• Around home - Blog - Kitchen - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: outdoor goodness edition

    The summer is flying by. I’m so thankful to be enjoying some of it outdoors. My garden is thriving with the abundant rain, heat and humidity.

    This is the first year I’ve had any luck with cucumbers…they are nearly taking over the garden!!  So far I’ve picked only two. I’m hoping there will be many more for all the space the vines are taking up. My green beans are producing like crazy. Unfortunately I bought the wrong seeds. These are the ones with a bit of a texture on the bean..sort of like a peach. Blech….we like to eat our green beans raw from the garden. The texture just doesn’t work for me. I’ll be making these into canned spicy beans.

    My yellow pear tomatoes are big but not producing much. Makes me kind of sad. Hopefully they are just a little slow this year.

    We have been getting our weekly CSA box in addition to our garden. We are really enjoying this again this year. So many fresh veggies. I’ve even done a bit of juicing. Trying to use the veggies in a different way. 

    This was beet, carrot, apple and ginger. It was SO GOOD!!!!!!

    And pretty too! Speaking of pretty…did you spy my freshly stained deck rails? They were so bad…basically down to raw wood. It was a couple labor intensive mornings. I’d have to stop each day when the temp climbed over 90°F.

    The great outdoors has so much to offer us. I’ve heard it said and couldn’t agree more that Minnesotans are all about spending as much time outside as possible. We endure extremes in temperature and several different kinds of weather in one day isn’t uncommon. 

    As you can see by my crazy tan lines…I spend a bit of time walking in my sandals. LOL  Marvin even gets to occasionally visits to the great outdoors under close supervision. And yes, he really is that big…no trick of the lens. FYI—I wear a size US 9 (40 EU).

    Tuesday holds a visit to my friend in her “new” house. I’m super excited to see it and her!!

    What are you doing today?

     

  • Around home - Blog - Creativity - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: dream catcher, deer deterrent edition

    Its been a busy week with the Independence day holiday smack in the middle. Lots of time off for everyone. A wedding, drivers training, a parade then cookout followed by local fireworks.

    First the wedding…it was lovely and sweet. The crazy thing is I used to do before school care for the groom. Yikes…making me feel old. 

    We did the traditional parade and cookout with the neighbors. Mini-me brought a friend this time. After we returned home about a dozen of J’s friends came over and braved the heat of the garage to play board games and hang out until fireworks. A large game of Nerf Wars eventually broke out. I’m still finding Nerf darts in the yard.

    The next morning I got out of bed and literally hobbled to the bathroom. I couldn’t figure out why my feet hurt so much….

     

    Then I saw this. I walked just a little bit on the 4th. Good thing I was wearing my walking sandals.

    So I bet you are wondering if I’m ever going to get to the dream catcher, deer deterrent portion of this post.

    I made this dream catcher one day basically just as a test. One to see if I could follow directions and two to see if using a non perfect circle would make things weird.  I also wanted to see how to adding beads to the webbing.

    My grand experiment taught me several things. I decided I like the asymmetrical  look of the webbing. I also like the organic look of the bent tree branch I used for the frame. I decided to hang it from our service berry tree right over my Tiger Lilies in hopes of scaring the deer away. They have already stolen the tops of two of the stems. The remaining ones are full of buds. Fingers crossed that it works!

    I can always dream right?!?

    What are you doing today?

  • Blog - Photography

    T Tuesday: Chinese garden edition

    Last Friday Mini-me had the day off of work…yes, my little baby girl has a job. How does this happen?!?  The forecast had nothing good to say. Hot and humid with extreme heat warnings. So we figured the best course of action would be to go walking at the MN Landscape Arboretum. Yeah…good choices did not prevail. But that’s ok…all’s well that ends well as the old saying goes.

    We headed out early for a little fuel in the form of Chick-Fil-A biscuits and iced coffee.

    The Arboretum recently opened a new Chinese garden that we had completely forgotten about until we happened upon it on our 3 mile walk…technically its a drive but biking and walking are welcome.

    As you enter you pass under a lovely arch…this is it from the back of the garden.

    This plaque greeted us as we passed through the archway.

    In the distance we could see large interesting art pieces drawing us further into the garden.

    As well as the geometric red fencing that was the perfect perch for several birds as they sang their beautiful songs over the pond.

    The area is quite sparse at this point. That may be purposeful. All I know is that by this point in our trek we were very overheated.

    Mini-me caught a bit of breeze in the shade of a pagoda.

     Ahead of us on the crushed gravel pathway was this gorgeous dragon.

    He looks very fierce. The detail of the work that the artist was able to create on the large scale using metal intrigues me. Evidently he is just on loan to the Arboretum. I wonder when and if they will have more permanent installations in that garden.

    We will definitely be making more visits to the Arboretum as summer continues. We like to walk, take photos and chat together. Its nice having grown up conversations with my kids. Ones that don’t involve nagging about chores, homework or how much time they spend staring at screens. (as I sit here staring at my screen)

    Today has a list as usual for me. It keeps me on track. In fact a friend and I are texting a photo of our list each morning to each other and then again in the evening to hold us accountable for checking stuff off that list. So far, so good. Of course this week with the Independence Day holiday things are a little wonky but stuff still needs to get done.

     

    What are you doing today?