Archive for the ‘Journal’ Category
I’ve spent the last few days complaining about United Airlines and the terrible time they gave me while traveling. So today maybe I should calm down and thank my nephew for being such a good host. I’d hate to make people think that my entire Memorial Day weekend had been totally ruined because of an unfortunate incident when it really wasn’t.
I managed to drag my camera around with us during my visit and took a few hundred photos. I thought I’d share some of them with you today, These first few are of the highlight of the trip as far as crazy delicious food was concerned. The name of the place is The Hard Eight and this was the line at the entrance when we arrived. You could smell that barbecue for miles around.
As we waited in line the smell of cooking meat was overwhelming and as we approached the grill station it got even worse. This is their outrageous version of a menu hanging on the wall.
And then you walk to the grill and see this.
You can almost smell it just by looking at these pictures. You choose your meat, it’s placed on a tray covered with wax paper, it’s weighed and priced and then your off to the dining room to choose your side dishes.
We enjoyed the band playing C&W music as we ate and OMG was it incredible. We ate until we couldn’t move and then just sat there to enjoy the atmosphere for a few minutes. The prices were reasonable and I’d recommend this establishment to anyone going anywhere near Dallas. It’s barbecue heaven.
This was just day one of the trip and I have many more photo’s that will follow in the next week or so. I also feel somewhat obligated to introduce all of you to my new best friend and Texas bedmate. She made me feel right at home and actually snored and kicked less than my better-half does in Maine. Her name is Pepper.
Thanks for a great time Mike.
Well I’ve calmed down somewhat after my fiasco of traveling home from Texas. It’s time to get back to normal and return to my quiet life without airlines, crowds of people, and over priced everything.
I climbed back on my trusty treadmill yesterday and I’ve got to say it was a real wake-up call. I went a full week without much exercise and starting up again was a killer. I just have to keep pushing myself to reach that final weight loss goal I’ve targeted. I really thought that after the Texas trip I’d have to work double hard to regain motivation to lose whatever extra weight I’d gained on the trip. The biggest surprise I had was when I weighed in showing a two pound loss bringing my total weight loss since last November to 38 pounds. Hooray for me. I’m now only ten pounds from my goal. With any luck I’ll be there by August and then I can really celebrate. Ten months of oranges, radishes, cashews, and protein will make any celebration an improvement in my diet.
It’s back to gardening, yard work, and preparing for the better-half’s trip to Los Angeles in a few weeks. The Spring seems to be flying along very quickly but Summers coming. I just wish the winter months came and went as quickly as these months seem to. As I lay on the floor of Reagan National airport the other night trying to catch three winks I could only fantasize about getting back to gardening without the fear of traveling nightmares. This young lady has a couple of gorgeous flowers that make her garden a sheer delight.
I’m planning on a major overhaul of my man-cave while she’s gone and I’m beginning today to collect the materials I need. The cave is getting a little crowded so I need to rearrange things a bit. My winemaking area will be expanded to include a new multi-level siphoning table as well as new shelving units for my assortment of accessories. I need more storage to accommodate the ever increasing number of wine bottles. I need that wine because it helps me relax me so I can continue my gardening fantasies.
This is my gardening helper. She’s in charge of all of my gardening tools and their maintenance. She’s a lovely young lady who is exceptionally talented.
Once my man-cave project is completed I can get down to cooking a little. I had dinner in a Mexican restaurant while in Dallas and we feasted on the best fish taco’s I’ve ever had. Along with the tacos we thoroughly enjoyed the chips and salsa and a Verde salsa that was unbelievable. It was citrusy and smoking hot and wonderful. It’s time for me to create my own version of that salsa. I’ve made a lot of salsa over the years and it should be fun to give this a try. I honestly think that this trip and the continuing Tex-Mex influences of my Texas born better-half are turning me into a wannabe Mexican. I know, it’s hard to believe and I’m as surprised as anyone.
