Perhaps you'll want to reconsider your visit...

Snake!

He is just under 5 feet long and I first saw him basking atop the landscape timber. My camera was in my pocket so I ran down the stairs to get a good shot. Dave warned me not too get to close...as if!

I followed him into the weeds on the hill and thus endeth my wildflower forays into the woods.

Lots of good things are happening around Chez Johnson, just click on the iris in the sidebar for a slideshow.

After the Garden...art?

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Since about March I have been directing my creative juices towards dirt and plants and garden structures, and now that 90% are done and the house in Cary has sold, somehow I am feeling a bit restless. I think it may be time to do something in my studio.

Dust has settled on everything and I wonder if I have the mental energy to unpack something and do something to it, and then to do something to that?

I do. I must.

As with so many times before, the way to begin is to just put away everything, rearrange the furniture, finish the laundry, find a new place to store stuff, and generally putz around until a rhythm develops.

It's a lonely place, the studio. And it is good that it is. If you want to try something and it doesn't work, it's better if no one witnesses it. I'll tell you this, having the blog watching me doesn't help. And if I could keep the process secret I would. But you know I just can't.

Closing Day

Today the buyers are taking possession of our old house in Cary IL...we hope. This is the second set of buyers and we have signed all the papers and it looks very positive, but one never knows.
I hope I am not jinxing anything. Eeeek.

Sigh.

We listed the house March 2007, and held our breath until we turned blue, and then went ahead and moved away. So much good has happened to us since then that this sale is kinda anticlimactic.

Of course you know all that has gone on here in TN if you read the blog, but the unseen and most important thing is the improvement in our health. Physical and mental.

Dave is doing so much better here, and suffers so much less from Parkinson's than he did back in IL. Why?

NO STRESS.

Stress, as you have heard is a killer. But what we didn't realize is how much stress we lived with on a daily basis.

1. Work

2. Traffic, both land and air

3. Congestion

4. Noise

5. Neighbors

6. Sirens and Barking Dogs at 3 am

7. Lack of privacy

8. Cost of living

9. Keeping up with the Joneses

10. Having to look at the mess the Joneses are making with their lives

It took a while to let go of all that, but watering the garden in my pajamas, while waving at the passing motorcyclists as they relish our mountain scenery on their vacation trip makes me realize that I live in vacation land.

So happy mortgage paying, New Buyers, and enjoy the house in good health. I hope you like red!

A Kool Ride

La Bamba, ready to roll

Dave's new old car was in the shop for a week having necessary work done and it finally came home, much to my delight. This signaled the start of the last garden project: my hydrangea bed. We needed landscape timbers and lots more composted manure. This is just the perfect manure hauling vehicle, imho.

We decided to go to the Lowe's in McMinnville, with the idea that we might stop at a nursery along the way and shop for a Southern Magnolia, which I long to plant in our yard. What's the point of living in the South if you don't have a big ol' magnolia on your land?

This would be my first foray in La Bamba, and I was brimming with enthusiasm.

Uh oh. My seatbelt doesn't work. But the remote control for the stereo works great! (whoever heard of a remote in a car?)
We arrived at McMinnville, safely, and I gave Dave wrong directions and we ended up in a parking lot across the highway from Lowe's, but right in front of a Sears. So we decided to look there for a new refrigerator.

Wha?

This is the refrigerator that came with the house. Double doors, icemaker and water in the door, but it has one minor flaw...the freezer door only opens a crack and things get lost in there. The kitchen wall is flush against the side of the freezer, preventing the door from ever opening fully. We tolerated this silently all this time, but really, it is a pain. I know some good things were in there, but once squeezed in, could never be found again.

Sears was having a sale, including free delivery and we found the VERY SAME refrigerator we had in our Cary house, which we loved. We loved it so much in fact that we had two. One upstairs and one down. So it was easy to decide to get another for our current house.

Here is the delivery guy rolling it into place. Yes, they delivered the refrigerator only a couple of hours later, the same day. Amazing!

