MaeLyn's Musings

In Denver, Mother's Day weekend is usually when people say that frosty mornings are over for the season, and that we can finally safely plant things out doors. Saturday was warm, but overcast and cloudy. It looked like we might get an afternoon shower, but nothing too serious. When I went shopping that morning, I picked up a few flowers to plant along the fence facing the street. After coming home, I spent a little while playing in the rich earth, transplanting some tulips that were already there, and planting three shades of purple pansies, digging holes and setting the fragile flowers in their new home. I hoped they would be happy there. As I finished placing the last few plants in the soil, the clouds opened, and a gentle sprinkling of rain watered them for me. I envisioned the tiny plants blooming and growing, filling the space with their lovely flowers. Mother's Day dawned cold and wet. As I ate the delicious biscuits that Steven made for breakfast and admired the bouqu...

The summer garden season is coming to a close. The cucumbers were made into pickles, or eaten in salads. The corn was plucked too early. the melons have disappeared one by one to either squirrels or neighborhood children - we're not sure which. The tomato plant succumbed to the cold and died. All that was left in the garden plot were the carrots, and I picked those this morning. I never know what kind of carrots I'm going to get out of our garden. Usually they are small, short, stubby things. This year I tried planting them farther apart, hoping that giving them more space to grow would produce larger ones. I still got an assortment of tiny, fishy looking carrots. (For reference, the long one in the middle is 4" from head to tail, and 3/4" in diameter at the widest point.) However, I did get one beauty of a carrot, almost twice as long as the carrots I usually get. (The ones on the right below are about the usual "big" size, about 3 1/2" - 4...

I made pickles yesterday. Our garden this year contained, among other things, four pickling cucumber plants. By yesterday, we had about fifty 3 inch long cucumbers. I've never made pickles before, so I had to do some research to figure out how, and I ended up purchasing a Mrs. Wages Pickling Mix, and following the directions on the packet. I started by washing the jars and lids in hot, sudsy water, and keeping them hot in almost boiling water. (I used my biggest stock pot, with a rack in the bottom to set the jars on.) Then I prepared the cucumbers, slicing the more curly ones, and cutting the straighter ones into long spears. Once the cucumbers were ready, I combined the pickling mix, water and vinegar in a pot over medium heat, and stirred it until the mix was dissolved and the brine was starting to boil. Then I took a jar from the hot water, loaded it with cucumber pieces, poured the brine in until there was only about 1/2 inch of air in the top, then put on a jar top an...

Josh posing as a scarecrow in the garden. Our gardening days have come to an end and the little garden plot has been laid to rest. For this year anyway. It has been fun. We didn't plant tomatoes this year, and instead enjoyed broccoli, carrots, peas, beans, onion and corn plants. The broccoli was a new experience. It grew, the flowers appeared, and we hacked off the stalk and ate it cooked with cheese melted on top. Good stuff. The peas and beans grew well and plentiful, and we enjoyed several meals with them both cooked and raw. The onion was one that started sprouting in the fridge, and was transplanted to the garden, where it proceeded to grow tall... I'm not sure how new onions are supposed to grow though. I imagine it is like other bulbs that should be planted in fall... but when do you harvest bulbs? I don't know. We enjoyed the plants, anyway. The corn was a plant that Josh brought home from school last Spring. It took a while to get going, but eventually the ear...