Cucumber Madness!

My garden is exceptionally prolific this year. We're sharing with neighbors, eating fresh veg daily, and I still find myself having to find creative ways to use up the supply we've been gifted with.

This post is revolving around cucumbers. We've already harvested well over a dozen of these beauties, and they aren't tiny either. The average cucumber harvested has been at least 10 inches in length. Now I love cucumbers, but just slicing them and eating them can get old. I turned to the ever-dependable Google and found this great recipe for Refrigerator Pickles!

Tuesday afternoon found me in the kitchen, slicing cucumbers and onions. Now I tend to be a little persnickety about my pickles. I like them to be uniform in thickness. Because of this I highly recommend using the Hold N Slice from Pampered Chef. Your slices will be the same thickness and you have a little help holding the veg steady while you slice! Plus it's under $5, and you just can't beat that.

After slicing and layering in a large glass bowl I mixed the rest of the ingredients in a sauce pan and brought it to a boil. I was out of celery seeds, and didn't relish the thought of an over 20 mile round trip to the store, so I just substituted with a double amount of celery salt, while reducing the salt amount by half. Then I poured the brine over the bowl ingredients, covered it tightly in plastic wrap, and nestled it safely in the back of the fridge.


The pickling process takes four days, so on Saturday afternoon I pulled out my pint canning jars and filled them with homemade pickle goodness! According to the recipe these will last for a month, refrigerated, making them a perfect choice for all of our upcoming cookouts. 

The finished product: 3 pints of scrumptious, sweet & spicy goodness!

Insert Catchy Blog Post Title Here...

Because I'm too sleepy to come up with one on my own. The Hubster and I had a great, fun-filled, weekend getaway to Cincinnati. We stayed in a full service hotel, so we didn't have to lift a finger. We just left the SUV with the valets and walked everywhere. We ingested WAYYYYY too much junky ballpark food. The Reds won (GO REDS!!), the weather was perfect, and the stress just kind of melted away.

Soon to be wall color in our guest room!

We're back home, now, and thus the work begins. I'm letting The Hubster sleep in a bit, right now, since we were up until after 1AM with post-trip hyperactivity. As soon as I finish this, however, I've got to get him awake and fed. Today we set the posts to move our outdoor building to a better spot. Right now the silly thing is about 4-feet off the ground, with stairs to get into it. Not optimal for storing lawnmowers and ATVs, huh? Since I'm helping him set the posts I'm enlisting his help this afternoon in doing paint prep in the oldest kiddo's room. (I need to come up with something else to call him now, since he'll be 21 in 7 months - perhaps man-child? - but, I digress.) He's coming home from college Friday, and I'm hoping to have his room painted beforehand. Keep you fingers crossed for me, as I'm attempting to cover a red wall with a sea glass colored paint (if you don't know what color that is, check out the image on this post!).

Oh, and I'm soooo proud of myself. I got everything from the trip unpacked and put up last night! No small feat, I assure you. Here's the way our evening played out, after we got home yesterday:

1. Arrive home at 5PM.
2. Throw the luggage in the house, all while yelling at the youngest kiddo to get his baseball gear on. (Game was at 6PM, but batting practice was due to start at 5:15)
3. Pack a cooler of water, strawberries, and pineapple (and Gatorade for the ball player!) to snack on. 
4. Make a couple of travel mugs of coffee to keep us coherent.
5. Dash out the door, making it to the ball field just in time for warm-ups at 5:45PM (WOOPS! Missed batting practice, but at least he got there, right?).
6. Tell the coach that we'll be back, then run up to my Parentals' house to retrieve our dog and the youngest kiddo's gear from his stay (This included a middle of the road, Chinese Firedrill that was giggle-inducing!).
7. Dash back to the game with the dog, arriving at 6:30PM.
8. We won the game by mercy rule, so we were done at 7:40PM, at which time we had to head to the store to pick up sandwich making goodies for dinner (What? Like I was going to cook after all of this?!).
9. Arrive home just before 9PM. The Hubster got sandwich stuff out and ready, I put groceries up and unpacked, and the kiddo did his chores and took a shower.

