Botanical Garden

It is day #2 of my mom's visit, and we decided to go visit the botanical garden. It was a beautiful sunny day and perfect to go walking around. It was however not the perfect day to go there because they had a charity fundraising walk-a-thon type event going on and it was a madhouse there. We walked around and looked at all the tulips, lilacs, cherry trees, dogwoods, azaleas and it was beautiful.

We got back to a vegetable garden demonstration area where people were working outside. One of the ladies asked me if I would like to have some of the flower plants, because they were getting ready to till up an old neglected bed to plant some vegetables. May as well ask me if I still want to keep breathing! So they dug us up some day lilies, poppies, oxalis and sweet william and put them in plastic grocery bags to carry out.

In case you didn't know, the soil in Alabama is clay. Heavy, dense clay that turns hard as a rock when it is dry like it has been. When they dug up the plants there was a substantial amount of dirt on them. We picked up the bags and started walking back to take them to the car. Before too long it felt like my arms were getting pulled off. The handles on the bags started stretching. We made it to a park bench and sat down to rest. We started off again and made it a little farther and the handles on the bags started breaking. We stopped at another more secluded park bench and decided that something had to be done. So we pulled out the clumps and started knocking off big clods of dirt to lighten up the loads.

We finally made it out, although there was a brief period of time where I was afraid we were going to get tackled as we left since it looked like we were carrying ill-gotten gains. We went out to eat afterwards and then went home. We stopped by the quilt shop and both left with more fabric than we needed to. Tomorrow: On to the nursery and pond store!

More Springtime Goodness

Yet another beautiful spring day today. It was actually 86 degrees yesterday and felt about like summer. Today it was a bit overcast and looked almost like it would rain. Almost. It's actually a bit on the dry side right now and we really could use some rain. I had to water today and I don't like to do that with water straight from the faucet. The water here really smells like chlorine, and when I take a bath it smells almost like a swimming pool. I ran some in a watering can today so it can sit overnight and some of it can evaporate out.

The grass got cut today for the second time and is starting to green up. There are weeds growing all in the sod and we're probably going to have to get it treated. Our previous lawn was a collection of weeds with a few sprigs of grass in it, so it'd be nice to have something that was mostly grass.

Tulip Hageri

Spring is definately here and we've been doing a lot of gardening this weekend. Got things planted and beds moved around. I am definately worn out and ready to go back to work so that I can rest.

My baby, you've found him!

I am extremely happy today and all is right with the world. My computer dieded and it had to go into the repair center. It's been gone over a MONTH. I have been lost and wandering without it and hubby and I have been unhappily sharing his. I basically got back a new computer because they replaced the hard drive, motherboard, video card, both DVD drives and part of the chassis.

But now here it is, back in my house and squeaky clean, woohoo! I don't want to put anything on it now because it's so empty. ;)

Hopeless

Since I've been spending a ton more money on books than I'd like to lately, I decided to get started going back to the library more often. That way I can read to my heart's content and not have to pay anything (unless I'm late taking them back!). You know that sounds really good in theory, but there are two evils at work here: previewing books that I like and the Amazon Marketplace where I can have access to thousands and thousands of used bookstores across the country. Case in point:

I've always been a sucker for regional cookbooks, and have always tried to find one for each area that I have lived in. I've been stumped on a regional cookbook for Minnesota. When I was at the library on Sunday I came across this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Savoring-Seasons-Northern-Heartland-Dooley/dp/0816645744/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7914975-6964722?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174358824&sr=8-1
The book is great, it has a lot of commentary and history on the region in it, and some downright tasty (though not healthy!) recipes. So of course I had to buy it. I've found myself prowling around the AM several times in the past few days and I think I'm going to have to start blocking the site now.

My problem is that even though I am telling myself that I really don't NEED anymore books I can complete the transaction in less than two minutes so there isn't time for the buyer's remorse to kick in. Normally when I go to a real book store I will pick up an interesting book, decide to buy it, carry it around for about 5 minutes and then put it back. Just the act of making the decision to buy it makes me feel better, and the hassle of having to actually go check out makes it not worth it. I hope that I don't have to make the library off limits like the bookstores are now. :)

Score 1 for the hometeam!

Or Me 1 - Feral Yeast 0

Second attempt for a rematch and it was much more successful than the last. The main reason is that I decided to use sourdough, which I've had better luck with in the past than straight yeast breads. I had some leftover pumpkin from making some pumpkin oatmeal cookies and wanted to find a recipe to use it. So I found a pumpkin dinner roll recipe online and used a sourdough recipe conversion spreadsheet to remake the recipe. I attempted it starting last night and these were the results today. Here's the recipe that I used:

Sourdough Pumpkin Dinner Rolls

1 c. sourdough starter

3/4 c. milk (or soy milk)

4-5 c. flour

1 tsp. salt

6 Tbs. canola oil

1 c. canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)

1/3 c. brown sugar, packed

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ginger

1/8 tsp. allspice

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Combine starter, milk, 2 c. flour, canola oil, pumpkin, brown sugar and spices in a large bowl and mix well. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave to sit for about 24 hours. Remove plastic wrap and stir spond. Combine remaining flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl and whisk to combine. Add flour mixture to sponge and stir until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl. Turn dough out and knead 3-4 minutes, adding flour only to keep from sticking.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Divide dough into 24 equal portions and roll them into balls. Place several inches apart on a baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit for 15 minutes. Brush tops with milk and bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

For some reason I was thinking that the rolls would come out pretty sweet and I wasn't thinking they would be a good dinner roll. They aren't though, they are just right. Really rich tasting with a subtle spicy taste. I plan on trying them again for holiday rolls this fall. :) They turned out slightly heavy and I'm thinking it's because I didn't use bread flour or maybe needed to knead it longer. I'll have to do some tweaking to make it better.

Crepe Murder

I'm so happy today because I can finally start talking about gardening again. Since moving into our new house last fall there wasn't much to talk about. There didn't seem much use in getting started on anything with winter right around the corner, and there was so many other things to do. But today is another matter all together.

The sun is shining very brightly outside, but the air is still really chilly. The birds are singing and the wind is blowing in the trees. One of the projects that has been on my radar lately is pruning our crepe myrtle trees. For those who don't know what a crepe myrtle is - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepe_myrtle Part of the deal with the new housing development were two trees in the front yard. The ones that were there had been planted in the middle of the drought and looked dead, so I asked for them to be replaced. I asked for crepe myrtles if possible. When I was growing up, we had two of them that my grandmother had planted growing in front of the house and I thought it would be nice if I had some again. I was reading an article in Southern Living that was trying to prevent people from committing Crepe Murder by beheading their trees in the mistaken belief that it would give the tree a beautiful form.

So with my newly acquired pruning tools I set forth to do battle with my own. For the most part it was pretty straightforward, but one of my trees has a split in the main trunk. I'm going to have to figure out what I need to do with it so I can get started with retraining it if necessary.

I've also been poring through gardening magazines and trying to figure out what I want to plant where. I have made enormous lists of what I want to plant and have to keep pruning it back. Cost is a constraint in this because we need to get a fence put up in the back yard first before we do anything else.