Differences

We've got house guests for the next two days.  Hubby's mom and aunt are visiting from Florida.  They came up north to attend a family reunion on Saturday and are making the relative rounds until they head back Thursday.  I enjoy talking with them about their family history. 

Ruth and Alice (Hubby's Mom)

Hubby's grandparents raised seven kids on a farmstead in Zumbrota MN.  Oscar Nelson worked at the local creamery, winning awards for his butter making.  Alice MacIntyre Nelson was a homemaker, breadmaker, jam-maker, etc.  Hubby has fond memories of spending summers at their house, playing with a horde of cousins and wandering wild around the countryside.  At night his grandma would tuck the horde into bed reading bible stories.  Three to eight young boys, depending on who was staying, sharing two double beds.  They'd run up the stairs to the tune of 'Shadrach, Meshack, and into bed you go!'

My father on the stairs.

My grandparents lived in a large house on Lake Harriet.  Despite living just 45 minutes away, we only visited them a few times a year.  Everything in their home was elegant and formal and tidy. We rarely spent the night, but when we did I slept alone in a small room.  I don't remember my grandparents ever tucking me in, let alone reading me stories.  My father was an only child, so there were no cousins to play with.  I do remember playing cards with my grandmother on the living room coffee table, but most of the time I just played by myself with a few of my father's old toys in the sun room.

Christmas, I think?  My father on the right.

I'm sure my grandparents loved me just as much as Hubby's loved him.  Different families, different lives.

Totes herbs

Arugula flowering

 

Parsley

 

Catnip and cilantro.  And weeds.

 

Reinforcements

Something killed eight of our hens a few weeks ago.  G found the mauled carcasses in the run one night while doing chores.  So in the interest of continuing to pay too much money to have too many fresh eggs available to us, we ordered reinforcements.

They're about two weeks old now, and growing fast.  We keep them in a stock tank in our garage.  

We got a mix of breeds with this batch, including Welsummers, Delawares and brown leghorns.  But I think my favorites are the light Brahmas, one of whom can be seen poking her head above the others and looking at me in the photo above.  They have feathered legs.

In a few more weeks they'll graduate to the teenager coop in the shed, and when they nearly grown we'll put them in with the older hens.  They should start laying around Thanksgiving.

Past prime

On Sunday we went to the Cities for a visit.  We're all fully vaccinated now, and were itching to go somewhere and see people.  So we piled into the minivan and drove north.  O and E couldn't join us - they had already headed north on Friday to spend time with her family.

We met Hubby's brother and family for lunch at a nice place called Cafe Thyme in Chanhassen.  Good food, but very sloooow service - 1 & 1/4 hours from the time we arrived to the time we got our food.

After lunch we went to the UMN Arboretum in Chaska.  I love the arboretum and try to go once a year, usually when the roses are in bloom.  The arboretum has many gardens, including two rose gardens, a cottage garden, Japanese garden, lily garden, peony garden, etc.  Unfortunately the roses were mostly past prime, so I didn't bother with pictures.

A photo from last year's visit.

My younger sister and her two girls joined us.  We haven't seen each other for over a year, and her girls had grown so much!  I was able to reassure them that I was still their favorite aunt.  Much more favorite than their other aunt.  They looked at me dubiously.

The kids' favorite part was the hedge maze.  After going through two or three times, we gathered the chitlins and made them stand still for a few moments for a photo.

Mine are the middle two, G and B.

While we were walking along, my sister's eldest daughter C (far left in the photo above) and I came up with ideas for our own arboretum.  Something more kid-friendly.  We'd have a zombie garden with shrubs trimmed to look like zombies.  People could bring water guns to shoot water at the zombies a they 'fought' their way through.  There would be an area where you could drive bumper cars on the paths between the flower beds.  And there would be fountains that kids could actually jump into, instead of just throw pennies in. 

I told C that we should go into partnership together - she would be 'creative' and I would run the business.  She agreed - she would come up with all the ideas and then I would do all the work.  I decided that didn't sound like such a good idea after all.

zombie garden gnome

After a few hours of walking in the hot hot sun we left the arboretum and drove to Shoreview to have supper with my older sister, her husband and her daughter B.  By 7:00 we left the Cities and made the two-hour drive home. 

