Lemon Balm Tea

A few years ago, we accidentally acquired a lemon balm plant when purchasing our garden plants. Upon discovering that it makes a wonderful and soothing tea, we bought a couple more plants and encouraged new starts. Today, we have quite a lot of lemon balm out in the garden on the west end of the house.

When the leaves are dried, the lemon balm makes a better tea than when the leaves are fresh. Either way, once the leaves have been used they go out into the compost bin. As I was cleaning the tea pots this morning, I was struck by the circle of our tea: it starts out on the west end of the house, comes inside, goes into the compost bin on the east end of the yard, and then is spread about wherever needed. A perfect cycle would have the compost going back to the tea plants in the garden.

Good Eats Tonight

I made two loaves of bread today. One is a pesto wheat bread for tomorrow night's dinner with the Jessicas. The other is an oat bread for us. We had slices of it tonight for dinner with some of Danny's pesto and our tomatoes on top. He added slices of fresh cayenne pepper to his but I am not into spicy...no!

I also baked two of the small spaghetti squash and we had those topped with the leftovers from yesterday.

Homegrown and homemade...gotta love it!

Dinner Tonight? Lots of Homegrown Goodies

We harvested the first of the spaghetti squash today - eleven beautiful yellow squash! These are easy to cook - slice in half, remove the seeds, place face down on a baking sheet and bake for an hour. Let cool for few minutes after removing from the oven, and then use a fork (or a spoon - your choice) - to pull out all the strands. Tonight's dinner featured one of our fresh squash topped with Danny's homemade meat-and-veggie loaf and a side dish of homebaked wheat bread topped with homemade pesto (from our basil, of course) and diced homegrown tomatoes. Yes, I should have taken a picture. But I was hungry.

I do have a picture of some of the squash bounty:

as well as other pictures from today:

Closeup of the cayennes turning red - pretty!

The peppers...yes, that is a basil in the "odd" pot.

The basils are still looking great despite the near-constant harvesting!

We've eaten lots of these tomatoes so far.

I'm not posting a picture of the squash garden as it's clearly nearing the end of its lifecycle and looks rather pathetic. We'll be getting a few more squash, but then that will be that. Interestingly, when this squash experiment first started, I read all over the Internet about how to grow them, and one constant was that it takes "90 days" for the squash to ripen. Nowhere does anyone say 90 days from WHAT. Based on this experiment, it seems that the 90 days is from the time of germination, since our seeds were started in April and here we are, chowing down on ripe fruit about 90 days later.

Another Knitted Item

This afghan and matching pillow were made on the USM from Caron One Pound (the pink and cream) and Red Heart regular worsted (the multicolor). The pattern is in the "learning book" that comes with a new USM. They were completed...oh...probably in April.

Yes! A Bit of Knitting!

I actually have knitted a couple of things recently. Yes, they are "just" baby blankets, but both are a new technique to me so I actually learned a thing or two!

Both blankets were made on the Brother KX-350 from Diana Sullivan's Swirl Baby Blanket video pattern.

This one was made with Vanna's Choice acrylic yarn in rust and white with the tension dial set at 7. It used EXACTLY six skeins of the yarn - three of each color - and I had to "squinch" a bit to get the rust edging done. There was just the tiniest bit left over of the white.

Why rust and white? Those are the colors for University of Texas, and the parents-to-be for whom this blanket was made both attended that school. That's why the not-strictly-baby-color scheme.


I can make "baby-colored" stuff, too, though. So here is the second of the two blankets, made from Bernat Baby Coordinates on tension 3. The yarn was in my stash and I forgot to weigh the finished product, so I have no idea how much yarn was used. :-( Boo for forgetting important details!

I ran out of time to get this one finished before we left for our trip to Ohio and Indiana, so the ends were weaved in while riding in the car, and the light steaming was done in the hotel room in Zanesville, OH. First time in years that I'd needed the hotel iron, and I was glad that it was there. Actually - it was a nice iron, with a retractable cord. If/when my iron ever gives up (probably never, since I rarely use it), I want one with a retractable cord.

Before I sold my USM, I made a couple of other baby blankets that were not intended for anyone. Since they are riddled with errors, it didn't seem likely that anyone would want them. But, not so! The friend who got both of the above blankets was thrilled (at least, she did a great job of ACTING thrilled) when I asked her if she would like to have them. The larger of the two, with the blocks of color, was made from Caron's Simply Soft. The brand of the other yarn has gone the way of many other things: right out of my brain. And I don't remember how much yarn or what keyplate. What I do know is that the edgings on these were hand crocheted and took far longer than the actual knitting. I did learn about keeping the yarn un-tensioned on the USM, and also learned about sewing as you go - a technique which came out better in the round blankets above.

