Hey! Butter butter butter, Swing! Butter!!!

6 flowers, a grape vine, several beets and a few turnips later, here I am.

Ugh. It's been a week.

First, I thinned out my beets and turnips, then replanted a few in other areas. Then, we had a massive storm. Tornado warnings, 40+ mile an hour winds, hail and lots of rain. As it swept in, in the wee hours o'the morn (2am-ish), I thought to myself, "self, those little guys I planted, should do pretty well". I said with a self satisfied grin of complete stupidity.

"Why the stupid grin?", you ask." Suburban Guy, you like are so adept at gardening, you have like green stuff growing on you".

Well, I do have green stuff growing on me, but it's not because if gardening...take that anyway you want. But I digress, ANYWAY...

So I sauntered out to the garden, all full of myself, "I am indeed the master of my domain!", I mused. "perhaps, I will grow prize winning orchids next then, if I feel like it, I will become a brain surgeon!" So, as I smuggely cast an eye upon my newly transplanted seedlings, much to my shock and surprise, they were all dead! Croaked, pushing up the daisies, taking the old dirt nap!!!

WTF???

Arrrrgggghhhhh!!!! I screamed at the sky, "Mother Nature, you are indeed a cruel mistress!!!!"

Sigh, the little guys, just couldn't take the storm. And oddly, their untimely death affected me more than I realized. It put me in a real funk for the rest of the day. Yeah, I eat them when they are all grown up and yummy, but they are my little pals when they are growing.

Wow, that's some really sick psychological stuff there. I need to see a shrink.

It reminded me of The Simpson's episode where Homer laments over the death of his pet lobster, Pinchie, but then eats it as self punishment. Enjoying eat butter soaked bite, then crying over the lost of his pet, between bites.

So, the little guys are gone. Oh well, I just replaced them will clones...new seeds. Meh. >Shrug<.

Okay, what does any of this have to do with the title of this blog, nothing. Just a really long side note that I needed to expunge from my soul.

Okay, butter. I eat it, you eat it, but do you make it? No, this won't be a little house on the prairie episode where...MA is losing her mind stirring away at the butter churn.

Laura: Ma, whatcha doin'?

Ma: losing my mind one churn at a time.

Laura: oh...um, can I go out and play?

Ma: kill me now.

That must have ended up on the editing rooms floor.

So, if you don't want to lose your mind and want to have fresh homemade butter; all you need is a ball jar w/ lid, a marble and some heavy cream.

Mr. Hand shows off the implements of death.

Fill it about 3/4 full with the heavy cream

Either put the marble in before or after, it doesn't make a difference. Just make sure everything is really clean.

Screw the lid on really tight. Put a movie in the DVD player, sit down and start shaking.

You don't need to go crazy, just a gentle figure 8 shake.

Then quite suddenly, about 20 minutes later (depends on the size of the jar and how much cream you have) you have butter.

(I know, it's a weird shape. Kind of like Elephant Man butter.)

The butter will separate from the butter milk. Pure off the butter milk into another container, then gently rinse the butter with cold water to get any remaining butter milk. It's really soft at this point and should be refrigerated right away.

The next day it will be ready for use.

The butter milk, which so many "authorities" tell us is EVIL, is actually quite yummy and if you use raw milk, like I do, it's actually really good for you. Yummmm. I mix mine with a little maple syrup. Very high in Beta-carotene. Not sure about the pasteurized stuff. So if you don't want to drink it, you can use it in making butter milk pancakes. :)

The Great Mozzarella Experiment went...okay. I'm going to try it again, hopefully with better success. I will give the do's, don't's and what to look out for, when I try again.

In the mean time, here are some quick photos.

Update on the Beets that are still alive...

Pulled the first onion...

And finally, our blackberry bushes are in bloom...

As of this writing, there are a few little "teeny" berries appearing. I just have to keep away the %$#%#%$ squirrels.

And hopefully by next writing, I will be blogging about my new water totes. They will be replacing the blue demons. http://suburbandweller.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-are-those-blue-things-part-2.html

What are totes? Stay tuned to this incredibly exciting blog and fined out. Hey! wake up!

Until next time,

Green is Good!

Couldn't hit the broad side of a...um...shed....

Once upon a time, many moons, many many moons, many many many...(enough with the moons) ago, any film I was working on that I was shooting, I would sing this song at the start of the shoot....

Don't ask me why. Maybe it was the only TV show theme I knew all the words to.

Little did I know at the time, how life would imitate art..very bad art.

As one of my many tasks I set out for myself when I started this insane endeavor, I had to move my shed.

