Ready, Steady, Go

What a summer it's been. There is now less than a month until Nico and I get married, and I've spent a lot of this summer getting ready. We're pretty close to being done, it's mostly the small things and the things that have to wait until the last minute that we have still to do. Though make no mistake, those last-minute things are a big deal. Things like making all the cupcakes and making corsages and bouts. But we'll have family and friends here to help then, and I know we can get it all done.

We got our engagement pics back from the photographer this weekend. We had them taken two or three weeks ago at the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library. A librarian getting her engagement photos done at the library, don't you love it? Yeah, well, this particular library has some great architecture and it's hard to turn down an excuse to go to Seattle. Here are some of my favorites:







Whew. I can't choose just one. Does that mean I'm vain?

But it hasn't been all wedding, all the time. I've been able to get some useful things done. My garden, for instance. It's done OK, not fantastic, but alright. I've gotten enough roma tomatoes to make a smallish batch of marinara, augmented with some basil I grew from seed. I'm going to freeze the marinara and save it for a pick-me-up on a bad day. I've also put some of my tomatoes and Anaheim chiles into a batch of my roasted salsa roja, which I canned in little half-pint jars. And I made three different batches of jam with berries from Spooner Farm stands. Also canned those. I like canning. In small batches, anyway. People say that if you've got your own preserves it's like having money in the bank. I disagree. I think it's like having sunshine in the bank. That along with the marinara sauce and a couple bags of chopped up rhubarb from a coworker's garden in the freezer and I feel almost ready for winter.

Which is good, because winter is coming. Oh yes. I like to say that in this part of the country fall starts on Sept. 1st. And it does. Sept. 1st this year saw us with rain and gray skies after a long stretch of sun. Now the trees are just starting to turn color. There are a couple of early maples here and there that are already almost completely yellow, but the others aren't too far behind. The first seasonal squash is also beginning to show up at the grocery.

And finally, Nico and I had a chance to get outside and play a little when Olympia had its first-ever Zombie Walk. We talked about using this as our engagement photo, but decided against it in the end.

Woodland Creatures

I think this is the darling that started helping itself to my garden recently. As my friend Jenny says, it's a good thing they're cute.

I've been spraying deer repellent to keep them from devastating my plants like they did last year. But poor thing, it looks so skinny. I kind of feel sorry for it.

Garden In

I thought I would be smart this year and get my garden started early. Last summer my chiles never ripened, but I thought that was because I didn't plant them until late June. What I didn't understand is that, really, in Western WA spring is too cold and summer is too short for chiles. Or so I'm told. This year I've got 3 tomato plants, 3 chile plants, mint, basil, cilantro and hops. The hops haven't come up yet, but everything else is lookin' gardeny!

Sprouting basil and cilantro:



Mint for the mojitos (everybody needs a mojito garden):


I've got a lovely pequin chile plant that I'm hoping to overwinter in doors this year. I grew one of these from seed once in Tucson:


And finally I've got a thai chile, 3 tomato plants, and an Anaheim chile. Yeah:


They may not look like much now, but check out the Russian red kale my neighbor planted for me. That's shoulder-high:


Party.

So. How's your garden growing?

Rhubarb Cobbler & Crazy Pie

Now that it's really and truly spring I've been feeling so rejuvenated. I feel happier and more energetic, more like my old self. And I have to admit that I've been having certain... cravings. Fruit cravings. I noticed that rhubarb was on sale at the grocery, and I still have some raspberries in the freezer from last summer so yesterday I made a raspberry-rhubarb cobbler.



It's my first cobbler but it turned out pretty good. Cobbler is, to me, sort of mythical and intimidating partly because I didn't really grow up eating it and partly because it requires making a dough. And that makes me think of pie dough, which is fussy and time consuming and sort of, well, formal. In the world of down-home baked goods nothing is more formal than a pie. But cobblers, oh! I am now a cobbler convert. Not only is the dough much faster and easier to make but it was also tastier. And the fruit part was simple too. All in all it took less than an hour. And it's F'ing delicious. Cobbler > Pie. And more fun to say.

