Hoedown

Not as much happened in the vegetable garden as I'd hoped yesterday, but there was a little bit of progress. Mike had a stump grinder rented for a day, and he spent about three-fourths of the day grinding stumps. It all looks good now. I didn't take any pictures of the large holes in the ground, but they're covered over now. He wants to rototill the area where the butterfly bushes were to make way for the blueberries we'll plant, probably next week. We're also on the hunt for a few more plants to fill in where others have died. Also, we didn't catch any more squirrels. You'll be amused to know they've figured out a way to defeat the trap. Hm. We might have to take more drastic measures.

The first thing I did yesterday was to start some bread dough rising. I made up the dough the day before, and then it was refrigerated overnight. It needed about four hours in its banneton before it was ready for baking.

With that finished, I went outside and hoed down all the weeds that had sprung up in the vegetable garden. It was about an hour-long task, but it needed to be done before sowing any seeds. I was dismayed to find a deer had strolled through during the night and eaten one of the zucchini plants. (Sigh.) When I saw that, I checked on our one rose bush and found they'd had a little snack there too. (Sigh, again.) And that kind of killed any push on my part to plant vegetable seeds yesterday. Mike needs to finish putting the ends of the fence back up, and that will happen today. I'll be planting seeds, no matter what.

When that was finished, I took another stroll around. I know you're sitting on pins and needles wondering if the peony has bloomed. The answer is a hard and fast "no."

But now there's another one to watch. Can you see the reddish petals inside this one? 

Already this morning I've been outside to check on it. Still nothing. I'm telling you, it's the cruelest plant in the garden. We have at least three warm days in a row, and I'm really hoping that will get it going. 

When I'd finished all my gardening, it was time to bake off the bread. I've been working on my scoring technique. This one didn't turn out quite like I'd planned. You can see where I was trying to do some stalks of wheat (or maybe you can't), but the bread cracked there and ruined the whole thing.

Nevertheless, this gives me an opportunity to tell you there's an Instagram account called Brooklyn Sourdough where she does some quick demonstrations of her own bread scores. It's kind of fun and interesting to watch. Then, she bakes the bread and shows a picture. She bakes the most beautiful breads I've ever seen.

When that was finished, it was time to get sewing. I needed to finish up the top-stitching on the Salsa block.

Then, I needed to hand embroider some "little bits" into the salsa.

Then, I added the borders and it was finished.

These are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far.

When I work on this quilt again, I'll be doing the enchilada block.

Today's push will be to sow seeds in the vegetable garden. If there's time left over for sewing, I'll be making another six blocks for the City Bank quilt started back in March.

We're venturing out to a restaurant tonight to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. We'll have a nice warm night for sitting outside. Our county is still in Phase 1 of reopening, and so restaurants have certain rules in place to keep everyone safe. We're hopeful it will all work out, but we won't stay if their social distancing measures don't seem adequate. 

Little Kitchen Things

Eliza had her little trip into town yesterday. I dropped her off for service, and we won't see one another again for about a month. I'd like to say I left the shop feeling certain she'd have her mind right when I returned...think of it as sewing machine rehab. Possibly it was because of his face mask, but the guy who took her in didn't exactly inspire confidence. She's there for service, but I also described what happened and the noise it produced. Then, I wanted to see him write it down, but he didn't. So...maybe he wrote it down after I left? No way to know. It means when I go to pick her up, I'm going to ask to plug the machine in and hear it run before I take it home. It's an hour and a half drive round trip, and I don't want to make the trip any more than necessary. So we'll see.

When I got home, I was completely worn out. It wasn't exactly a stressful adventure...the grocery store is much worse, by comparison. Still, I kept yawning and yawning, and finally took an afternoon nap. It doesn't seem like much got done, but I finished off the Stitched Inchies (my name for it).

This was a stitch-along project created by Meg Hawkey of Crabapple Hill Studios for International Embroidery Month 2020. It was the second of these I've done. She created one for the same event the year previous. This was the first one:

They're so much fun, I really hope she does another one next year.

After that, I got busy with my little kitchen things. I fed my sourdough starters, which usually means I'm going to bake something with the discard. I have it sitting on my kitchen counter, and I'll feed it for a few days before baking some more bread.

It's a mixture of the whole wheat and white bread starters. I'll keep feeding it with all-purpose flour, and so it will end up mostly white. Also, I recently received a little email newsletter from King Arthur Flour with recipes for discard. These can be made without continuing to feed what is poured off, and there are quite a few that look good to me. I'd rather save the discard and make something with it than just throw it away. Thus far, I've been giving it to my neighbors. I haven't heard if anyone has actually baked anything.

Next, I made this Sweet-Potato Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing for last night's dinner. It's best made earlier in the day to give the flavors time to meld. This is one of my favorite salads, and I had a yen. We had that with our salmon last night.

