Burger Night and All Seedlings Healthy!

Last night was Burger Night! :) I wanted to make Alex a special meal since he'd been taking such good care of me after my tumble. He loves burgers and I always try to outdo myself with the toppings. I made his with ground top sirloin and mine with a breaded chicken breast. On his was lettuce, tomato, bacon, Swiss, Cheddar and two onion rings!! Mine was much more "simple" ;), I had the breaded chicken breast that I'd pounded down thin, with ham, Swiss, lettuce and tomato. I made strawberry milkshakes, fries and onion rings too...whoa...BIG meal! I think I'm still digesting!

The raging river. I took this photo from the covered bridge this morning.

Poor Marlene...when I stopped to take the picture, a big truck drove by and scared her. She's so sensitive to loud noises. You know, we had an acquaintance who tried to convince us to NEVER get shelter dogs because you adopt "all of their problems" along with them. The heck with that! These three are the best dogs and they make a wonderful pack! They listen, they obey, just look at them sitting and waiting for me!! They're loving, sweet and fun. Of course, they each have their own quirks and issues, but we love them to bits and will always adopt from shelters from now on.

My obsession update: I stopped by the mail box this morning and got the next installment of my addiction! :) I have no more room in the window so these will have to wait to be planted at the end of May outside. The whole reason for this order was the mint because I want to make mint juleps lol...And I ordered more seeds the other day since I'm now doing potatoes in the tires. Speaking of that...

I set up my little root garden yesterday. Yes...I very likely overdid it. I probably should have been resting...but I'm so dang restless! Plus we had SUN yesterday, with 4 more days of rain in the forecast, so I felt the need to take advantage!! I dug up my pumpkin patch! It looks tiny in the photo, but it's about 3 feet wide by 5 feet long, give or take. That's just the first one. I'm planning another one to the right of the photo where you can't really see. We want to make an opening in the lattice fence, so when that's done, I can figure out the sizing of the second patch. I still have to make a raised bed around this and buy more earth from the garden center, but stage one is done. My carrots and radishes will stay there and I have my tires in place for the potatoes. I still have some work to do on the tires, like cutting out the inside rims (thanks Kymber and Ruth for the advice) and making them look pretty. :)

It's funny what you find in boxes...I found these three solar lights that you plunk into the ground. I guess I bought them last fall at the Dollar Store? I just can't remember. Anyway, what a nice find, I hope they work! :)

Ever feel like you're being watched? This little fella kept an eye on me for a while as I was digging.

I tried to very subtly walk closer to get a better photo, but he got wise to me and took off!

Now I feel complete! My spring onions have popped up! Every pot in my sunny (not so sunny today) window has plants growing - happy! Good thing I got rid of those peat pots! I feel accomplished that I succeeded in growing seedlings. Now the challenge will be to see if I can keep them healthy and growing until and after they are transplanted into bigger pots and raised beds at the end of May!

Greek Chicken and A Wee Bit of Sunshine!

I made a very easy dinner last night, Greek Chicken on Orzo. The preparation took longer than the actual cooking time! I was feeling really restless mentally...I hate being in bed all day, even if it's recovering from an injury! I get so bored...but I was good - I let Alex do most of everything for me, I napped, cuddled with the pets, relaxed and watched British comedies. But by 6 pm, I wanted to be in the kitchen! This dinner didn't take much energy thankfully and it was delicious!

I let the dogs out in the yard this morning, debating on whether I could manage a walk in the woods. Charlie gave me such a guilt trip that I had no choice!

So into the woods we went! :) Actually I am feeling a lot better. I'm taking much better care of myself lately. The Arnica gel is working wonders for pain and bruising. I've been treating my swollen digits and joints with ice and taking Tylenol for pain. Normally I'd just grin and bear it but I'm just way too restless and anxious busy for that! :) It's still very chilly out though, we had frost on the ground this morning and there are still pockets of snow in the woods. The dogs really enjoyed their walk, though we went a little slower today! They were on the scent of something...the woman who owns the gas station in town told me she saw a lynx cub in her backyard. As soon as her dogs spotted it, it ran away, but I'm still keeping an eye around and up in the trees to be safe.

