Saving Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce Seeds. 8.29.22

 I cut some flower heads from the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce plants that I let bolt.

It's easy.  Just cut the scruffy looking flower heads.  Store them in an open paper bag until winter.  Then they will be fully dried out and ready to clean up.

Tomato Sauce. 8.29.22

 I used the Roma tomatoes to make seven packets of frozen tomato sauce.  I also made some pasta sauce for supper.

The Roma tomato plants have about three times as many green tomatoes.  Maybe more.  So there will be more sauce ahead.

Repotting The Brugmansia. 8.29.22

 The sad looking little Brugmansia has grown a lot.  It is pushing flower buds now.  I think it outgrew the container, so I repotted into one with twice the volume.

The black plastic container absorbs heat from the sun and heats the soil too much.  In the past I found that a shiny foil cover reduced the soil temp by 10 or 15 degrees F, so I did that today.

Canning Asian Pears. 8.27.22

 I canned the first batch of Asian pears.  Followed USDA canning book recipe, light syrup.  They came out very good.

Tomato Harvest. 8.27.22

 Here are the tomatoes I harvested today.  Plus some peppers and onions.

I'm cooking the sauce tomatoes now to make frozen tomato sauce.  I also added a few of the firmer other ones.  

These are from dwarf varieties.  They are just starting to ripen.  The pink ones are Livingston Dwarf Champion.  The red one is Livingston Dwarf Stone.  There should be many more of the other ones soon.

Quilt Bummer 🤪. 8.27.22

 The star quilt was nearly done.  I completed cut the batting, and pinned it all together.  This time I wanted to be extra precise with the stitching, so I marked the first row with blue tailor's chalk.  I sewed the first line.

Still, something was nagging at me.  They say you should test a sample and see if the chalk line washes out.  I thought, it's tailor's chalk.  That's what it's made for.

Guess what.  The blue color didn't wash out.  I washed twice.  Still didn't wash out.

It's faint, but I will always see it.  I used a brush to remove what I could.  It didn't stay on the dark blue areas, which are slicker, or the dark grey areas.  All of the white areas on two corner patches were stained.

 So, I removed all if the line of stitching.  I removed the two corners of white fabric that were stained.  Now Im removing the large patchwork blocks that need to be either replaced or taken apart and just the stained parts replaced.  If I have enough fabric scraps (maybe), I'll replace the entire blocks.  Easier than taking them apart.  If not, I'll just replace stained peices.

Several years old four o'clock. 8.27.22

 This four o'clock comes back every year.   It never gets winter protection or watering.  It started blooming a few weeks later than the others, but will bloom all through fall. nIt's much larger than the first year plants.

Dwarf Tomato Crop. 8.27.22

 Here are the dwarf tomato raised beds.  Unfortunately I picked tomatoes before taking the photo.

I couldn't be happier with how they came out.    High raised bed, dwarf varieties, drip irrigation, cardboard mulch.  Working very nicely.

Oh Dear. Oh Deer. 8.22.22

 

I'mostly learned to coexist with them.  Every tree's lowest branches are at about 5 or 6 feet now, because Bambi ate all of the lower leaves and branches.

Flowers. 8.20.22

 Here are some of the flowers.  The zinnias haven't had as much of a chance this year but are still a favorite.

Reblooms on Alstroemerias

More Rudbeckia and Echinacea flowers.

Figs, figs, figs. 8.20.22

 Two fig trees are producing like crazy, Desert King and Lattarula.  Sicilian white is producing smaller figs, but not bad and is a younger tree, shaded by a larger Linden tree.

Desert King.

I didn't photograph the Sicilian figs.  There were also two ripe figs on the Brunswick fig tree.  Photo below, the largest, brown-ish is Brunswick.  Desert King is the largest green, Lattarula is the smaller green.  

The small colander is Sicilian White but mostly Lattarula.  The large colander is Desert King.

I made a batch of fig jam.

I froze puree for five batches of fig bars, yummy!

Tomato Harvest. 8.18.22

 Some nice tomatoes now.  These are Extreme Bush  (the smaller ones) Earlie Girl Bush (a bit bigger), and Dwarf Golden Champion (the yellow).  The Dwarf Golden Champion is similr to Lemon Boy flavor but a bit smaller fruit.  Very good.

As for the plants, these are Exreme Bush.  Only about 20" tall.

Dwarf Golden Champion.  It's roughly 30" tall.

Potato Harvest. Kennebeck and Soraya. 8.18.22

 Today I dug up more Kennebeck potatoes.  These are good tasting, nice size.  I also dug up Soraya, which I think is OK but not as good as Kennebeck.

The bowl on the left is from three potato plants, grown in the ground. mOn the right, three plants grown in a growing bag.

I forgot to photograph Soraya.  They were much smaller and fewer per planr, so far.

Lattarula Figs, First Picking. 8.12.22

 Here are the first figs of the summer crop.   So sweet and juicy!  Also a couple of Petite Aubique.

Thunbergia. 8.12.22

 Well, now we know.  Thunbergia grows nicely in the summer climate here.  These were a seed mix of different colors.  Unofficially, "Black Eyed Susan Vine".  I'm told that in Holland these are called "Suzanne with the lovely eyes".

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Star Quilt Progress. 9.9.22

 I finished the star quilt top side.  It still needs a border and backing, then to be sandwiched with cotton batting and quilted.

The stars look a lot nicer up close.  The big picture obscures so much detail.

Now I'm working on the backing.  I think most quilters use a plain fabric or even a bedsheet for the backing.  I don't want to buy more fabric.  Plus, there was a lot in my fabric stash, and I want to clean out the majority of that stash.  So, I'm making a simple patchwork backing using mostly the same fabrics and some others I had squirreled away.

Technically, this will make the quilt reversible.  However, the backing is much simpler and will go much faster compared to the front.

Lots of Flowers. 9.9.22

 I went around the yard looking at some of the flowers.