The Mid-Summer Yard and Garden Tour - Something's Growing! (Part 2)

The garden, which had an inauspicious start and was so sparse just a few weeks ago, is starting to really look like something's happening!  The peppers are peppering and the tomatoes are tomato-ing!

The garden has nearly exploded with growth!  There are tomatoes and peppers all over the plants.  I'm looking forward to the harvest!

The Late Spring Flower (and Garden!) Tour - Part 2

It's the time of year when the green growing things are REALLY growing, so the yard and garden change REALLY fast!

So I wandered around the yard today to see what's happening, and here's what I found, plus the dumb porch birds from a few days ago...

Species daylilies along the
back of the house weren't blooming
at all last week..

Species daylily closeup.

Not a lot to see here, but after
the original tomato and pepper
plants got nibbled down to the
ground, I put in NEW plants.

I was sitting on the porch and
this house finch came along to keep
me company!

Again, I was sitting on the porch when I took this picture.
This bird is building a nest in my hanging pot of impatiens.
We may have baby birds soon!  

Stella d' Oro daylilies by
the mailbox.  They started
blooming last week. 

Suddenly, Garden! But Then Again...

I didn't have much of a garden last year, or the year before.  My knee had gotten really bad two years ago, and last year I was taking care of somebody else's knee, so...

Anyway, this was going to be the year of the garden restoration.  I weeded around the asparagus patch and dug up the rest of the plot.  In an earlier post, I told about how I'd received the plants I'd ordered from Burpee - delivered upside-down.  I had to wait a week until it was warm enough and hadn't rained the day before.  The weather finally cooperated and the plants went into the ground.

Rosemary

Basil

Bell Pepper

Super Steak Tomato

Super Sauce Tomato

Big Boy Tomato

Here they are - all recovered from their rough treatment by UPS!  Don't they look like happy plants?

Well, we've since had several days with rain, so, again, I couldn't do much in the garden.  When I got out there after a particularly hard rain to check the baby plants, one of the tomatoes was broken off.  Well, the fortunes of war and all that.

Another couple of days of rain, and when I got out there again this past weekend, I found...the rosemary and basil plants.  What the heck?  When I looked more closely at where I had planted the tomato and pepper plants, I found...this:

Nothing but an inch or two of their stems.  Somebunny has been in my garden!  Somebunny is on my naughty list!


We've had a LOT of rabbits and their offspring cavorting in our yard this spring and thought how adorable!  How innocent!  How cute!

Well, no more.  The little stinkers have attacked my poor baby plants.  They are officially not welcome in my garden, darn them.

I've reordered plants, and now we go to war!  I'm putting up a fence.

Toys in the Kitchen - Part 4, and Red Pepper Chicken (A Slow Cooker Recipe)

I came across this recipe, and it sounded WONDERFUL.  I like red bell peppers, and I like dump and go slow cooker recipes, so this one was right up my alley.  But slicing up all those bell peppers and the onion - what a mess!  Red pepper juice all over the counter and me.

This is the classic 14-cup
Cuisinart food processor.

So I used the food processor.  It was fast, and it kept everything contained - less mess.  By the time I'd sliced the peppers and the onion, the processor's bowl was full.  When I bought the food processor, I thought it might be too big, but after this I decided I'd gotten the right one.

I waffled back and forth a LONG time before I decided to pull the trigger and buy the food processor.  I'd read reviews and recommendations and found the one I thought I might consider buying, but it was just too expensive for me to buy it and then find out I wouldn't really use it much.  The Amazon price was about 10 percent less than the manufacturer's list price, but still.  I put it on my Amazon wish list and left it there.

A while later, Amazon sent a notification - the price had dropped - 25 percent less than the Amazon price.  Well, that was more like it!  But again, it was still kind of pricey for something I wasn't sure I'd use a lot, so I waited.

I waited too long.  The price went back up.  Rats!  But I left it on my wish list - that way I'd know where to find it if I decided to buy it.

Just a couple of weeks after the price went back up, it dropped again - this time, to 50 percent of the Amazon list price.  That worked for me - I ordered it!

