Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Short Tour of the Kitchen & Flower Gardens July 11, 2012

Venting time. ;) I've been a vegetarian for 17 years (but I still ate fish, dairy, eggs, & honey) & I've only had a handful of incidents where I got take-out or was eating out at a restaurant & ended up with meat in my dish, either because I didn't understand what an ingredient was (like Mexican chorizo mixed with refried beans) or because the server or cook didn't listen to my request for a "meatless" meal.

However, since I've given up dairy just about a month and a half or two months ago, three times when we've gotten take-out from two of our favorite Mexican restaurants, I've ended up with cheese in my taco salad even after multiple requests for no cheese.  sigh  Yesterday evening my hubby brought back taco salad & he even checked it twice before leaving the restaurant parking lot to see if they'd sprinkled cheese on it.  Nope.  Got home & we all sat down to eat & I when I got down to the refried beans & cooked veggies, I saw cheese melted thoroughly & mixed in with the veggies & beans.  sigh  No, I'm not allergic to it.  I won't die if I eat it.  It doesn't even really make me sick to my stomach.  However it does make my allergies flare up & makes working out, well, challenging.  This morning, after my workout, I had a monumental coughing fit that was so bad I nearly threw up multiple times, just from accidentally eating that small amount of cheese yesterday.  Yes, I realize that there are bigger problems in the world ;) , heck, there are bigger challenges in my own life, it just bugs me when people don't take their jobs seriously.  In every job I have ever held, even if I was only making $7 an hour in a retail position, I always gave it my all because I take pride in what I do, regardless of the paycheck.  Even doing what I do now, not getting paid at all & putting in 15-16 hour days (full-time mom), I do it 110%, so the fact that people whose job it is to make food to order can't follow a ridiculously simple request like "no cheese" really irks me...

Anyway, back to happy things ;) , after working out, showering, & getting dressed, I went outside to let the chickens out of their coop & into their run & I watered the potted plants & walked around my garden beds, deadheading all of the day lilies & inspecting my veggie plants.  That is, without a doubt, one of my favorite times of the day.  :)  Before the (sometimes oppressive) heat & humidity hits & the kids are bouncing off of the walls, it's nice to have calm, cool, & quiet...


I've been checking on my yellow straight-neck summer squash plants once/day because I just love to see how quickly they produce fruit, but I accidentally knocked off one of the tiny squashes two days ago.  Whoops!  I've got to learn to be more gentle... ;)




(Sorry for the blurry-ness.)  My pepper plants are small this year.  I've scratched Epsom salts into the soil around the plants twice now (a tip I learned from a local organic farmer two years ago) which, when I did it to my pepper plants two years ago, had such an effect on my habaneros that my husband & I couldn't keep up with them & we're still eating the canned bounty.  So this sweet pepper plant is short, maybe 8-10 inches tall, but she's still bearing fruit!  :)  I hope the jalapeƱos, habaneros, & Hungarian wax peppers will soon follow suit.



I'd been worried that my (over a dozen) zucchini plants weren't getting pollinated even though I see plenty of pollinating insects outside all of the time so I was thoroughly relieved when I saw that most of the plants had started to bear tiny little zucchini fruits.  YAY!  No hand-polinating.  :)  It really is the simple things that make me happy.  ;)



I just love this variety of day lily although I'm not sure of it's name.  Like most of my flowers, it was given to me by someone thinning out their garden which, as far as I'm concerned, is the best way to get perennials because, never mind the fact that they're free, each flower reminds you of the gift-giver so it's like walking amongst your friends as you walk through the garden.  :)  This particular plant has gotten quite a bit bigger than last year, producing several beautiful blooms like this each day.




The hubby & I enjoy our heat...  Spice, that is, not temperature; we both actually seriously detest the heat & humidity.  ;)  This is my first year growing cayenne peppers & they're really coming along!  I have a feeling these will be a regular in our garden from now on.  :)




Our single-bloom day lilies have been going like gangbusters for a couple of weeks now.  I try to let no more than two days go between deadheading them, as they keep producing more blooms if you remove the spent blooms right away.  You can see a flower spike from a hosta too.  This is the only garden bed that had obviously been cultivated when we bought the house & every year I take many, many transplants from this area & add them to one of the garden beds that I've put in over the 5+ years we've lived here.

For more views of my garden, check out my short tour that I posted on on July 7, 2012.

Enjoy & Happy Gardening :)

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