Stumbling into our house with tired feet and slumped shoulders, I realized that like the roses I too am past my prime.  I turned 50 a few weeks ago, so I am forced with the reckoning that I am now 'in my fifties'.  I remember a time when I didn't think about my age, and 50 seemed so very far away.  I seem to be thinking about it more often now.

The River

A beautiful day today, a bit warm but not too warm.  I drove out to Kettner Landing, one of the water access sites we maintain on the Minnesota.  Since we're in a moderate drought the river is pretty low, but still nice to look at.

Mnisota, the name given by the Dakota, meaning sky-tinted water.  Very apt.

Eggs of the devil

Windy windy day.  Red Flag warning, which means DON'T burn your brush piles or have a cookout, lest it turn into a wildfire.  Good thing we weren't planning to set off any fireworks this evening.

I started lettuce and pepper seeds today, a little later than I probably should have.  Next week I'll start basil and tomato.  My onions are doing ok, not great, but not horrible.

We're still getting plenty of eggs from the hens.  I deviled 16 of them (eggs, not hens) for dinner last night.  That may seem excessive, but we all love deviled eggs.  Not one of them went to waste.  When my boys were younger they called them 'debbled eggs.'

I use the basic deviled egg recipe from my old Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.  We don't add any of the extras, because the eggs taste great just the way they are.  Besides, the cookbook photo next to the recipe doesn't exactly make me want to try the other variations.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  It's bizarre to me how cookbook editors thought some of those old photos looked at all appetizing. 

Pickled eggs served in a drinking glass?  Hglugh.

Trust me guys, putting an olive on top of stuff does NOT make it look better.  And I'm saying this as someone who is generally fond of olives.

What kind of monster fills their deviled eggs from the top?

In other news, spring has officially arrived.  How do I know this?  Because the flies are back in the house.  After six months of seeing nary a fly, in the last hour I have seen and swatted three.  How is it that they all arrive at the same time?  At EXACTLY the same time?

It's a few days past the 24th, but I did remember to wish my old horse Shady a happy birthday on the day.  I'm not sure why I've always remembered her birthday, but I have.  We were born in the same year, so if she were alive she'd be 50 now.  Which would be very very old, but not record-breaking.  Guinness says the longest-lived horse died at the age of 51.  Shady died when she (and I) was 24.  A long time ago.

Shady on the left, my old cat Aphrodite on the right.

G takes his ACT test tomorrow.  He's gone to bed early in order to get a long night's rest.  I'm sure he'll do very well - he's a bright kid.  And he's been getting straight As for the last couple of years, so he's also determined.  B's bright too, but we have to shackle him to the chair to get him to pay attention to his online classes.  

O and E are coming over for the Easter weekend.  I've got the 1st through the 5th off, and the boys have a few days off as well, so we'll have a lot of time for games and chatting.  And it looks like O and E will be living with us again this summer - they've both got a good-paying job lined up at Firmenich in town.  Hooray!

Thoughts of spring

I received my second COVID-19 shot on Monday.  Other than a few aches and a fuzzy brain (totally vaccine-related and not just because I'm normally that way), no big reactions.  I hope my immune system learned a few things.

I received my seed packets from the UMN Master Gardener seed trials this week.  I'm growing storage onions, marigolds and kale for them this year.  Last year I trialed basil and leaf lettuce.  The basil was a complete failure - my first ever experience with damping-off killed all the seedlings before they could get into the ground.  But the leaf lettuce, which I had never grown before, was a success.  Successful enough that I will be growing some on my own this year.

I've just finished planting the trial onion seeds, each carefully labeled in their own individual trays.  My other onions are doing well, already 2" tall.

Hubby wasn't feeling well Sunday night, so on Monday he went in for a COVID test.  The doctor told him to isolate until he got the results, 2-5 days.  So he took a 'basement vacation' until Wednesday morning.  He brought our dorm frig and extra microwave down to the basement, and slept in Owen's old bedroom.  We left suppers and other supplies for him at the top of the stairs.  He spent a lot of time streaming Netflix, going through several seasons of Agents of Shield.  Fortunately the tests came back negative, which we were expecting.  Other than the Sunday night issues, he's felt fine all week.