So I've been playing with it off and on.  It's fast, which is great, but it's also REALLY easy to clean, and that makes me even happier I bought it.  I haven't tried all the things I'd like to do with it, but I've made a good start

Anyway, here's the recipe!  Super easy, and super tasty!


Red Pepper Chicken

4-6 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (about 2 1/2 pounds), cut into strips
3-4 red bell peppers, sliced into strips
1 yellow onion, sliced
4 large garlic cloves, minced
1/4 c olive oil
1/2 t crushed red pepper (cayenne) flakes
1/2 t salt
1/2 t black pepper
1 bay leaf

Put everything in the slow cooker in the order listed.  Drizzle the oil over the top, and sprinkle the red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper over all.  Place the bay leaf down the side of the pot so it's near the bottom.  Cook on low 6-8 hours, or high 3-4 hours.  Serve over rice.

My Seventh Communitty Supported Agriculture (CSA) Box - What I Got

I picked up my produce box at Teter Organic Farm, and on the way home, it started to rain - a real frog strangler!  I was glad I got my stuff loaded into the car before all THAT started.  We've had a lot of rain the past few days, and I'm tired of it - UGH.

So this week, we got some mixed salad greens (two bags!), some assorted small sweet peppers, more new potatoes (YAY!), slicer tomatoes, cherry tomatoes (I didn't take any since I'm not a fan), beets (double-YAY!), and some bonus bell peppers.

I'm looking forward to making wilted lettuce again - break out the bacon!!!  And more roasted potatoes.  Or, I have a recipe to try for roasted chicken breasts, potatoes, and carrots that sounds REALLY good.

And the beets - one of my favorites.  I'm afraid that when I cook these, they'll bleed all over the place and look pale and washed out.  To prevent that, you're supposed to leave a couple of inches of the stems on, but alas, there are no stems on these lovelies.  Maybe roasted they won't do that.  I'll need to do some research!

This is also the first week of  EGG SHARES!  For the next eight weeks, I'll pick up a dozen eggs every other week.  The new chickens have finally started to lay, so now we can not only provide eggs to families who attend the free Thursday night dinners at the church and donate eggs to a local food pantry, but we can sell shares.  The idea is for the shares to cover the costs of keeping the chickens, making them a sustainable part of the farm.  Of course, I'm super excited to get my paws on some "fruit of hen" because I help care for the lovely ladies.  Some of their eggs are beyond jumbo, so it will be fun to watch for double yolks!

My Fifth CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Box - What I Got

Here's this week's haul from Teter Organic Farm!

Slicing tomatoes, onions, assorted sweet peppers, carrots, cherry tomatoes (traded for an additional slicer), and (wait for it)...NEW POTATOES!

I am SO EXCITED for the potatoes!  I will probably do something wonderful with them tomorrow - maybe roasted...YUM.

I still have so many onions that I'm going to chop them all up and freeze them.  I use a lot of chopped onions when I cook, but right now, I'm not cooking much because it's hot outside, and raw onions and I don't see eye to eye most of the time.  So, they will be chopped up and put in cold storage.  Sounds like Mafia hit to me.

I also have an abundance of tomatoes from my CSA boxes, PLUS my backyard tomato plants are on the verge of ripening.  There are boatloads of huge green tomatoes, but three of them have started to get a little blush to them.

You know what that means.

Soon those plants will bury me in mountains of tomato-ey goodness.  I've already been eating tomato sandwiches and Caprese salads (watch for them to be featured on upcoming Wednesdays), but I won't be able to keep up just by doing that.

Most of them will end up canned.  Tomatoes are easy to can, and they are pretty in the jars - like red jewels on the shelf.  I sometimes have a hard time bringing myself to open them because it seems such a shame to spoil the display, but I manage to overcome my aesthetic sense, raid the larder, and actually USE THEM.

I'll give some away, too.  I've already had a couple of requests, so...!

How do you use up a bumper crop of tomatoes?  Let me know in the Comments!