Just now I remembered I was supposed to add some peanuts before I served it up. Oh well. It was good without them. The name says "spicy," but if you're not into that, you can reduce the amount of chili-garlic sauce used.

Aside from finishing up the inchies, the only other sewing I did was to cut 180 two-inch squares for Jenny's Flower Garden. I'm making mine from my smallest scraps.

Some of the patches in these 49-patch blocks are consistent from block to block. Those were cut ahead of time.

Today I'll start sewing them together. I need four of the 49-patch blocks and three "blanks." I laid out the first block before I stopped for the day.

Then I covered it with a protective shield to protect against, um, rearranging.

The sun appeared at the end of the day, and so I got outside for a little walk around. The fourth of the rhododendrons is nearly in full bloom now. You can also see the sticks for the sunflower seedlings in the foreground. The squirrels have eaten a few, but I've sprinkled them with medicated body powder. I'm really hoping that will prove to be a solution to the critter problem.

Across the sidewalk, more of the dark purple rhododendrons have opened.

Also, another poppy has opened. Poor thing is a little beaten up by the rain.

Oh wait...but what's this? So at the top of the image below, you can see the greenery. For years, the squirrels have made the area under the greenery their home...popping out of the top occasionally to see what's for dinner. Now, look toward the bottom of the image, and what do you see?

It's one of the little sticks that is marking the sunflowers. Apparently, somebody wanted their sunflower seedling served up as a kebab. Little sh*ts. You can bet I expressed my outrage to any squirrels listening. That should have them quaking in their boots...if they were wearing boots...which they aren't...and so it probably didn't make any difference to them at all.

Okay, moving on...the peonies are looking great! I'm so happy about this.

And how can this next one not be open? I'm checking it twice per day. It's sooooooooooo close. Maybe today. What do you think? Probably, I should start some kind of pool.

Turning around, Mike spent the day hacking down what remained of one of the butterfly bushes. He's made complete mincemeat of the larger of the two. You can see how large its trunk was where I've marked with a yellow arrow.

He'll get started on the second one, his back and weather permitting. It'll be so good to have these gone.

Looking to the left, I found this little girl waiting for me on her catio. The kitties love the afternoon sunshine.

When I left her this morning to write this post, she was all snuggled into her favorite quilt. Do you think kitties have any idea how adorable they are?

So today, I'll get to work on Jenny's Flower Garden. I'd love to finish the third row by day's end.

Good Day, Sunshine

Our weekend was kind of a mixed bag of weather. Yesterday was one of our famous everything-in-a-day weather days here in the Pacific Northwest. There was sunshine, rain, hail, then more sunshine. Mike spent the day pressure-washing our decks and sidewalks. They were covered with a thin growth of green moss, and they were treacherous for walking. Very slippery. Everything looks good now. As sunlight waned, everything looked so pretty. So I took a little walk around, backing up from my usual close-up shots.

These are a couple of the azaleas. I was standing at the corner of the house. The one in the foreground is just starting to open. It's a sunny day today, and so we might see it really open up and show off.

Walking around to the other side of the house, our Japanese maples are all leafed out. They are especially pretty during the "golden hour" of sunlight.

Toward the front of the house, the lilac is in bloom now. I think this is its best year ever.

The heather is still in bloom at its feet, and the lilac is covered in flowers. Getting in a little closer, there are still little flowers that haven't opened yet.

The dogwood "blossoms" get a little larger and more red each day. These aren't actually flowers, but more like what we call "guard petals." Inside there is a flower bud, so I hope they come through this year. I'm feeling more optimistic each day. We noticed the ones in the valley are in bloom, and we're usually a couple of weeks behind them at our elevation.

But here's the most exciting news. It appears we have violet-green swallows living in at least three of our bird houses.

We've seen them sitting on top of the houses, hanging from the sides, and also going in and out of the holes. Pretty exciting. And there's plenty of boffing too. Yes, that's what I said. Boffing.

Yesterday's bread turned out beautifully. It might be the prettiest loaf I've ever made. The dough was so nice to work with, and it meant I could do some pretty scoring. I'm trying to accomplish a wheat head, but I think I might be making the center slash too deep. It spreads out, and while I can see the little wheat seeds, the shape is kind of lost as it expands.

And this is so nice. Here's how it looks inside.

As I mentioned yesterday, I ran out of bread flour, and so this one was made mostly with all-purpose flour. Now I'm finding from various friends that nobody bothers with bread flour. Apparently, I'm the last to know. Bread flour hasn't been available in our grocery store lately, but I might not bother with it in the future. I think the loaf also benefited from an extra 24 hours in the refrigerator. The dough can be made two days ahead and refrigerated for 48 hours before baking it off. I had two loaves. The one I gave to Mae had just 24 hours in the refrigerator, while this one got the extra day to think about what it wanted to become.

