The Bottle Tree

A bottle tree in the garden is totally a southern thing, y'all.

I have been wanting a bottle tree in the garden 
for quite some time now.  
I think they are just beautiful!
But I also think I'm becoming one of those people,
you know the one, 
the crazy neighbor who has too much yard art.

I'm not that bad yet, but I'm working on it!!

This wasn't exactly the style tree I had planned when I was having bottle tree fantasies. I had pictured a free flowing, tree-like form, but whenever I came across those, they were ridiculously expensive. So I had Doug buy a 4x4 post and Danny and I hammered in nails for the bottles to rest upon.

It's a work-in-progress!

She's mostly "nekkid" right now, but she will evolve over the year as I collect bottles here and there.  I'm so tempted to go buy wine this very minute for the pretty bottles and just pour the wine into another container because 

Impatient = my middle name.

Bottle trees add such a nice touch of whimsy to the garden and have wonderful benefits such as never needing to water, prune, or fertilize.  Plus, they are rumored to catch evil spirits roaming around at night! 

It's a tree that even the laziest gardener can't kill,

but they might stumble a little going out to the garden after drinking all that wine and beer!

No time for blogging today!

Now that I've got that pesky garden snail problem licked, 

I can get down to some serious sauce making!  

Loads of  SanMarzano tomatoes are ripening by the day. 

I've waited all summer for this!

Check out my super simple way to make tomato sauce HERE.

You won't be sorry!

Just call me the Drunken Snail Slayer!

Y'all, 

I HATE SNAILS!

They have completely decimated my garlic bed (above).

And have eaten through more tomatoes than I can count (below).

I would go out to the garden each morning and pick off and crush as many as I could find, but they simply outnumbered me!  I posted the question on how to get rid of them on Facebook and my ever-wise friend, Peggy, gave me a solution...

BEER.

She said to bury a small container at soil level in the garden.

Fill the container just shy of the rim with beer.

Luckily, I just happened to have some lovely Shiner Bock in the fridge.  I really hated to waste in on those slimy villains, but I was desperate! 

I set the filled containers out at dusk, 

because the snails become more active at night.  

I thought by morning I might have a dozen or so. 

 I almost passed out when I found THIS:

These greedy little slime balls crawled to the container, 

drank the beer, got drunk, fell in, and drowned!

If I repeat this 2-3 more nights I might make a dent in the snail population in my garden!  Although, I might get some funny looks at the local grocery store for buying beer in the middle of the day with four children in tow...

Thank you, Peggy, for your wonderful idea!

You're definitely getting some tomatoes 
(and whatever else you want from the garden) 
for helping me defeat the army of snails!

It must be summer!

Because I have 'cukes comin' out of my ears~

and that means it's

PICKLE TIME!

I used to hate, like REALLY HATE, bread and butter pickles.  I couldn't understand why anyone would want to eat a sweet pickle!  In my opinion, if you're going to eat a pickle, it's got to be crisp, garlicky, dilly, and just a bit spicy.

Recently, by mistake, I had some sweet pickles on a hamburger....

it was delicious!

And ever since then I have been a believer in the goodness of bread and butter pickles!

  

Here's my recipe for making them:

Pack 7-10 pickling cucumbers into quart sized jars 

with half of a thinly sliced white onion.

Make a brine of:

2 cups apple cider vinegar

(Use an unpasteurized vinegar like Bragg's) 

1 1/2 cups of honey

1 Tbs. mustard seed

1 Tbs celery seed

2 Tbs sea salt

Pour this mixture over the cucumbers.

Place lids on jars and give them a good shake to get rid of all the air pockets and put them in the fridge.  They'll be perfect in two weeks and will last months in the fridge.

And because I love them so, I made a batch of good 'ol lactofermented pickles!

Here's a post on how to make them:

The Creamer Chronicles :  Old Fashioned Pickles

Here's to summer time and eating pickles, 

which ever ones you prefer...sweet or sour!