Stunning, isn't?

My favorite part is the rust! :) So earthy!

So anyway, last Saturday, I took the #@*$ing thing apart.

Like a shed of cards, huh?

So the much more Significant Other and I, trotted over to Home Desperate to pick out spray paint.

SO: We should get all the paint now.

Me: I don't know. I think we should wait. (was getting a bad and expensive feeling)

SO: Really? Why not? This way you don't have to come all the way back here.

Me: Let's hold off.

At times, I get ideas that form in my head, but can't exactly verbalize them at the moment. I call these my caveman thoughts.

If there was a thought bubble over my head, it would read something like this, "Me think this bad. Me not know why. Me not buy. Me explain later. Me need bronto-burger."

So, we do buy a can of red, a can of white and a can of primer, to test the colors.

This is what one can of black primer covered...

The thought, "not a whole h*ll of a lot" comes to mind. Plus I was battling the wind and probably lost a good 3rd of a can to gusts.

So now with my new information, my inner caveman can now have a conversation with the inner bean counter part of me.

Caveman me: this not cover cr*p

Bean counter me: right you are, my hairy friend. In fact, it doesn't cover much at all.

Caveman me: how many bones it cost?

Bean counter taps away on giant adding machine. Rips off receipt and hands it over to Caveman me.

Caveman me: F THIS!

Bean counter me: Not very economical is it?

Caveman me: me hungry.

So after figuring out the square footage, the amount of cans I will need, I found the result would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay expensive. Disheartened, I broke the news to my SO. She pondered for a moment and then said, "is there another way or different kind of paint?"

I had one of those coming to the mount moments. "duh, why did I not think of that myself, duh?" Daftly, I responded with, "I will check".

Lo and behold! Behr paint makes a paint and primer. So a can of "Bleached Linen" and a can of "Gerianium" later, I'm all ready to go.

(I want to give my SO a special thanks for cutting through pea soup of my brain. That was the "fog" part of my brain).

Cost of each 1 gallon can of paint: $36.95 plus tax. A gigantic cost savings. Let me say that again, A GIGANTIC COST SAVINGS. :)

So Sunday, I start paining...

And painting...

And painting...

Now that I had this stuff started, I had to move the old shed base. After unscrewing the wood floor, much to my delight, I found that the center section contained concrete. Weee...

Two weeks before, I had prepped the new area. More or less leveled it. (I knew once I moved the base into the spot, I would have to level it again.).

So I grabbed an end and pulled...and pulled...and pulled...

There it is on the right. The brown bald spot is were it used to be.

So it's now Saturday, my SO is working, however, she will have tomorrow (Sunday) off. I thought, well, when I took those walls down last week, it was pretty windy. Thus making the deconstruction a colossal exercise in patience. Trying to keep the pieces straight and not bending in the wind, proved to be quite the challenge. I'm thinking, "I will need SO's help if I'm going to get this done. I'll have to wait till Sunday".

But this being Saturday and Sunday being a WHOLE day away, I get the"itch to finish". SO is working and I need her help. And besides, I have a lot of other work to do. However, I'm just looking at the now painted walls and roof scattered around my yard and they beckon to me. build me...Build Me..BUILD ME. Ugh, I couldn't take it!! There was virtually no wind to speak of, so I thought, "what the h*ll".

Screw, screw, bolt, bolt, lose balance, smash toe, cut leg, swear a lot; I finally got it all together.

Come Sunday, with the help of my SO, we put in the last few bolts. I now give you...

Not to shabby, if I say so myself.

With some elbow grease, a bit of swearing, 70 bucks of paint, and a burning desire to get that #$%*ing done, it's finished.

I toasted it with a nice Gin & Tonic. :)

With that behind me, I will next be putting up new clotheslines right next to my little red shed. A little "T-Bar" number, which I will also blog about, much to my total of 2 1/2 readers delight.

But before then, as I mentioned in the previous post, I will be making mozzarella cheese. That should prove to be very amusing.

And as a little new feature, I will be posting bi-weekly picts of one of my beets plants growing! Wow...what a thrill...I don't know if I can contain my anticipation...please, more mind numbing photos of plants growing...

HEY! At least it isn't real time video! "Hey kids, tired of watching paint dry? Watch my plants instead! Oooo, watch them sway in the wind!"

When last we left our little friend the Beet, he was about 1/2 tall, now hold onto your hats!!

It's a whole 1 1/2 inches!!!! Oh the humanity!!

Fine. Whatever.

I will leave you with this last pick.

Remember, Green is Good!!!