Sarracenias.
Itoh Peony. This was one I moved last sinter into the meditation garden.
Annual Shirley Poppies. These are self-sow from poppies I grew last year or two years ago.
Alstroemerias. I planted these from divisions, last year.
Sisyrichium - kind of an odd plant.
Elderberry
Some of the figs are starting to swell, especially Desert King, Lattarula, and Brunswick. I installed three yellow jacket traps. Yellow jackets tunnel through the figs at about the moment they ripen, so when you pick a fig, you get a ball of angry yellow jackets. They are voracious and destroy the entire crop, leaving nothing.
So far I haven't seen any, but not taking any chances.
These are on Desert King.
These are on Lattarula.
These are on Brunswick.
If those Brunswick figs stay on the tree and ripen, it would be one of the best crops of that variety tbat I have had. They are really good, too, and the largest of my fig varieties.
It's been raining and I have also been having contractors over for home repairs that I can't do. Today I stayed in and rested. I missed baking bread and cookies, so made these fig bars. Mission figs are one of my favorite flavors.
This recipe came from the Betty Crocker website, here. I followed that recipe as exactly as I could.
These came out very good. I think they need to sit overnight to mellow a bit. They are more figgy than a Fig Newton, very rich. A bit crumbly. I think this could be made in a blind baked pie crust, which would be a little less sweet, but hold together better, and the flavor would be something of a hybrid of pecan pie, shoo-fly pie, and figs.
Here is the completed water feature. I re-sealed the planter using white rubber sealer, sat it on an old bird bath stand, added water and a self-contained solar fountain.
It's nice hearing the water tinkle as I putter around the kitchen garden.
In keeping with the baking substitutions and space cadet theme, I also made some orange sugar cookies. These were the same as the lemon sugar cookies that were so tasty previously, except I used an orange for zest and juice, instead of a lemon. I don't have any butter on hand so I substituted shortening in equal amount for butter, and again used some butter extract for flavor.
Well.
The cookie dough was less moist than before and wouldn't roll into balls. Just kind of flaked apart. I formed them as best I could and baked a batch.
Well.
They didn't spread out like before. The cookies did rise and expand. Plus, they were no where near done in the expected twelve minutes, and I wound up baking five more minutes. They were halfway between a drop cookie and those Christmas cookies that are rolled in powdered sugar. So, I decided to make rolled cookies out of the second half of the dough. I rolled them out and used a cookie cutter to make the second batch. I've never made cookie-cutter cookies before, so I can now congratulate myself on another milestone LOL.
The last one got pressed with a pie dough press just for fun.
