Digging Potatoes. 8.7.2021

 I dug some more of the potatoes.  They seem to keep better in the ground, so I only dig what I need for a couple of weeks.  I should eat less of them.  I'm starting to look like a potato.  But they ate very good and cook nicely.

Resizing a Vintage Shirt. 8.7.2021

I found a vintage shirt that I liked. Back in the age of the dinosaurs, I owned a shirt with exactly the same fabric, only in green. This looks like batik but is printed cotton.  This one was way too big, but the chances of finding one in my size are remote. So I used a shirt that fit well, as a pattern, took this one partly apart, cut it using the other shirt as my guide, and sewed it back together. I thought about just cutting the body of the shirt narrower, but the sleeves wouldnt look right. So I took off the sleeves, and cut them the same as my better fitting shirt. Then I cut the body of of the shirt narrower too.

Before cutting, I sewed the new seams and tried it on to check the fit.

The hardest part was sewing on the sleeves. I had made the shoulders 1 1/2 inches narrower on both sides, and the body of the shirt about 2 inches narrower. The arm holes are curved. I made multiple tries before getting it right. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the shirt and now I can wear a walk down memory lane.

I'm also pretty happy with the seams. The original shirt had flat felled seams, which dont have any rough edges insidecor out. I could have zig zagged the new seams, but they wouldn't look as smooth or as nice. Flat felled edges are not too hard, and my result was OK for a novice.

Kitchen Garden Harvest. 8.4.2021

This is a good time of year for the kitchen garden. The tomatoes on the right are from the dwarf variety, "Clare Valley Pink". Not a vigorous plant, and not many tomatoes, but they are good flavor. The oblong tomatoes are "Purple Russian". Very good production and very good flavor. The zucchinis are from the Burpee hybrid, I forget the name. The cukes are various types, mostly sneaky ones that evade detection until they are quite large. The apple is "Gravenstein", the only ripe one on the tree.

Zucchini makes a nice meal, cut into fries, sprinkled with garlic salt, pepper, some hot pepper and season salt, and olive oil then air fried for 8 min at 375. I mixed in some green beans too, but the zucchini is better.

Purple Russian tomato.

Clare Valley Pink tomato. I think this plant is off the irrigation line, which might explain why it didnt grow much.

Dahlias. 8.4.2021

Not much to say about these. They brighten the room!

Rufus is the Best Dog on Earth! 8.2.2021

Flowers. 8.1.21

Four O'clocks and poppies, all volunteer. Daylilies that I grew from my own hybridizing a few years back. And squashes, quite fragrant and honeybees love them.

Dahlias and Nasturtiums. Also more volunteer poppies. The nasturtiums are volunteer too. The dahlias are saved from last year.

Three Types of Slicing Tomato. Goliath, Russian Purple, and BrandyFred Dwarf. 8.1.2021

 Today I harvested the first of the big slicing tomatoes.

Dwarf BrandyFred.  I can't tell this from Brandywine.  Really super delicious.

Russian (or Ukranian) Purple. I don't know why they call these purple. More mauve-ish to my eyes.

Im not sure where to count a start date for these. Goliath had a setback due to baking in the wall-o-water. I'm estimating about May 1 although that is not perfect. If we use that date, each of these is 90 days. Early Goliath Hybrid.

Sweetcorn Progress Note. 8.1.2021

These are the variety "Ambrosia". I planted the seeds 5.23.21. They are starting to silk and tassle. The first ones that I planted, Sunglow and Trinity, are not quite ripe. I harvested two ears of Sunglow today, The kernels were small, but they were sweet and the flavor was very nice. Give them another week or two to fatten up.

Blackberries. 8.1.2021

These are the variety "Triple Crown". This is the only variety so far that works for me, produces reliably and well, is thornless, and the berries are delicious. Today I picked about 10 cups, enough for a big batch of blackberry jam.

Fig Harvest and Fig Jam. 7.30.2021

Both Lattarula and Desert King are bearing now. The fruits are quite similar. The fig with the dripping nectar is "Lattarula" or the Italian Honey Fig.

Since it's a lot of figs all at once, I made some jam. I followed the Sure-Jell forvlow sugar recipe. I think it gels a little too firm, but it's very tasty. I could see lowering the sugar level some more, but the recipe on the package insert says not to. I do love this jam. It's also quite pretty.