It’s interesting to write this post about powerful words for a couple different reasons. I’m fascinated by the messages in the pictures for one, but also by how much words can affect our daily life. As an LPC, my entire job is word based, even if the client in question doesn’t know what words to use, or a child who maybe speaks through play instead of vocally. And it’s kind of meta to be writing a blog post about words, even if I know only a few people will read it.
I follow a lot of librarians and indie bookstore owners too on different social media sites (shout out to Bettie’s Pages and Blackstone Books and Cultural Center) and it’s been very interesting to see what has come up during Banned Books Week. Words are important. We should be choosing our words and our time to speak more carefully. Whether you are speaking about something you’re passionate about, something you’re concerned about, or with joy, our words have impacted others more than we know. They also impact our own sense of self and worth.
With that in mind, I’d like to share some more pictures from Meadowbrook Art in the Elements. One of the artists created floral sculptures based on the work of Masaru Emoto who proposes that molecules of water can be affected by our words, thoughts, and feelings. He froze the water and photographed the crystalline formations that he claimed represented each type of thought or sound. While his theory has come under criticism and is reportedly flawed, it still can make us think about the ways we talk to ourselves and others. Whether or not you believe it, the floral sculptures were beautiful and I hope inspire you.
At the end of the exhibit there were two bouquets that you were invited to either write positive or negative messages or words on their vases. I didn’t see the end result of this, as we came on the last day. But here are the bouquets for your viewing.
I hope this has inspired you, even though it may be a silly thing. We are 60% water after all. Speak kindly to yourselves, friends!
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” ― John Muir
“Plants give us oxygen for the lungs and for the soul. — Linda Solegato
“The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.” ― George Orwell
“In the rain forest, no niche lies unused. No emptiness goes unfilled. No gasp of sunlight goes untrapped. In a million vest pockets, a million life-forms quietly tick. No other place on earth feels so lush. Sometimes we picture it as an echo of the original Garden of Eden—a realm ancient, serene, and fertile, where pythons slither and jaguars lope. But it is mainly a world of cunning and savage trees. Truant plants will not survive. The meek inherit nothing. Light is a thick yellow vitamin they would kill for, and they do. One of the first truths one learns in the rain forest is that there is nothing fainthearted or wimpy about plants.” ― Diane Ackerman, The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds
“Plants are like people: they’re all different and a little bit strange.” — John Kehoe
“We may think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it’s our garden that is really nurturing us.” – Jenny Uglow
There’s probably a cheesier canning joke to use instead of that one, but I couldn’t think of it at the time. Feel free to add some to my comments to make us all laugh. Or sigh with resignation at the terrible puns. Either way would be fun! 😉
I was feeling the canning urge last week and this weekend, so I thought I should probably do something about it. I picked up a big box of tomatoes from the local farm store today and have made it through about half. I did have some nice garden tomatoes to add into all the batches of tomato products. Tomorrow I’m planning to make some pasta and pizza sauce and maybe some crushed tomatoes too. These are two of the beefsteak tomatoes that grew this year.
Most of the tomatoes I used for salsa had the small and medium tomatoes in them, so I had to supplement with store tomatoes too. I used a Fresh Preserving/Ball book recipe for Jalapeño Salsa. I don’t have a link for the recipe, as it doesn’t appear to be online. This second salsa recipe is though- Fire Roasted Salsa from The Hungry Bluebird: https://thehungrybluebird.com/fire-roasted-salsa-canning-recipe/
I was able to use all garden jalapeño peppers for both salsas! It always makes me happy. They are super spicy though, so it will be interesting to see how they age. I plan to make another slightly more mild salsa with calmer peppers too, as we do have friends who do not enjoy breathing fire. 😆
I also made squash pickles from Southern Living: Small Jars, Big Flavors, with some help from the neighbors’ garden. I texted to ask her if she had any extra zucchini, as I think the ants ate our plants and she said “You never need an invitation to the garden!” I’m going to bring her a pint of them in thanks! My yellow squash made a surprise recovery, so I was able to use some of our garden squash too. Here are the jalapeño salsa and the squash pickles all canned up!
Both salsas made one extra jar that wasn’t full enough to can, so our fridge is full of homemade salsa. I’m thinking I’ll make some enchiladas or something to use it up. Oh! Or crockpot Salsa chicken one night! It’s super simple, you throw chicken breasts in the crockpot, throw some broth and salsa on top and cook for a while until they shred easily. It’s really good in tacos or even just over rice.
