Rain And A Touch Of Autumn!

Rain And A Touch Of Autumn!

It finally rained today! Not a torrential downpour, but enough to need wipers driving and to wet our windows at work. BLUE skies, sun and clouds. Forecast 47 tonight, yes! Happy dance!!!!

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!

Smoky Summers- The New Normal? Fermented Pickle Results, Movie Star Maureen O'Hara's Estate Sale

Today in Boise

Smoky Summers- The New Normal?-
We first moved to Boise in 1996, when our children were in elementary school, and they're all grown now. That gives us some perspective on what used to be normal weather here. We used to get occasional thunderstorms coming through in the summer with torrential downpours or hail. The thunderstorms that pretty much stopped except for very rare circumstances. We never had smoky skies here in the city until a few years back. The worst we had was 3 years ago when it was so smoky you could see the smoke looking down the streets. Seattle is really smoky, as are parts of Oregon, and meteorologists and scientists are saying this may be the new norm. When you have environmental issues, droughts, stupid people who light fires intentionally/accidentally, a combined with other events and fires rage. Ironically there have been very few fires in the Boise foothills this summer. Most of the fires in Californian and British Columbia are large enough that all the smoke comes into our valley. When it's nice outside and 80° you want to do something outside. All you have to do is look at the foothills, or where the foothills used to be, and say I don't think so. When you have respiratory issues and allergies it just exacerbates them even more. I've had to break down and use steroid nasal sprays because I've been so congested from this. I avoid that when possible, but wind up using them several times a week. We use a good furnace filter and we have a HEPA filter that I run all hours in our bedroom except when we sleep. You do what you can to keep the contaminants out but it always comes in anyway. I started thinking if I want to keep living in Boise long term is every summer going to look like this? Time will tell, but it's sad. I'm very grateful that we don't have any risk of fire in our city, like people in other areas.

Fermented Pickle Results-
Last weekend I made my first batch of Armenian fermented pickles! I checked them after 3 or 4 days, but they weren't very sour at all so I waited until today. Fermented pickles are one of those personal preference, taste choice things. The longer they ferment the more sour they will get. It's all about what tastes good to you. When I tested one this morning I was happy to see that they were crunchy! I had added a black tea tea bag in the bottom of the jar as I had read that helps with keeping the pickles from getting soggy or mushy. The flavor was good, but I think next time though I would add more garlic and more pickling spice. I strained the liquid and then put the pickles back into the fridge. It's very normal for the liquid to be murky and a lot of that will normalize after it gets cold.

My fermenting kit comes with a regular plastic jar lid and so you just take the fermenting lid off and use it on top. Into the fridge they went. They will still ferment a bit more slowly and get more sour and that's fine.

From The Quiet Man

Movie Star Maureen O'Hara's Estate Sale-

My daughter dropped by yesterday and told me a fascinating story. One of my favorite actresses from older movies, some made before I was born, was Maureen O'Hara. I didn't but about 3 years ago she moved to Boise to live with her grandson. She passed away a few years ago and she used to frequent a store called Ricochet. It's a re-sale store that specializes in furniture and home furnishings. Apparently said she and her grandson used to shop there, so her estate sale went to that store. Some of her belongings went to museums in Ireland where she was born. The sale started Friday, ran Saturday and finished yesterday. Here's the local news story- Ktvb.com  My daughter bought a pair of long leather gloves that went to her upper arms, and a leather ethnic belt that look like it was from the 70's. I dropped by the store yesterday for a few minutes and the only thing left for shoes and clothes, but lots of great photos of her. I thought it might be nice to buy a teacup and saucer, but sadly all gone. I looked at some low cut riding boots and she had very petite feet! She really had a fascinating life story and I always loved the spunky women that she portrayed. She had a interesting personal life as well and there's lots online. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery with her 1st husband who was in the military. Loved her movies!!!!