In a Pickle

It was a very busy day from start to finish yesterday. We were up and out early to get our grocery shopping done. We both had plenty to do at home, but we needed groceries nonetheless. I wanted to get out and harvest the cucumbers first thing though, before it got too hot. Besides, canning pickles was one of my agenda items, and I wanted to get all of them that I could. 

When I go to the garden, I should always take my camera, because there's always something new there. Yesterday, I noticed the sunflowers planted by the squirrels were starting to bloom. No doubt, these are from the black oil sunflower seeds we use in our bird feeders.

Here's a close-up.

You might remember when we first planted the garden, and barely anything had popped up, I noticed a cluster of these sunflowers coming up. It was the sort of thing I might hoe down as a weed. It was close to the other sunflowers, and so I left it. Now I'm glad I did.

Below, the bees are loving the giant sunflowers. Look at all that acreage for them to do their bee business! They were not moving...very still. It's as if they are mesmerized by the flowers.

This is the Red Lemon sunflower.

This next one is called Floristan. Some of them have beads of water from the sprinklers that ran about an hour before I arrived.

This next one is called Infrared.

I believe this Ring of Fire sunflower is my favorite.

There were some newcomers to the bee garden too. This one almost looks like a tiny sunflower. It is about the size of a quarter.

Here's another one.

There are at least three colors of cosmos. These are the pink ones, and there are white ones too.

And then there are these darker, almost red ones.

Here, you can see the bachelor's buttons and then, I don't know the names of those red ones.

I only know the names of a few of the wildflowers. My friend Marei once worked at a nursery, and she knows all the names. She tells me this next one is called "Godetia."

Yesterday I spotted the first eensy weensy green beans coming on. My beans didn't do well this year, and I ended up with only about a quarter of what I planted. The gophers had their way with some of the beans that did sprout. I'm hoping I'll still get a good crop. It was nice having jars of these from last year's harvest whenever I needed an emergency side dish.

The corn is absolutely thrilling me right now. I planted a different variety from last year, called "Sweetness." I chose it for its, um, sweetness rating, but also because it is an early ripening variety...supposedly 68 days, which would be 18 days earlier than the variety from the year before. Each stalk has about 3 ears, and they are growing fast. I expect we'll have corn by next week.

Yesterday's cucumber harvest did not disappoint. I picked about a quart.

When we got home from the grocery store, I went straight to work washing and sorting by size.

About an hour later, I had eight more pints of dill pickles. That brings my total to 12 pints, in addition to the ones in the refrigerator. That's probably all the pickles I'll make for this year, although I'll probably do more for the refrigerator. We have to wait a month to open these, and so the refrigerated ones will satisfy our pining for pickles while we wait. I'm kind of curious to see what will happen if I just let them stay on the vine. Are they good just for eating in salads? Time will tell.

I took a good long break after I finished with that. It was hot in the kitchen, and I'd been on my feet for half the day. When I felt up to it, I went back to my quilting. I'm nearing the end with this, and I'd like to get the binding sewn on so I can take it along on next week's beach trip.

So here's what I did yesterday. This first one was my own idea. I stitched a "spine" both directions, and then I did a sort of spiraling feather. When I made the hook at the end, I traveled back, and then just as I reached the spine, I veered off a little bit, forming a triangle. The triangle can be adjusted in size to end where you need the next one to start. I liked that it could fit into the harder-to-reach areas.

I'm running out of ideas for these, and so I was flipping through some of the free motion quilting books on my book shelf. These next ones were from various different books.

In some of the smaller areas, I'm just doing a wavy line grid.

Here's another one I saw in a book, but I filled in some lines between the main design.

And this was the last one of the day.

I'm down to the final corner on this, and so I'm hoping to have it finished today or tomorrow. I didn't make any more progress on my challenge piece yesterday. Smitty was very disappointed by this.

Sadie was downright appalled.

Oh yes, and I almost forgot. I wanted to tell you about this sandwich I made last night. A couple of weeks ago, I needed some pitted green olives for a recipe. Our grocery store used to have an olive bar, but that's been shut down since COVID, and now the only way to buy the olives from the deli is prepackaged, with no ability to control the amount we buy. So I ended up with lots of pitted green olives and I went searching through my recipe database for something that would use them. I came up with this recipe for Grilled-Zucchini Subs with Fresh Mozzarella and Olivada. And any recipe that uses zucchini right now is just a big bonus! I didn't take a picture of mine, but here's the one from the internet.

(CREDIT: PHOTO © JOHN KERNICK)

It was pretty easy to make. The olivada is just ground up in the food processor, and there's an easy vinaigrette. Mike grilled the zucchini, and that made a satisfying and delicious meal for dinner on a hot afternoon. I'd made this once before, but then forgotten how good it was. I can recommend it. 

Today is going to be a busy day again, but only because I have to go into town. I'm getting my monthly pedicure, and I have some errands to run. I'll spend some time on my slow-stitching before I leave, and I want to get out and harvest some tomatoes. A few have been harvested, but I noticed lots more coming yesterday. I'm hoping to get enough for some salsa soon.

So that's it from the Three Cats Ranch for today. We've had some hot weather the past couple of days. We're hoping it will cool off a little today.