The remainder of this summer should be fun and a great time to relax before Canning season starts in September. One last gardening fantasy before I go. Oh man do I love gardening . . . . .
Well the Texas trip is finally here and I’ll be flying off to Dallas tomorrow. I don’t intend to do any blogging until sometime next week, probably Wednesday at the latest. I’ll be taking a break from working out, blogging and everything else as well. That’s what a vacation is supposed to be and I’m going to make the most of it.
This week I finally planted the last few plants in the garden. I have others breaking ground as we speak and so far everything is doing fine except for the asparagus. All of those I gently planted are doing absolutely nothing. I purchased a bag of asparagus roots and knew at the time it was a big gamble. I have yet to buy either flower bulbs or veggie roots packaged that way that have actually grown. I’ve finally learned my lesson, never again. Next year I’ll try to find asparagus seeds and start my own plants. Hopefully I’ll have more success.
“Zucchini”
As you can see the garden has made significant progress in the last week. The plants are loving the warmer nights and are jumping out of the ground. As you can see I have more chives than I know what to do. When I return I can look forward to a day spent filling the dehydrator with chives for our use through next Winter.
“Cherry Tomato’s”
Starting tomorrow I can kick back and relax for a few days and enjoy my trip. It will be nice to enjoy the warm and sometimes hot weather in Dallas. It should help me shake off the effects of this last Maine Winter. My summer will officially start when I return home next week fully rested and relaxed.
“Left Side”
“Right Side”
I hope you all enjoy your Memorial Day weekend and that the weather cooperates. Show the flag, cook a few burgers and dogs, and toast all of our former and current Vets. Without their service we wouldn’t have much to celebrate.
My goal today is to give all of you a tip. After you get to a certain age never, I repeat never, make dandelion wine. I know that sounds stupid but let me explain. Over the years I’ve made dandelion wine a few times and it always tastes so incredibly good you might wonder why I’ve only made it a few times. The main reason is the amount of work that goes into making it. It’s a labor intensive project that becomes more difficult as you age.
Yesterday I was out in the garden just walking around and happy to see that everything I’ve planted has broken ground and looking healthy. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts the garden is well underway and my batch of red wine is bubbling happily along. I knew I wanted to make a second batch of wine but really hadn’t decided what it would be. As I was thinking and walking the mail lady pulled into my drive way with a package for me. It was a small order of winemaking materials I recently ordered to replace what had been used on the red wine. It must have been a sign from the wine drinking gods.
As I opened the box to check the order I glanced out the window and noticed that my yard was covered with freshly blooming dandelions. I decided at that moment to make a batch of dandelion wine out of those blossoms found in my yard. I should have had my head examined but foolishly prepared for the project anyway.
I dragged a plastic bag, a pair of latex gloves, and an already sore back into the yard and got to it. Over the next hour I harvested a few thousand dandelion flowers and filled the bag to the top. I started out just bending over to get the blossoms but the sorer my back became the more I thought about calling it a day. It wasn’t long before I was forced to my hands and knees to complete the collection process. One of my latex gloves had torn and that hand was now a bright yellow that took some serious scrubbing to remove. I now had the hands of a thirty-year smoker.
I finished up and returned to the house to try and work out the kinks in my back and neck. Unfortunately the worst was yet to come. I wanted to make at least three gallon of this wine which requires five full cups of petals per gallon. The next step was to sit on the deck for another two hours with with a fresh set of gloves and a huge glass of icy cold Sangria. I sat there and slowly and meticulously began removing the petals from the stems. With my hands painfully cramping I finally reached my goal of fifteen cups of dandelion petals.
“Dr. Frankenstein’s Lab”
To make a long story short, I returned to my man-cave, gathered the remainder of the required ingredients and finally had the batch prepared. I placed the blossoms into two gallons of filtered water and boiled them for twenty minutes making a beautiful golden yellow liquid. I added the other ingredients as well plus seven pounds of granulated sugar and allowed the mixture to cool. That took a few hours and it wasn’t until after dark that I was able to finally able to add the yeast.
