Strawberry Season

 Yesterday (Saturday) Vince had gone to a neighborhood garage sale in one of the subdivisions near us. He came home and yelled "Come upstairs. We're going somewhere!" OK. I went upstairs and he said "We're going to pick strawberries!" OK. Over in Carthage there's a new strawberry patch and it was so nice. No mud holes. The wind was blowing a bit so there were no mosquitoes. It was fairly cool.

When you get there, you are given a bucket (which you pay for and bring back with you each time you go). Of course, we got the BIG buckets, picked our berries and went to check out. 

We got up to the checkout area. The lady weighed Vince's bucket - 10.94 pounds. Then she weighed my bucket and had a really funny look on her face. My bucket was also 10.94 pounds - exactly! Because we managed to do that, she gave us a free pound of strawberries.

These were, without a doubt, the best strawberries I've ever had. They were sweet and juicy and big and clean!

There are blueberry farms around here too and when I can get good berries, I always make blueberry and strawberry (separately) syrups. They're so good on ice cream, pancakes, biscuits. I like to put some in our smoothies. I like to make a drink with Matcha tea, a bit of strawberry syrup and milk or cream.

We kept out some strawberries for eating and used the rest to make strawberry syrup. I ended up with 24 pints of syrup.

I'm so happy to have that. We haven't had strawberry syrup on the shelf for about 4 months. We still have a few jars of blueberry syrup left but I will need to make more of that this year too.

I think the strawberry patch is open again Tuesday morning so we're going to go back and get more strawberries to make a double batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. 

Tuesday afternoon we will go back to Nevada, MO with Cooper so I will be rushed to get jam made that day. Wednesday I will be gone all day. Thursday a friend is out of town and I'll be caring for her pets and Cooper goes back to Nevada so I need to get some streamlining done to get the jam made.

My plan is:

• Monday, cut, clean and chop the rhubarb.

• Measure out the sugar for two batches of jam.

• Wash the jars, lids and rings, then just heat them up before filling.

• Add water to the canner. I should be able to can a double batch in the big canner.

• Then, on Monday, get the strawberries picked early (they open at 9 a.m.). Come home, get them stemmed and chopped.

• Depending on how long it takes for the jam to thicken, I may be able to get it all canned.

• If not, we should be home by 6 p.m. and I can get it canned then.

It will get done and I'll be glad when it's finished!

I did take a casserole out of the freezer so I can heat that up and serve it for dinner . . don't have to think about that.

Catching Up and Garden Update

 Last week I received an email from a blog reader saying 'I hope you're ok'. I hadn't posted since April 21 and she was concerned.

I know we're all busy but it seems like we've been SO busy! And yet, we haven't done anything worthy of writing about. I will try to do better.

Here's just a bit of a summary of the highlights -- as far as I can remember.

April 30 - I went to Nevada, MO to stitch with Debbie

April 29 - Oscar went to the vet for his annual. That was a ridiculous fiasco. I gave him a tranquilizer (as instructed by the vet 2 hours before the appointment). We ended up having to wait almost an hour to see the vet (and we got there at least 10 minutes early) so it was a LONG wait for Oscar and he gets more nervous the longer he has to wait. At one point I went outside with him and he was fine but I had to hold him and he weighs 18 pounds! We're going to work on the weight. He is one of the "old style" Dachshunds and the vet says he isn't overweight but he doesn't need to get any bigger.

April 27 - Cooper is now going to obedience school (per se) twice a week in Nevada, MO. It's an hour there, an hour back, and class is an hour so that takes a chunk out of the afternoon.

April 23 - Vince and I had a one hour meeting with a nutritionist at Natural Grocer. Did you know that Natural Grocer has a nutritionist (in each store I think) and you can see them for free - as often as you like. She was amazing and she never pushed us to buy anything from the store, though we do shop there a lot.

We're back where I left off. I'm sure there was more than happened that I've forgotten about.

What's making me crazy (always something, right?) is the weather! I still haven't planted my garden starts.

This is all the plants I'm trying to keep alive. Into the greenhouse at night, except last night it was too cold even in there so at midnight, I was out bringing all those plants into the downstairs garage. Look at that eggplant on the front left . . totally outgrown it's little pot. Most of the pepper plants have peppers on them. Some of the tomatoes have fruit on them. It's so frustrating.

