Garden Update: Tomato!

This morning watering the plants I noticed that the Patio Orange has set our first tomato. The plant has had some leaf roll — caused, I think, by the herbicide that was spread on the complex lawn. Anyway it’s exciting to see a tomato.

I took these pictures Sunday morning:
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Since then the Thai Tomato has grown up past the top of the cage, the new peas are all up, there are several more pea pods, and everything else is growing well. The chard is improving quickly with no signs of the leaf borers returning. The watermelon hasn’t taken off yet. I had planted a couple new patio orange tomatoes next to it, but they haven’t come up yet. I don’t know if they’ll have time to grow and produce or not.

Our little patch of a garden is coming along. We still have the bulk of summer and the fall so it’ll be fun to see how it develops.

Return to Yoga

A few months ago I started a yoga practice but despite feeling better I decided it was taking too much time. Lately, however, my muscles have been stiffer and I haven’t been sleeping well. Clearly I need to do something or my health is going to continue to suffer. With that in mind I’ve ordered a couple of books.
Kripalu Yoga : A Guide to Practice On and Off the Mat The Kripalu Cookbook: Gourmet Vegetarian Recipes
In addition to the two books that I ordered I’ve requested a few others about yoga from Kripalu teacher Stephen Cope.
The Wisdom of Yoga : A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living Yoga and the Quest for the True Self Will Yoga & Meditation Really Change My Life: Personal Stories from 25 of North America's Leading Teachers

This time around I plan to stick to the practice. I also want to look at my diet and consider changing what I eat. I already know I want to cut back on the sugar and junk food. Yesterday we had a salad with greens from our garden and Kate’s excellent sourdough bread. I enjoyed the meal. I’ve also added the Kripalu DVD to our Netflix queue. I don’t know if I’ll purchase the DVD but I at least wanted to look at it so I can see their approach in motion.

I don’t expect these changes to be easy but I’m becoming more inflexible, gaining weight and I’m not sleeping. I can’t afford not to work on it any longer.

More planting

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Today I removed the roots from the old Swiss Chard and planted a couple patio orange tomatoes in that container next to our watermelon. In the other container I had taken out the arugula and spinach, leaving the Swiss Chard and Peas. I’ve added a cage and planted a bunch of peas. It’s obvious that the couple plants we have are never going to produce enough peas for even a bite. Hopefully the newly planted seeds will do well. I also tried planting a new Teddy Bear Sunflower today in the pot next to the Thai Pink Egg tomatoes.

Garden update

Last night I took a few quick pictures of the porch garden. The plants are mostly doing well.

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The Thai Pink Egg tomatoes have been a mixed bag this year. One of the plants is doing well, the other not as much. The nasturtiums behind the Thai Tomatoes are blooming and look great.
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Out front the Patio Orange tomato has been a nice surprise so far. The small compact plant seems well suited to the porch garden. Hopefully we will get some tomatoes. The Lemon Cucumber is growing next to it on one side and our watermelon on the other. As the weather warms I expect they’ll do more.
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Our most productive container this year has been the lettuce container. Aside from the lettuce we have a bunch of carrots and radishes growing in the container. Our rose bush is behind the container.
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I didn’t bother taking a picture of the other container. The leaf borers pretty much destroyed the swiss chard and spinach. I got rid of the infested leaves — I don’t know if the chard will recover or not. The peas are doing good but we’d need to have a lot more planted to get a useful harvest. I’ll probably replant with something else. Maybe more tomatoes since they produce well and seem to be resistant to pests.

Granny Goose’s Mother’s Day Quilt

It all started last year and it was all Aunt Diane’s fault. She had the idea that we should make a memory quilt for Grandma for her next birthday. We all loved the idea, however being a family of procrastinators there was no way it would be ready for Grandma’s 87th birthday. Thanks to lots of nagging from Aunt Andie (the only non-procrastinator in the family) we were able to get our blocks done in time for the quilt to be finished for Mother’s Day. Of course all of us finishing our individual blocks was only step one, my sister Lauren then had to put all the blocks together, making all the little blocks that tie the quilt together, make the backing, binding, and then all the quilting too! She did an amazing job!

Here is the finished quilt.
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Our block is in the top left hand corner. It has photos of Ryan and me when we were kids, pics of our 4 legged kids, and the center is a photo of us at Ryan’s sister Kelly’s wedding last year.
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The center block of the quilt is a photo of a very young Georgia holding baby Elyse. The photo is surrounded by the butterflies Grandma loves so much.
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Here is Granny Goose with her memory quilt.
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We love you Grandma!
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Tortillas!

Last week I made tortillas for our chicken tacos. This is the second time I’ve made homemade flour torillas and my second recipe trial. This recipe actually had some cornmeal along with the flour– for flavor and texture. It definitely tasted better than the first recipe I tried but not as soft and flexible– made good non-fried tortilla chips though! I’m going to try it again and not bake the tortillas as long but if that doesn’t work I’ll try another recipe. I really want to find a good, reliable, tortilla recipe.

Here is a tortilla cooking. This was the only one I took a photo of and, amazingly, the most circular. I seem to have an issue with rolling them out round.
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Here is the stack of finished tortillas. We ate the whole stack! Of course they were really thin, crepe like thin, and crispy!
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Shakespeare says, “Yummy!”
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