If I’m lucking and barring any unforeseen catastrophes, I should get at least 15-17 bottles of a gorgeous golden wine in approximately three and a half months. Was it worth the effort? I’ll let you know as soon as I can use my hands again and I can bend over without screaming.
This had better be the best damn wine ever made.
After thoroughly enjoying my day-off and cruising around the area with my better-half it was once again back to work. It seems that we’re finally free of the frost for this year so we I began planting the next group of plants which included black beans, green beans, wax beans and snap peas. Any or all of these are delicious to eat fresh from the garden but they also can be canned without losing their flavor. Normally we use them as part of the vegetable mixes we make for use through the Winter in stir-fry’s.
The vegetable mixes are usually the last thing we do before closing down the garden. The mix can contain any number of veggies that are left over at summers end. We try to make a number of different assortments as you can see by the photo’s.
The better-half has been trying unsuccessfully for years to grow gourds. She gives them a great start in the house under glass as you can see. Then they are moved to the cold frames before final planting. We decided this year to move some of the gourds out of the garden to a spot closer to the house where they can get sun and be better protected from the weather. We’ll cross our fingers and hope for the best one more time. In my opinion it’ll take a minor miracle to get them to grow large enough to produce anything useful. She’s forever the optimistic and is certain it’ll work this year. Half full is her manta in all things.
I wanted to plant the jalapeños and cayenne peppers but stopped myself. As a rule peppers do best when they have warm nights so I decided to wait another week or two. I’ll be able then to put the cucumbers, zucchini, and squash in and finally be done with the garden planting. So for now they remain in the cold frame.
My winemaking efforts continue and that red wine I mentioned in an earlier post has completed it’s hard fermentation and moved into glass jugs and sealed with air locks. It’s now just a wait of a few months for the jugs to clear. Eventually gravity will cause all of the yeast to drop to the bottom of the jugs and I can siphon off the clear and finished wine. I have to say I love the smell of yeast and wine when it’s fermenting. I wish some company could bottle that smell because I’d make sure my man-cave was always filled with that fragrance.
While I was cleaning and organizing my man-cave I was pleasantly surprised to find this bottle of wine.
This is a bottle of blackberry wine that I made back in 1986. I’ve recorked it a few times over the years and each time I’ve taken a small taste. It’s pretty potent after all those years but I think I’ll put it back in storage for a few more years before I try it again.
A day-off was really becoming necessary after the last few hectic weeks of gardening and lawn clean-up. Today was the day. The better-half was also on a day-off so we slept in a little, loaded up on coffee and breakfast, and then jumped into the car and took off. It was a semi-beautiful day but the cloudiness was going to make taking pictures a challenge.
We drove east towards the shore and the traffic was light. In two more weeks the tourists will arrive in force and make traveling a little more interesting in these beach areas. We drove up the coast for a few miles and stopped briefly in a small cove used primarily by local lobstermen. I snapped of a few photo’s of them at work and a few of the birds covering the nearby rocks. Neither seemed too happy about my picture taking but I persevered.
It was breezy as hell and the temperature had dropped just low enough to require a hoodie if you planned on walking around. We returned to the car, turned on the heater, and warmed up a little. As we proceeded north it was great to see everything struggling to become green again and the sun finally decided to make an appearance. We stopped briefly at the Portland Head Light which is one of the most visited and photographed lighthouses in Maine. It guards the entrance to Portland harbor.
As you can see it’s just a place made for photographers. It’s almost impossible to take a bad picture there. Normally this place is mobbed with tourists but we were lucky to get here before the Memorial Day madness.
Our trip continued north as we entered the city of Portland. If you you’ve never visited Portland your missing something special. It’s a small city with a small town feel. It has a colorful waterfront as you can see and if you like the ocean the aroma of low tide here will enchant you.
