Friday, June 14, 2013

aaaand, we're back!

I'm giving up on the 52 Weeks of Happy. Don't look at me like that! I'll still be posting happy things. Promise. It just got too hard to remember every week.

So, where'd we leave off? Late April? Gosh, so much has happened! The tomato and strawberry seedlings, alas, did not make it. The baby basils did, and are thriving in their new container home, along with some baby alpine strawberry plants I purchased. So far, so good! E's started some roma and beefsteak tomatoes, and they're almost ready to transplant. We acquired two hops plants (Nugget and Willamette), which also need to get in the ground. The garlic is doing great (and we harvested and ate some scapes the other night), the mulberries are sloooooooooowly ripening, and oh yes, thanks to a chance encounter at the health food store, I'm the proud owner of a continuous-brew kombucha setup! Batch one is in the fridge, batch two is almost ready, and my pet scoby is healthy and happy.

 
Little V (and fam) flew in for a belated first birthday bash, and I taught her all about dandelions. Mostly she just enjoyed waving them around. Cutie pants.


 And speaking of pants, I'm learning to make them! Well, pajama bottoms, anyway. These still need finishing, but YAAAAAAAAAY PANTS!


This morning, I went to a local U-Pick berry farm and came back with a whole flat, ostensibly for freezer jam. Except there are now ten 1/2-pint jars of said jam, plus another cup or so of crushed berries for ice cream making (no-churn, no-machine...if it works, I'll share the link), and I still have three quarters of the flat left. We're already planning strawberry syrup and pancakes...and Mom likes smoothies...and somewhere, I have a recipe for strawberry bread...


Ten jars of summer flavor should be plenty to see us through the winter!(plus, that's all the freezer space we can allocate for jam, lol!)


Work has been steady, but there's room for improvement. I'm womanifesting 20 clients a week. So far, it's between 12-18, which isn't bad! E and I are going camping in Oscoda, MI next weekend, and that includes a canoe trip down part of the Au Sable river. Super excited, we've been planning this trip for months and months! This weekend, we're getting me a fishing rod, and we have high hopes of cooking fresh fish at the campsite. I haven't been fishing in over 20 years, not since my cousins' bass pond in Kentucky, and that was catch-and-release...but catching, killing, cleaning, and cooking my own food is a skill very worth learning.

More later...right now I have to run an errand, and then E's coming over for Arabic food (we seriously can't stop) and berry wrangling. Thanks for hanging around, readers! You're very much appreciated!

1 comment:

Maxine Dangerous said...

YAAAAAAAAY YOU'RE BACK! :D

That last picture is straight-up jam porn.

As you were. ;)