From the Garden

Started dismantling the garden this weekend. There's something about ripping out your garden when it's pouring rain. :) It's like closing a chapter--ushering in the Fall--like putting away one hobby to pick up another.

First to go is the tomato plants. We hadn't seen any evidence of viruses yet, but didn't want to take any chances. So from the 10 plants, i gleaned a lot of fruit: 19 lbs, 14 oz to be exact.

Granted, most of it is green, but i'll be hopeful. :)

These cherry tomatoes i planted this year are divine! I love how they are a perfect little bundle. Maybe we'll luck out and get some to ripen all the way.

Total cherry tomatoes: 2 lbs, 6 oz

This whopper is a slicing tomato, Purple Cherokee. It weighs a pound on it's own.

Total purple cherokees: 7 lbs, 6 oz.

From the italian tomato plants, i was a little disappointed. There was only 9 lbs, 2 oz--all green-- from 4 plants. And that pretty much sums up why this year was such a bust!

Luckily, i found an idea for a movable greenhouse from the farm tour we took last week! TA DA!

(more on the farm tour later!)

Sunday Stills :: The Letter S

This-s-s week's post is brought to you by the letter "S", and by the number 4 (because 4 is the number of inches of rain we are over our usual amount of rain we get in S-s-september. Grrr!

I thought i would get a little s-s-silly and create "S" from things that start with the letter.
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Seeds on Salt

Then we found s-s-something that begins with "S" on our way home from our farm field trip.

And then i felt like a fool for being s-s-so literal, and i snapped up s-s-some better shots.

(Using my retro camera application on my phonebot i snapped these)

I've been attempting to teach myself to knit a sock.

The thing i will miss the most this Fall..."S"ummer days spent playing in our flip flops. Click here to s-s-see more s-s-super shots from S-s-sunday Stillers.

Tuesday = Last Garden Tour 2010

Waaaah! I am so not ready for the season to be done! Especially when this September has been the 4th wettest on record! We've received about 3 inches more rain that we usually receive this month, and supposedly, the reminents of a typhoon from Taiwan is working it's way up the Asian coast and will get sucked into the low pressure system sitting off our coast by weekend.

It's not looking good for the tomatoes. :(

So, in the 2 days of partly cloudy weather we are expected to receive over the next couple days, i need to get all the green fruit off and dig up the carrots.

Here are the last of the garden pictures until Spring 2011.

Onions for overwintering: red rocket and ringmaster.

The only seeds set for fall gardening that the neighbourhood tom cats

didn't foul up with their nuclear waste.

Cosmos and tomatoes--i would definitely make this combination again next year.

They are so beautiful, and the cosmos do a great job of shading out the weeds!

Moose will be happy.

There's brussels to pick!

I'm praying this poppy makes it.

Although, my hopes for saving seeds of anything have be dashed this year, with all the wet.

And the slug trails on things ingestable...like fennel seed. Bleech!

Lots of different wasps and bees this year...

thanks to the companion gardening.

Thankfully, most of Cookie Monster's sunflowers flowered over the last week.

She worked hard sowing and watering them this year.

Unfortunately, one of the mammoths, that were set to bloom this week, was a victim to the wet and dreary weather. I had the thing staked, but apparently it wasn't enough. And now the poor plant is suffering death by slug. Grrr!

Hoping you all have a mild fall and better luck with your fall veggies than we all will have in Western Washington.

The Only Rooster Around These Parts

While in Idaho, i found a few really neat things at one of the local thrifts. I'll show you them over a series of posts.

The first here is a cheeky ol' chap...i can't tell whether he is mass marketed or handmade. I do know he's cute. And he's perfect for my kitchen.

He has a twin. They reside on a pair of swag curtains that perfectly fit our colour scheme in the upper level of our home and the kitchen window above my sink.

See.

Vessels

I've been finding lots of Pyrex pitchers lately. Most are very atomic age looking, and seemingly hold very small quantities.

I found this one from the 60's or 70's that looks more like a flask, and thought it might make some science experiments fun. :o) Maybe a good Halloween decoration too with a little dry ice in the bottom? Who knows.

This was my most guilt-ridden purchase in Idaho, however upon returning home i've come to adore it. I love copper! Not just because the colour is great but because everytime i see it, it reminds me of my dad (he's an old copper miner from back in the day.)

I found this in the same shop as the Esso tiger cups. This gave me sticker shock at $8, but it's style intrigued me. I basically ran for my life back to the car and headed home to Mom and Dad's before i could purchase it.

Where, of course, it bothered me all night. First of all, it was shiny! :o) Secondly, it seemed to be in really good shape. I really couldn't deny it's charm. The next morning, before heading into Bonner's Ferry, i ran back to the store to get it and the Esso cups.

And i made little plea deals with myself too. If i buy this, i can't thrift for a whole month. And no extras at the grocery either. You know all those silly little things you do with yourself when you know you shouldn't be buying something. :o)

Well, now that i've been cruising the thrift stores at home (we're looking for an old wardrobe unit for our coats now) i've seen at least three of these vessels. St. Vinnie's had a badly tarnished one for $19.99! Goodwill had one with a broken handle for $12.! And a "treasures shop" had one with corrosion for $25.! Deal of the century for me, i'd say. Especially because all the ones i've seen here don't have the little cup in the stand for the Sterno. I haven't been able to find out much about it...some sites say it's a Princess House item, others say it's Corningware. Much more research is needed.

