Harvesting Hops!

It was that time of the year again... time to harvest our beer!
Well, the hops that will go into the beer.

Last year we were newbies, and didn't really know what we were doing. All the same, DadB made some great tasting beer with them.

We have been so busy lately, we were probably a couple weeks late on harvesting the hops. Some of them are a bit more dried brown than others, but the pollen is still inside the cones, and that is the important part that flavors the beer.

We set them out on screens to dry for a few days. (They dry in the bright pink and yellow room that was painted by the previous owner.) We will get around to painting it eventually...

Once dried, we weighed them on a kitchen scale so we could seal them in 2 ounce packages. (I guess that is about how much you need per batch of beer.)
When weighing the dry hops they were a little smaller than a volleyball, but after vacuum sealing, they turned out to be about the size of a magazine.

I had never used a vacuum sealer before, so Eva was kind enough to help figure it out.

After a successful trial run, we started to get the hang of it and packaged 9 full bags and one more half full for a total of 19 ounces! Quite the harvest.  Into the freezer they went, to best preserve them until they can be used.

All that work called for a reward of a puppy-cuddle on the couch.







With hops season comes football season! Since everyone else in the family has a jersey, Dear Husband (DH) decided Eva needed one too! She looks adorable in it. I even caught a picture of her mid-yawn.

Crafty Tea Party Invites

It has been forever since I have had a chance to blog! I have been so busy!
It doesn't happen very often, but I have been feeling rather domestic lately. First I filled up 4 boxes for donation, mastered the blind hem stitch on my sewing machine (... ok, learned and tried it), gardened, and made invitations, favors, and decorations for SisX's bachelorette tea party. Whew!

We are so fortunate to have wonderful family able to travel and visit us. Last week alone, I cleaned the guest bed/bath rooms 3 times! We had three siblings over for the long Labor Day weekend, an Aunt and Uncle came Thursday for the football game, and two more siblings came the following weekend for the bachelorette party. All this during my birthday week! Are we blessed or what?!

The fox was a birthday present from Eva... who then promptly "borrowed" it and destroyed the squeaker for me.
Dear Husband (DH) was so sweet, and surprised me with a birthday weekend before all our guests came. He took me out to a special fancy dinner, got me flowers, and gifted me a new Chromebook to replace my old Netbook. The new Chromebook is so fast and I am loving it, especially the cool touchscreen!



Here are the invites I made for the bachelorette party. Since it was a tea and wine tasting party, I tried to make the invites look tea-stained.
I cut a teacup shape out of some floral craft paper and made a slit for a "pocket." Inside the pocket was a teabag shaped invitation.
I put a layer of velum over the top attached with a grommet to make it look a little bit fancier. Then I attached a little tag with a bit of string just like a tea bag.

Some stamping and ink around the edges made it look a little aged. Add a couple fancy stickers and a bit of washi tape for embellishment and added interest.

The back had a silhouette stamped on it that I cut out of some craft foam. Believe it or not, it is pretty tough to find a stamp of a pin-up girl pouring tea. Go figure.

I had also stamped the envelope to give it a little pizzazz.

For the party itself, we first stopped at a shop that has flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegars to taste, then moved on to two different wine tasting shops.  Once back home we had three or four different teas and many tasty treats made SisV, a masterful chef in disguise.

It was a wonderful outing and I really think SisX, the bride-to-be, enjoyed herself. Although she, along with everyone else, was skeptical of the green-apple dessert wine!

Curb Appeal

Remember that big storm that took down half of our plum tree? All the tree removal companies have been so backlogged, they only now just got around to us!

They said they could probably save the plum tree, but at a cost. Since it was the North side of the tree that fell, any new growth would turn to the South. There would always be a bare spot. Crud.
At this point it would cost about the same to prune the remaining half or remove it. I was really hoping to save it, but that just didn't seem feasible. Since we needed to get the plum tree taken care of anyway, we decided to have them take care of a few other plants too.
It's beautiful, but it has to go. 
That is my feeling about the burning bush planted smack dab in the middle of our front landscaping. I'm sure it was perfect for the space when it was small, but people seem to underestimate the mature size of these wonderful bushes. You can see how big it is, with Dear Husband (DH) and Eva playing football in front of it last year.


I would loved to just move it, but that would be way too much effort with a low probability for survival. I really want to keep it, and I struggled with the decision; but in the end it is just too big for the space. Yep, it has to go.