I've managed to do a little gardening this week. I planted half my cilantro and basil seeds, and I planted the two Cascade hops rhizomes I ordered. Everything got lots of rain yesterday and it's all getting plenty of sun today, so that's a great start. When the night time temperatures get a little warmer I'll plant some chiles and tomatoes from the farmer's market. I can't wait. Anyone else gardening?

Now, the crazy pie. Yes, I've been partaking of the crazy pie recently. It helped me make this:




Yes, folks, that's a whole bunch of yarn that I spun and plied on a drop spindle. For those of you keeping track at home, drop spindles are ancient tools and they are slow. And that's a lotta yarn. But that's how I did it. And I've started spinning even more yarn on the drop spindle. More crazy pie? Yes, please.

It's Spring!

Two beautiful, warm sunny days here in Oly! Two days of making dinner on the grill! And lots of flowers flowering:









Also, look at what's growing outside next to my patio:



Looks like a great big weed, huh? But my upstairs neighbor informs me that it is Russian Red kale. He came down one day and told me all about how I could eat it. Apparently he had gotten some seeds and just dropped a couple over the side of his balcony for us. Wow. So this week I'm going to try putting some in a cheese frittata. It's getting to be time to plant some herbs and chiles and tomatoes and hops soon. Hooray!

And oh yeah, congrats to Vermont too!

Juicy

The winter has been getting to me and I've been missing the desert something awful. So I decided to bring a little bit of the desert to me. I have added three little succulents to my household.





I always used to keep little succulents in terra cotta pots on the steps to my apartment in Tucson. I love them.

Nico refuses to call them succulents and refers to them as "juicy" plants instead.

Picked a Pepper

Slugs have found my pepper plants, and since the weather is getting cooler anyway I decided it was time to act. Yesterday evening I picked all these off the four Mystery Pepper plants.



And just to give you an idea of the size of these things...



I also picked all the stubby little jalapenos off the two jalapeno plants, which the deer seem to love to graze on.



I haven't picked anything off the two cayenne plants, because it seems somehow wrong to pick those before they turn red. But seeing as how it's fall now and it never did get hot enough to really ripen anything, I might pick those tomorrow.

I'm planning on turning all these peppers into hot sauce tomorrow. Of course, it probably won't be all that 'hot.' I might save a few out and make some fresh salsa. We'll see.

Upside-Down Blue Monkey

That's the name of the new socks I just finished knitting this week:




That's Cookie A.'s Monkey worked toe-up with an eye of partridge heel. I did the foot on a half-size smaller needle than the pattern calls for, then switched to a larger needle after the ankle. The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, colorway Tropical Storm. I'm pretty pleased with them, and they're a bit lighter than the other socks I've made so I can wear them in slightly warmer weather.

It's been a while since I mentioned my chile plants. Well, those that were eaten by beasts of the forest have recovered quite well. They are all flowering and they all have peppers growing. I had to pick 3 off one of the mystery plants because they have some spectacular blossom-end rot going on:



I've run into this once or twice before while growing peppers and tomatoes. It has something to do with the amount of moisture and calcium the plant is getting. Sad. Hopefully this won't be too big a problem. I'm really hoping to make some home-grown hot sauce this year.

I drive because I have so much money to burn.

Not really, but sometimes it seems that way. This week NPR ran a story about how Tucson AZ has the lowest gas prices in the country. Meanwhile, the Pac NW seems to have some of the highest.

But here I am, throwing caution and money to the wind! Not only do I commute by car 2 hours every day to and from work, but I also drive on my weekends! I'm a wild woman! Not really.

Last Monday I had the day off, which is rare, so Nico and I drove up to Seattle for a few hours to do some regular touristy things. We went on the Space Needle, which was the second time for me and the first time for him.



Mmmm, Seattle...



And we also went on the monorail. Being on the monorail is, of course, being in the future. The monorail is the TRANSPORTATION! OF! THE! FUTURE!!! Srsly, in the future we will allllll be on the monorail. Sigh. The monorail in Seattle goes for only 1 mile. And it's been there since the 1960's, so they've had plenty of time to expand. This does not bode well for the future, my friends.