Especially nice, was taking it out of it's wrapping to clean it up and put it away, when Moose noticed it and said, "Woo, that's nice! What do you do with it?"

I love it when that happens! Erases all that guilt over $8. :o)

Sunday Stills :: Flags

It's been very soggy this week, so taking pictures of flags wasn't too interesting as they were all laying flat against the pole, a dripping mess. Poor flags. Sorry i had to go in the archives again.

Spokane Indians

County Fair

racing flags

Firefighter Day

To see more flags, visit the talented folks at Sunday Stills!

Grandma's Linens

Upon thought, i decided that i needed to come up with a system to keep track of our linens for historical purposes, should any of these be around for when Cookie Monster has her own home, she could know who was who's and what was what. :o) Anal? Probably. But it will be another project to keep my fingers busy and away from the new pantry.

So while i am snapping photos for these posts, i am also going to print off the photo and paste it in a comp book with identification marks. :o)

The idea for this came to me from my mom, while i was sharing that i was starting to mix in Grandma's linens with our existing one's in our various storage compartments throughout the house. Good idea, Mom!

Here's a tablecloth of our's that i acquired through an Etsy vintage store. I thought i would be fun to have around when Cookie Monster started studying the Egyptians. We could have a little themed kitchen table. Isn't that funny? I know, i know. I'm so lame, my kid will be screaming and begging to go to public school within 3 years! :o)

Holy Tigers, Batman!

Another lucky find while i was in Idaho were Esso Tiger (Fire King) mugs. Pictured is one, however there were 9 total. And at 50 cents a piece, i could afford them all. Woo hoo! What does one do with 9 tiger mugs, you wonder?

Cookie Monster wants a zoo themed party for her birthday this year. Score! This will be the extra little something that will help us complete party favours for her friends.

Another cool find (once i returned home) was this neat square Glasbake mug. I can just see yoghurt and berries for breakfast in this mug!

Tuesday = Garden Tour

For lunch, i took a wander around the garden yesterday....the signs of summer's demise is all around.

The blueberry bushes are changing colour.

So too is Cookie Monster's birthday tree changing colour, which for the past 7 years has been as reliable as anything that it would blush come the first of November.

And that just makes me so sad, because we haven't really had a summer yet, made evident by the fact that it still looks like early Summer in some parts of the garden.

Poppies are blooming again...hopefully this Lauren's Grape will make it to maturity.This is the first sunflower bloom of all season. Needless to say, we'll be lucky to participate in the Great Sunflower project at all this year, as our Lemon Queen sunflowers aren't up yet, and the number of bees are dwindling.

The summer squash are just starting to take off.

This bush last week was about half this size.

The first of the cosmos are blooming in the tomato bed now

and the borage is almost done.

The ears of corn are just starting to come on

we'll be lucky should we get an ear or two.

The brussels are just starting to fatten up

in time for the slugs to eat them. Grrr.

I tried my hand at growing winter greens (their pictures would be above), but it seems it must be best to plant them from starts rather than seed for two reasons: the cats can't stand to leave a freshly raked and planted patch of dirt unsoiled in the Fall and the slugs get what sprouts do come up. I've got a couple rows of onion seedlings coming up, but i've no hopes for the kale or the lettuces.

And just as the Scarlet Runner beans were blooming,

it got so cold that the hummingbirds left.

I am hoping these pods will leave me with mature beans to save for next year.

Ah. Next year. I don't want the gardening to be over with before we've even had a chance for more than a couple handfuls of lettuce and a handful of cherry tomatoes from the garden. However, it seems Mother Nature has her own ideas.

We'll see what next gardening season brings.

Will it be enlarging this space?

Or tending 10 acres somewhere?

Lord only knows.

I'm a Sucker For ...

making baby things. One of Moose's brothers just had a baby boy, so to welcome him into the world i wanted to make him a little something. Decorated onesies are always a sure winner in my book.

The tie cracks me up! Especially because all the men in the family are engineers. And the only other nephew has definite engineer-like qualities about his personality. It's like it's pre-destined or something. Sorry, kid, but you have no chance of escape. Especially because your mom and dad are engineers who love their work. :o)

Wonder if you could make it a skinny tie for all those 80's fans? And since i could sew this, i am wondering if i could take on sewing real ties for Moose??

Sunday Stills :: Glass

In Tacoma, in this cool looking building, internationally renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly has a number of works on display and a glass blowing museum. We visit the skybridge every once in a while because that is a good spot for my dad to take train pictures.

And while he's taking pictures of trains, i am usually taking pictures of the glass inside the roof of the skybridge. Click on the pictures to see the full image, if you'd like.

If you'd like to see more pictures of glass, head to Sunday Stills!

9/11

Things are already too politicized only 9 years after the events that occurred on that day scattered over the eastern seaboard. 

I needed an escape from all that media coverage and found this site about the memorial to Flight 93 www.nps.gov/flni. Amazing that it is going to be a national park!

Grandma's Linens

This year, my mom dug deep in the bowels of their storage and found the linens that my paternal grandmother and great-grandmother acquired. My parents remember that my great-grandmother used to do a lot of needlework, so some of the items may be handcrafted by her. My grandmother was an antique dealer. So she may have acquired some of them as well through her dealings.

Mom sent me home with the linens that she knew i'd enjoy the most. I am going to catalogue them throughout a series of posts.

First up is one of my grandmother's beautiful linen tableclothes with 6 matching napkins.