Long weekends,

are pretty much the best thing ever. Late summer ones are even better. You get to do things like process all the beans! This year I planted green beans (my favourite) and red runner beans. After a tough start due to cold weather and very hungry slugs, I am finally seeing some results.

Left to right we have Frenched blanched green beans, pre-blanched red runner beans, and larger (older) green beans just chopped & blanched. It was all I could do to not leap in and steam up the entire lot of Frenched beans and eat them with butter and salt. Soooo good that way.

I decided I was going to blanch the red runner beans and freeze them for use in soups/stews/etc later in the winter. See how pretty they are? All bright red and purple. Look at them after blanching:

They went all dusky purple. Nature is so weird!

Today I grated and froze between 8 and 10 pounds of zucchini for winter use. Also probably in soups & stews but possibly in muffins & breads. This week we’ll be buying canning jars and starting to process all the beets. Oh my, do we have beets. LOL

Finally, the most fun this weekend was had making tubey scarves on a friend’s circular sock knitting machine. This this is soooo cool! I took a couple videos:

and

Oh wait. And finally finally, I finished a pair of socks:

These poor things have been on the go forever. I’ve knit and ripped them 3 times before finally being reasonably content with this pattern. They will be nice and warm when winter comes again. Which seems so far away when I’m still having to put on sunscreen before I go out and work in the yard.

 

I know, I know. There’s no excuse for it really.

I’m going to blame twitter for killing my blogging mojo recently. But, if for no other reason, I need this blog to keep track of certain events in life just so that I can win arguments with my husband. I’m not even kidding. Recent examples? This is him:

No, we haven’t had Abbie that long!

No, we put the garden in x number of years ago.

No, we bought the house in 19xx

Wrong, wrong, wrong. All proven via the magic of the blog. So, without further ado. Here’s some eye candy until something important comes up that I think I’ll need to note down so I can be right in about 5 or 6 years. LOL

Summer is finally here!

Stella – still obsessing about having a ball thrown for her.

Knitting – still occurring on a fairly regular basis

Spinning – also still occurring

Oh, and as this is an Olympic year, there will be a Ravelym… no wait, that’s Ravellinics now. There was a bit of a kerfuffle, dontcha know. Anyway, I’m going to be captaining Team Canada to fibre gold again this year. Makes me so proud!

Spring, finally sprunging

After a fair number of weeks of rain we finally had a nice sunny weekend. Which of course meant a bit o’ gardening time.

And what better way to celebrate spring than to take a 16 year old futon frame and make it into an arbor for one of our vegetable gardens. Of course I totally forgot to take a before shot. Typical.

During:

A little more work and boom, it looked like this:

In total, we spent about $40. Only because we had to buy hinges & a latch for the gate.

Now, the beans are all planted, the garden is gated off from the wee heathen dogs, and we’re due to have a week of sunshine and warmth. Can’t.wait!

Gonna go put some aloe vera on my sun burn now.

Things, they been happening

I’ve been remiss in posting lately and now I have a backlog of stuff I want to show you and I don’t know which bits should just get cut and which shouldn’t and….BLARGH!

Anyway, let’s just start here, shall we?

I got a new tattoo. Before:

During:

After:

For you non-knitters out there, it’s the Kitchener stitch.

Via Wikipedia:

‘In addition to his military work, Lord Kitchener contributed to efforts on the home front. The knitted sock patterns of the day used a seam up the toe that could rub uncomfortably against the toes. Kitchener encouraged British and American women to knit for the war effort, and contributed a sock pattern featuring a new technique for a seamless join of the toe, still known as the Kitchener stitch.‘  

Even my mom likes it. Thanks mom! Dad? Totally not loving it.

Spring is officially rolling over to very early summer here as well. Yesterday was the first true bit of heavy labour in the veggie garden. Cleaned out all the detritus left from last year:

Turned all the soil, fertilized, and planted the start of this year’s crops.

Three kinds of beets, two kinds of carrots, scallions, turnips, radishes, and 145 storing onions. Nom, nom, nom. Then I sang the ‘Imma gonna eat you’ song to the onions. It was magical.

Today I am nursing a fantastic sunburn and some very sore muscles. LOL.

‘Cause gardens? Way cooler than cars. Just sayin’

I saw this the other day but I was on the express bus and boom, we were past it before I could even think about pulling the ding ding cord to make the bus stop so I could take pictures.

Today, I went back and got off the bus special, just so I could show you this amazing thing at the corner of Broadway and Clark.

See, it’s a garden…that used to be a car. You simply can’t get any cooler than that. I’m so bummed we sent our 1980 Ford F150 to the wrecker when I could have done something like this with it.

Vancouver has some of the coolest things in it.

