dolin bliss

Canning and Quilt Crazy

Over the long holiday weekend I wanted to get some canning done, with the veggies I bought at the farmer's market and also some veggies from my garden.

 

All of the above were picked fresh from my crazy prolific garden.  I canned the beets, zucchini, some of the jalapenos, lemon cucumbers and crystal apple cucumbers.  I didn't want to waste the beet greens, so we sauteed those on Sunday night.  YUM.  I had big plans to can all afternoon, but our little Domino pup, decided to eat a black widow spider, that I had poisoned the night before.  So we spent the afternoon at the vet.  He is just fine and never even showed any signs of being sick, but I would rather be safe than sorry.  Once we got back home I settled into my crazy night of making pickled vegetables.  I was up until midnight getting all of this done.  I know, what a wild way to spend your Saturday night!  

Everything turned out pretty good, but I am in love with the green beans and the beets.  I used this recipe for the green beans from Sunset Magazine.  Soooo good.  I want to make more of them.  Sunset has a great guide to canning, if you have never done it before or just rusty at it.  This guide has been very useful to me lately.

For the past nine weeks, every Monday night I have been going to a quilt workshop that I planned in partnership with the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association.  We were trying out this workshop for the first time with participants from Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence.  There have been 5 women who have come every week to work on making their own quilt.  Most of them have never sewn before, so this has been a great skill building exercise for them.  It has been great fun for all involved and we are all almost finished with our quilts (I got to make one too).  

 

Here is a little peak at mine:

 I will post pictures of the finished quilts, in the next few weeks.  We have a few more sessions to go, before everyone will be done.  

I really haven't been totally slacking off!

Want a little peak into what we have been up to here at Lulubliss...

-Growing leek and jalapeno seedlings.

- More leeks and tomato seedlings.  

- Make my own worm compost bin!  I was too cheap to buy one for $80, so I made this one for $12.  Here is a video on how to do it.  I have some bricks set inside the bottom one, so the top one (where 400 of my new wormy pets live) has some air circulation.

- My first contribution to feed our wiggly worms.

As I am sure you have already guessed, the gardening bug has bitten me.  So here is what I asked my sweet husband to help me with while he was on his spring break.

- Marking the territory for our two raised beds.

- We had to dig up all the grass, where the beds are going.

- Fantastic 10'x3'x1' bed my sweetie made for me, in place.  Mikey has to check it out.  

I missed taking a picture of the next couple of steps.  We dug out a good portion of the dirt pictured above, then lined the sides of the bed with some heavy duty plastic sheeting, laid down 1/2" grid wire mesh on bottom (to keep the gophers out) and finally filled it with some "veggie mix" soil (that was so stinky).

- Bed #1 all planted.  There are zucchini, lemon cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, basil, jalapenos, leeks, spinach, carrots, radish and a variety of lettuces all in this one bed!  I am so excited for things to really get growing.  We had to put up the little wire fence up to keep the dogs out, they were eating the stinky manure dirt (yuck).  Domino still tries to sneak a taste now and then.

- Here are both beds, the covered back bed measures 12'x3'x1'.  We have to keep it covered and unplanted until we can make the other doggie fence.  I am going to plant more peppers, lettuce, herbs and persian cucumbers in this bed.