Monday, July 4, 2011

Porch Flowers

As I await the finished garden, my baby plants ready for transplanting to their new home are less and less of babies and some have started to bloom!

A corn poppy
A selection of the back porch. I found these pretty plant stands on the cheap at Hobby Lobby.
Blue Star Creeper
A type of morning glory. The seed company mixed up the type of seed so I have no idea what this is called. I was expecting Heavenly Blue lol!
My flowering thyme and bountiful pots of herbs brimming with almost bursting buds :)

Thirsty Girl Drinks

Gardening, yard work, and cooking are rituals for me. Rituals which demand libation! I have favorites for each enterprise, which combined with appropriate consumption of water, make strenuous activities less so.

For gardening, I like to take along with me a frosty glass of Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat or Noble Pils. Both are excellent for spring or summer.Yum! Yard work needs something light and refreshing, and my new favorite beer is Palm, an amber ale from Belgium that is really smooth. Cooking is a time for heavier, classy drinks. I quite enjoy a glass of wine if I'm cooking with it, but a martini is just fine for an aperitif.

Meg's Dirty Martini
  •  Equal parts Vodka and dry Vermouth, to total about 3 to 4 oz.
  • 1/2 oz. or to taste green olive brine from a glass jar of olives
  • 4 green olives
Mix all ingredients and pour into a glass with a few cubes of ice. Put on some jazz music and enjoy cooking your family or self a fantastic meal!

Happy July Fourth and Such

Got some photos to share of the progress of the backyard garden. I've been planning this garden since last winter when it was too burr to work outside, now that it is summer it is almost too hot to complete, lol. The idea was to build a natural rock raised garden bed in the area of the property where some of our pine trees collapsed during a storm. It gets the perfect amount of sun and shade that flowers love here, and privacy from the nearby road.

Here we have the wall with bender board in place around the exterior walls:


After we finished hammering and screwing in the boards, I bent a steel wire frame into the spaces to reinforce the strength of the cement we later poured in.
My lovely nephew and Neal, a family friend shoveling in the concrete. My under developed arm muscles made doing that exceedingly difficult so I contributed by smoothing out the concrete when they were done.

The completed concrete was then drawn on for fun and to ensure the next layer sticks.
The poem that I wrote on my section was from "Myosotis", from my favorite poet, Patrick Woodroff:

Were flower beds the sea, then Neptune should I be, the laird of every leaf and cherished bud. Forget-Me-Nots, forgotten not, I'd scoop them by the flower pot, like brimming cups of azure from the flood!
Progress!

This is it as it is now.

 
We still have two more layers of rock to add to the top of the garden wall, and the soil to amend. But overall we have made some good progress. I'll keep updating as it goes along!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Birthday Notes

Sooo..... my birthday is coming up here soon and I'm thinking I'll treat myself to a pattern that I've been wanting to have for quite some time now. Sitting on my Amazon.com wish list is period patten no. 41 by Period Patterns. See, for a while now I've wanted to rejoin the Society for Creative Anachronism, an awesome organization for recreating the best of the middle ages and Renaissance. and I love love love the Italian Renaissance style of garb (how very happy I was when Shotime aired The Borgias). So for a little while now I've been trying to come up with a renaisance wardrobe to wear to events. I'm gonna add one of these babies to my (ever expanding) list of things to sew:

Of course, money is tight at the moment so creating a period gown isn't exactly high on my priorities list. But I do like to wile away an evening planning things that are gorgeous :)

I'm going to an SCA meeting this upcoming Wednesday so we'll see how it goes!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Starting a Habit

First post for my new blog! I'm trying to start a good habit- to live a happier, healthier, simpler life here at HH. I'm intending on updating with pictures, recipes and how-to with what I discover and what works for me in areas of my interests.


Projects for July:

  • Home:
    • Complete the walled garden
    • Start a veggie patch
  • Kitchen:
    • Grill pizza!
    • Home made ice cream.
  • Crafts:
    • Complete handmade handkerchiefs
                                                                                                                                                                   
Watching: Season 4 of Dexter (again)
Reading: "Classical Living: Reconnecting with the Rituals of Ancient Rome", by Frances Bernstein