New commute, new sights

I got this new job, yeah? And the commute is completely different. Now, instead of seeing things like this on the way to work:

When frog stuffies go bad!

I see things like this:

Political squirrel side walk squirrel!

Apparently, you can find out more here. And,

Lost little Hello Kitty glove. Cold fingers are occurring! Right now! Oh, the humanity!

Beautiful little snow drops! Spring is coming. No, really. It is. Further proof of spring? Fine, I’ll show you!

That little whitish nub to the right? That is an onion seedling just struggling to live and thrive and survive!

IMMA GONNA EAT YOU! Snicker.

Gardening can be creepy. Which is why I got involved, to be perfectly honest.

Monday? Really? Well okay then…

Let’s see, what’s been going on. Hmmmm. Oh, I know. Spring must be coming ’cause we’ve started planting out seeds for the veggie garden.

All those little cells of dirt will one day be onions. Mmmmmm, onions. Last year we planted 96 onion seedlings and thought that was too many. Yeah, right! I used the last of them this week. Sooo, this year we’re doubling the onion crop.

And, in the interests of winter being not quite over, I finished a big warm wool afghan for the couch. Squooshy!

Oh, and I started my new job today. My brain feels about 5 pounds heavier than it did this morning when I left the house. LOL And now, I’m going to go do the dishes and knit a bit. Happy Monday!

Gardening notes for 2012

I’m going to put this in writing, for posterity as it were. Next year, when I’m getting ready to plant my vegetable garden, if someone could just point me back here, I’d really appreciate it. I seem to have a very short memory.

For a household of two human beings:

• 18 bean vines – yield about 10 pounds of beans a week
• 4 zucchini plants – about 8 zukes a week
• 4 patty pan plants – about 18 – 20 patty pans a week
• 2 cucumber plants – about 4 cukes a week
• 4 tire planters of herbs – enough for most of Tuscany to season their dishes for at least a month
• I’m not even going to discuss how much food one gets from 8 rows each of beets, carrots, rutabagas, and kohlrabi.

We also won’t discuss the issues that are going to be very apparent in a couple weeks when:

• 8 HUGE tomato plants all come ripe at once

About three weeks after that when:

• 96 white onions are ready for harvest
• 96 red onions are ready for harvest
• 48 heads of garlic are ready for harvest

Actually, the garlic could be fun. I think I’m going to try that whole braiding & hanging thing. Food + arts & crafts = fun!

Now, I’m off to process the 10 or 12 pounds of beans that I picked this morning. Turn on the tunes & French/blanch/freeze those little lovelies.

 

 

So easily amused

It’s year three with this little unit and I have to say, the blush is not yet off the rose for me. I truly, madly, deeply love my bean Frencher.

‘Cause hey, when your bean plants are producing about 10 pounds of beans a week, any little toy that makes them fun is greatly appreciated.

I ‘Frenched’ (now that’s an awkward verbing if ever I saw one) about two pounds of green beans for dinner tonight. What? That’s totally a normal amount for two people. Right? At least they are good for us.

Another fun thing today? When I walked into the train station the lady who gives me the free daily papers gave me this:

Betcha can’t guess!

Tape flags to make all the things you love in the new Ikea catalogue. Apparently it’s out. I am verklempt with excitement. I know, I know. They have some vaguely not nice business practices. Like being a registered charity and never paying much tax even though they make a butt load of money.

It blows, I agree, but all of our kitchen and most of our living room is outfitted from them. I’m prolly going to hell. I bet it will be in a Billy book case!

Summer in the city

I won’t say hot time, summer in the city, since yesterday was the first actual hot day we’ve had t his summer. It’s been super mild and everything in the garden is so far behind. I was finally able to pick some tomatoes yesterday. They were tasty but I don’t think our yield is going to be that great this year. You can already smell fall in the air when the sun goes down and I’m back to wearing a hoodie when walking to the bus in the morning. Winter is coming! Thank you Eddard Stark.

So far this summer has been all about:

Gardening

More gardening

Fun with the spoils of the garden

Decorated bus stops by interbenchion.blogspot.com

Stella discovered the joys of the frisbee

New glasses were acquired

Silly faces were necessary to ease the pain of having to get progressives.

Sock Summit was attended. Learned so much and spent *so* much!

I miss you Sock Summit!

Oh Powell's Books. I could live in you forever!

Mmmmm, food trucks!

Except for this one. That is the worst name ever for a food truck. Blargh!

While sniffing for free wifi this was my favourite network name.

Irony? Going to Sock Summit and buying a metric tonne of sock yarn then casting on a shawl. Nicely done!

This is Dancette in Plucky Knitter Primo. Really nice yarn, REALLY nice. So, how’s your summer been so far?