When we got back from the walk, I felt it. I was and am quite sore. Despite the pain, my mood skyrocketed when the sun came out! :) It's been too long, sadly, it won't last though, there is rain in the forecast for another 5 days. I'm always hoping the forecast changes! My plants are loving this sunshine! Yesterday I reported that the only holdouts in my window garden were the spring onions and Roma tomatoes...well, the Romas are coming up! These are the seeds that I found in the basement, so clearly they are still good! The onions though, they are still playing hide and seek.

I hate to use clichés, but I really am like a kid in a candy shop when it comes to my plants! I've never planted pumpkins before, well, I've never planted many things! But the pumpkins are what fascinate me the most! Look at them growing! I've read mixed opinions about the transplanting process. Some people say that pumpkins HATE being transplanted and you must plant them directly into the ground; others say it's fine to start them indoors, to transplant the container contents, without separating the plants, into the ground once it gets above 20 C. So...I planted half the seeds indoors and I'll plant the rest right into the ground at the beginning of June. Hedging my bets!! :)

Silly Me!

I got my Arnica gel in the mail yesterday and it couldn't have come at a better time. Last night I did the silliest thing. I was heading to bed with a glass of water, but wanted to give Jack a little hug before bed. He sleeps in the living room. It was dark and I tripped over something, couldn't stop my fall and landed hard. Glass everywhere and somehow the water shorted out a circuit and we now have no power in the living room. I was in a fog when Alex told me but he said he'll take care of it today. 

Anyway, I have bruises on my bruises, my pinky finger, left wrist and big toe feel broken...though they are likely just sprained. If they still ache in a few days I'll drag myself to the emergency room...but the idea leaves me unmotivated. I don't know how it is in your neck of the woods, but here in Quebec, an emergency room visit is MINIMUM 12-14 hours wait (if you're lucky). I feel more like a fool than anything! How can someone with so much walking experience trip over something and fall so hard? 😕

But I'm happy to say the Arnica gel WORKS FAST. Wow. I wish I'd had this lovely gel a long time ago! Thanks again to everyone who recommended it, it's FABULOUS!

Since I can barely hobble, the dogs didn't get their walk this morning, but the huskies are happy outside in the rain...I don't know how they can be so comfy! 

Jack is taking a day off too...hiding under the covers on the couch, waiting for me to call him up to bed. So today will be a "feeling sorry for myself" day while I'm in bed and letting Alex take care of me! ;)

Good news though! The peas are coming up.

As are the pumpkins! The only seeds still hiding are the spring onions, which may take another 6-15 days; and the Roma tomatoes, again could take 14 more days (those are the seeds I found in the basement). I'm looking out the window and I guess I'm grateful right now that the weather is still cool and rainy because I'm in no shape to dig or plant. If anything, it's good timing...how's that for a positive spin? :)

Good and bad news...our winter tires are shot. Our mechanic warned us to get some new ones in the fall. They came used with the car and we knew this day was coming. So we're budgeting for studded winter tires for October. After our experience in March with the car slipping backwards down that icy mountain, we knew it was time, but I guess we were in denial because it's so darn expensive! Minimum a thousand including taxes, if we want rims too, sigh. Oh well, that's life right? But...this leaves me with 4 empty tires that haven't been sitting in a dirty, ash-tray-smelling garage forever! I think I'm going to plant potatoes after all! :) I found these cute ideas on Pinterest for painting them:

I have to get to the Veseys Seed website to place my order soon! I'll likely only get my planter potatoes in June though, but that's fine by me, it'll give me time to paint the tires and figure out where to put them. :) So, I guess the lesson here is that from bad always comes good, if you look for it. :)

Chicken Saltimbocca, Sweet Tea and My Happy Window Garden!

Last night's dinner was Chicken Saltimbocca. I had the last of the prosciutto to use up and finally was able to find some fresh sage. I love this dish, it's sautéed chicken pieces topped with chopped sage, prosciutto and Mozzarella. There's a little white wine sauce too. I usually make it with chives because I can never find sage...and to be honest, we like it better with the chives! I made green beans for Alex and I had mine with a big green salad.

I also made some sweet tea. Using the loose tea makes this so much tastier. Adding the dehydrated orange peels gives it a nice kick too. This will be a great sipper on my porch this summer!

It was so cold yesterday, but I wanted to do something for May Day! I would usually try to find some wildflowers to cheer up the house, but none of them have bloomed yet. Even the dandelions closed up yesterday because of the rain and cold. But I did make these Apple Cream Cheese Rose Tarts. I wanted something that resembled a flower! :) They were yummy but mine did NOT turn out like the photo in the recipe! They never do lol...

