Cross Stitching

 There's still a little cross stitching happening but what little I do has to get squeezed in between the garden and canning. And . . The finger! Ugh! It's frustrating. The finger is so much better, and I think it's still improving, but it's still a problem. If I bump it, or tap it against something or try to peel anything - potatoes, eggplant, apple .. it gets red and swollen again. It recovers within a day or so but it's been six weeks so I'm more than ready for it to be "normal".

I still cannot use the index finger to stitch unless it's just for a few stitches so I'm getting pretty good at using the thumb and middle finger.

On the stitching front, I've framed a few pieces that had been sitting around for quite a while. One was from 2021. About time, huh? I'll get pictures when I get a couple more framed. I ordered two more frames last week

Now that the patriotic stitching is not my priority, but I do still have a couple of pieces to get finished, I want to start working on WIPs again and Christmas projects.

The Blooming Stitcher and Rushing Rabbit Studio are hosting a stitch along for Christmas Roads, which started July 1. I had bought the chart when The Blooming Stitcher first mentioned it so I started that.

I didn't have the green floss for the border and the trees but it should be here this week. I went ahead and started with the floss I have. I'm working to get to the house so I can stitch that but without the green for those trees, I'm afraid to trust my counting so I'll keep working on other areas til the green floss arrives, hopefully Tuesday. Markup tells me I'll finish it July 27 but Markup thinks I'm going to keep stitching without stopping and working on something else. Crazy app!  :)

My linen is more gold than the photos are indicating. I started at the top and almost all of the white oval has been stitched. There's a bit more fill in at the bottom to be done.

I thought maybe if I got the words stitched, I could count up from there and start the house but I'm not that brave. I didn't have the called for color of floss for the text either but I had one that's close enough. It's supposed to be a gray and this one is kinda grayish green. I like it! I actually have a green that might work for the outer border and trees so if my package doesn't arrive by Tuesday, I may go ahead and use that one if I'm ready to start stitching those things.

Garden & Canning

It's that time of year when the garden is keeping me busy. I've canned more potatoes, cowboy candy and LOTS of chicken broth, which obviously did not come out of the garden.

There's still a lot more chicken broth to make but the bones/chicken are all in the freezer so I'll work on that as I can. Actually, it's all in Debbie's freezer because I didn't have room in the freezer for them but I'll bring them home, make the broth, then get more til they're all gone.

I'm so happy with the "fix" Vince came up with for protecting the squash. I think I had mentioned that apparently squash seeds accidentally got added to the compost and the pepper bed has pretty much been taken over by squash. At first I thought it was all butternut but there's delicata squash in there too. Who can complain about all that coming up and producing when I didn't even plant it? I'm most excited that I'm going to get at least a few candy roasters this year.

I had to pick this candy roaster and it wasn't quite ready so I hope it will be good. It was about an inch from growing right under the greenhouse. Those vines are taking over the entire back yard. If I had left it to grow under the greenhouse, it would have died over there and hundreds of seeds would have produced and grown through the spaces in the wood floor in the greenhouse and it would have been a mess . . probably for years. The fines were attached to the rocks around the base of the greenhouse so I couldn't move the vine so . . I picked it and will probably cook it tomorrow.

We're getting lots of eggplants, peppers, still a bit of zucchini, and a few tomatoes. The tomatoes aren't doing great and neither is the okra. I may have to give up growing garlic so I can get the okra planted sooner since I harvest the garlic, amend the soil and plant the okra in the same bed. This year it was at least three weeks later than usual when the garlic was ready. We'll see but the okra is really behind. Garlic is fairly inexpensive to buy. Okra is rather expensive to buy so if I have to choose, I think we'll keep growing the okra. I may end up buying tomatoes for canning and if I can get good ones that aren't too expensive, I may not even grow tomatoes next year. 

Vince is NOT a gardener. He'll help me when I need help but he has zero interest in gardening. He's funny though . . we've been together for over 30 years and I've had a garden almost every year and he still seems shocked when I come in with a big basket full of goodies from the garden. Today I came in with a bunch of peppers and four big and beautiful eggplants. His eyes got big and he said "You grew those??"  He seems surprised that things grow in our garden!  :)

Medicinal Herbs

 Several of you have asked for more info about medicinal herbs/remedies. I'm not trying to be evasive and I would love to write for days about medicinal herbs but there's a very fine line between giving medical advice (which I am NOT qualified to do!) and sharing what I've learned through the years. There are so many online resources and I will list a few here and hope you can get enough info to get you started.

Probably the most common "concoctions" are tinctures and salves. I'm not much into tinctures. Many are very beneficial but, at least for now, we need salves way more than we've needed the benefit of tinctures. Salves can be used for itching, stings, bug bites - the things that happen daily around here.