So, here's us being very happy on the monorail:



And then we walked around the Pike Place market, bought some wine jelly, ate lunch, walked around again, and went home. It was ver' nice.

Today we'll drive down to Portland because some friends just got a new house and we must see it! Yayyy! Housey.

Also, my pepper plants have a little pepper growing! Whee!

AAAAAAUUGHH!!!!

Because it is an election year, because our country is at war and because it is the 4th of July, my plan had been to have today's post be thoughtful and political. And just so you'd know I wasn't too stuck up, I was going to start the whole thing off with a Morrissey quote.

But plans have changed. When I woke up this morning and stood in the kitchen drinking a glass of water I noticed my cat crouched at the back door, making little cat grunts. I followed her gaze and saw a bunny sitting out in the grass, rapidly inhaling some dandelions. And then I notice something else...

This:



And this:



And this:



Something ate my pepper plants! Gah! And they were ALL flowering or JUST ABOUT to flower! They were getting so tall, and just last night Nico had commented that the peppers were exploding with growth. And now they're stubby and it will take them forever to recover.

What creature was the culprit? Was it rabbits? We've seen deer walk past outside, was it a deer? An ambitious squirrel? Something else? Was it the hand of God reaching down to pluck the flowered crowns off my beloved plants? Who knows.

I'm very sad.

So far, the 4 peppers that are in the ground rather than in pots are still there...



I have to cover them up with something so they'll be safe. Sigh. I'm not used to this.

Summer Projects

Have I mentioned how much happier I am since moving to Oly? I am so happy that I've even begun to get back to my old ways of having little (food-related) projects going on! In fact I've got three different projects going right now! Woohoo! I feel good.

There's the sweater of course, that's one. Knitting is always a good project and the best thing about it is that you can put it down and totally ignore it for a while. I have to admit that I'm not making the headway on my sweater that I should be. Part of the problem (if you can call it that) is that the weather is finally starting to behave! We're getting more sun and more warmth and I loooooove it! For a little while there I was thinking we wouldn't get a summer AT ALL. It's not that summer is my favorite season, autumn is, but how can you enjoy the cool crispness of autumn when you haven't had the sun and heat of summer? It would be impossible. Everything in season.

Then there's the beer. Nico and I stumbled through our first batch of home-brewed beer; a stout. It's bottle aging right now, and in another week we'll take the first taste, but I'm betting it will need longer than just 2 weeks in the bottle. I'm sort of itching to begin a new batch tomorrow, if I make it down to the brew shop to buy ingredients. I've found a bunch of good-looking (extract) stout recipes online, and they all use at least twice the DME our kit came with, so now I'm convinced I need to immediately begin a heftier stout. I can't stand the thought of doing it wrong, you see.

And my third project is that I am back to growing chile peppers! Yayyy! I've got 4 generic types in the ground outside, and then another 4 in pots - 2 jalapeno and 2 cayenne. They've started to make progress since the weather's gotten sunnier.



As you can see, they've still got a ways to go and we're already pretty late into the growing season, but these two at least have begun to flower, and I'm hoping the worm tea will help them make up for lost time.

Worm tea?

Yes, worm tea. This morning my upstairs neighbor gave me some extra worm tea since he noticed I've been growing plants. Imagine - vermiculture in an upstairs apartment! That's pretty hard-core. I've never used the stuff before, but I've heard all about how it's the super-magic-grow-formula for your plants, so how could I resist? The guy also told me that he's trying to drum up support for a community garden to be added to the new city park being built down the street, so I promised him I'd whip up a little letter about that.

Other than that, I've got a couple awesome dinners planned for the weekend. Right now I've got chicken strips marinating and later we'll skewer and grill them, serve them with some fancy-pants rice I'm going to make and some mango salsa. Maybe some sliced avocado and some salad greens too. And margaritas, since it's finally margarita weather. Tomorrow we're going to marinate some skirt steak, which Nico will grill and chop up to make a burrito bar. Yum! I wish we could eat like that every night.

And meanwhile, the books are biding their time.