My anti-peat-pot-campaign continues. These are tomatoes that I planted in the peat pots that never showed themselves. I re-planted them on Saturday. Four days later and lookie-here. 

The Buttercrunch lettuce is also starting to grow. I'm so happy I followed my gut on this! I'd still be lamenting over dry peat pots and dying sprouts if I didn't! My seedlings are finally happy! :)

I got these photos yesterday of a Red-Winged Blackbird. They are grainy because I was lazy and took them through my rainy, dirty office window!! It's hard to get a photo of these fellas because they are so skiddish. The tiniest move and they're gone. We hear them all spring but I rarely see them in the feeder, they mostly stick to the swamps. It was a nice little discovery while I was ogling my tomato pots!!!

Today I'm off to the mechanic again. This time just to change the tires to all-seasons instead of the winter tires. I must learn to do this myself, but I figure, it gives my trusted mechanic a chance to check the tires and under the car at the same time. If he ever notices something off kilter, he always tells me. He's saved me so much time and money over the last few years by pointing things out that needed a quick fix. But I do hope he finds nothing else today!

Happy May Day! We're Eating Red!

Last May 1st (2016). We still had snow. And we had that little pergola structure that the previous tenants put up for their bbq...which fell over in a wind storm!

Just three weeks ago...

What do I have to complain about? It's May 1st and even though it's raining, the snow is GONE. This gives me lots of happy! :) I should be dancing around the May Pole today lol...but it's cold out, so today is an indoor comfort/cozy/hygge day!

I managed to get out to the garden center yesterday and got my supplies for the porch. Those 8 foot pieces of wood will have to be sanded and weather-proofed, which I will start once the rain dies down at the end of the week. I also got some chicken wire - I want to make some kind of screening for my container garden to keep the birds away. My neighbour told me last year the birds picked at all of her pumpkin seeds and they never stood a chance!

(not my photo!)

Has anyone ever made lilac lemonade? Kristina mentioned it in her post today. It got me curious and I found a recipe online. I've been reading good things about its benefits: it has a calming effect when used as aromatherapy, so it might be good for my anxiety problem. I also read it was used to treat malaria...so if you come down with a case of it, eat a lilac flower! 

This is out my office window. Our lilac tree is just starting to bud. I think I will harvest some of the flowers this year. I would like to try to make the lilac simple syrup for the lemonade, but also use the flowers for aromatherapy. I'm always trying to find new, natural ways to help with anxiety and depression...not to mention any other ailments that come my way! Oh, there's a Blue Jay on the ground by the bird feeder! I didn't see him when I clicked the photo!

Eating Red!!! We had some tomatoes to use up and the bread I made the other morning was so fresh, we decided on tomato sandwiches for dinner last night. Once in a while for a treat, I buy some Imperial aged Cheddar. It comes spreadable...but like I said, it's a treat because now it's up to nearly $8.00 for that little 1 cup container. It was a nice light dinner.

I fell for it again...strawberries were on sale last week, and I bought some. They come all the way from California and who really knows how old they are by the time they get here? All I can think of is "oooh strawberries!!!"...but, they never taste very good. They aren't sweet at all. Sigh. We added some sugar to the strawberry shortcake to help it along. I must try to wait until there are fresh local strawberries available! It's hard though!

So Much Pizza and Some Gardening

When I have time on my hands...I'm usually in the kitchen! Insomnia turns me into a productive homemaker...I baked, cleaned the house, re-organized the kitchen, did some gardening, laundry...and took a long walk with the dogs in the woods. It turned into a nice day and last night I actually slept ELEVEN glorious hours! :)

After I made the bread yesterday, I started on some pizza dough. My plan was to make a bunch of it so it would be all ready when we wanted pizza...but of course I got a craving! I had leftover thick-crust dough from Pizza-Ghetti night and a leftover green pepper so I made our version of an all-dressed pizza with ham and green olives too. I had some Feta to use up so I made a three-cheese pizza with Feta, Parm and Mozz. The third one is one of our favourites: Prosciutto (which I also had to use up), apricot jam and leftover Blue cheese which actually froze very well from last month! We had a little of each one for dinner, and we'll have lunches for a few days!! I actually made 2 more portions of pizza dough for the freezer too.

