My Life in a Cartoon

Found this in a Dognition tweet this morning. Pretty much sums up my life...

Remembering Tag and Hooper

It's been one year. I think about them every day.

Never forgotten.

The garden

More pictures. 

Zinnias. These poor things had a hard time getting started. They are in unamended soil (our soil is awful) and temperatures have been unusually cool, so they were slow to get growing. Then they had to overcome the earwig attacks. Some of the seedlings didn't make it. This is one that did and I love that it produces flowers of different bright colors.

This blueberry variety is Chandler and the berries are huge when fully ripened. If I had room for more this would be the one I'd go with.

Couple of dahlias...

Sky high tomatoes in the greenhouse. We need some warm sunny weather to encourage ripening. I found a variety of basil that doesn't bolt and it's growing really well (on the right at ground level). I'm making basil pesto to freeze.

Just some huge poppy seed capsules.

More bigness. Look at these raspberries. The duck's pool water gets dumped into them every day and the combination of duck poop fertilizer and water produced a great crop. Last year, during the drought, they were small and lots of work to pick. 

Three Amish heirloom sauce tomatoes. I will need lots more of them to put up sauce.

Flower power. Lots of color around the patio. Bees are busy here, but noticeably fewer of them this year than last. We've noticed some ground bees nesting in dry areas of the property but far fewer bumble and honey bees. We don't use pesticides or herbicides but pretty much everyone else around here does, insisting on golf green lawns and perfectly manicured yards. I guess that's more important than the survival of bees to them, sad to say. I'm happy to have a less than perfect yard.

Garlic, Tomatoes, Onions

Despite all the strange weather we're managing some good things from the garden. We've had a bumper crop of raspberries, blueberries and strawberries (even though the rats were eating them too), and artichokes are still producing. Now the tomatoes are starting to color up and I harvested a load of onions and garlic and they are spread all around the garage to cure for a few weeks. 

Cipollini onions, the best! Sweet, mild, delicious.

We bought four types of garlic and I didn't bother to keep them identified, but they all look good. We have three bundles. Looks like Walla Walla onions hanging to the left. The giant ones will be perfect for big onion rings like the ones sold seasonally at Burgerville.

Hattie with the first big tomato of the season. She ripped a dew claw off a front paw yesterday while chasing a ball. 

Cherokee Purple, my favorite tomato, just waiting to be sliced for a sandwich. 

Clay

Just wanted to post a few more, hopefully better, pictures of my clay works. This first one is the bowl I patched. The patches failed so yesterday I cut them out entirely, added a few holes for interest and now we'll see what happens in the fire.

These pictures better represent the colors of the jars I posted last time although you can't see the patterns on the lids very well. Sheesh. One of these days I'll get a good photo lighting set up.

Blue with ocean waves pattern

Red-gold with fish pattern

Black with curlicues pattern 

 I just liked the softness of this out of focus shot of a small porcelain bowl. Looks very artsy.

Canning

I am making raspberry jam today. Here's the first batch. These are pint jars and I've got berries for a whole lot more.

Finally some peony poppies. 

Chokes, like alien heads floating above the garden. I harvested a bunch of tiny heads, cut them in half and cooked them into a pasta dish. Wow!

Here are a couple of porcelain bowls I'm working on. This first one started cracking around the rim as I was making the texture so I patched it up and humidified it to kind of even out the moisture in the clay. We'll see if it survives the fire.

Some of the jars I made back in December, finally fired. The red background and contrasty lighting isn't the best for photos . 

Cheer on a Gray Day

It's raining and cold. What happened to summer?

Update on the garden with pics...

The greenhouse. Tomatoes forming fruit in the greenhouse and outside, too.

Artichokes with blueberries behind and raspberries in right rear. Berries are wonderful this year.

One of my garden goals was to attract hummingbirds and I've had success with this honeysuckle.

The deep blue of sea holly as it ages. Can you see Tag's pawprint?

Our old girl Tux. Her coci titer was back down to 1:16 with the latest blood work. I doubt it will ever go lower.

Hattie with her ducks at the new, larger, pool.

My new wheel arrived yesterday. I haven't had a chance to break it in yet.

Escallonia in bloom. Some day they will form a small but pretty hedge to protect the flowers from wind.

A really big white poppy.

Red poppies.

A beautiful lavender poppy on the purple bush.

The crazy Himalayan blue poppy in bloom.

 Long-lasting flowers of hellebores.

That's all for today.

Boiled Linseed Oil

This has been quite a week for us. You might be wondering way I'm writing about boiled linseed oil after the last post was about rat poison. If you guess that it has something to do with the dogs you'd be correct.

We had another emergency situation yesterday. Bob was finishing our new garden chairs with linseed oil...

Comfy new rockers for the yard

...and left a bucket with a little oil in it on the garage floor. I went into the garage, Hattie at my heels, looking for a loupe so I could take a close look at her tick bite and within 30 seconds heard *slurp slurp* behind me. There was Hattie with her head in the bucket enjoying another illicit treat!  This required a trip to the vet because vomiting was not what was called for. 

The vet treated Hattie with a charcoal/clay suspension and sent us home with the bottle to administer the rest that evening. She slurped that slimy black stuff right up. There is nothing this dog will not eat.

The vet also wants to check Hattie for Lyme and other tick borne diseases in five weeks. In the meantime we have several days of cleaning up ugly black stools. Incredibly, I caught her licking the chairs where the odor of linseed oil still lingers this afternoon! What are we going to do about this girl?

Never a dull moment with Hattie

In the garden we are battling rats. The strawberries have been disappearing and I thought Bob was eating them. He thought I was. Then he saw the rat run from the raspberries to the strawberries and we knew who was actually the luck one. There is now a trap in the strawberries. Here is one of the culprits that ate my other veggies.

No more veggies for you!

Other garden news. I have some white peony poppies after all, though their size isn't as advertised. They'll be pretty when more of the buds open though.

A peony poppy

There is even pottery news. I had some good results in the latest firing though I haven't had time to get pictures yet. That will be next post... if Hattie can stay out of trouble for a while!