See what I mean? Now you know why The Hubster and I were up until 1AM...it took as that long to wind down! Well, it looks like it's time to dash. Got egg whites and crumpets to nom, work clothes to don, cement and paint to buy, a garden to fertilize, posts to set, and paint prep to do. Crikey, I'm tired just thinking about it!

That Bud Made Me Blossom!

No...not that type of bud. Seriously, people, minds out of the gutter! I meant a tiny, early bud on one of the tomato plants in our little garden. I wasn't feeling the best yesterday. The pollen counts are skyrocketing which makes me feel like I've got the flu. I ache in every joint, my facial skeleton feels like it's being pulled apart from the inside out, my head throbs, and I'm in the negative on energy. Needless to say, those things tend to have the same soul-sucking technique as Dementors.

I hadn't been able to water the garden for a couple of days. A cold front had gone through and, had I watered the plants, they would have frozen. Yesterday the front broke. It was warm and there was a little sun, though storms were moving in. I looked out the patio door and the sight of my beautiful plants almost broke my heart. They just looked to droopy and sad! Jenn to the rescue!! I quickly armed myself with a watering can and large bucket of water, and out the door I went.

A return trip for another bucket of water later found my plants reaching for the heavens once again. While I'd been out watering our Boxer, Lucy, and her next-door pal (also a Boxer), Rose, had been running around me playing.  Dashing in and out of the house, yipping; basically, doing anything possible to entertain me during what they deemed a very boring job. It was far from boring. I absolutely love the feel of working with the earth. To grow and sustain life, then use it to feed my family. It's beauty in its truest form. At that moment I felt like nothing could make me any more peaceful, serene and relaxed than I was. Then? I noticed it. At the top of the largest tomato plant we had purchased, a Mr. Stripey Heirloom that the hubster fell in love with. A bud! Just over a week after placing the plant!!

That, gentle readers, is what life is all about. The explanation of the answer "42", for those of you bibliophile sci-fi geeks like me. To me, that is what we are all meant to do! Plant seeds, whatever type you like. If you want to write? Plant a writing seed. Dance? Plant a dancing seed! Tend to it. Weed out anything that threatens to steal its nutrients. Water it. Cultivate it to make sure that its roots are getting what they need. It won't take long and you'll have a tiny bud. A little while after that the bud will turn to a blossom. Keep at it and (yep...you guessed it!) that blossom will turn into the sweetest, most succulent fruit you could ever imagine.

365 Days of Positivity - Day 45

It's going to be 52 degrees today...and sunny until this afternoon. In other words...I get to go play in my flower beds and start cleaning them up for fresh mulch and spring sprouts!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, Happy Valentine's Day!!

An Uplifting Message from Mother Nature . . .

So we all know that life goes on - even when we really don't want it to. It's been a hard week for me, I'm suffering a lot over the loss of Lady and focusing on the positive and uplifting has been near impossible. I'm driving myself crazy, not to mention those that have to deal with me in any capacity - so I'm drawing myself up short. Yes, Lady is gone. Yes, I miss her like crazy. Yes, I fully recognize the fact that this will be for quite some time.

It's also time for me to realize, however, one simple fact. Loss is essential to life the same way that new growth is. Case in point? My garden. Every fall/winter everything goes away. All the beauty browns and fades, leaving behind a shallow imprint of what was. Then spring comes, and with it a burst of new growth that is as essential as air. This dawned on me this morning as I was coming back in the house from taking Bradley to school. I looked to the left of the porch as I prepared to climb the stairs and was struck by the beauty of the bright, spring green shoots on my pine shrub with rain drops glistening on them.

So, I've taken a few pictures. It's amazing just how much brighter everything seems now that I've done this. It's as though, by taking the time to appreciate what Mother Nature has placed before me, I've also created a cleared path to a new chapter in my life. While I don't expect everyone to find hidden meaning in pictures of plants I still thought some of you may appreciate the beauty that is spring, so decided to share. Enjoy!