Sunday, July 22, 2012

Busy Saturday!

Spent a busy day putting up some food and tending to the garden.
First, I pulled up the entire watermelon/pumpkin patch.  They were on the way out and a deer incursion helped me decide to just be done with it.  I got two small Amish Pie Pumpkins off the vine that were beginning to turn orange.  Aren't they cute?!
I had started to pull off all of the bean plants from inside the garden, but stopped about half way since these red runner beans started to bloom again.  I'm leaving them for a while for the hummingbirds, who have been swarming around these plants like crazy...so neat to watch them jockey for position every morning when it's bearable out there.
John golfed in the morning, but when he came home he pulled up a couple of the peanut plants to see how they looked.  I think the soil was too heavy for them, there are a few small peanuts up close to the plant, and some have even started to break open and sprout.  I guess I waited too long to harvest them? or not? I'm really not sure, but it was a fun plant to watch grow.  It was just for grins anyway.  Monday morning I'm going to turn the entire bin over and dump them out and see what I can see.
Too hot outside, so I went in and made a batch of lemonaide soap!  It looks beautiful and I got to use the lemon oil that I made myself this time.  I hope they smell a bit more lemony this time.  They do smell marvelous right now.  We'll see after they cure for a few weeks.
Next I turned to the figs that we've harvested from the new fig tree that we put in this year.  Amazingly we had about 12 nice size figs.  John wanted fig preserves, so I added some raspberries to make enough of a batch and made up some quick refrigerator preserves.  They look good, but since I don't eat figs or raspberries, I let John do the taste testing.  He approved.
Quick check on the chickens - they were loving the bean plants that I gave them.  These guys are looking so cute with their fluffy butts!
Next I turned to the basil - the green one this time.  I'm making olive oil infused with basil and garlic.  Cut up a couple of cloves of garlic and cut and bruised about 3 cups of basil leaves.  Heated up the olive oil and then poured it over,  put the cap on and put it in the fridge (recipe says for about a week) and will shake it up a few times this week before I strain out the basil and garlic.  I wanted to use it immediately, it smelled so fantastic.  Yummmo!
That's enough, already!

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