Thrasher Houseblog

This summer we started getting a weekly box of produce from Timberwood Organics and it has been an adjustment, but a nice one.  I’ve learned how to cook several new things, and I have come to love Swiss chard which I hardly ever cooked before.

I now plan menus very quickly on Thursday when the box arrives, aiming to use up all those vegetables in one week!  I only have to stock up on staples like rice, oats, flour, tortillas, etc. and then pick up a few extras like cheese, fruit and milk.
For example, here is the menu for this week of vegetables - for the box containing basil, leeks, red potatoes, russet potatoes, squash,
cucumbers, eggplant, braising greens, and cayenne (hot) peppers, plus some leftover cabbage and green bell pepper from last week.
THURSDAY
beets, roasted
red potatoes, mashed
greens (sauteed with olive oil, garlic, chicken stock)

FRIDAY - Cabbage & Potato Soup, bread (freeze leftovers)
Uses: cabbage, russet potatoes, leeks, chicken stock

SATURDAY - RATATOUILLE, more bread
Uses: patty pan squash (instead of zucchini), eggplant, green bell pepper, purple basil

SUNDAY - leftovers (both soup and ratatouille make good leftovers), maybe pasta

MONDAY - Quesadillas, salsa verde, cucumbers

TUESDAY - Pizza with purple basil (or a pesto base), more cucumbers?

WEDNESDAY - pasta?  Fried rice? (To use up leftover vegetables or else garden herbs)

On another note, I’m so excited that the garden is doing well this year!  We have no complaints with the basil, and the tomato plants are loaded with green tomatoes.  Not to mention the FREE FOOD we will be getting from a compost-pile volunteer butternut squash plant.  I’ll post pictures soon.

We recently ordered two grab-bag specials from Breck’s for $36 (about the only way I’d ever order from that company.. .  We received them on our doorstep sometime this past week while we were on vacation.  We got:

• “Blue Star” Dahlia
• “Mystery Day” Dahlia
• “Gerry Hoek” Dahlia
• “Iron Cross” Shamrock (Oxalis)
• Some hardy gladioli (meaning we don’t have to dig them up)
• Some non-hardy gladioli
• “Satisfaction” Oriental Trumpet Lily
• “Grand Paradiso” Asiatic Lily
• Perennial Baby’s Breath

Now, the perennial problem: finding places to plant them all.
Also, our tomatoes are flowering and we have a tiny jalapeno on one of our jalapeno plants.  Peppermint is doing well (no surprise there).  bachelor’s buttons, scarlet runner beans and johnny jump-ups are flowering.

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Planted the rest of what I had, plus a few more things I bought along the way, including okra, lantana, jalapenos, chamomile, cilantro, and basil.  Things seem to be growing OK, though we’ve had a few cold nights to stunt the growth of the tomatoes.  I’ll have to start posting pictures soon.

Last Saturday I went on a planting spree.  Lots of fun!  The things I planted were:

• Planted hollyhocks
• Planted bachelors buttons
• Planted feverfew
• Planted sunflowers
• Planted sage
• Planted scarlet runner beans (sowed seeds)
• Made a trellis for the beans
• Planted 9 Heritage heirloom tomatoes
• Planted 5 Beefmaster hybrid tomatoes

What do I have left to do?  I have shasta daisies, coneflowers, thyme, and peppermint left to plant.  The rest of the plants are really failures.  Next year I’m definitely not using milkjugs for winter sowing.

Now that we have disassociated this blog from houseblogs.net, I feel freer to post things that are not about house-building. (Although, don’t forget, the wise woman builds her house.)

Yesterday’s project: Meal planning & list making - 28 meals planned! Since we live 25 minutes’ drive from Aldi, I like to stock up, which is best accomplished if I know what meals I am stocking up FOR. (Please do not miss the ending of a sentence with a preposition.)

Today’s project: shopping! We got food for a month, for 5, from Aldi.

Items: 106
Cost: $214
Pantry: Full of rolled oats, honey, and canned broth (and much more)
Freezer: Full of cheese & butter (and much more)
Refrigerator: Full of cheese & milk (and much more)
Kids: Cheese-happy
Mother: Relieved (and all ready to shop some more)
Weather: We are eating pizza outside tonight!

Do you think we like cheese? I’m glad we aren’t vegans. But I digress.

We still have to shop at the farm and Wal-Mart for what Aldi doesn’t carry, and then pick up fresh foods again after a week or 2, so you can’t conclude that I am a magician with a $200 monthly food budget. But the monthly planning does save gas and time in the store overall.  (Credit is due to other ladies, SG & CK, for giving me the idea!)

Planted a sour cherry bush yesterday evening. I was wondering where to put the two fig trees I bought - I eventually decided to train them as fans and grow them right in front of my front porch.  Hopefully that’ll give them some extra warmth and keep them away from deer.  I love planting things.

This past January I winter sowed several plants in an effort to produce a lot of plants for cheap without terribly much effort. I check back on them all the time, but I want to write down my results so far, since they haven’t all performed the same.