I also made jams and marveled at how long the tomato products take compared to the jams. I think I made three jams in the time it took to make one batch of salsa and the canning part of the squash pickles. They sat for a few hours in an ice bowl with salt to brine first.
For jams, I made a Strawberry Rhubarb, and a Cinnamon Rhubarb. The Strawberry Rhubarb is on the right, cinnamon is on the left.
They may have been a tiny bit more processed than they should have been, as they are a pretty thick jam. I’m hoping I didn’t accidentally make rhubarb candy instead of jam in the canned jars. I was lucky enough to have a little over half a jar left of each and have tried both in yogurt. They taste delicious!
Technically my version is Spiced Stone Fruit, as I had a bag of peaches and nectarines in the freezer and added two pluots and a plum that had gone soft. I was on a mission to use up all my freezer fruit this year. It tastes like the best peach pie ever, so I’m excited to use it for breakfasts. Sadly, this did not give me a fridge jar, so I’ll have to use up some more of the rhubarb before I open it. It will be featured in the LOTR Culinary Journey this year for sure! I’m thinking little peach tartlets. Mmmm…
I don’t have a picture yet of the other two things I’ve canned, but they were this Fire-roasted Salsa from Hungry Bluebird mentioned above, and a Roasted Garlic Pizza Sauce from my Taste of Home Canning magazine. It’s delicious! It made a lot more than it said it would and I forgot to add the lemon to it, so we’re going to have to eat it quick. It does have acid from the tomatoes, wine, and salt in it, so I think it will be okay in the short term. If I get nervous, I can always reprocess or freeze it for longer storage.
Piggy has taken to sitting on the kitchen rug by the back door in hopes that I’ll let her play outside while I’m canning. Unfortunately, her idea of “playing” is eating the really bitter apples from the apple tree and making herself sick, so we’re not really letting her out unsupervised. I wish that the apples would be good ones. They have gotten bigger this year, but are still horrible. I think we need to get an arborist to tell us how to fix it. It’s very productive still, so if we could get the apples to be edible, that would be wonderful!
Anyway, that is the start of my canning. I still have berries to make into syrup, a small bag of apricots, and half a box of tomatoes, plus a rather lot of peppers. I see more salsa and maybe some canned crushed tomatoes in my future. Jams too, of course, and some berry lemonade concentrate. We don’t have a lot planned for the next couple weekends and then in October, it will be time to make more applesauce.
I’ll leave you with a picture of my motivational canning towel. Have a great night!
I hope y’all didn’t think the squash had gotten me in my post absence! We have had a lot of them, but I think they’re under control for the moment. Possibly. I trimmed my vines pretty drastically to get rid of the mildewy and dead leaves, so we’ll see if that helps or hurts. At last count, I think I had gotten 15 yellow squash off the single plant I have. Only about 4 zukes though. Luckily, the people at work are still charmed by my increasingly desperate emails if “Please save me and help yourself to the squash in the fridge.”
This was the plant before I cut it.
This was how many squash were growing at the beginning of this week. I have since brought 4 into work and have plans for the others as squash pickles. This is one side of the plant, by the way. The second side had just as many. *nervous chuckles* Yeah, it’s totally under control.
I had so many that we jokingly asked both house repair estimate guys if we could pay in squash. 😆 They both laughed a little nervously and started backing away fingering their car keys. I swear I may have heard both car locks beep to make sure we couldn’t sneak any squash in their vehicles.
My neighbor gave me a second enormous pile of cucumbers, which have made the office manager at work very happy. The first time she gave me some, she snuck a zuke in the bottom of the bag. It’s the enormous one at the top.
The two big zukes have been shredded and put in 2 cup portions in the freezer. I ended up with about 8 cups of shreds all together. Two cups of them went into a loaf of chocolate zucchini bread, which is delicious!
Most of the other things in the garden are doing well. My zucchini plants are having a bit of a rough go, but are still producing. My jalapeño peppers have given me several. I need to make some fresh salsa soon.
My small tomatoes have been growing really well. My bigger tomatoes have been slower growing as well, but I have heard from other people that it hasn’t been a good year for them either.
I have a bell pepper growing and a couple of cucumbers.