The doors swing totally open and all the food is just so easy to find. In the move from the old refrigerator's freezer I discovered a fully cooked quiche, three unopened bags of peas, birthday cake from December, and a full bag of flounder fillets. Who knew?

Of course the question arose, what to do with the old black beauty? Dave wants to sell it. I am happy to keep it on the side porch, which conveniently has a grounded outlet, never gets wet in a rain storm (east side of the house) and makes good use of that porch. Yes, the screen door opens fully. And isn't just so appropo to have a big ol' appliance on the porch?

And look, all the beer, and soda, and ten pounds of potatoes and onions can be stored out there. I project this will also be the future home of 700 cucumbers.

******

We never got the magnolia, the timbers or the manure. We are so easily distracted.

The Butcher's Wife
While we love living the rural lifestyle, there are a few things I do miss about suburbia. The grocery stores, for example. We do not have the luxury of oodles of choices of exotic produce or lovely meats close at hand. If I travel an hour away, I can find what I want, but that is hardly convenient.

Since I married a butcher, I had the option of asking him to bring home a cut of meat that was superior. (That didn't mean he would always remember to do it, however.) And my own experience of working in the meat market gave me an edge over what to look for in a cut of meat. Now I have no service counter, or meatman to help me get what I want.

My limited choices do not include asking for a specific piece of meat or even a category.

Lamb chops? Forget it.

And when it comes to the staple of almost every kitchen, GROUND BEEF, I am really underwhelmed. The offerings are pitiful. I have not purchased fresh ground beef in five months. And even then, it was just OK, not Dave's Famous Blazing Red Sunglasses Required Ground Beef.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.
I bought a nice three pound package of beef chuck, labeled as boneless country ribs (O sure.) with nice marbeling and limited amounts of fat. I took it home and cut the meat into large chunks about 1.5-2". Then I popped it, unwrapped, into the freezer for about an hour, until it was stiff and hard, but not totally frozen.

Then I got out my Cuisinart and put a few chunks of frosty beef in and whirled it up. I transferred the chopped bits to a bowl and continued until all the meat was chopped. It was still frosty, but it looked a lot like hamburger should.

Of course the taste test would tell the rest of the story. I had a few bits of fat that I didn't want to chop, so I rendered those in a saute pan and then added my freshly made patty. Salt and pepper were the only other ingredients.

DEE-Licious!

Sure it took a bit of effort, but the resulting burger was worth it. And now I have the rest of the meat wrapped and ready to thaw for my next recipe.

Learning how to make do is kinda like an adventure. Having fresh produce from the garden has already begun, with lettuces and soon, our first radishes. However, the chickens are on strike and I was forced to BUY eggs.
All that crowing with nothing to show for it. Those rascals!

Rocks Away!

From the first time I walked on this rock filled pathway I knew it was a mistake. Bumpy, slippery, and just plain awful. The previous owner put these down, bucket by bucket and finished the job just minutes before we saw the place.
I so didn't want to complain since I didn't want to have to move them myself. The rocks splash dust and mud up onto the foundation which Dave wants to paint, so without my urging, he got the idea to move them to the pond edge.

Now they are all gone, except for a few stragglers imbedded in the ground.

All those yucky rocks are now on the banks of the pond, keeping down the weeds and making the pond look landscaped.

So now the plan is to put woodchips down in the pathway, and logs steps going down the hillside, where the cucumbers and zucchini are growing nicely, so far... I am thrilled! What a man!

Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille

'

This is a tomato blossom, from my Pink Brandywine tomato, still in its nursery pot. Imagine the size of the tomato this will produce! It looks more like a sunflower than a tomato.

Sweetbush blossoms. These are new to me, and are kinda hard papery things. Not at all what you would think of as blossomy. But with the morning light showing through them, they look just as delicate as a rose.

I love the buds of the Hosta Elegans that are forming now. Thick, sturdy and dripping with dew.

And the newest member of the family is this white iris, the first to open. WE are so pleased to have iris, and I have added two plants myself, a pink, and a lime green specimen.