When I make a salve, I start with herbs, mostly dried herbs. They can be dried on a towel on a hot sunny day or in a dehydrator. I usually dry mine below 100 degrees for about 20 hours.

The herbs/weeds/medicinal plants I make sure we ALWAYS have are:

• Mullein
• Comfrey
• Elderberry
• Turmeric
• Tulsi
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Dead Nettle
• Plantain
• Sumac
• Burnweed
• Dock
• Callendula
• Echinacea
• Self-Heal
• American Beauty Berry
• Yarrow
• Chamomile
• Wild Lettuce

There are so many! There are more than what I've listed - just am not remembering them all now. I don't grow them all every year. The mullein pops up every year, some years there's more than other years. Because we've changed what we had growing in some areas, we've had to add add mullein plants but in a few years, we'll be pulling up more than we leave in the ground.

We have comfrey, elderberry, self-heal, echinacea, American Beauty Berry, yarrow and sumac that we've planted and they come back every year. Mullein, for the most part, burnweed, wild lettuce, dock, plantain, dead nettle and dandelions are weeds that come back uninvited every year.

I plant turmeric, Tulsi, garlic, turmeric, ginger, chamomile, and calendular every year. Of course, ginger, garlic and turmeric get used in the kitchen all year.

Of course, you do not have to have all of these plants, and there may be others you want to grow but this will give you some things to think about.

Here are some useful links:

Barbara O'Neill is the one person who has had the biggest influence on my desire to learn about herbs/weeds as medicine. She has excellent books and videos.

Top 10 Medicinal Plants

10 Edible and Medicinal Weeds

Medicinal Herbs

NOTES:  PLEASE READ

1.  If you are taking Rx meds, be very careful about adding anything new without speaking with your prescribing physician. Some herbs are quite powerful and can cause problems with adverse interactions with other meds.

2.  I feel like everyone needs comfrey but one type is very invasive. I think it's some kind of Russian comfrey that is NOT invasive but I was checking to see what kind to recommend and some say there are types of Russian comfrey that IS invasive. The comfrey we have does not spread. Yes, it may grow from being a small plant to being a larger plant each year but it doesn't pop up here, there and yonder.

3. If  you are not in a position to grow your own or you just don't want to do it, I've always had good results with Mountain Rose Herbs. They can be a bit slow to ship. I've also used Frontier Coop and Azure has a few dried herbs that are medicinal.

Speaking of Frontier Coop, I LOVE hibiscus tea and this recipe is so refreshing! It has helped me quite a bit in kicking the Dr. Pepper habit.

One last thing:  Making a salve couldn't be easier. I dry the herbs. Then put them in a jar, pour in enough olive oil to cover the herbs. Let it sit in a cool, dark place for 2 - 6 months (some take longer, sometimes I just don't have time and they sit longer). Strain out the herbs. Gently heat the olive oil, adding in enough bees wax to the olive oil so that it thickens and gets a bit hard. I use a 1:4 ration (1 part bees wax to 4 parts olive oil) and I'm not exact with my measurements. I do store the unopened containers in the fridge until I need them. I try to make enough to use and share for one year. I have no idea what the "shelf life" is but I enjoy making it so I never mind having to make more.

I store my salves in the 4 oz. Ball jelly jars. You can buy fancy, cute jars . . I just use what's easy to get and fairly inexpensive.

Hope this helps and I hope no one thinks I'm being to evasive/unhelpful.

Foraging!

 Is it really "foraging" if it's in my back yard and I know it's there, even if I didn't plant it? In my mind, foraging is going out looking for something you may or may not find but . . foraging sounds more "back to nature" than picking a weed out of the back yard.

I see pretty, well manicured yards but we will never have that kind of yard and I'm sure my neighbors wish we would do better but I have wild lettuce, curly dock, mullein, burnweed and plantain. We also have American Beauty Berries and comfrey that we planted.

Above is dock. Below is burnweed.

I have the burnweed, dock, mullein (shown below) and comfrey in the dehydrators. I will use those leaves to make three different salves.

Soon I will use some of the American Beauty Berry leaves to make various insect repellent and skin conditioners.

It's hard to believe we're already at the end of June and by mid to late July, most of these leaves will be starting to get dry so I wanted to harvest and use them while they're still healthy.

Weird Things

 Maybe this happens to everyone but I feel like so many weird things happen to me . . not bad weird but just weird. Is it weird that I just used the word weird three times in one sentence?  :)

I'm not going to say Joplin has the worst drivers in the world but they should definitely be near the top!  It's a small city and probably has the average amount of traffic any city of its size has. I guess I spent too much time driving in rural Texas, Missouri and Kentucky because every time I drive in Joplin traffic, I wish I lived in the days before automobiles were invented. Seriously!

