Thirsty Thursday

Everything was thirsty yesterday. It was quite warm in the greenhouse, even with the door and window open. The tomatoes were looking limp...not urgently so, but they were definitely feeling the heat. All the potted annuals were needing water as well. A few dry days and an uptick in the temperature will get you that. And all of that to say that I still haven't done any sewing. I don't think I've done any sewing in an entire week, which is pretty much unheard of around here. My hands are getting shaky. You might say my thirst for paper piecing is coming on.

Thursday was the day I set aside to repot the tomatoes. Also, I needed to plant the last three late-germinating sunflowers. Those went into the culinary herb bed with the others. This year's herb bed is going to be gorgeous when those sunflowers start blooming. After doing that, I took a little walk around. More of the iris are blooming. This is my favorite one, although this one seems a little bleached out by the sun. Usually the lower blue is a very deep peacock blue.

I always forget about these deep purple ones until I see them again each year.

And these sort of apricot colored ones are blooming now too. A few days ago, I showed you one that is more orange than these. These are the most delicate shade of orangy-pink.

The daylilies are getting ready to bloom. I hope we don't miss them while we're gone on our trip.

And I noticed some green strawberries. It just goes to show what a difference 1,000 feet of elevation makes. Oregon berries are widely available now, but ours are just starting to show themselves. We rarely get any of these. The squirrels make short work of them.

The raspberries are coming on too. These are some plants my quilting buddy Pat gave me a while back. Thanks, Pat! I miss you.

If you can't read the little carved stone below, it says, "I came. I purred, I conquered." And alongside that are the remains of some sunflower seeds the squirrels have been sitting there eating. Do you think the squirrels are mocking the cats?

Speaking of squirrels, they've worn a path from beneath the birdfeeder to their little hidey holes near where the trailer pad is. It's a little hard to see, so I've marked the path. I can watch them when I'm walking on the treadmill, little buggers.

After I'd filled the birdfeeders and watered the pots, I got to work repotting the tomatoes. The lettuce is very close to being ready for harvest. And now that I'm getting my CSA shares, I wonder whatever made me think I was going to need lettuce. I'll no doubt end up giving this away, and I won't be planting more.

It was a hot job, but I got all the tomatoes repotted into their largest pots of the season. Mike will get their automatic sprinkler system set up this weekend.

When I started with this, I had about 2 1/2 big bags of potting soil. When I was finished, I had none. Fortunately, I had enough to do all of them.

Did you notice how long the grass was up there in that squirrel trail picture? Yeah...I'm going to fire that gardener. Oh wait. We don't have a gardener. Actually, that's what happens when you have a couple of wet weekends, and then you go off traveling to the beach on the dry weekend. Now the grass is so long it's actually heading up, and our allergies are screaming from it. Mike says he'll get it done this weekend...and he has to because we're gone next weekend. We won't be able to find the house when we get back if it doesn't get whacked back now.

Smitty doesn't mind. He's practicing being a tiger in the weeds.

Last night I tried a recipe that turned out downright tasty. I hope this picture does it justice, because this was a seriously good meatloaf.

The CSA shares have me looking for wild ways to use lots of veggies, and this recipe couldn't have come along on the Food in Jars blog at a better time. It used one whole bunch of chard from this week's share. It's a pretty basic meatloaf. I had some leftover rice that I used as a filler. It's supposed to be made with ground turkey, but I happen to like my meatloaf made with ground beef. That's what I used...nice grass fed beef from our local Safeway store. 

The recipe says to use about two tablespoons of ketchup over the top and then "sprinkle" sliced onions over. I used about four tablespoons of ketchup and it acted as a glue to hold the onions on top. I'll admit to being skeptical about how an entire bunch of chard would taste all mixed up in meatloaf, but my skepticism was unjustified. This was seriously good. If you like meatloaf, and you have access to some chard, you need to give it a try. I'm saying it's good enough to actually buy the chard on purpose, which is something I would almost never do. 

And in my ongoing quest to use everything up, I made a salad from the last of the romaine, the bunch of chicory, radishes and green onions with a sweet champagne vinaigrette. The chicory is a bitter lettuce. I thought the salad needed just a little more sweetness, so I mixed in a handful of dried cranberries, and that was just right. This was my first taste of chicory. It has a nice texture in a salad. 

This morning I'm walking with my friend Sue. The yard work is pretty well taken care of, but I still have housework to catch up on, which means I probably won't get any sewing done today either. For my Baking on Friday project, I'm going to try a small batch of beignets from the Desserts for Two blog. Christina Lane went on about the beignets in a way that convinced me to try them, although I'm dead set against deep frying anything. Ever. She convinced me that if I used a pot deep enough, I wouldn't be sorry. We'll see. And you can bet I'll be back here tomorrow whining about it if it makes a huge mess.

Here's hoping your Friday is fabulous!