Highs around 50 today, and 70 by Tuesday.  Needless to say all of our remaining snow should be gone by then.  The sun is shining and everyone is thinking about spring.  But as it's still early March, we'll get a few more shots of snow before we can relax our guard and put away the snow shovels.  Spring is a fickle mistress in Minnesota, coming and going with seasonal whim.  Best not to tempt fate by getting your hopes up too early.

Cheeseburger buns

 The recipe for the aforementioned buns.

I've had this recipe for many years, but I can't remember exactly where it came from.  Obviously a magazine, but which one?  Probably either Taste of Home or Bon Appetit, the only two cooking magazines I ever had subscriptions too.  I'm guessing it's Taste of Home, as 'Cheeseburger Buns' seem a little low-brow for Bon Appetit.  Low-brow, but not low taste.  

You could experiment with the fillings, depending on what you had on hand.  It's kinda like a pastie, although the dough is different.  I prefer this bread-dough covering to the shortcrust covering of a traditional pastie.  It's lighter and sweeter.  Just make sure the filling is fully cooked before it goes inside the buns.

The week's news

I have the weekend off!   Woohoo!  Work has been very busy lately.  Not customer busy, although we had over 100 people on the sledding hill last weekend, but paperwork busy.  Which is a lot of my job.  I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that working for the government involves a lot of stupid bureaucratic crap.  Not exactly an epiphany, I'm sure.

I don't have any big plans.  The whole pandemic thing, you know.  I will be making a large vat of wild rice soup this evening.  O wasn't feeling well last week so Hubby brought our last frozen bag to him.  Time to make more!  I'll use leftover ham from Wednesday's ham supper.

Last night's supper was biscuits and gravy.  Which meant this morning's breakfast was biscuits and gravy with fried eggs on top, a favorite with all our kids.  And me.

O and E went up to St. Cloud to visit her family last weekend, so we're skipping our weekly visit with them for a bit.  Hubby did drop off a batch of cheeseburger buns (homemade buns with meat, tomato sauce and cheese baked inside) to him on Thursday, so they still got a free supper, sans socializing. 

G had a Knowledge Bowl tournament yesterday.  No other students were at the school, everyone was socially distant and he agreed to wear two masks, so we let him go.  His team got 4th place out of 23.  Way to go G!  He's also been spending a lot of time on the Seterra geography website, trying to break speedrun records.  If you ever need a geography nut for a trivia match, he's your guy.

B is currently downstairs firing off Nerf guns.  Over the years we've amassed a large amount of guns and ammo, so every once in awhile he goes downstairs and fires off numerous rounds.  It's a bit of a stress release.  Sometimes the cats go with him and chase after the bullets as they ricochet off the walls.

Melting snow and ice puddles in the yard.

Temps have been in the 30s and 40s this week, which means a lot of our snow has melted.  The farm fields behind our house are bare, although we still have snow and ice in our yard.  Open black fields warm faster than grass-covered lawns.  The snow-melt has turned our driveway into a mushy soup of gravel and dirt.  But the chickens are happy that we've opened their door and let them outside again.  They just have to step around the glacial lake in the middle of their run.

On Monday Hubby gets his annual physical, and I get my second COVID vaccination.  Several of my coworkers who got theirs this week were hit the next day with fevers, aches and migraines, so I'm anticipating a day of partial sick leave to recover.  Hopefully my immune system learns how to deal with the virus, and remembers the next time I'm exposed.  And hopefully the vaccine is good against the various mutations cropping up around the country.  And hopefully the rest of my family can get their vaccines before the end of summer, so we have some time to travel before the start of the school year.

Seedling setups

My seed-starting setup has changed over the years.  I've always used fluorescent lights for starting seeds, with mixed spectrums to suit my different plants.  Fluorescent lamps have different Kelvin ratings, with the lower spectrum good for vegetative growth (leaves) and the higher spectrum good for flowering and fruiting.