My herbs are recovering from it being super hot again, but they were doing really well. I made basil pesto from garden herbs to take up north with us and it was fabulous.
I had a handful of peas and beans, but the squash is doing its best to strangle them.
Piggy likes to browse the herbs for a fresh salad when she thinks we’re not looking. You’d think this would help her doggy breath, but you’d be wrong. 🙄
My nasturtiums are growing all over the place and I love it! I’m going to harvest and dry the blooms for fancy butter for our LOTR party this year and to make fancy floral sugar.
So overall, it’s a good garden year and I’m revising plans for next year already. Soon I’m hoping to start canning things, although I’ll have to find a good source for tomatoes. Wish me luck on that! I’ll send good garden vibes your way!
A little too well currently! My yellow squash plant is taking over, as one would expect from a squash. I know my Dad will agree with me on that one. Squash is his sworn enemy, after all. 😉 Here’s the squash in question.
The squirrels have already started plotting their garden attacks. Mysteriously, there are baby squash bits in my garden. Piggy has been investigating the herb garden and has rediscovered the green apples in the lawn. She likes the crunch because she will pick one up and eat it while running gleefully away from us when we try to get them back.
It’s hard to see the other plants in my squash bed, but I do have a bunch of cucumbers, peas, beans, and peppers. Also carrots down the middle so they’re out of the way. I’m going to go tie up the squash plants and prune the leaves a little when it finally stops raining.
The berry and squash bed is also doing well. I have some smaller plants in there.
The berries are looking a little rough, but I’m hoping that they’ll come back better next year. My poor blueberry bush is just a bunch of twigs, so I’ll have to keep buying them at the store, I guess. 🙁
The tomatoes look nice and have a lot of flowers starting, so I think that’s a good sign.
The herb garden is growing wonderfully well. I think I’m going to have to harvest and dry a bunch of the bee balm and the hyssop for tea. The Thai basil is destined for an Asian inspired pesto to go over rice noodles tomorrow for lunch.
My little salad buckets are doing really well too. I’ve had a couple of salads all from the garden, including the nasturtium leaves! I need to eat more salads this week to keep up with the arugula and lettuce growth.
We have a little garden friend too. Piggy gives it a heart attack about once a week by chasing it, but it seems to like our yard.
We are fighting poison ivy and think possibly the Husband may be immune. I am most definitely not, as evidenced by my recent doctor trip and itchiness. Ugh. Over all though, it seems to be going pretty well. I’m impatiently waiting for when I have other things besides lettuce and arugula to eat.
Hope you enjoyed the garden tour! I’m sure everything will be a lot different after all the rain predicted this week. I’m not looking forward to the weeding! I’d better go rest up now for it. 🙂
Hello friends! I hope you’re getting excited to garden with me! It is that time of year, after all. Since we finally stopped having frost warnings every night, I was able to get some of the plants put in. However, I was only able to get 9 tomato plants and will need to go get some more. I was waiting to see if any of the seedlings came up, but it doesn’t look good.
I know I’ve talked a little bit about what gardening means for me, but I thought I’d talk a little more about it today. Feel free to scroll for pictures, if you don’t want the family history!
First off, look at this gorgeous iris!
Iris remind me of my Grandpa Ed. He was a great gardener and I think the iris at my parents’ house are descendants of his iris. I was too young to do much actual gardening with him, but I do remember playing outside in the back yard under various shady trees and admiring the garden. That’s also why I started growing rhubarb. I do remember making hats with the rhubarb leaves, with Grandpa’s permission, of course!
Currently my rhubarb has gone to seed, but I’m wondering if I cut it off if it will grow more. You can see it in the upper left part of this picture. It’s next to the strawberries which came back with a vengeance this year. Now I have to see if I can beat the pesky squirrels to them.
Both grandpas were actually involved in gardening or agriculture in some way. My other grandpa was a missionary and managed an experimental agriculture plantation in New Guinea and the Philippines. Apparently he enjoyed running around shirtless and wild looking. So wild looking and hairy in fact, that the native people asked him to put a shirt on frequently! They had raspberries growing in their UP backyard, some of which were transplanted to my parents’ backyard as well.
Mom is a spectacular gardener and Dad helps too, so I grew up getting to pick out special flowers and having my own corner of the vegetable garden to tend to. I think the garden grew a little bit bigger every year and now that all the kids are out of the house, it pretty much takes over the backyard there.