Big, Happy, Strong - A few of the plants have performed as if they couldn’t care less that I stink at raising plants from seed:

• Sunflower - I got these from my dad’s last-year’s sunflowers
• Sage
• Cornflower (Bachelor’s Button)

Medium, Prolific - More of them have germinated and grown more slowly, but I’m not worried about them:

• Feverfew
• English Thyme
• Peppermint
• Hollyhock
• Shasta Daisy
• Sweet Basil
• Coneflower
• Butterfly Flower
• Various Sweet Peppers (I usually brought them in on cold nights)
• Various Tomatoes (same here)

Frost Damaged - A few of them were severely damaged by the cold (occasional 28 degree nights after germination). Next year I’ll have to remember to bring these in:

• Pumpkin
• Butternut Squash
• Chamomile
• Cosmos
• Zinnia

Barely Anything - Two plants really haven’t done much:

• Poppy - though, I must say it has started up now that it’s warmer
• Marigold

Can’t wait to plant these.

Prelude: My goal this year is to make large bounds towards establishing my landscape/garden, with the proviso that I want to do it relatively on the cheap. More in a different post.

Posts - Got two more fence posts in the ground. We’ve got four corners now.

Daffodils, Daylilies? - I went with my son Chip to our meadow, which has large clumps of naturalized daffodils, dug a few up, and planted them in the front garden. I like having plants I can just dig up and move around. I’ve never had the luxury of owning an established garden. While I was separating clumps, I noticed plants that looked like daylilies, so I planted those, too.

Paw Paws - I’d made an order for two Paw Paw whips on eBay, and they arrived Saturday. They’re bareroot, so I put them in water to soak and went to dig the planting holes. I’ve decided to make my yard into an orchard, since I don’t have much use for grass. The children had fun helping me by picking up dirt out of the hole I was digging and putting it into the wheelbarrow. It was like a sandbox to them, I think. Got the paw paws planted. I hope they survive, but if they don’t, I didn’t invest a whole lot of money in it (maybe $14 total).

More Fruit - Placed an order with Hidden Springs Nursery for a sour cherry bush and two fig trees (different varieties). I’d like to order some other stuff too, but I’ve got to watch the non-existent budget.

It’s been a while, but we’re starting up the house blog again.. this time as a homemaking/gardening blog.

I started building a new fence today.  This is my first real carpentry project, and I’m enjoying it so far.  I managed to hack together a sawhorse and get the first two corner posts put in the ground.  We had a temporary driveway during home construction which has created a layer of tough digging for many of the post holes.  However, I look forward to having this fence.  It’ll complete the “cottage” style of our house.

We did what we always hoped we wouldn’t… moved out of the apartment before the house was finished! Because of the inspections in this wonderfully strict county, they had to lower some of the steps by 1/4″ each before we were allowed to live here. So we moved our stuff in on Saturday the 13th, stayed with the neighbors for 3 nights, and moved in ourselves on Tuesday the 16th - and that was a wonderful relief. We’ve already been through some “experiences” here - an ice storm (no power outage!) and a stomach bug for most of us, along with unpacking, more workmen coming through, and regular life. (All that to explain why it’s been more than 2 weeks since we moved in, and I didn’t post an update.)

We really like a lot of things about this house. It feels very spacious - especially after the apartment, but I think it would still feel that way if we moved straight from our former house. (There is no more computer or laundry being done in our bedroom!) We have “instant hot water” because of our recirculating pump, which helps us use less water besides being convenient. Once we have warmer weather and landscaping (starting with grass), I expect to be spending lots of time on the porch and in the garden, which will be the most amazing part of the house. I can’t wait to have friends over to eat outside in the warm weather. Once we get screens, we can air out the “new house smell.” There are ceiling fans in almost every room, which Jimmy will love. I love all the windows… the house can be very lit up and welcoming at night, and still fairly bright during the day even with the porch shade. It’s really nice to be able to look at the blue sky while I fix my hair on a Saturday. (But we still need some privacy even out here; we had to rig up temporary curtains in the bathroom out of towels!) There are bookshelves galore, so they hold ALL our books (we had 11 boxes, at this early stage of life, even though I supposedly like to declutter).

One thing we might do differently next time: put the heating units somewhere other than right outside our bedroom windows. It’s so quiet out here that we really noticed that at first. However, we’re getting used to it.

I haven’t yet found the camera battery charger since we moved in, so I have NO pictures, which is probably OK because of all the stuff that hasn’t been put away yet! The away room, which was supposed to solve all our organization problems (with 2 built-in desks, cabinets, file drawers, and a window seat), is quite a mess! Our files are in boxes till I buy something to hang them with in the built-in file drawers. Jimmy has to buy guitar hangers so he can get them off the floor. And we are planning to drill holes in the back of the desks so all the wires can be out of the way. But we’ve really made a lot of progress since we moved in.

We still have to get some glass shelves and doors installed in the cabinets above the kitchen sink. We need to buy bathroom accessories and also mirrors for our bathroom. Our stairs need some more trim work, since they had to rip them up and redo them for the inspector. We still don’t have the tile backsplash and fireplace surround yet… the tile is sitting there, but Jimmy wants us to do it ourselves to save money. So I’m sure I’ll finally be able to do at least one little project myself, and become a more worthy houseblogger like the rest of you.