What I've attached the fixture to, however, has changed.  My first layout was in the unfinished basement of our farmhouse in Ortonville.  Hubby suspended the fluorescent fixtures from the ceiling joists, and placed a table underneath the lights for the seed flats.  The fixtures were hung on long chains, and could be raised or lowered depending on how high I wanted them to be.  

Tomato seedlings on the floor, under lights.  2011.

My next design, also in the Ortonville farmhouse, was two card tables in the dining room.  I hung the lamps under the tables, and had the flats on the floor.  The flats would be on top of boxes to bring them closer to the lights, and as the seeds grew I removed the boxes to lower the flats.

When big enough, seedlings went onto the sun porch.

When we moved into the house on State Street in New Ulm, I took a break from starting seeds.  I relied on mail-order seedlings and my local nursery.  Which is just fine, but you have a smaller selection to choose from.  Several seed companies, including Seeds Savers and Burpee, offer mail seedlings for certain species including tomatoes, peppers, onions, eggplant, brassicas, kale and herbs.  Mail order seedlings are also a lot more expensive.

I have a few aloe plants.

My current configuration is set up in our sun room.  I bought wire shelving from Menards, and used metal chain and hooks to hang the shop lights from the bottoms of the shelves.  The shelves are different heights, so I can adjust the distance from seed to light by using different shelves as well as adjusting the chain lengths.

My first scallion seeds didn't grow, so I've replanted more.

At some point I'll probably bite the bullet and invest in expensive LED fixtures, but for now my cheap shop fluorescents work just fine.

Loose ends

Like I've said before, I'm a bit of a hoarder.  Not 'stacks of newspapers and piles of garbage' hoarder, but more of a 'don't throw away a perfectly good skein of yarn when you may want to crochet an afghan someday' hoarder.  Over the years I've collected a few dozen perfectly good skeins of yarn, just waiting to be used.  I got most of them from garage sales during the 80's and 90's.  

Mom's old business card

My mother was an antique dealer, and when I was younger she would take my sisters and I with her on her garage sale expeditions.  We would always go to the same area - south Minneapolis, where she knew the streets by heart.  The night before our outing she would go through the garage sale ads in the paper, making a list of addresses that we would go to, in order from first to last.  South Minneapolis, at least the older part of the residential area, has streets named in alphabetical order.  Aldrich, Bryant, Colfax, Dupont, etc.  I think that was part of the reason Mom chose that area.

A candid of Mom in her antique-filled kitchen, 2006

We'd leave early morning to get to the best spots first, sometimes before they opened up.  Mom was not afraid to knock on a door and ask to get in early.  She loved the hunt, the excitement of finding something rare and interesting.  She wasn't in it for the money -- if she found something valuable that was significantly under-priced, she'd give the seller more money than they were asking.

While my mother looked for antiques, I would look for other things.  Mainly books, albums, weird odds-and-ends, and craft supplies.  In 9th grade I had taken an elective class called 'Creative Textiles' and learned knitting, crocheting, sewing and quilting.  I can honestly say it was one of the most useful classes I ever took in high school.  

My collection of crochet hooks

About twenty years ago I started crocheting an afghan using my hoarded yarn.  I've worked on it on and off, a little at a time.  Every few years I'll get a bug in my ear and bring it out, do a few squares, then tire of it and put it away.  I chose a simple granny square style, easy to make and pretty to look at.  I decided that I would make a 'crazy afghan' (similar to a crazy quilt), with multiple colors in multiple patterns. 

Sounds great, doesn't it?  However, I didn't figure that every time I used a color, it meant two ends of string to tie off and weave back into the stitches.  Weaving in these ends takes a lot of time.  So far I've got 72 squares made, each with three to four colors, which means about 400 loose strands of yarn to be woven.  Some of them I had already done, there were still about 200 to do.

A few loose ends dangling

Two days ago I brought out the afghan.  I took a look at all of the strands hanging down, and decided to do something about it.  So I grabbed a small crochet hook and began weaving.