Our garden space is not quite as big, nor as nice looking sometimes, but I love it anyway. (Did I tell you that when the house next door was for sale, they very carefully only took pictures from the angle that did not include the cinder block beds filled with tomato tangles? 🙂 )
I shared our set up after making the third bed, but here it is with more plants added. Tomatoes! So far I have 8 tomato varieties: Sun Sugar (cherry,) Siam, Large Red Cherry, Grape, Cherokee Purple, Yellow Pear, a Yellow Globe (I think?,) and a mystery tomato that had a tag, but turned out to be just a price, not the name. I think it might be a drought resistant variety. I couldn’t find Mr. Stripey and forgot to seed save last year. If I find him again this year, I’ll do that. There are some seeds and seedlings planted as well, but I don’t know that they will come up. Carrots down the middle too!
Peppers, beans, and peas. If the beans and peas come up. Also carrots down the middle for later. I think possibly squash as well. I have to check tags again. So far I have some Carnival Pepper seedlings planted in between the plants. A lot of the pepper seedlings survived! Then I have cuc seeds planted along the side, but may replace them with plants if they don’t germinate. I have an orange bell pepper, a jalepeno, and a hot banana pepper planted. There’s a straightneck squash and an acorn squash as well. There may be shisito peppers as well, but they were from seed, so I’m not sure if I actually planted them or just imagined it.
Berry bushes! Onions that I have no idea when to pull, and squash. Something ate my original raspberry plant. I’m hoping it comes back. I also got a thornless blackberry plant. Possibly a dead blueberry plant. Not sure what to do with that one. Zucchini in the back corner.
The marigolds from the farm store were so pretty! I was going to get more at Home Depot, but they looked so bedraggled and terrible. They may be helping with insects eating the other plants, but the squirrels keep munching on them for a snack. Piggy will also not chase squirrels. We keep getting defective squirrel chasers. Cats, they would both chase, squirrels have a free pass. Piggy probably politely shares the tomatoes with them. *shakes head sadly*
Here’s the rest of the herbs to finish it off. The empty looking blue pot has lemon balm that came back. The terracotta pot has parsley. There’s blue cone flower in the black pot on the right, tarragon and rosemary in the grey pot, bee balm in the other blue pot, and “pet grass” in the tiny pot. Perhaps I can persuade Piggy to leave the other stuff alone.
3 types of basil so I don’t have boring Caprese salad (The Horror!) This year I have regular sweet basil, purple basil, and Presto Pesto (I think?) basil. That basil has a white outline and is thicker than the other basils. It’s not as strong tasting either, but that could be because it’s younger. In the grey container I have sage that came back, even after being outside all winter and German Thyme.
I have a plan to get more hot peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, of course! I want to turn the strawberry planter into a tea planter instead. It didn’t work well with the strawberries. If I can’t find enough smallish herb varieties, I’ll put tiny fairy plants in it on the porch with some fairy garden things.
I’m excited to get started with the garden and hope that it will go better than last year. We have a watering system in all three beds, so that should make it relatively easy. I also have two buckets with some bok choy and rainbow chard in a big bucket, and a salad bucket with lettuce, spinach, and arugula! They just look like empty dirt buckets currently, so no pictures.
What are your gardening plans this year? Do you have any new and exciting things growing? Tell me all about it!
Hello from Canning Central! I’ve been busy canning delicious yummy things lately. K2 reminded me that we “didn’t have to wait until winter” to use the things and I gave her a really funny look. In my head I have to wait until at least December! She is right though. It’s nice to have a shelf of home canned things, but even nicer to actually eat and enjoy them!
I joined a Facebook group about canning and it’s absolutely inspiring, but yet also altogether intimidating to see others’ canning progress. I haven’t posted there yet with my measly looking 5 jar haul. 😳 Luckily, I can post here, no matter how small my batches are.
Now, to get to the actual point of the post! The featured picture is my lemon verbena ready to be dehydrated for teas and other things. I used the arugula forest to make this lovely peppery pesto with parsley and walnuts.
The pesto is in the freezer for quick dinners later. I made this mimosa marmalade as well, for the fridge. It’s from the Little Jars, Big Flavors book.
I don’t have a picture of it, but did make cinnamon crockpot applesauce for the freezer, although we did eat some of it for dinner as well. I have more apples, so will make more after I make the apple chips. These were the not canned other things I made.
