Blue Skies & Garden Update, Chicken Escapades, New Muffuletta Sandwich Recipe, Mini Kitchen Update

Blue Skies & Garden Update-

Friday a nice low front blew through and brought some wind to stir up the air. Friday afternoon the smoke started to clear a bit and that was a real blessing. Saturday morning brought cooler temperatures, almost a little bit of Autumn, and bluer skies. What a relief! I'd love to see some rain, but for now it's still dry. The smoke did come back a little bit later in the day. This morning the skies are still blue with a little bit of clouds, but not bad at all.  With 50's last night, and 48 forecast for tomorrow night, Autumn is in the air! I read about this app last week that measures how smoky skies change your breathing in relation to how many cigarettes you might have smoked. Friday I smoked 2.2 cigarettes, yesterday it was 1.1. Here's an interesting article on a App That Measures Air Pollution in Cigarettes  It's free and an interesting little tool.
  As far as the garden update our apple tree has fruit way up, almost impossible to harvest. We are going to have a tree trimmer come in in October to work on her massive maple tree, as well as the apple tree, to trim it to a more manageable size. As far as the veggie garden production we're doing really well! Lots of tomatoes are ripening, herbs, green beans, Italian peppers, Gypsy Peppers, 2 kinds of cucumbers, and zucchini. I'm making our first salsa today since we have enough tomatoes and may start freezing some as well. There's nothing better than homegrown organic tomatoes in the middle of winter to make into soups, pasta sauce, etc. Our only fail seems to have hit everybody locally from what we have heard. With the intense heat in the 100's for a while we had very little in the way of jalapeno or bell peppers. Interestingly enough now that it has cooled down (80's) we have several small bell peppers growing, as well as jalapenos. It's pretty common knowledge that when you reach a certain temperature some vegetables will not set fruits. Tomatoes, for instance, won't set fruit if it's above 85 degrees, if I remember correctly. We have lots of pears that should be ripen in about the next month so we will harvest those. We have a small second harvest of raspberries that is trickling in which is nice. Many of our blackberries we were waiting for simply withered up in the intense heat sadly. There's always next year...

Chicken Escapades-
It's the case of the escaping chickens! For a while now I have found 1-3 of our new chickens out in the main part of the back yard. Annie, the white young hen, seems to be the ring leader. Sure, she’s cute but don’t let that chick fool you! I suspect after the hawk attacked, then dropped her in the boxwood shrub, she realized she could climb up it. It’s in the shade area and I’m pretty sure that’s their escape route-

I have lost track of how many times Dave or I have come home from work, or looked outside, to see her/them out. Sometimes, like this week, it was all 3 birds. I trimmed all their flight feathers a bit more recently, no help. I can herd them into the coop pretty easily, but it’s a safety issue having them out. There's also potential damage to our perennial beds. The neighbor's have an aggressive dog, which made them get rid of their ducks. Safety for sure! Here's what I saw yesterday-

Pru jumped up on the fence top

Short jump to the compost pile and over the fence to the dog

It suddenly dawned on me two nights ago that I could but some bird netting and basically cover the shade area pretty easily. Only a $10.00 fix! We could just staple to the top of the 6’ fence, go over the Red Twig dogwood and attach to the lower fence. After I mentioned the idea to Dave he decided to reuse some of our used cedar fence boards and create a little bit of structure for that area. He pointed out that we may occasionally need to get back there and it would be easier to have something taller that we could walk under. He added strategic boards into the existing fence, and we both covered all that with bird netting and stapled it down-

I'm hoping this won't have to be up there permanently. I observed this morning that one of the larger chickens lunged at one of the smaller hens and she tried to climb up the boxwood as an escape measure. She realized there was netting there and went back around behind the coop. I hope the flock dynamics will settle down over time. I don't think the older hens are actually trying to attack the little ones, it's just they're very nervous. If not it’s back to square one. Have any of you dealt with this? And poor Rosie is in a full blown molt! Lost all her tail feathers, so embarrassing! Normally you can't see where I trim their flight feathers, oh well. They'll grow back and I'm giving her extra protein treats.

New Muffuletta Sandwich Recipe
I was channel surfing one night and ran across a new muffuletta sandwich recipe on Cook's Country on PBS. I was used to do a lot of hand chopping lots of different ingredients to make the olive salad. This recipe uses food processor and Italian Giardiniera as the base. It also uses store-bought pizza dough to make the sandwich bread. I decided to skip that part in the interest of time with a busy weekend. I made the olive salad as directed and it came out great!

It was much faster using a food processor but was still nice and chunky. You can add whatever kind of Italian meats you like and I followed their recipe but substituted Chorizo. Trader Joe's had the perfect combo for $5.00. I also added thin sliced Italian salami. Plenty of meat for 2 dinners. Here's the recipe- New Orleans Muffulettas

Mini Kitchen Update-
With all of our garden harvesting my kitchen has been full of mixing bowls of vegetables. I realized the other day I needed to just also remove some decorative items along the kitchen counter as it was getting just too cluttered. So I pulled a few things out and moved a few things. I moved my favorite lemon topiary that I made away from the sink area over to another part of the counter,  I then replaced it with just a small Mason jar full of faux lemons and my tea sign-

  I also moved our phone charger to another area-

Over in my kitchen desk area I moved my other favorite topiary that I made. It's in a flour sifter and I put it on our dining table where it can be seen. That help me clear off my desk -

So sometimes it only takes a few minutes to pull some things, move them, or set them aside for another part of the house. There's also also the donation box! It gives you a chance to wipe everything down and declutter, killed two birds with one stone kinds thing! I like the result and it only took me about 30 minutes!