14 April 2012

First blossoms!

Lookie Ma!!!!  I got BLOSSOMS!  Now, none are mint (LOL) but this is even more exciting (I just found them maybe half an hour ago).  All three are the plants I bought at Lowe's as my "cheaters" but they survived the hard frost two nights ago and more than two weeks in my possession, so I am chalking this up in the WIN column, especially given previous history.
Roma sauce tomato blossoms

Big Bonnie (TM?) slicing tomato blossom

Ozark Beauty (everbearing?) STRAWBERRY blossom!!
Now I have a real plant to match my little cross-stitch strawberry-and-blossom motif I did over the winter!  I use the pic of the motif on a couple of sites as my avatar because I love strawberries and think the pic and motif both turned out so pretty.  Even better - I think a couple of the stems-with-roots strawberries are showing some life from the ten-pack I got from Tractor Supply.

06 April 2012

Canned spiced apple rings

I was both brave and feeling pretty good today, so I took the plunge to try out my new waterbath canner, transforming a little under 3 pounds of Jonathan apples into spiced apple rings ... well, they were supposed to stay as rings.  I guess they were a smidge too ripe since the rings broke during cooking.  Technically, I have canned spiced apple ring bits.  LOL
canned spiced apple rings
I left out the red food coloring for them, as I just don't see the point.  I licked my finger after filling the half-pints, so it will definitely taste good.  All seven half-pints "popped" within half an hour of pulling them out, so I did it right!

02 April 2012

Goodbye Green Blankie

It's finally dead, Mom ... that green blankie Katie gave me when I was four or five.  It had gotten so thin I only used it during the summer, and this time it did not survive a winter of feline attention.  Thirty-four or thirty-five years of love in fiber form - I think you tried to retire it back when I was a teenager.  I even smuggled it to a field problem or two, and it may have hitchhiked to Kuwait and Iraq hidden in my issued gortex sleep system.

I suppose one of my very last pieces of fiber from childhood will die next ... the Linus pillowcase from Mom.  I wonder if my brother still has his.  I used it to make my oversized pillowcases last year, but the fabric is getting very thin also.  Interestingly, hubby says he had that exact one as a kid as well.

I feel a little like Linus right now ... I just threw away an old blanket I've been carrying around from state to state for over thirty years.