Harvest Time, Modern Thermal & Haybox Cooking History, Graduation, Best Lemon Cake! Landscaping A Narrow Area

Harvest Time-

We've harvested our first peppers, cherry tomatoes and Lavender! Still lots of eggs and herbs.  Love the lavender, and I left some for the bees-  

Made some bundles to bring inside-

Tomatoes are getting ripe!

Yellow squash-

Lots of cucumber blossoms, Lemon cukes and slicing-

Yellow Gypsy peppers- 

Kohlrabi may be going to seed-

Blackberries are LOADED, starting to turn colors-

Pumpkins in the back, row of green beans and Italian peppers in front-

 Modern Thermal & Haybox Cooking History-
I signed up for emails from Milkwood.net, a Permaculture organization. They have tons of free information! I read this article Milkwood Thermal Cooking photos courtesy their website. There's a fascinating history going back quite a while, you bring foods to a boil and then put them into a hay filled box. Basically a non-electric, heavily insulated box. Some of the photos show you can make an insulated bag with a lid and use that instead. I may look into buying one of the insulated containers, see below.  I'm pricing styrofoam beads and I might make one instead. Good idea for all kinds of reasons! Bring food to a boil, put into insulated container, walk away, come back later, food is cooked!

Best Lemon Cake! 

I made this for 4th of July, amazing. I've made this for decades, recipe here- East 62nd Street Lemon Cake  I garnished with fresh lemon slices! Keeps well up to a week, very moist and not too sweet.

Graduation-
The chicks have been doing really well outside and have gotten pretty big. After about four or five days being integrated with the big hens they started playing in the coop! I thought that was sign that they were getting comfortable being out there. We still have the little condo set up gives them a separate shadier area, but they're using the coop more and more-

Roosting during the day

Up on the top at night

They were so small when we started out!

Landscaping A Narrow Area-

After we added our new stone walkway this bed basically was empty. We had some ground cover, which died during construction. Dave and I wanted to add something, and I thought about getting something taller to fill the space. It's on the north side of the house and gets some sun late in the day.  I found this photo on Pinterest, from Skinny Conifers for Tight Spaces, which got me thinking- 

So here was our blank slate, we had already bark dusted, and Dave waves! 

We went to Lowe's and found quite a few 50% off plants, scored!  We bought three Emerald and Gold Euonymus (only $4.00 each!), one dwarf English Boxwood, one Green Velvet Boxwood, one Cool As Ice Fescue grass and one Emerald Spreader Yew, the large one is a Juniper, sorry lost the tag! I tried to find a nice assortment of colors, shapes and sizes to go against the light gray house paint. All of these can be pruned if they get too tall- 

We had one leftover plant so we added it to the bed by the coop- 

Hens staying cool in the mister, was 100 degrees!

Record Rain & Cold for June! Chick Ark and Garden Progress

Record Rain and Cold for June!
We got into the nineties two days ago and then this morning it was 48 degrees and pouring rain. A high of 60 degrees. A cold front blew in last night with some rain, thunder and a little lightning. This is getting kind of old! While I love having the greenery it's been challenging doing things outside. Neighbor's deck this morning-

Forecast this week-

Big storm today- 

 Chick Ark and Garden Progress-
I had our little girl chicks out in the garden after they "graduated" from being inside. Dang weather. We built a great little enclosure, separated from the two hens, hawk proof, to get everyone acclimated-

Yesterday I debated on either locking them up in the big coop with the big hens, but I thought there might be some aggression issues. Heavy rain was on the way. They've only had a few times out in the main garden with the big girls! Dang weather!

I decided to just cover their enclosure to keep them as dry as possible last night. It looked pretty funky but it seemed to work pretty well. This morning and afternoon after hard rain it was 90% dry inside. I used the painting tarp over the big tomato teepee area and then added wired-down clear plastic sheeting over most of the rest of it-

Girls nice and dry on upper deck, pine shavings and dirt dry below-

In the garden it's definitely is green from all this rain! The cabbages are doing great-

Kale ready to eat! Tomatoes on the other side growing fast!!! 

It is supposed to be in the 90's for my four-day weekend for 4th of July, happy dance! What's your weather doing???