My better-half has a overwhelming desire for beer at almost any time so I decided to make a quick stop at Three Dollar Dewey’s, a local ale house and restaurant. It’s located on Commercial Street in Portland, adjacent to the harbor. It’s a charming area with fish markets, micro breweries, and some serious parking issues if you visit in season. We try to stop at Dewey’s whenever we’re in the area for a quick cold one and a large order of fries. They are just what the doctor ordered.
We finished our fries and drinks and then walked around town for a few minutes of people watching. Everyone was out in large numbers enjoying the sunshine and warm weather. Check out this little project someone created along the street. Snap a padlock of some sort on the fence and write your name on it. I though it was pretty cool so take a look.
It was mid-afternoon and time for us to depart. We enjoyed this relaxing break from our normal lives and were ready to head home. Tomorrow is another day.
I really seem to be getting readjusted to this warm Spring weather. Yesterday was in the low seventies for the first time in almost seven months and I was loving it. I actually wore a pair shorts for the first time and got a little tan on my legs and they were loving that. I’m still working on the garden but the yard work took precedence this week. Being the dedicated and well trained slave that I am, I was able to make short work of the grass cutting.
Once that was finished I took on the semi-unpleasant task of organizing my compost pile. Some of you have little or no idea what I’m referring to so let me explain. It’s a gigantic pile of decomposing organic material collected by me over the last few years from yard clean-ups and grass clippings. It’s smelly and disgusting but it’s what makes the garden grow as well as it does. Each Fall I cover the garden with it and then plow it under. That gives most of the nutrients time to leech into the soil and reinvigorate it before Spring. Each summer’s garden uses up a great deal of the existing soil nutrients and they must be replaced.
It’s also very important to never plant the same plants in the same area two years in a row. You’ve got to switch it up a little because individual plants requires different sets of nutrients to thrive. In my experience that doesn’t always apply to herbs. They seem to grow well in just about any soil and require little of no fertilizer. The only issue I’ve had with herbs is that some do poorly if planted near certain others. Also, if you plant mints such as oregano, catnip, or spearmint too close together they cross pollinate and their specific scents become diluted.
Once the mowing and composting was completed I decided to do something I really enjoy which is set up my first batch of wine for 2014. I decided to make a nice semi-sweet red wine out of Concord grapes. I mixed the grape concentrate, acid blend, yeast nutrient, yeast energizer, and four and a half pounds of sugar into three and a half gallons of filtered water and set it aside. I then set up what’s called a yeast starter. It’s two packets of brewers yeast dissolved in luke-warm water with one cup of sugar. I let the yeast activate for a couple of hours before mixing it into the the fermenter with the grape concentrate.
Now it’s sit back for a week to let the yeast eat up all that good sugar and create the proper level of alcohol for the wine. Sometime in early August if all goes well I should have approximately sixteen bottles of a beautiful ruby red grape wine.
I normally prefer making fruit wines because getting the ingredients is much easier that coming up with a quantity of grapes. Grapes are expensive and the processing of them into a usable form is time consuming and annoying. Using a simple grape concentrate is much more affordable and makes a better quality wine (in my opinion). This batch will end up costing me approximately $2.00 a bottle including the cost of the bottle and cork. Not too bad for a small amount of work and a month or two of monitoring and tweaking the batch. I’m already planning a second batch for this year if I can find someone nearby with a Mountain Ash tree. The orange berries from that tree make a smooth and tasty white wine that is to die for. I’ll keep you posted.
Needless to say the Spring garden work and yard cleanup continues apace. The only part of my body that’s not sore or aching is the tip of my nose. Everything else is shot to hell and letting me know about it every time I move the least little bit. Fortunately all of the hard work is finally paying off which is rather satisfying for so early in the year. The better-half who is in charge of the flower gardens is already seeing amazing results as you can see by these pictures.