Get your pucker on!

The sunflower patch

Last year, I ordered all these sunflower seed varieties from 

Baker Creek Seeds.

I didn't have great success because I planted them late and we had really extreme heat last summer as well as drought. 

 I love sunflowers so much that I was determined that this year we'd have our very own garden space dedicated to these lovelies!

We had some local tree trimmers dump a pile of woodchips in our yard.  The pile sat around a while before we could get them all spread, but that worked to our benefit!  The ground underneath the pile was rich and soft and all the grass was gone.  

It was the perfect place for our sunflower patch!  

Danny loves the flowers as much as I do and we eagerly went to work spreading seeds.

Within a few weeks, some of the stalks were as tall as Dan!

And with the warmer temps and tons of rain, 

new seedlings are coming up every day.

"Teddy Bear" sunflower

I get happy just looking at these beauties!

"Henry Wilde" sunflower

HERE,  HERE, HERE, and HERE 

are some links to sunflower gardens past.

Have a happy and SUNNY day!!

About a boy

There is this boy I know,

he's kinda stolen my heart.

He calls me "Mom" and I love him so!

Our parish bazaar was this past weekend.  

Kyle and the other boys had signed up to volunteer to help out in the game booths and for clean up.  

Kyle said he wanted to do more...

 He asked me to buy him some really good plywood and paint, and after finishing his schoolwork and chores for the day, he went out to the garage for hours each day.

He drew, cut, and painted.

He sweat and worked hard all week.

By Friday afternoon, he had three works of yard art to donate to the auction at our bazaar.  

And when it was all over, 

Kyle's projects fetched $400 for our church. 

 May God bless these wonderfully kind and generous parishioners.

And may God bless this special boy!

May he always have a servant's heart.

He teaches this mama by his example.

Growing in the garden...

A little butternut squash...

Tomatoes...

Peppers...

Pickles...

Elderberry...

And a garden arch!

This is the remnants of a wood chip pile.  

The ground below is soft and rich and I thought it would be a great place to plant, especially since all the grass under it is dead!

Kyle and Doug put this together for me yesterday.  All it is, is four small rebar hammered into the ground with two large PVC pipes slid over the ends.  A little chicken wire and zip ties complete the arch.

Luffa and gourds will grow over the arch and the fruit will hang down.  I think it will be so pretty in bloom.  I'm also planting a small watermelon patch below to cover up all those wood chips!

Right now, the garden is my favorite place to be!

They're baaaack!

Every year I plant dill in the garden,

and every year the Black Swallowtail caterpillars find it.

I even go to the trouble of planting in different parts of the yard each time...but they always find it! 

They're pretty smart little boogers,

I wish my kids could find their stuff so well!

Their first year here, we took them inside and kept them in a big jar to watch them transform into butterflies.  

You can read all about it HERE. 

 It was really fun back then....now, not so much!

  

I wanted that dill for my pickles and other recipes!

But I get a kick out of the kids continual curiosity with them.  Multiple times a day they go out to check on them, 

they've even named a few.

The caterpillars have won this round by endearing themselves to the kids (they really are kind of cute!)  so I'm headed to Walmart to pick up another pack of dill seeds...and maybe some bug netting, too!

I will have pickles!!

(saying as I shake my fist in righteous anger!)

Feast of Our Lady of Fatima

May 13th, feast day of Our Lady of Fatima.

We started our day by watching an EWTN documentary titled, 'Fatima ~ Our Hope'

and then an episode of 'Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen' (circa 1954) about the story of Fatima and it's impact (which is still relevant in 2014!).

Then we made Miracle of the Sun cupcakes!

And took them to the church office staff.

Doug was able to pick up some holy cards with the Fatima novena on them, and then he and the boys prayed a decade of the Rosary in the church before coming home.

O, my Jesus, forgive us our sins.

Save us from the fires of hell.

Lead all souls to Heaven

Especially those in most need of Thy mercy!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!