Summer and Chick Condo, Day Trip, Windmill, Bees & A Basket

Chick Condo-
Summer is finally here I think! It was 87 yesterday and finally harvested our first radishes this week!

Yard is looking great and deck finally cleaned off-

We've kept our turf since it's so shady and the grand kids love to play there. If it was sunny I'd have other plans for it!

  

It was about time to finally be able to get the chicks outside. With the unstable weather and the pouring rain on the weekends we just couldn't do it before then. They've gotten to be the right size, feathered out and pretty spunky! Chicks generate tons of dust and they were in my "office". Boy did I deep clean later!!!  We were out of town Saturday on a day trip, so Sunday Dave and I designed and built a little temporary condo for them. Basically they stay outside for about a week so while the two older hens can get used to them and vice versa. Nobody gets killed, life is good. This system works really well and I've done it several times before. Basically I asked Dave to build it in about the same area we have before-

Scrap wood setting up in place, keep them out of the veggies

It's up against or cedar fence that goes into the easement behind our house. I saved some scrap cardboard from a large box, we had scrap OSB, cedar boards and lots of leftover chicken wire. Basically Dave and I cobbled together a little condo area with pine shavings in the shelter and the rest of it a little run. Basically it's triangular-shaped. We had to go around a tomato. Using my long cardboard I saved, adding chicken wire. We also covered the top with chicken wire to keep hawks out-

Added pine shavings under the roof

  

Food and water set up

They enjoyed the indoor area this afternoon, siesta time-

They have shade and shelter and if we get any heavy rains this week I'll put them into the coop, separate them or bring them inside. There's a chance of some thunderstorms Wednesday night so I'm going to watch the weather closely. A few sprinkles would be fine but not if it's pouring rain. They seemed to do pretty well the first afternoon, so I decided to leave them out overnight since it was only supposed to be 65 degrees, not too cold. I went out this morning, they were in the pine shavings in the sheltered corner and I said "where's Mommy's little girls?" They all came running out and started eating and drinking. Life is good!

Day Trip-
With all of the Covid craziness Dave and I really needed to get out of town for the day. We tried going the last two weekends, but we got rained out big time.  This weekend it was supposed to be mild and possible sprinkles. So we drove up to McCall up in the mountains where there's lots of trees, water, very green and beautiful. It was a nice drive up Hiway 55,  a winding road along a river up to the mountains and trees-

Hitting the flat part of the valley, pastures and cattle here and there, cloudy, no rain-

 It started drizzling just a little bit outside of McCall, but it was about 70 degrees and mild. Coming into town you hit a tee where the Payette Lake is straight ahead and the hotel on the right is where we've stayed for anniversary in the past-

They had a cool old Range Rover in front! Dave thought it's the same make and model that's in the BBC series Rosemary and Thyme- 

We had our usual lunch at McCall Brewery, great food! Later in the day we stopped at Stacy's Cakes, an amazing bakery! We got some desserts to go for that night. I love their menu and sign! 

We drove around the back of the lake, took some photos and a beautiful whitetail deer crossed the road in front of us, sorry no photo, happened too fast-

Funny to me on a certain level, fresh air used to be good for you!

We stopped at a little thrift store that we've been to before and I scored some fun items! For my beach table and wall, total $3.00-

$1.50 for flowers-

We stopped at the McCall Store and I got Dave a new tee-shirt for Father's Day and scored some local Huckleberry syrup-

We needed a new back door mat, our was trashed. I found this really gorgeous one at the local Ace Hardware store, love the design! McCall is an affluent resort type of town so they always has always have some fancy-schmancy things. Twice as thick as any I've ever seen before, longer too, hopefully will last a long time- 

Heavily knotted 

When we left McCall we took the back route home on Hiway 95, thru gorgeous valleys, then farms, ranches and the flat lands. It's a hour longer drive but a much easier drive-

We had burritos on the way home and crashed. Great day, glad we went! 

Windmill, Bees & A Basket-

Some fun scores lately! Recently I bought a sweet little windmill from LTD Commodities for the garden! It was $20.00 and heavy steel, happy dance. Then at Joann's Fabrics I bought a little clearance-priced framed bees print, $6.00, about 12" x 12", cute, hangs in the dining room-

and a little basket for the floor next to my end of the couch, on sale $10.00 -