Peach Pickin'

You know how hard it was to not name this post after the Presidents of the United States of America song? Anyhow, the mister was traveling last week so me and the little missy decided to head to Oklahoma to do some peach pickin' with grandpa.  Last year we missed the picking season and so for months now we have been plotting and planning when we would go this year. Grandpa happens to have the beat on all fresh fruit growers in the central part of Oklahoma so he took us to the best one in the area.

One morning after breakfast we loaded up the car and headed out to Hannah, Oklahoma to pick peaches  at an orchard there.  Grandpa showed Adelaide how to pick the peaches off the branches and put them in the basket.  She got pretty good at it, if fact throwing is something she's gotten quiet good at so some peaches got thrown and hence a little beat up on their way into the basket.  

Towards the end of our time picking she wanted to take a peach out of the basket to hold.  I obliged and before I knew it she had chomped right in and ate the whole thing bite by bite! The peaches were so fresh we both ended up being covered in peach juice--yum!

We brought home a HUGE basket of peaches that I have plans to blanch and freeze (for winter cobbler and pie), do some fresh salsas to serve over grilled fish, and even try out a chutney recipe to can.  Hopefully I will share a little of that part of the process too!  

It was a great way to spend a cool morning with our grandpa and have a new experience.  

Spring! Oh, Spring!

Oh, it is that time of year again!  I don't get crazy about much but spring, oh spring!  Planting season. Play in the dirt season.  It's like I walk into the local nursery and get high from a combination of all the oxygen emitting plants and the possibility of another season of growing our food and having fresh cut flowers.  Really, I should not be aloud to go to Home Depot this time of year unchaperoned.  

And you know what's so awesome this season?  I had several plants go to seed out of pure neglect last fall at the end of the drought. Because we were still in a drought all winter I didn't think much of it but guess what?  I have around 11 basil plants--in fact way too many to manage myself so when they get a bit bigger I will be sharing them with friends!  Plus I have close to 4 dozen zinnia seedlings and a few other little surprises growing.  

Another awesome thing about this season?  I have a little helper to sit next to me, eating Cheerios, dancing to the Beach Boys and pulling leaves off my newly planted begonias.  Ah, spring is good!

Basil Harvest

I hope next summer to have a raised veggie garden in the back yard, since you know, this spring I was a tad bit busy having a baby.  But when I did the planter make over I did put a little basil plant in amongst the zinnias, margarita flowers and sweet potato vines.  To be honest, the basil didn't look that hot when I planted it and the planters get full sun all day, so I didn't think the basil had a chance in the Texas heat.  But to my surprise, the basil is taking off like crazy.  In fact, so that it doesn't take over the whole planter, I had to do a little mini harvest.

No stranger to big batches of basil, I tried to figure out how to store it.  In the past I have made the basil into a pesto and frozen it in ice cube trays for adding to sauces and pasta dishes in the winter.  Yum.  However, since its only the first of July and I have already had to collect some, I have a feeling there will be enough for pesto later in the summer.  So I thought I would try my hand at drying my own basil for the winter.

Here's how I did it:

First I clipped the basil from the garden.  I had read that in order to totally not shock your plant you need to leave behind about 25% of the plant.  That way it can continue to grow through the rest of the season and you can do a second harvest in August (hello pesto cubes!).  So I clipped the plant back.

Next, I soaked the clippings in cool water.  Now lots of "pros" suggest not doing this step but its a safe, effective way to clean bugs and dirt off them.  And my desired outcome is dried basil, not bugs in the house.  I soaked them for maybe 15 minutes, fully submerged in a bowl of cool water.

Then I removed the clippings (and took the bowl of water out to water my newly shorn basil plant) and aid them out on a towel to air dry.

Once they were air dried I removed any discolored or yucky looking leaves (yes, yucky is a technical term).  Then I took the ends loosely (making sure that air could flow between clippings and leaves and tied the ends together with baker's twine and hung it upsie down somewhere cool and dry and away from the sun (at this point in the process it can loose flavor with too much exposure to UV rays...or so they say).

When they dry I will take them down, remove the leaves and store them in a glass or plastic air tight container, I will store the leaves whole because I have read that it preserves the flavor better if you wait to crush the leaf when you are ready to use it.

On the whole it was really easy.  I can't wait to use it in my veggie, chicken manicotti dish this winter.  If you had an extra stash of basil what dishes would you use it for?

Planter Make Overs

As I mentioned a week or so ago, during morning nap time I have been dashing out to the backyard to tidy things up and work on a few projects.  One of the projects I have been working on is figuring out about the planter situation for our patio.  

Our patio pots look like hell.  There is no way around it.  They are faded and sad looking and to add insult to patio injury we were gifted some second hand planters from the previous owners as well that were equally sad and faded.  Since like most folks we live on a budget round here, new pots and planters just aren't in the budget this year, we have other things higher up on that house to-do list.  But I love planting and gardening and growing things too much.  I also like things to look neat and tidy and not, well, like hell.

So I decided to do a quick makeover of our existing planters until next summer (when it will actually be in the budget).  My idea was to gather up all the different style and colored planters both ours and gifted and spray them all a single color to tie them together and cover the fade and ugly and age. 

Here is a "sort of before" picture.  Why sort of?  Well I got so excited about this project I didn't take a proper "before" picture of the whole ugly collection.  When I realized this I snapped a quick pic of the bases I hadn't sprayed yet so you could see the fade, but this is most definitely not the worst of it!

Although the many color to choose from in the spray paint isle were tempting I decided to go with a white semi-gloss to keep things neat and simple.  My goal was to spray them all nice and evenly with a plastic primer and then the white, do the best I could with my two cans of spray and then hope the plants grew over any imperfections.  Quick, cheap and hopefully a little less ugly.  

Here they are after I sprayed them but before I planted.  To be honest at this point in the project I sort of thought they looks not as bad but close.  Well, maybe that's an overstatement but I was still skeptical of my own project.  

Then I filled each of them with sun friendly plants, following the rule of tall growing, mid-growth or mounding and vines.  

I think the purple and yellow sweet potato vines will hide any imperfection and I already think its a nice improvement.  And for the cost of two cans of spray paint ($3.95 each), I think its not too bad!

What projects are you hoping to tackle on the cheap this summer?  

Beating the Heat

This week has been full of ups and downs.  It is still hotter than the blazes here so we are dodging the heat and laying low for the most part.  And I might be sneaking out to do a little gardening and yard work during the little miss's early morning nap...hey even if we only enjoy the outdoors from the comfort of the inside of our house, it should look nice when we peak out the window to check if its still summer right?

Here's a little sneak peak, although I am excited to do a little more detailed post on the progress and distance we still have to go with our back yard.  Hopefully next week, but no promises!

What are you doing to enjoy the outdoors this summer and/or beat the heat?