And I did it, I got rid of those nasty peat pots that I have come to dislike so much! :)  I now have:

- Basil, parsley, cilantro, oregano, thyme, chives

- Spinach, Buttercrunch lettuce, beets, spring onions, cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, garden peas and 2 pots of pumpkins...plus of course my lemon tree.

...all sitting in the sunny window! In about two weeks, I can start hardening them off and then in three weeks, most of these are destined for the garden.

I also started my radish and carrot seeds yesterday in big containers. I am still waiting on my mint, chamomile, (more) chives and rosemary that I'll start when I receive them - though I have no clue where they'll go...I have no more room in the window! I'll figure something out!

And for end of May I will plant these directly in containers outside:

- Cucumbers, ground cherries, orange peppers, green and yellow beans, and probably more of the lettuces.

- All of my flowers and ornamental grass

At that point, I'll have to see what's growing and what's not, figure out a successive planting schedule, get bigger containers for my window starters and start looking around for used windows for my winter cold frames. I'm really loving this! I'm going to spend May through to November outside I think! :)

This is a photo from last summer. Today it's overcast, so if I have the motivation, I'm going to head to the garden center and pick up some screening and 2 x 8's so that this week Alex and I can screen in my porch. We are going to make a screen door too. Last year, I just used what I could find and it was a pain to move that screen every time we wanted to go down the stairs! You see where my garden tools are? That is such a silly space, it's so narrow you can barely even walk there, but we can't screen it in because of the clothesline...I can move the garden tools, but I would still like access to that clothesline so I don't have to stand on my tip toes to reach it from the stairs...we thought about moving the clothesline, but it's in the perfect spot......so I'm thinking of a screened Dutch door kind of set up so I can open it and just use the clothesline when I need to...the hamster wheel is turning in my head!

Sleepy?

Are you part of my club? Some nights I'm so exhausted by 9 pm that I need to start unwinding and I'm out like a light by 10 pm. But then inevitably around 3 am, I'm wide awake. Normally I wake up and can fall back asleep, but some nights I just lay there wondering for hours if I should just bite the bullet and get up or not.

I got up. And I baked bread. It's now 5 am and I need to figure out what to do next. All the pets are in my office with me but they're sleeping. I wish I had that gift they have of being able to fall asleep any time I want to! Alex is sleeping too, so I can't make all that much noise. I guess building a raised bed is out for now! :) But of course, I feel like I'm winding down again at the same time, I may have to nap with Jack on the couch for a few hours! 

Yesterday we treated ourselves to dinner. We have a nice restaurant in the next town that offers a huge "table d'hôte", mostly all the meals are under $10 with a soup, dessert and beverage included. It's cafeteria-style, you order at the counter and they give you a buzzer to let you know when it's ready and you just seat yourself. No big tips to worry about so it makes going there very affordable. Alex got the double burger and I got the fish and chips. I still like our homemade food better though, but it was nice to be out! :)

It looks like tomorrow and Sunday will be the only sunny days for the next week, so I'm going to get my seeds replanted this morning. The peat pots are just not working out for me! I'm going to replant what's in the peat pots into new plastic pots with more dirt so they retain the water better. I'm hoping I have better results this way!

I hope you're all sleeping soundly as I watch the sun come up! :)

Peat Pots...??

I got up early this morning and there was still a lot of fog. When I was walking back with the dogs to the covered bridge, it was pretty much gone, but the sky looked as though a storm was on its way. So far, the forecast calls for sunny skies, but I'm not seeing them!!

These are the tomato seeds I planted in the peat pots on April 23rd. Nothing yet.

I planted these tomato seeds the same day but in a plastic pot. These are growing. I'm still going to wait and see if my homemade greenhouse works for the peat pot seedlings, but I'm starting to think the seeds hate those pots!!! Has anyone ever used them? I got them last year at a garage sale. The lady was selling dozens of them in their original packaging for $1 so I bought them. Now I'm thinking, maybe there was a reason why she didn't want them! Anyway, we'll be driving our neighbour to the vet today so I might stop by the garden center for some more of these little plastic pots and do some more experiments. I can't plant outside for another three weeks or so because of frost potential so I have time to try some things out!

For dinner we had the leftovers from Pizza-Ghetti night. We shared some pasta and the last slice of pizza. We are on a pizza kick lately, I think we're having it for dinner tonight again! We'll have to have a big green salad for lunch to make up for it! :)