This afternoon I finished tying up all the loose ends.  Now I can begin making squares again, nibbling away at my hoarded yarn supplies.  When it's finished, it will become a gift for one of my sons.  Which means that I'll need to make two more.  Let's hope I live that long!

Loose ends all tied up

Dueling fish fries

 You can tell it's Lent in our very Catholic town.

We chose the NU Girls Fast Pitch.  Four pieces of fried fish with potato salad, coleslaw and cookie.  Yum.

Cake and custard

Hubby played Egg Fairy again on Tuesday, delivering 6 dozen eggs to friends around town.  Then I took another dozen and made an angel food cake.

It came out pretty well.  Not picture perfect, but very tasty none-the-less.  I didn't use cake flour, so it's a bit more dense than normal.

I enjoy sliced bananas and a bit of chocolate sauce on top of my cake.  The boys like lots of chocolate and fsssht, which is what we call Reddi-wip.  Hubby eats his very thin sliver of cake plain, without adornment.  Stupid borderline diabetes.

Since angel food cake uses only egg whites, we had a bunch of egg yolks left over.  Hubby decided to make a custard with them to try on his morning oatmeal.  We make custard fairly regularly, whenever we make banana cream pie or sticky toffee pudding.  It's pretty easy.  For the non-adventurous cooks out there, Bird's makes a good custard powder substitute.  Just add milk. 

Maybe I'll have my next piece of angel food cake with custard on top, uniting the egg whites and egg yolks once again.  Or maybe that would be like mixing matter and anti-matter together.  I'll let you know if I rip a hole in the fabric of time and space.

Sprouts

My germination tests continue.  I checked the seeds a few days ago, and will check again tonight.  It's such a thrill to see the seed coats splitting open and tiny baby roots growing out.  

Zucchini seeds

I feel a bit guilty not using the sprouts, but there's no way I can save them for the garden.  It's too early - they'd grow too big and get too leggy before I had a chance to plant them outside.  I could plant the onions into pots, but I have enough started already.

Beet seeds

I could eat some of the vege sprouts - people pay big money for bean or alfalfa sprouts at the store.  It's way cheaper just to buy seeds and sprout them yourself.

Bean seeds

I did take the zinnias and onions and put them into some dirt, just to watch them grow.  I can cut the onion leaves off for chives if I really want to use them.

Cosmos seeds

We're supposed to be in a warming trend this week -- it will be 40 degrees by Monday.  We haven't been above freezing since February 3.  Bring on the sun!

Gardeners, start your onions

Onions seeds have been planted!  It was indeed lovely to get dirt under my fingernails for the first time this year.  I've made such a big deal about starting seeds, you'd think the process took hours and hours.  But in reality it took only 45 minutes, mainly because I had everything I needed already on hand.  Seeds, trays, flats, soil, heat mat, and grow lights.  I won't need the grow lights until the seeds begin growing, but it's good to get things ready ahead-of-time.

You need special seed-starting soil to start seeds indoors.  If you use regular potting soil, the hunks of bark and rock in the dirt will impede the seed growth.  If you use outside soil, you'll bring in weed seed and insect eggs.  Best to use the good stuff, which is easy enough to find.  My favorite commercial seed starting medium is from Burpee's.  I usually buy it from Menards for $4 a bag.

Last year I tried coconut coir for the first time.  I was dubious about all the hype around it, but lo and behold I discovered the hype is well-deserved.  An 8-ounce brick costs between $2 and $7, depending on where you get it and how much you buy.  One brick expands to about 2 gallons of soil.

Just like those dinosaur capsules my kids used to play with, the brick expands when you add water.  Just so you know, it expands a lot.  

It's amazing how much water the coir holds.

It was still expanding after I took this photo.  I realized I needed a bigger boat.

Best 5-gallon buckets you can find.

After the soil is saturated, fill your trays (not to the tippy-top) with moist soil.  As you can see, I like to re-use plastic food containers for my trays.  Make sure the trays have holes in the bottom for drainage.  The trays are placed in a 'flat' that catches any water seeping through. 

My seed sprite keeping a watchful eye.