Wednesday night, Accuweather says our low will be 39 but, as I've said here a million times, we're in a valley and the lows are usually 3 to 5 degrees less at our house. So the plants will all have to come inside again . . bugs and all. I think that's the last cold night and I should be able to plant the starts. I have already planted the seeds but, of course, the ground isn't getting very warm so I haven't seen anything up yet.

The potatoes are starting to bloom.

The volunteer potatoes have already started taking over a second bed. If they do well this year, I'll be happy but if not, next year I'm pulling up every one of them that comes up. I've already been dealing with a few potato beetles. Guess the cold nights don't scare them.

The garlic is looking good. One year in Texas when I had planted about 500 garlic seeds, the garlic never made scapes. I kept waiting for scapes because that's when I start watching to see when I need to pull the garlic. It all ended up staying in too long before I realized there weren't going to be any scapes that year and it pretty much ruined the whole crop. This year I haven't seen any scapes yet. I'm going to be watching for dying bottom leaves so if there are no scapes, I'll still know when the pull the garlic. I need to pull it as soon as it's ready because usually the same day I pull it out, I plant okra in the two raised beds where the garlic was. I need to get the okra in the ground - the longer it's in there, the more okra I'll get.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some very important things <G> but that's what I remember for now.

Patriotic Finishing Pieces

 A couple of weeks ago Denise sent me a photo of a Freedom Flock that she had finished and she was showing me the frame. Denise had found it online and it was on sale when she got it. I immediately went to Hobby Lobby's website and couldn't find it on there, but I kept thinking about it.

Debbie is so good about saving all the good stuff she sees on flosstubes and Instagram and sharing it all with me. Last week she showed me a "pear" that Recovering Monogamous Stitcher had shown. If you go to about the 12:45 mark, you will see the finished pear. She used this little patriotic hair "bow" on top of the pear and it was so cute.

After adding a couple of the patriotic hair bows for both to the online cart for us, I went searching to see if they had the patriotic frames back in stock and they did! Not on sale but I showed Debbie and she liked it too so we each ordered one of those.

I hope to get projects finished in time to use both of these this year but, if not, there's always next year (I hope!).

I had already checked our local Hobby Lobby and they didn't have the frames. When I was back in there after seeing the hair bow, I checked on that and they didn't have that either, though they have rows and rows of patriotic items. My guess is that Hobby Lobby has LOTS of patriotic fun things, as well as other seasonal items from time to time, that are on their website but not in the stores - maybe in some but not in all so I'm going to start keeping a closer watch on the website.

The Spring Garden - 2026

 We're now five days past the middle of April. I had planned to get the garden starts planted around April 15 -17 but am still waiting. Next week, we have  a night or two with lows in the mid 40's. When Accuweather says 47, that's usually about 42 at our house in a valley. I almost always count on 5 degrees lower than the prediction, which is for in town. We also have several chances of hail. I guess I'm a little cautious because last year I lost every plant I had started due to hail but, waiting until there's zero chance of hail probably means no garden! So, I'm REALLY hoping to get things planted by the first of May. Crazy but we've had a couple of days where the high was 90 degrees. Where cilantro was planted last year, the seeds dropped, cilantro sprouted and has already grown and bolted - even while we're having nights that get too cool to plant tomatoes and peppers.

Another weird garden thing . . this pepper is going to get harvested before I ever get the plant out of the temporary cup and into the ground. Funny that it's a jalapeno - the pepper I'm having so much trouble finding in the grocery store. Hope this means I'm going to have a good crop of jalapeno peppers!

Waiting til the cold and hail has ended could mean planting so late that everything burns up in the heat. Gardening can be great and productive for many years, then there can be years of failure - we're pretty much at the mercy of Mother Nature. I really appreciate those farmers who work so hard to provide food to feed our families.

Vince had a couple of places he needed to go yesterday and one of them was Menard's so I went along because I wanted an electric (battery powered) sprayer. I'm tired of pumping to get the pressure needed. I often use the sprayer for fertilizer and I often use the sprayer for Neem oil/water mix. We got this one.

