Slim pickings and a question

Here are some of the scant handfuls of veggies I've managed to harvest from this year's struggling summer garden. Not pictured: a quart size Ziplock full of green beans and a couple more cucumbers (they're in the refrigerator). Sadly, these photos are the sum total of my tomato production so far. 

I got exactly one Black Sea Man tomato before all three of the plants got a disease and died. It had a nice flavor, but still....one is just enough to be a tease. 

I did slice it thin and tried to make a nice presentation of it. :)

Finally, I have a question for all you vegetable gardeners out there. I bought a 4-pack of what was supposed to be yellow crookneck squash plants at Lowe's a couple of months ago. I'm not sure what these are, but they're decidedly NOT yellow crookneck squash! 

Can anyone identify this for me? Please and thank you!

Free time

I got two extra days off work this week, today and tomorrow. It was quite unexpected; my contracted days for the 2025/26 school year were done last Friday. I go back on Wednesday, which is the first day of the 2026-27 term. I hadn't been paying attention, but my principal caught it and thank goodness! I'd have been working extra days for free otherwise. 

It's too hot to do much of anything. At the moment it's just normal summertime heat and humidity, but later this week and next weekend we're supposed to be getting a record-setting heatwave. Thank goodness for a/c! I feel so sorry for all of you in Europe who are dealing with these kinds of temperatures without it. I think it's been cooling down a bit (at least in England) for some of you and I hope that continues. 

Thanks to the heat I haven't been doing a lot of cooking, but I did finally get around to baking bread yesterday. Gregg and I agreed that these ended up being the best loaves I've ever made!

 Practice is apparently paying off.

The garden continues to flounder. We finally got a few tomatoes (one Black Sea Man and three or four small Romas) and some peppers, but that's it. So disappointing! The other day Facebook showed me a photo I posted this time last year and it hurt my heart a little:

Tomorrow I'm hoping to go swimming at a friend's house. At our last book club she mentioned that the pool is cleaned and ready and issued an open invitation to the group to come over and swim anytime. If she's not busy tomorrow, I plan to take her up on it. Pool time is a real treat when it's this hot, and it will be good to see my friend (outside of book club) too.

White People Burritos

 I stumbled across this funny anecdote on Threads the other day and wanted to share it with you for two reasons: first, because "White People Burritos" are still a favorite easy meal of mine, and two, because it's a story that takes place in Stuttgart, Germany. Hi Meike! 😃

Enjoy!

 

Just a catching-up post

Last Friday was our 20th wedding anniversary! I had the day off thanks to my awesome summer schedule at work (short days and Fridays off). Gregg and I spent the long weekend at home, hiding out from the heat. It was a record-setting weekend temperature-wise and going outside for much of anything was downright miserable. We tried to think of a couple of day trips to take, but nothing appealed to me enough to venture out when the temperatures were around 100 degrees with high humidity! It was a nice (if somewhat boring) few days at home. We've found a cottage we'd like to rent in Kitty Hawk, NC this fall, and if so then that will be our belated celebration.  And we're still happy and proud of our milestone anniversary!

Besides estivating at home, not much is going on at the moment. I love my summer schedule, what with going in later, getting off early, and long weekends. It's awfully boring up there, though. Most days it's just me and the custodians, as the principal is on a leave for the month of June. What little work I have to do I've been stretching out to fill the time over the next few weeks, and I spend lots of time reading a book or listening to podcasts. I'm in no hurry for the slow-paced summer work hours to end, though. It's restful. 

In garden news, this year's garden SUCKS. Several of my tomatoes have developed some sort of weird wilt that I can only assume is a virus, and the remaining ones are struggling to flower or set fruit. I'm guessing it's the wild temperature swings we've had combined with very, very little rain. We water daily during the worst of the heat, but hose water and rain water are very different things. Gardens just don't seem to thrive without rain. The cucumbers are pretty sad, too. We've gotten a few so far, but the numbers I'd hoped for to make pickles with just aren't happening. The peppers are doing okay but they're never my main focus. I do have to say that Mary's Rattlesnake beans are great, though, just like always! We're already getting more green beans that we know what to do with. Maybe I'll try her recipe for dilly beans, since I love pickles and it would keep them from going to waste. 

Overall, the garden is turning out to be a big disappointment. I've started to think about planting a fall garden in September to make up for it. With food prices what they are I'd really like to supplement our diet with some fresh vegetables. 

The one part of the garden that hasn't sucked: the roses! I'm so pleased with them.