The onions are going to be in these trays for 8-12 weeks, so I used deep trays to have room for root development.  If I was starting tomatoes or lettuce, which I'll transplant into larger cells after a week or two, I'd use a shallower tray and less soil.

Sprinkle your seeds over the soil.  Whether you put the seeds in single holes, rows, or scattered over the top depends on a lot of things.  Because I'm unsure of the germination rates, and because I have plenty of seed, and because I'm fine with thinning the seedlings if too many grow, and because onions are easy to pull apart when transplanting outside, I decided to scatter the seeds thickly and randomly.  Cover your seeds with a thin layer (1/8-1/4 inch) of soil.  Make sure to label your trays!

Cover the tray to keep the soil from drying out - those clear plastic lids that come with some flats work well.  Put the flat in a warm spot, or use a heat mat.  Heat mats can cost up to $30 depending on where you buy them, so they're not cheap.  But they are a good investment if you start a lot of seeds, or if your house is a little chilly during the winter months (like ours).  I like to test my mats with a thermometer to make sure they don't get too hot.

Now that the onions are done, I have to wait a few more weeks before I can start the next round of seeds.  Kale seeds are next on the list!  And after that lettuce, and then marigolds, and then peppers, and then...

Seed miser

Me counting my seeds.

Every day

A somewhat disturbing, but heartfelt Valentines Day greeting.

Valentines Day is always a low-key 'holiday' for us.  Hubby bought chocolates for the boys and myself, and made a run to Mankato to bring candies to O and E and to grab India Palace take-out for dinner. Besides that, it's been a chill (both literally and figuratively) day.  Currently (7 pm) the boys are online with games and videos, while Hubby is watching pro wrestling on TV.

When you have a husband who sweetly does anything you ask whenever you ask, including making you bacon, mushrooms and eggs for breakfast, bringing you hot tea when your mug is empty, hauling heavy boxes of seeds or soap supplies around the house, making you chocolate cake just because he saw your FB post about it, or giving you foot-rubs at the end of a long day, Valentines Day is every day.  I really lucked out in the spouse department, I tell ya.

All things seed

The past few days have been all things seed.  

First, I updated my seed inventory spreadsheet.  I went through all of my totes of seeds (yes, I have totes), through each individual container in the totes, through each packet or jar in the containers, and confirmed varieties and quantities.  Then I deleted the seeds that were planted last year and the ones I tossed after testing badly in my 2020 germination tests.

I have one okra packet as a 'free gift' from an order. 

Next, I started the 2021 tests.  I chose the varieties for testing and dug them out of the totes.  Using my tried-and-true process described in my old blog here, I started about 30 seeds and filled out my chart.  In a few days I'll check on them to see if any have sprouted, and then a few days after that, and so on.

Lastly, I'm deciding what (if any) new seeds I need to purchase this year.  I've already made my Seed Savers Exchange order - I made that one in December to use a 20% off coupon I had.  I've still got a Johnny's and Fedco gift card from Xmas burning a hole in my pocket.  I also like ordering from Sand Hill Preservation Center.  But I may not need to get anything else right now.  As you can see, I've got a pretty large seed stash as it is.  And I want to use up some older seed (and save more seed from those plants!) before the germ rates get too low.

Seed germination is a wildly variable thing.  It depends a lot on the species and the storage conditions.  And the timing of the seed harvest.  Sometimes I save seed one year and test it the next, to discover that I've got a really low germination rate.  Apparently the seed I harvested wasn't mature enough.  Other times I've tested really old seed, expecting a really low germ rate, but am pleasantly surprised.  I have radish, flint corn and tomato seeds saved from 2005 that still test at 100%.

Packets for the 2021 germ testing.

This afternoon (or tomorrow) I'll start my onion seeds.  I'm growing the Yellow of Parma seeds that I harvested last year.  Unless they test badly, of course, in which case I'll use something else from my stash.  I'm also trying bunching onions for the first time this spring.  I like to try a few new things every year.

It's 13 below zero right now (1 pm), with a windchill of 35 below.  A perfect time to be indoors playing with seeds.

Prime rib

 It was sooooooo goooooood.