Saturday, November 28, 2009

Easy as Cake! Piece of Pie!

It's been a long hot miserable summer. To quote from the movie Biloxi Blues, "Africa hot".

With that said, we were still able to actually grow something!

Oddly, with no rain I was still able to channel my Italian grandfather for his tried and true method of procuring water through draught sapping insanity!

The hose.

We ran out sometime in July and I had to resort to filling my barrels with, gasp, city water! Oh the humanity!

We are now looking into investing in two 250 gallon "tubs". They aren't as pretty as the blue demons, but they will do. Plus, they have a metal cage around them so, maybe, I'll try vining some grapes to them.

The Urbandweller is in a annoyed mood. I have a splitting headache and my, now very mixed up, dog just pooped outside, stepped in it and tracked it all over the house.

So, being the natural people we are, no caustic cleansers for us, no way, uh huh, nope, we use water and vinegar. Yes, it works actually really great , but you have to get accustomed to the vinegar smell...mix that with the flora of dog poop and you have a rather nasty...bouquet. Fortunately, it passes quickly and everything is very clean.

Cheap and clean, that's me! LOL

Okay, enough of my moaning and groaning.

Here's the "bounty" from this summer.

A little before and after action...

From this...


squash blossom

You get this...

little summer squash
A blurry sideways pic of mini squash, but you get the idea. They actually grew bigger but they were in my stomach before I could get a photo. We had a pretty good yield. Some where between 10 and 15. Not bad for not having the slightest clue as to how to grow them.

Next...

First you have this...

Pumpkin blossom

Then this...

fresh pumpkin

And finally...

Pie finished

That's right, I made pumpkin pies from pumpkins I grew!!! It's been a very weird abitition of mine for a very long time. By the way, this is a Honey-Pumpkin Pie recipe. No sugar for sweet, just honey.

My pumpkin endeavor wasn't the tri-fector, but that's for next year.

The Tri-Fector is: Jack-O-Lantern, roasted seeds and a pie.

I hadn't a clue as to how to grow this guys. I yielded 3. Yes, just 3, but it was enough for two pies, a chiffon thingy and a little left over.

Interesting side note: notice that the yellow summer squash blossoms were yellowish and so is the squash and the pumpkin blossoms were orange-ish and well so were the pumpkins. Yeah, I know it's like, "thank you, Mr. Obvious", but nature is just so amazingly simple yet remarkably complex.

Moving on.

Now then. First you have this...

green lemons

Then you have this...

Photobucket

A well lit bowl of lemons!

Our little dwarf Meyer's Lemon tree yielded about 18 lemons! Zested and squozed, we now have plenty of lemon innards to last us a good while. Sadly, I don't have photos of the blossoms. They are white will little yellow guts. And have the most unbelievable fragrance. I will make sure I post those next year.

So now, you ask, "Well, Urbandweller, that's all just fine and good, but what of that root celler? What might be the status of that?"

And I answer, "shut up...". Sigh. It beat me. That crazy hole in the ground beat me. I was digging that bad boy by hand. I got a total of 3 feet down. Didn't hit limestone, but it was taking so freaking long, that it was postponing everything else. (and killing my back) So now it's a filled hole. The hole is still there, just...filled. Get off my back.

I will continue with my plan of moving my storage shed and at some point in the future...never...I will take up the project once again.

If society collapses, then I will ask the neighbors to help and we will have a grand o'celler diggin' party! Boy, won't that be the time, huh?

Right.

I leave you with the following photo below. As a kid I would find Cicadas crystalists everywhere but never the Cicadas. I would hear them endlessly, but alas, never see them. So when this moment presented itself, I couldn't pass it up and had to save it for posterity.

Remember Green is good!!!
Cheers. :)

bug

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i love this post, Will. and what an amazing cicada photo! also loved your blossom-to-fruit photos. i remember with fondness how i would observe these growth cycles before i moved from sierra madre to the city. it's comforting to know that mother nature keeps to her own time clock, no matter what. it's magical and something you can always count on.