What else is going on this summer? Not much. We're trying to figure out what to do with extra furniture that's left after getting the new bedroom stuff. The house is cluttered with it and needs a good cleaning to boot. Gregg and I agreed to work on all that this weekend. I have a few errands to run this morning: the farm stand (I'm still buying tomatoes and other veggies, sigh), the drugstore, the eye doctor (my glasses broke and I had to order new frames for the lenses), the bank, etc. etc. Errands and housework! Fun times! :)

So off to finish my coffee and begin. Have a good weekend, everyone, and thanks for stopping by!

Four small surprises

I can't remember if I shared this picture on the blog already. This is a stray cat that's been hanging around our house for close to a year now.

During the coldest parts of winter, we put out food now and again for the handful of strays that live around here. This one showed up the most often and would sometimes meow at us when we were bringing out the food. Now that summer's here, we've started making sure there's always fresh water available, too. The cat isn't around every day, but does come through regularly to get a bite or a sip.

A couple of weeks ago, the cat came around one afternoon and brought a surprise.

She's a mama! These are three of her four kittens (the one not pictured is a tuxedo).  We think they're living under the porch of the empty house that's for sale behind ours. The four kittens are wild and will run when they see us coming, but the mama just goes still and watches us. She obviously trusts us but is wary of the dogs, as she should be.

And speaking of the dogs!! The other day Poppy saw them and ran up to the fence, barking and jumping around and acting fierce. The kittens ran away, but the mama...get this....ran straight up to the fence and got right up in Poppy's face, nose to nose between the chain links, and stared her down! Poppy was so taken aback she immediately stopped barking. Ha! The cat continued to stare until Poppy turned and went back in the house. Can you believe that? 

Anyway, as soon as Poppy was safely inside, Gregg took out a fresh cup of cat food. Mama cat watched him calmly from her spot beside the fence, meowed at him, and then went and gathered her kittens and brought them back for their evening meal. Even though she's half wild herself, I think she'd like to be adopted. 

Gregg and I have to keep reminding ourselves that we don't need (and can't afford) another pet. Also, our dogs would never accept it. Also, I'm allergic to cats. Etc. Etc. 

But we sure do like her.

Happy boy

My sweet old man, George, is the happiest dog I know. I haven't shared a picture of him recently, so here's one I took today. Isn't he the handsomest good boy? 

I love him so much! ❤️

House and garden news

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing the garden center of Home Depot and decided I ought to buy some fertilizer for the vegetable garden. I've heard great things about growing tomatoes with fish emulsion, but had never tried it, so this is what I came home with.

Sunday afternoon I finally got around to trying it out, and oh. My. God. The smell. 

Just unscrewing the cap flooded the back porch with a stench the likes of which I've never experienced. It was like some awful sea creature voided its bowels and then died. It was so godawful I even Googled whether or not it was possible for fish emulsion to "go bad"! (Nope, it's supposed to be smell like that). 

Holy shit, y'all. I had no idea! Even after diluting it down and pouring it on the tomatoes, the smell lingered in the back yard. It seemed like it was all over me, too, even after I took a shower. It's like the stench got stuck in my nose or something and I couldn't escape it!

Even if this stuff grows prize winning tomatoes, I'm not sure I'll ever use it again. That's how bad it smells.

In more pleasant garden news, here are some hydrangea blooms I picked for the house. 

They were a gift from my workmates in April of last year. I potted them up in a large container  and forgot about them over the winter. They came back this spring better than ever and the flowers last a long time in a vase.

And in other excellent news, our new bed arrived last week! We're thrilled with it. We picked out the furniture from an online catalog (the mattress was chosen in the store) and it's so much nicer and heavier than we expected. Here it is right after it was set up. We only had the sheets on, but we've since gotten our new duvets for the top. It feels downright luxurious!

And guess who had to try it out first thing!

Small Wonders

This is a zoomed in photo of the flowers of a common garden herb. Can you guess what it is? * I've grown it for years but never noticed how pretty the flowers and seedheads are until now.

This is a Luna moth (Actius luna), also known as the American moon moth. One morning last week it was perched above the front entrance of our school. I mentioned it to the principal and a couple of teachers, but no one else seemed too impressed. That's okay, because when my little crew of four friends made their morning stop by the office to say hi, I took them out to see it and they were. 

A couple of extra kids tagged along, about six in all, and they ooh'ed and ahh'ed over its beauty. Then I dropped a fun fact about Luna moths: the adult moth doesn't have a mouth or a digestive system! It lives its adult life entirely on the energy it stored as a caterpillar. Of course, its adult life is only about a week, but still. The kids all loved it. When I sent them on to class, most of them hugged me, and sweet Emogene said, "Thank you for teaching us something cool!" That made my day.

*Flat Leaf Parsley