This one is the smaller of the two, and the pattern is from the Bond Gifts and Toys Pattern Book.

This is the larger of the two. It's made from the pattern in the "teaching booklet" that comes with a new Bond machine. I left off the fringe as it didn't seem safe for babies - way too easy for that cutesy fringe to get stuck in a little throat.

 Missing from my blog, I realize now, are pictures of all the socks I've made this year. After I get the laundry done, I'll see if that mistake can be rectified. At least Danny loves his socks and wears them!

June's (Unintentionally Only) Post: Doodle, Oregon, and Garden Stuff

June is almost over. It quite got away from us, what with traveling and school and such. Two of my summer classes were five-week courses that ended on June 20 (I got an A in both, thanks). We left early for our Oregon trip for a unplanned quickie visit with our daughter and granddaughter who were staying in Myrtle Beach. And, of course, we spent a delightful week in Seaside, Oregon with my parents.

The garden is doing amazing things. We've been able to enjoy fresh tomatoes with fresh basil pesto broiled on top. Danny is loving the pepper plants. And the spaghetti squash...well, all I can say is that hopefully there is a way of preserving it, because at this rate we are never going to be able to keep up with it once it starts to ripen.

There are a lot of pictures following. Some of the garden ones were taken the day we left for our travels (June 6) and some today (June 25). Kind of a before-and-after thing. There are some pictures of our visit with the Doodle, and some pictures of our visit to Oregon. In Oregon, we climbed the Astoria Column (read about the Column here) - it was the first time that I'd ever been to the Column when it was open.

6/6 view of peppers

6/6 view of basil, rosemary, sage, basil

6/6 view of tomatoes

6/6 view of shade bed

6/6 view of squash

6/6 - one lone jalapeno!

Danny & the Doodle - she was fascinated by his face

Danny & the Doodle again

Note that his glasses have been removed to keep them safe

My turn with the Doodle!

Guess my finger wasn't what she was looking for

The two of us at the top of the Astoria Column.

View from atop the Column

I tried to take a picture of my parents, who are standing in front of the building.

The Columbia River, from the top of the Astoria Column

More from atop the Column

6/25 pepper plants - oops, there's a basil in there now!

A closeup of the peppers, in an attempt to show off their productive ways

6/25 another pepper closeup

6/25 and another

6/25 - The basils, rosemary, and sage - note that we've been harvesting basil quite regularly!

6/25 The tomato plants...from the front

...and from the back. Go, tomatoes, go!

6/25 The shade bed. Not doing as well as hoped, although the coleus (and the weeds) seem happy

6/25 - Squash overload!

On 6/25, the squash are growing out of the box!

Irrigation: Check.

The irrigation system is in. For the container plants on the patio, we have a Rainbird drip irrigation system. The smaller plants are on 1 GPH emitters while the larger ones are on 2 GPH emitters. (We ran the system this morning for 20 minutes - and twenty minutes is too long. Every plant had water in its tray. We dumped out the pepper plants' trays so that they won't drown.)

The squash are on a 25 foot length of weeper hose and the ornamental garden is on a 50 foot length of soaker hose. These two hoses are joined by a length of plain hose, and the weeper hose is connected to a plain hose which is connected to the faucet.

At each of the two faucets, we installed the manual timers (think kitchen "tick-tick" timer) that we got at Tractor Supply. Once we sort out the proper time for each group to have the water running, taking care of the watering chore is going to be very easy!

Speaking of the ornamental garden, yesterday Danny planted the coleus, Johnny-jump-up, and English daisy seedlings that had been languishing in my office. They're all still pretty tiny, but hopefully they will perk up now that they are out of the house and in the ground where they belong.

Here are this week's photos. Everything is doing really quite well!

Spaghetti Squash 

Stevia, Banana Pepper, and Three Other Kinds of Pepper

Look! Our little banana pepper plant has produced again!

 A closeup to give an idea of the size.

Basil, Rosemary, Pineapple Sage, Basil

Patio Tomato, Patio Tomato, Stevia, Patio Tomato

The tomato plants are already putting on tomatoes!

Another closeup of the plant in action.

Hard to see...but all the little sticks indicate the newest plantings.