Beginning of June

Our yard is blooming everywhere! Every day we see something we didn't the day before. It is a wonderful feeling to walk around the yard and just let the sights and sounds soak in.

One of our pepper plants.

 

Serenading from the neighbors downspout.

The first bloom on the second year growth of our Chester Blackberry bush!

The perennials that survived last year are by far the most fun to watch, as they have really taken off:

 

Amethyst in Snow Bachelor Buttons

 

Fire Spinner Ice Plants

 

 Gallery Red Lupine 

One of my new favorite flowers: a Coreopsis Hybrid 'Jethro Tull' - Tickseed

This is a new perennial that was planted in the front yard - hopefully it will take off like the others.

Radishes!

We have our first crop ever!
June 5th we picked our first radishes and have been eating on them since. This is the first thing we have ever planted from seed that grew into something we could eat. I never knew radishes were so juicy.

1st Wine Kit

We started our first wine-making kit! 

Donnie has been wanting to start a homemade wine kit for quite awhile, but it never seemed to be the right time. First we needed to save up and Christmas helped with that. Then we needed to find a time to go to the wine shop together to pick one out. The shop with the most selection is close to our parents' house so we tried to find a time to combine trips.

Five months later we finally made it! 

Since we had been thinking about this for some time we knew what we wanted: definitely a red and nothing too sweet. Something like a Syrah or Merlot would be perfect.

We looked around, read the boxes, and left with a sweet white wine. Go figure. 

What we bought was a Washington Columbia Valley Riesling. It was 30% off, which you just can't pass up. (Especially if it doesn't turn out quite right since it is our first attempt.) In addition, not all of our family likes red wine, so we thought this might be a better wine to share.

A couple days later we got it started:

 

Pouring the juice into the primary fermentation bucket. It smelled just like apple juice. Apple juice!?! Isn't this supposed to be grape?

After the bucket was filled the rest of the way with water it needed to be stirred to combine the ingredients and aerate. Donnie has a special drill just for this, which makes stirring 6 gallons at a time no problem.

 

Checking the hydrometer reading and temperature to make sure it is the best environment the yeast. It was perfect, so in went the yeast. The lid was put on the bucket and it is now sitting either on the counter or the top of the fridge depending on the inside temperature of the house.

In about a week it will be ready to transfer into the 6 gallon glass carboy for the secondary fermentation.

Hmmm....Does this count as a boxed wine?

Soft-Cheese Class & Cheesemaking

For our five year anniversary we attended a class called the "Artisan Cheesemaking & Sampling Class." It was a whole lot of fun and not nearly as complicated as it sounds. Cheese, especially soft cheese, isn't really approved on our diet, but what better indulgence is there? When I heard about the class we couldn't turn it down.

We watched as the instructor flew through the steps of cheesemaking like they do on TV cooking shows: 1. Mix the milk and culture 2. let sit for 12 hours, then she lifted the lid off of the next pot and like magic- Cheese!

We got to sample five soft-ripened cheeses, three Chevre and two Fromage Blanc. We learned that Chevre means goat and Fromage Blanc is Chevre made with cow's milk instead of goat's milk. I had no idea.

The class was hosted in a spice shop and all of the samples included spices from the shop. Oh man, were they good. The best sample was the chocolate chevre truffles! Who knew you could mix sugar and chocolate with cheese to make a wonderful dessert? It isn't something we would normally think of.

The unfortunate part about attending a cheese class in a spice shop is you can't possibly leave the shop without buying all of the spices you just sampled and then heading over to the local brew shop to buy cheese culture and rennet.


Soooo.....here is our attempt at homemade cheesemaking the next day:

 After leaving it to sit, the curds and whey have separated.
In theory anyway. Our cheese didn't quite separate completely because our milk was not farm fresh and it was probably pasteurized to too high a temperature.

 

Letting the whey drip out.

 

Watching it drip was quite mesmerizing. I could believe that six hours later it was still dripping. 

(keep your naughty thoughts to yourself . . . )

 

After the cheese was finished we had a wine and cheese night! The cheese by itself tasted like mild yogurt more than anything, which is probably because we couldn't find the right culture. We mixed four different seasonings, including two new ones from the shop, to see what we liked the best. The truffle salt won hands down. Yum!

Grass Removal - Xeriscape

Our next project was removing the small patch of grass in the front yard that was between the houses. It was such a waste of water and time trying to keep it alive - so it had to go.

Apparently, I never took a picture of this patch of grass at any point since we moved in, so I don't have a before picture. I suppose that everyone knows what grass looks like though.

Almost Done.

We removed it all just using a shovel and muscles!

Donnie supplied both the shovel and the muscles!

 

I rolled the sod.

 

Here is the patch after the grass was removed.

 

Here is the patch after we added some perennials, mulch, and flagstone.

What a difference!

Cabbage Bandit Struck Again!

We weren't too worried when all of the starter cabbage plants from the second batch disappeared, because we had started cabbage in the first set too and they were doing great. Unfortunately, it appears that home grown cabbage this year is not meant to be.

 

Before - taken 2 weeks ago

After - taken last night

The culprit's response: feigning innocence

She snuck off the patio while I was working in the front yard and again, didn't touch any other plant - only the cabbage!

Spring is Here

This week saw a lot of changes. 

We finally got all of our starters planted, sowed more seeds, and spread a truckload of mulch.

These are all the starters, peppers mostly, that didn't fit in our garden beds. I just can't bear the thought of throwing away the little plants and since I have all of the containers from when we were container gardening at the apartment, I might as well put them to good use. 

Our first radishes have come up! Weeding and thinning to come. . .

 The landscaping on the east side of the house is now complete!

 

Along the back fence is also done.

The apple trees are in bloom. 

We are pretty sure the April snows killed the blooms off the apricot trees and probably the cherry tree, but the apples don't appear to have been affected.

Our first honeybee of the year!