It occurs to me that the plants in Maine understand what a short growing season we have and make the most out of every minute with whatever rain and warmth they can find. The grass can look like a field of dirty dead plants one day and within a week it turns into a lush green carpet that very quickly needs to be cut. I added the first mowing of 2014 this week along with all of the other chores I had on my To-do list.
The herb garden suffered a little more from the winter weather than I first thought. The neighborhood cats will be highly upset when they discover the huge catnip plant has passed away. Our garden was a regular stop in their travels where they could roll around in and eat some catnip. It was like the town’s feline opium den. I suppose I’ll be replanting it once again even though my cat Stormy is unaffected by it’s influences. I made enough room in the herb garden so that a larger than normal patch of parsley can be planted. We use a great deal of parsley through the winter and we ran a little short this Spring.
“Asparagus”
The asparagus roots have been planted and hopefully within the next two years we’ll have a thriving patch to harvest from. I love it with my meals but it takes such a long time to establish before we can use it. It’s recommended that we don’t harvest from this planting until early in 2016. Patience for this I just don’t have.
The lettuces were planted yesterday as well. I’ve put in three varieties this year along with spinach and two varieties of kale. The kale is freezable and my better-half tells me that kale chips are in my future. They don’t sound all that appetizing but I’ll withhold final judgment for now.
“Spinach/Lettuce”
I’ll be waiting at least another week or two before putting in any plants that could be killed by a frost. I’ve gotten ahead of myself in past years and been burned when a late frost wiped out a large number of my plants. I guess gardening is a great way to learn patience but it’s not something I’m known for.
This garden is much smaller than most people think when they see the results each Fall. The excellent level of production takes good planning, crop rotation, great compost, and plenty of good old sunshine and water.
I consider this a modern version of the old WW II Victory Garden. It takes a little hard work and investment of time but growing and eating your own crops makes sense to me. I know what I’m eating without fear of spoiled plants or diseases and it’s fresh and tasty. It hasn’t been sitting somewhere in the back of a truck or warehouse for weeks before the store displays it for sale. Enough of my preaching, it’s time for me to climb down off my soap box and go accomplish something.
Another week of this and I’ll be all out of a gardener’s best friend, Ben-gay. I should start buying it by the case every Spring based entirely on how my butt and legs feel this morning.
“The First Flower on the Deck for 2014”
I just opened my eyes, rolled over and checked the clock. It was 6:30am and I was awake, it was morning, and the only thing on my body that wasn’t sore or stiff was my eye balls as I looked around the bedroom.
Without a doubt I love Spring time but OMG the work involved. The last week has been nuts and the weather has been just warm enough to make me crazy. As always I tend to overdo at this time of the year in my lame attempt to make the warm weather get her just a little sooner. I’ve been "garden" involved almost one hundred percent these last few weeks. I’m trying to get as much of the preparation done as I can before I take my trip to Texas over Memorial Day. I’ll be returning from there just after the holiday and I need the garden ready for planting when I get back.
My main project for the last week was the rebuilding and repairing of the raised beds that I initially built five years ago out of non-pressure treated lumber. They were slowly rotting away and were filled with bugs and other unwelcome guests. It was easy enough to just tear the wood out of the ground but getting the required replacement lumber to the house without paying Lowe’s huge delivery fee was a bit more difficult. I have no immediate access to a pickup truck so I had to improvise. I drive a small and cute PT Cruiser that is my all time favorite vehicle. I was forced to turn her into a workhorse for two days as I made numerous trips from Lowe’s to my house with 12 foot long pressure treated boards sticking out the passenger side window at least four feet. It was the only way I could get them in the car and close the rear tailgate door. It made for a very interesting drive home. I accomplished it without killing any pedestrians who happened to be standing along the edge of the road and I also dodged hundreds of mailboxes that I came within inches of as I sped past.
Everything was delivered to the house with minimal damage to the car, to me, or any innocent bystanders. It’s not something I ever want to try again. Lugging all those heavy boards around has accounted for most of my sore muscles and general overall feeling of "death warmed over".