Here's a neat trick: To see these pictures in their full size, click on the image and hit the F11 button to remove your menu bar temporarily. Wow! Then hit F11 to restore your normal page.

Rosies and Rhodies

Rose Breasted Grosbeaks at our feeder. We have seen the female too, who wears a dull brown striped outfit, poor darling. The males have such a fine ensemble with a really pink breaststripe down their middle. We also were visited with three glowing blue grosbeaks, eating the chicken feed in the pen, but I was sans camera, so I'll have to wait to post pictures until I am luckier.

At dusk I went out to the shade garden to shoot the newly opened rhododendrons. Pink is the color of them all I think, altho only this one of the four has revealed itself.
The buds are so deep pink.

The cabbages are getting HUGE already, and are both blue-green and purple. Will this ever become a red cabbage as advertised? I have never grown cabbages before, but am so glad I decided to have these in my kitchen garden. I also have some smaller stonehead specimens, which look like regular storebought cabbages so far.

Except for more basil seedlings to come, the kitchen gardens are completed. I have used the plastic bottles as mini-greenhouses for my poblano pepper sprouts. They took FOREVER to sprout and I don't want anything to mess with their eventual maturing. Behind them are nine California Wonder plants, from a pack that I have had as long as the cabbages. I just put them in because the soil temps rose to an appropriate 50 degrees. I have flowers, both annuals and perennials mixed in with the veggies and some cilantro seeds have been scattered near the walkway, making them easier to pick when needed.
I still have pots of tomatoes to plant, but we are in the middle of constructing a bed for them and are waiting to get more landscape timbers to finish off the plot. The varieties that are going in are German Pink, Brandywine, Park's Whopper and Sweet 100's. Way too many tomatoes for one girl, since Dave doesn't eat them. Add to that, 9 cucumber plants and 9 zucchini, and I should seriously begin designing my fruit stand for the coming harvest. What have I done?

The Best Time of Day

Another glorious morning here at the Mexican Chalet. Even rainy mornings are glorious, because then I don't have to water the many plants. Tomorrow we expect a good storm but today will be sunny and warm.
I missed the bottom stair and fell on my butt yesterday. It was my famous ankle that always gets sprained. It didn't hurt for several hours, and I got some work done, but when I was planting on the hillside slope, it spoke to me loud and clear. I had to hobble off to bed midday. After a nice nap and some Aleve I was much better thank you. And meanwhile Dave MULCHED THE HILL!!

Ok there is still some more to do, but if you click on the first picture, you can see he has lots more mulch to add to the lower parts. What is difficult to see is that we dug 8 holes and filled each with a 40lb bag of composted cow manure and will add seedlings to each.

So far I have planted zucchini, and Sweet Baby Watermelons, with acorn squash, butternut and cantaloupe to follow. I also planted two hills of watermelons sprouts in the orchard, in an area made vacant by a dead blueberry bush. I saw vole holes, and that means the babies probably will be discovered and the roots eaten. Those damn voles. If not, and they reach maturity, the melons themselves may be stolen. That's what happened the last time I ventured into vine crops. Funny, no one ever steals the zucchini.

A Good Fire Pokin' Stick

Don't tell Al Gore but we have been burning wood outdoors this week. The huge dump of logs is diminishing and Dave puts out the fire each night. But...when I take my morning walk the coals under the white ashes are still red, so I find a good fire pokin' stick and add a few bits of bark, leaves and twigs and soon it all is ablaze again.

Then I wake up Dave and he adds more wood to the fire. When they built this house they moved the downed trees to three or four spots on the property and they are such an eyesore. It will take quite some time to eliminate all of them. If I lived here alone it would never happen, but Dave dreams bigger than I do.

Denver National Quilt Festival III

Bradford Copse

Mancuso's Denver Quilt Show begins today through Sunday, and the Chicago School of Fusing has a special exhibit which includes these and ten of my smaller quilts.

Bon Bon #1 and #2

Bon Bon #3 and #4

This is the first time any of these pieces have been seen in public. I hope you let me know if you visit the show and see these pieces.