Despite several stern talking-to's I've given myself over the past couple of weeks, I haven't been able to force myself back to the hand quilting on Mulligan Stew. I'll get to it eventually. I've actually spent some time thinking about how it is that I can love embroidery, but hate the big-stitch hand quilting. For one thing, the quilt is large and bulky, but it's more than that. I think it's just the tedium of taking one big stitch after another. Embroidery stitches are fine in comparison, and there is variety in stitches and color. Whatever the case, I decided to put Mulligan Stew in time out until its turn comes up again on the white board.

For now, I'm getting back to the blocks for "I Believe in Snowmen." I last worked on this quilt back in December, just before we left on our trip. There are 16 blocks altogether, and I've finished ten. Now I've traced out the next three. They are small, and so I've worked them three at a time when their turn comes up. Here are the next three I'll be stitching.

After that, I got back to work on the poppy mosaic. Smitty helped me with this. Notice how carefully he places his paws, making sure not to disturb my work in progress.

He would much purrfer if I came outside with him. He was closed off from his outside world during our conversation, and he was very much looking forward to his afternoon adventure.

Sadie was warm next to the fireplace. When we can't find Sadie anywhere, she usually turns up in this little hidey hole.

So I finished the 9th row of sections for the poppies...

And then I did two more for the final row before quitting for the day.

Earlier this morning, I took these pictures of the kitties getting their morning sunbaths. This is the best time of the year for kitties.

Smitty likes his kitty pole. Sadie found a nice warm spot on the stairs.

So it's a little late in the morning, but I haven't done any slow stitching for several days. I'm going to get a start on the snowmen before doing anything else. I'm really hoping to finish off the last of the poppies today. It'll still need a borders added, but those will go quickly in comparison to what I've done so far.

Little Sprouts

As expected, I spent another day in the kitchen yesterday. It's all good. I like a good kitchen binge every now and then. It was worth it to have some beautiful bread and a pie to contribute to last night's little birthday party. You really want to see the pie, don't you? It is a thing of beauty.

It was delicious too. I cut it into eighths when I served it up, and so there are still three pieces left over for the three of us to have for dessert after dinner tonight. (Checks watch to see what time it is...not dinner for another 9 hours...shoot.)

Also, I told you I was in the process of trying out a new recipe for a no-knead sourdough bread. I totally love this dough. It was so nice to work with. When it came out of the oven it looked like this. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

I linked to the recipe and tutorial for this yesterday, but if you missed it, you can find it right here. Mae likes my bread, and so I made this loaf as a little gift for her. I was trying to do some fancy scoring on it. Can you tell?

We had such a nice little reunion last night. It's been months since our little family of five got together. I only took this one picture of Clementine. She was put out that someone had moved her little scratching lounge to the wrong location. When Mae put it back, it took Clementine a while before she was feeling better about this transgression and the indignation of it all.

Earlier in the day, I'd done my daily check and wetting down of the new seeds in the greenhouse. And lookie there! It's a little lettuce sprout!

Oooooh! There's another one!

There were a few more too. Also, some of the cat grass is sprouting. This one is so exuberant, it pushed its way to the top of the soil.

Okay, and so I've done a little investigation into the mystery of why the fifth of the five peonies hasn't sprouted any buds yet. It's well above ground, but checking every day, I don't see even a hint of any buds. So, I checked in with the folks on the Peony Lovers and Enthusiasts Facebook group and asked if it's unusual for peonies to not bloom in their first year. Someone responded with this link to an article. Since it was posted to Facebook, I can't link to it, and took screenshots on my phone instead. You can read if you're interested. If not, just scroll on by.

Basically, it says that planting root stock, as I did, you're asking the plant to reproduce asexually. (And that's the only thing allowed in my garden. Sheesh...plants. You have to watch them all the time, indecent things that they are.) And so, that means it may take the root stock a couple of years to produce flowers. But don't take my word for it...here's the article.

Okay...so everything you ever wanted to know about peonies. I haven't given up on it producing buds this year though. It still might come through. In the meantime, it makes me even more grateful that four of the five have produced buds. And according to this article, the flowers may not be as large, but I'll be happy with whatever flowers I get. 

Just then I typed "flour," which reminds me I'm baking one more loaf of bread today. I had two starters on my countertop this past week. One was to make a loaf for Mae, and one was for us. I used all bread flour in Mae's loaf, but ran out for ours. So I used the last of the bread flour and then supplemented with all-purpose flour. I'm curious if it will make a difference. We'll all find out after I've baked it off in a few hours. More about that tomorrow.

As it is, I've done no sewing for the past two days. Today, I'm going to sew my guts out. I doubt I can finish off the poppies today, but I'm hoping to get close.