No Sewing Day

Good morning, my friends. It was an unplanned day of no sewing. There was time for sewing, but I think I just needed a day off from it. Every time I thought about walking to the machine, I didn’t. I'll get back to it today. The only sewing I did yesterday was to make a little more progress on the cat for the Pieces of the Heart project.

We had grocery shopping to do. We also stopped off at the local feed store where they had whiskey barrel planters on sale. When we first moved to the Three Cats Ranch, I purchased five actual whiskey barrels to use as planters. (They might have been wine barrels.) Nearly 25 years on, they’ve fairly well rotted away. We replaced two of them a few years ago. The remaining three need to be replaced. The cherry tomato is planted in one, and so we’ll wait until its season is over. The other two can be replaced now. While we were there, we saw the biggest hibiscus I've ever seen!

I really wanted to buy it and bring it home, but I couldn't think of a good place to plant it. It would need full sun, and can it survive the winters here? Would the deer eat it? When I thought of the deer, I walked away. (Sigh.) Now I'm wishing we'd brought it home. It had another five flowers coming. Even if it lived its whole life inside our house, I would have gotten the $15's price worth of enjoyment from it. 

After lunch and naps, I had in mind to bake some Blueberry Zucchini Bread. It was a new recipe to me. We’re pausing with our morning granola cups for the time being, which meant I had some blueberries left over that I wanted to use. Also…zucchini. Honestly, the zucchini is starting to scare me. It’s filling about 3/4 of my vegetable crisper now. I have a lot of it included in dishes for the coming week’s menu, but there’s still an overabundance. In any case, I decided to try this new recipe. When it came from the oven, it looked like this:

We had to wait at least an hour to cut into it. In the meantime, I went to check on the garden. The plums are beginning to turn purple. This is the time of year when I start gnashing my teeth about the plums. Generally, we take a trip in the fall, and this year is no different. We planned our departure date a week later than usual to accommodate the plums, but it looks like they’ll be ready in plenty of time. They’re still rock hard, but I suspect they’ll be ready in about a week.

The giant sunflowers have bloomed. I was thinking I need to back up and take a picture of the whole plant to really bring home how tall they are. Just know our fence is eight feet, and they’re well above the top of the fence.

The corn is getting some size to it. It’ll probably be another week to ten days before it’s ready.

The green beans are getting some size too. They still have a ways to go, but things have a way of growing to their full size overnight.

I was happy to find four more pickling cucumbers. Two of them had almost grown too large. I check them every day, and still, some of them are able to hide from me. I need four pounds for a batch of pickles, and oooooh…I just need a couple more. There are plenty more coming, so there’s nothing to worry about. It’s time to go hunting for some dill heads.

Later in the afternoon, we cut into the bread. It’s made with whole wheat pastry flour, and so it has a nice soft texture. It only used one zucchini. Some time ago, I learned the trick of tossing the blueberries in a little flour to keep them from sinking to the bottom of the batter. These did anyway, but it doesn’t really matter. And the bread was good. I just wish it used more zucchini.

So that was a day of not much accomplished, but at least we won’t go hungry. I’ll get back to my sewing today. The only thing on today’s agenda is to hoe the garden. Our neighbor invited us down for dinner tonight, which will be nice. I’m going to bake some more zucchini bread to take along. Everyone has to do their part, right? And as long as I’m doing that, I might take some time to shred some of the excess. I like to divide it into two-cup portions and bake some sort of zucchini bread or zucchini muffins whenever the mood strikes. 

All right then. I’m off to do my slow-stitching. Faster stitching to follow.