The pictures will show the new and improved beds and the other work that was done. The gardens have been cultivated, composted, and the fabric put in place covering the soil.
This week I’ll be planting the cold weather crops such as lettuce, kale, and spinach. I visited a nearby nursery yesterday and made a few preliminary purchases to place temporarily into the cold frames. While chatting with the owner I was able to pick up some valuable information on upcoming weather patterns and all of the problems with specific plants lost or damaged due to the rough winter.
I’m now in the process of preparing the hoses and sprinklers for installation. They should be up and operational in a day or two and then I can relax for a week or so before my trip.
My better-half is suffering from a raging Spring Fever that has taken complete control of her life. We have a wrap-around deck that partially circles the second floor of our house. This deck becomes our second home during the Spring, Summer, and Fall. As you can see she has moved many and assorted pots to the deck to begin planting her container garden. She’ll have pots full of a grand assortment of flowers and certain selected vegetables making it like a jungle out there in just a few weeks time.
Once I return from Texas I’ll be back to my good old Maine gardening ways doing all of the things I enjoy most. Fortunately for us both all of the really hard work will have been completed by then allowing us to enjoy the garden and deck time well into September. Then the canning, herb drying, and wine bottling can commence once again.
I mention my better-half in this blog often. With Mother’s Day approaching I thought a salute to her would be appropriate. She’s raised her three children, seen them graduate from college, and watched as they moved on with their lives. She is and should be proud of such a major accomplishment. Now since her nest has emptied it was time for the next stage of her life with me to begin. It was time for both of us to readjust to a new and different style of living.
As I’ve gotten older I find myself looking back and reminiscing at odd times. I have many wonderful memories that I reflect on occasionally and that was always part of my master plan. Growing up I decided early on to build an archive of memories that I could enjoy after I was too old to create new ones. I always pictured myself sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of my home looking back at all the fun I’d had in my life. I looked forward to the day I could mentally relove any number of women and remember them as being even better than they actually were.
My normal approach to living was if something looked interesting I just jumped right in and tried to experience it. Why not? I was slowly filling up my mental filing cabinet for use after my retirement. It made for a pretty cool life all in all but there were many bumps in the road as well. That was to be expected and those not-so-great memories also made their way into my mental “vault”, to lamely quote from a few Seinfeld episodes.
As a young and middle aged man I saw life in my sixties as something totally different from what it actually turned into. When I was thirty I felt twenty, in my forties I felt twenty-five, and in my fifties I felt thirty-five. It was in my mid-fifties when I first met my better-half. I’d heard the term “better-half” used for years by others but I just thought it was something people said to convince themselves they’d found that elusive soulmate we all search so diligently for. Little did I know that I would all of a sudden become a real believer. One can never know when that thunderbolt will hit but OMG when it does, it really hits hard. Things haven’t been the same since we met and I’m all the luckier for it. I felt like I was sixteen again both mentally and physically which was more than just a little scary at first. But I adjusted.
I was forced into retirement much earlier than I ever thought possible thanks to the downsizing of the state government here in Maine. I was afraid my master plan had been seriously compromised. Now I’m sitting on that famous porch of mine with my better-half, my cat, her grandson, his parents, and all of the new memories we’ve been creating over the last decade. The vault is full to overflowing, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and I see many more terrific years ahead of us.
Of course, I’m writing this to brag a little but also to let all of you know that life can be good regardless of your age. My fantasy now is to sit on that infamous porch when I’m In my nineties and hopefully remember the things I’m experiencing today, tomorrow, next week, and next year. I imagine I’ll be feeling like a man in my sixties then which should be a weird and amazing turn of events. It’s incredible how our minds work to help us to adjust to these constant life changes.
It will happen to you too . . . . . . . Wait for it!
AND A HUGE HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO MY BETTER-HALF.
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