Dried lemon balm and lemon verbena (for teas,) dried sage, and freezer marinara sauce. The little jar is lemon verbena sugar.
I did can a marinara sauce from one of my canning magazines. A friend shared extra tomatoes with me, so I gave a jar to him and his wife as a thank you. Also, to encourage more excess produce sharing in the future. 😁
They are both pretty spicy. The Jalepeno salsa is more of an end spicy kick and the Fire Roasted is more spicy on the front end. We polished off the half jars that were left over pretty quickly.
I made another marmalade too. This one is a Citrus Vanilla Bean Marmalade. It was a pain to make and I was mad at it for being so much work, so haven’t tried it yet. It smelled delicious though. This recipe is from my Little Jars, Big Flavor book.
Three kinds of pickles were made. Garlic Chips and regular dill spears.
I also made one jar of kohlrabi pickles which are a fridge pickle. I haven’t tried them yet, but will soon. I also have no picture of them.
Tomorrow I’m making salsa verde and I have some more jams I wanted to make, so there should be a second canning post. It doesn’t feel like I’ve made much this year yet, but seeing it all written out, I guess I have after all!
Oh, and an update to the Squirrel War Chronicles! I was dismayed to find out that I may owe the squirrels a tiny apology, as I discovered a certain dog munching on my tomatoes the other day. She was going through the plants happily slurping the ripe ones right off the vine! Then when I yelled at her and started to go out to chase her off, she started eating them faster! She even hopped into the garden to snack in there! 🤨
We’re not going to tell the squirrels though, because they stole a bunch of other items. Or did they?! Piggy has no shame, of course, and is peacefully sleeping the sleep of the pure hearted. Dogs, man.
Anyway, enjoy the canning goodness and I’ll share the rest as soon as I have it done.
Hello from the Squirrel War that’s being fought in my garden! Major players are myself, Piggy, and the Husband. Only one of the squirrels has a name- Steve the Stupid Squirrel. The rest are collectively known as several unladylike words, which I will not repeat as to spare my poor innocent Mother’s ears. 😉
We’re all doing our part for the war effort. The Husband valiantly throws rocks at the squirrels while outside. Piggy stalks squirrels across the yard and then chases them up trees surprisingly fast for such a little tank/potato of a dog. She’s been a big help. The other day I looked out and she was balanced on the cinder blocks munching on the grass stalks that I hadn’t weeded yet while the squirrels yelled at her from the tree.
I ended up spraying vinegar on the cinder blocks and diluted peppermint oil all over the plants and that seemed to help keep the critters away. The neighbors also live trapped a groundhog in their yard to relocate as they didn’t feel like sharing their pool or tomatoes with it. I think that might have been what was eating everything as well. We think we had a burrow in our backyard. We filled it in, after making sure it was empty.
My zucchini gave me one tiny squash and I think I have squash borers, so half the plant is dead. The other half still has flowers though. I do have tomatoes coming through finally. I had caprese with garden basil and three kinds of garden tomatoes today for lunch. There was a Lemon Boy, Mr. Stripey, and some unknown cherry tomatoes from one of my volunteer plants.
My cukes are coming in! I’m hoping to make pickles as part of my canning adventures this weekend.
I found a big one hiding in the vines while I was tying them up over the weekend and have been happily eating it up. I even made a cucumber gin gimlet!
We have harvested some hot peppers and there’s a bunch of these Mad Hatter peppers growing too.
I missed the first tomatillos, but we have more on the plant. I had to look up how to know when they were ripe.
The bell peppers are coming back, which is good. I don’t remember if these are purple or green. My tags didn’t stay with the plants this year, due to squirrel interference. 🤨
Pre weeding!
We even have strawberries coming back and rhubarb (in the featured pic.)
I’ve killed some herbs and need to look at what seeds I have to see if there’s any quick growing things I can plant. We currently have an arugula forest that I need to pick and save seeds from. It made delicious pesto, so I’ll be making more of that for sure. My tea herbs are due for a trim as well, so I’ll be drying those for winter time cold fighting teas.
I know I’ll have to supplement my garden produce with store produce when I start canning, but I know what to do differently next year.
Piggy is currently sleeping like this and it’s making me giggle. I thought I should share it with you, in case you also needed a chuckle.
Wish me luck in the Squirrel Wars and send extra zucchini!
