here's some chard and kale I planted in a repurposed flower bed. There's rhubarb and beans behind. It's been so hot and dry and we are under water restrictions so some/most parts of the yard look pretty dead. But that's just the way it is.  It looks more like August here as many gardens and trees look pretty beat up. I'm happy I took most of these pictures a few weeks ago. 

This is one of the bunkers, it's a planter but it got named as a bunker! I'm growing herbs, some pollinators and a few lilies and a couple of sunflowers. This used to be strictly flowers.

I've done some knitting during my incarceration here. Hopefully I can use my PC soon, it's awkward typing with one finger on an iPad! 

I'm enjoying reading everyone's posts lately, they have kept me great company and I always find out and learn about the most interesting people, places and things. Thank you all!!

Keep smiling friends!!

Chris

A most beautiful sweater that failed to launch and a straw bale update

I had the most wonderful plans for my new sweater, I loved the colour, the lovely stripiness, the pattern-Stripe Parade. I began to knit it with some Madtosh Merino Light on 3.5mm needles. That's pretty fine knitting-lots of stitches.

I measured, I swatched, I measured again. I knit enough to I could slip it over my head and put my arms through (it is a top down sweater) and it was too big. I did measure several times, I did swatch but something got lost in the translation. Shipoopy!!!

And that is the end of that story. I still love my colour combo so my knitting brain will have to cogitate on that one for awhile longer. You know, sometimes I think knitting (gardening) is sometimes a metaphor for life. Sometimes no matter how hard we plan and prepare, things don't always work out. So we have to rip back to square one, take a deep breath, dry our tears, regroup and press on. Hopefully we can learn something along the way. As my Dad would say, "you can plan the event but not the outcome" So very true!!

Chrissys Flower Garden

I did receive a most wonderful surprise though. Sally, the owner of the LYS where I enable like minded souls, received a large shipment of hand dyed yarns in many colours recently. They were all unnamed and so the task fell to her to provide them with suitable nomenclatures. I was totally surprised and touched to see this. Evidently I was told this but I must have been in a trance triggered by all the yarn fumes this yarn was emitting (yarn fumes are a known phenomena, ask a knitter). Thanks Sally!! Now it got me thinking, what with my preoccupation with veggies in the bales I had neglected my flowers for the garden. This would not do!

So off to the garden centre I went. If you zoom in on this picture you will see Mama Robin collecting plant material for her nest or maybe she is looking for worms.

Straw Bale Update

Arugula

Radishes

lettuce

tomatoes

eggplants

sweet peppers

 Oh my, the bales are hopping!! Everything is growing well and with the warm weather coupled with some much needed rain, the veggies are growing like gangbusters!

We picked a big bowl of arugula, butter crunch, red leaf and deer tongue lettuce for our dinner tonight and it was sooo good.

So far so good and it has been such an interesting process. We have had a 100% germination and transplant rate. Now, in the spring chicken to stewing hen continuum, we are both definitely quite right of centre. The bales are so much easier on your back and the weeding is minimal and super easy. We get this long grassy stuff growing a bit on the sides,but it just pulls out with no resistance. The best part is the produce comes out so clean, it is amazing! In the picture above, the greens had not been washed yet.

I planted some nasturtium seeds in front of a couple of bales as they are good companion plants. They popped up so that made me pretty happy!

I have two old wooden ladders under which I planted both a pole bean and a scarlet runner bean respectively.They are doing well. Beans like warm soil and with our unseasonably warm spells they germinated pretty quick. They are a great nitrogen fixer for my crumbum soil. We have been eating these french breakfast radishes from one of our in ground beds. Super tasty!

Lastly here I am!  I read so many interesting blogs and I always like to put a face to a name. I am just curious like that.

Yikes, I keep forgetting, a big welcome and how'd you do to my new followers! And a big thank you to all of you who leave such lovely comments and to those who visit my blog. It is reassuring that I am not speaking into Vacuumland  as Alan McPhee used to say (Remember him Isobel?)!

Have a super week friends!!

Keep smiling!

Chris