Yesterday morning, about 8:15 a.m. I was driving into town to meet Debbie. I was sitting at a red light - first car in line. I was headed south and there are two southbound lanes and a turn lane and one northbound lane. I was in the far right southbound lane and, as I said, stopped for a red light. The northbound lanes had the same configuration. The turn lanes going both directions get to go while we wait, then they have to stop and all the non-turning vehicles get to go.

The light turned green and I was entering the intersection. There was an older pickup truck headed northbound and he was turning left but he got to the light after the turn arrow was gone. He stopped and as with all intersections in Joplin, I make sure there's no one running the light before I start moving. The white truck was stopped but just as I started into the intersection, he started too. I thought . . wait a minute, dude . . we can't both go. I stopped and he stopped, both of us well into the intersection. I started to go and he started to go. I stopped and sat there while he went. It was a very, very old man (says the very old woman!). So . . he went on his merry way, and so did I. 

Today, about 9:30 a.m. Vince and I had to go to town to pick up my new glasses. We got to that same intersection and I was telling Vince about the old man in the truck and how he wasn't driving very good. Vince wasn't understanding which lane the truck was in and which lane I was in. There was a white truck across from us, in the same lane the white truck had been in yesterday. I told Vince - I was in this same lane. There was a white truck just where that white truck is. I was stopped for the light . . told him the whole story. I finished my story about what happened. The turn arrow came on, the white truck was turning left and he had the right-of-way. When he turned and I could see him better . . it was the same old man! The exact same old man in the exact same old pickup truck at the exact same intersection. What are the chances of that happening two days in a row when obviously, neither of us have jobs to go to, we live probably 12 miles from that intersection and don't go that way often. I have no idea where he lives or where he goes but I just thought that was so weird . . me telling Vince the story about him and there he was!

Then second weird thing today - I told Vince while we were out, I'd like to go to Sam's Club and get some chicken. I like Sam's organic chicken much better than Walmart or Aldi chicken. So, after getting my glasses, we went to Sam's.

I knew Nicole, Addie and one of Nicole's friends were coming to Joplin today because Addie had a dentist appointment. Nicole doesn't have a Sam's account so I surely didn't expect to see her there. We were in line to check out and I was looking up something for Vince on my phone. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone running but I didn't pay attention. Then when I looked up, the person was running right at me - and then I realized it was Nicole. I said "What are you doing in here?" Her friend has a Sam's account and needed a few things so Nicole, Addie and the friend were in line checking out too. What are the chances of us running into Nicole and Addie in Sam's in Joplin? They live an hour from here and don't even have a  Sam's account!!

Does anyone else think these two things are weird??

Our Flag - Finished

 Tonight (Wednesday) I finished Our Flag, which is published in the Summer, 2026 issue of Punch Needle and Primitive Stitcher magazine. It's designed by Crocette a gogo. This chart will not be in Etsy shop now since it's in the newest issue of the magazine.

Even though I thought I had checked everything, once I took it off the frame, I realized I had not stitched the centers of the four flowers at the bottom. Those are now stitched and even though it's a bit wrinkled, it's beautiful.

I have a plan for how I will finish this. If it works, I may have it finished by the end of the weekend . . maybe!

The linen is Tropical Stitches' Perna. I don't think this is a current color for her. I have no idea how long I've had it but I do love Tropical Stitches' linen.

As far as floss used, most of it is called for but I subbed a few colors I didn't have with stash floss.

The Focaccia Bread

 On yesterday's post about the focaccia bread, a couple of readers asked how thick the focaccia bread was since I mentioned using it for sandwiches. I don't know if I mentioned this yesterday but the focaccia bread I've always made has been thin - not cracker thin but probably less than one inch thick. Here's a picture of a piece of the bread I made yesterday.

It's about 1-3/4" (just a tad over) thick and that's probably as thick, maybe thicker, than the focaccia bread Panera uses for their sandwiches. 

This is the recipe I used and it is so good! It truly is so easy - I stirred it up in a bowl with a spoon, the description says it needs to stay in the fridge 18 - 48 hours and she shows one she left in the fridge for three days so it's pretty forgiving. I left mine in about 14 hours and it did great.

I did use whole wheat flour. The recipe called for 512 grams of flour. I used 400 grams of hard white and 112 grams of soft white. I shifted out the bran so I actually milled extra and weighed the flour after it had been shifted. The bread I made this morning, I used all hard white and only shifted the bran out of about half of it so we'll see how that turns out.

The recipe calls for 8 grams of instant yeast. I used 10 grams because I felt like the dough might be a bit heavier with the flour I used. The last change I made was to add more water. I used the 455 grams called for and then added more water until I got the dough where I felt like it needed to be. Sorry . . I didn't measure. On about the third set of stretch and folds, I felt like the dough was a big dry so I added a bit more water. I'm just guessing so use your own judgment but I probably added close to 1/2 cup extra water. Again . . just do what feels right for your dough if using whole wheat flour.