"Why is it too big?" you may ask. Well, there are a variety of reasons. Because it is so large and in the middle of the house, it blocks the view of the front door. This is good for thieves/marauders, and bad for us. It also creates a less inviting feel, and disrupts the "flow" of the landscaping while blocking the view of the gorgeous hydrangeas.

You can see before (left) the overgrown plum tree and the three trunks of the birch on the far left.

 After, you can see the plum and burning bush are gone, so much more open!
Also the birch is trimmed up, and the left trunk is gone. (Didn't want it falling over.)

 Another tree in the front yard was perfectly healthy, but the low branches caused problems when it came to mowing: they were a little too attracted to Dear Husband's forehead. A few bruises and quite a bit of cursing later, the lower branches needed to go too.

Much better!
Now we just need to replace the plum with a dogwood or something else. After all, remove a tree then plant a tree!

Garlic and Shallots!

Last October I tucked little bulbs down into the cold, damp, sandy soil of my garden beds and have mostly ignored them since.
I covered them with straw and the layers of snow buffered the bulbs from the harsh arctic that was last winter.
I fertilized them once or twice in the spring and the automatic sprinklers kept them watered. I weeded here and there but the straw kept those away for the most part.

Almost 10 months later, their long green tops of growth have started to shrivel and dry in the summer heat. It was time to harvest! (With Eva being helpful as usual of course.)

First the shallots:
("SHAL-lot" for us Americans, "sha-LOT" for the Brittish)
Shallots look like a small onion, but they have a sweeter, and milder taste with perhaps a hint of garlic flavor.
Everyone knows onions have varieties (white, yellow, red, etc.) Shallots and garlic have varieties too. These are "French Red."
Shallots are called for most often in French cuisine and can be difficult to find in grocery stores. When you do find them, they are often either old, relatively expensive, or both.
The great thing about growing them is that one bulb planted produces a clump of usually 5 new bulbs.
They are planted poking through the surface, so all you need to do is gently scoop under them with a garden fork and separate them from each other.

I was maybe a week or two late in pulling them up, so some of the bulbs had gotten too big and split. They are still good to eat, but won't last nearly as long so they should be used up the soonest.

The pile on the left are the good ones, and the pile on the right needs to be used up sooner.

Not too bad of a harvest for 7 square feet of garden space!




On to the garlic! I planted two different varieties. "Spanish Roja" is the same type I planted last year in poor, soggy soil. This year they did so much better, like the one to the right.The other variety was "Music." It will be interesting to see how different or same they are.

Here is Dear Husband (DH) with only part of the harvest!

 Now garlic and shallots (like onions) need to be "cured" if you are not using them right away. The idea is to dry out the outer layers to give a more protective barrier against bruising and molding.

For a couple weeks they need a warm, dry location out of the sun and with good air circulation. Most places use an open shed or gazebo, but our shed gets no circulation at all.

So instead, poor DH has to suffer with a slightly garlic smelling house. Thankfully the smell won't last too long, and once they have dried in a few weeks then I can store them without rotting.

Add a Storm, Subtract Half a Tree

We had a wicked storm come through the Midwest this week. Everyone in the area was hit pretty hard, but we were pretty lucky all things considered.
We did lose electricity for about 12 hours, but some people still don't have theirs back on yet. One of our friends might not get power back until Saturday. That's 5 days! All we had to put up with was manually opening the garage door, and cereal for lunch because we have an electric stove.

Ok, the other casualty of the storm was half of our plum tree. Thankfully it fell in the yard, not on the house.
The ironic part? We had already scheduled to have that tree trimmed next week. Oh well, now they can look at it and see if the other half can be saved.

I thought we were going to have to wait a week for the tree trimmers to remove the downed tree, but I was in for a surprise. Our next door neighbor (who seems really nice but we just don't talk to that often) came over and dropped off his chainsaw for us to use! Maybe it had something to do with the heaping handful of snow peas from my garden that I gave him the day before the storm.
Chain saws for snow peas... that's my kind of barter!

Dear Husband (DH) learned and used a chainsaw for the first time!

 We are left with a large pile of branches. I tried to call someone to haul them away, but with no luck. There are so many trees and branches down around town, they are focused on cleaning up the schools and businesses. They aren't even taking non-critical residential calls yet.

We are so blessed that no one was hurt, and nothing major was damaged. It even gave us a chance to make friends with a neighbor!