I knew we would want a Ryobi because we have quite a few Ryobi products which means many Ryobi batteries and chargers. This one has two 2 gallon tanks; a battery and a charger. It can be used as a backpack sprayer or carried using the handle. According to the info, 30 tanks full can be sprayed on one battery. That could mean I wouldn't have to change batteries more than once a month. Doubtful . . but maybe. I don't spray every day but some days I go through several tanks of spray - whether it's Neem for bugs and/or fish emulsion for fertilizer.

We've had so much rain and wet days (I am not complaining about the rain - we needed it badly!) but some of the grapes now have rust so I pulled off as many affected leaves as I could and cut back some of the vines that seemed the most affected. I need to get out there one evening in the next few days and spray the grapes with Neem oil/water just as the sun is setting.

I know NOTHING about growing grapes or raspberries. From the raspberries we harvested last year, I'm going to say they require zero attention so that leaves me to learn about grapes. From what I've read, grapes don't really need bees for pollination but do bees come to the grape flowers, whether needed or not? That's why I'm not going to spray Neem until dusk . . do not want to harm the bees.

The grapes are at the calyptra stage so I probably don't have to worry about the bees yet, right? Please correct me if I'm wrong and feel free to give me any advice you want to share. I would love to get enough grape juice to last us a year . . not happening any time soon but maybe some day.

The horseradish is doing great. We love it when it's young and tender. I add it to salads and love to best on tuna salad sandwiches. Other uses: slice, saute and add to omelettes or use in place of lettuce as a wrap.

The raspberries have exceeded my expectations. We planted them down that center row and you can see how many have popped up outside their "bed". I've dug up five or six of the runner plants and moved them to another bed. They look good so I'm hoping they survive and produce next year.

I'm going to stop complaining about this bed where I haven't planted potatoes in four years but every year, it's full of potatoes that have grown from tiny little potatoes that were accidentally left behind. I'm not planting any other potatoes this year. If these grow and produce, then I have what I'm going to consider a perennial bed of potatoes (though I know they are not perennials). I had been trying to make this a second asparagus bed but I'm giving up. The potatoes have won this battle.

I am not a flower gardener. Most anything I grow has either a food or herbal remedy type value but we have four peonies. Our first year here, at the end of the season, I found this peony at a big box store and it looked like it was beyond saving. It was on the $1 rack in the garden center. I had never grown peonies but had always heard how amazing they were so I got it, came home and planted it. The next spring, it had a couple of blooms and they were so pretty and smelled so good that we bought some kind of variety pack that had three more peonies and that's how we ended up with four of them. When I walk out the back door, I can smell them and I love them.

There are other things in the garden that are looking good - onions, rhubarb, garlic is just about to produce scapes.

So many of y'all are probably having scary weather today (Friday evening). Even though a lot of the warnings didn't materialize, thank goodness, we've had tornado chances, some pretty high, every day this week except Thursday. I was never really afraid of the weather until the Joplin tornado in 2011 and now, I find myself really being a weather wimp and I try to do better because Cooper is a big weather chicken and I  he senses my fear.

I try to keep the TV off and depend on the weather radio to let Vince know when we need to get in the safe room so today I took a long nap. Woke up to find my timing was off and the storms were going to be later than they had said earlier. I do have a headache - not weather related probably. Vince asked if I wanted aspirin and I told him wine was probably better but I opted for the aspirin.

OK. Lots of places have it way worse than we do . . Illinois & Wisconsin according to Ryan Hall. I'll stop complaining. 

Today Vince had some errands to run so I went along for the ride. Really, I went along because he said we could get lunch at Texas Roadhouse! I took the measurements for 4th of July Rules.

I could finish that one in the next week or so. I found two pieces that might work for getting this one fully finished. Once the stitching is done, I'll figure out how I want to finish it and, of course, I'll share it all when it's finished and fully finished.

Racing to Beat the Storm

 Today was my day to go stitch with Debbie and it was the day I drive up to her place. We've had storms predicted for almost every day this week - not tomorrow. In fact, Vince had a doctor's appointment scheduled in Kansas City and convinced them to do it by telephone/video so we would have to risk driving through storms. Yesterday Vince and I were debating about whether I should drive an hour north to cross stitch today but this morning, we both looked at the weather and decided it was safe to go, so long as I got home by 5 p.m. Early in the afternoon Vince called to tell me the storms seemed to be moving faster and he thought I should come home earlier. He said definitely be on the road by 3:30. I looked out the window about 3, towards the west which is the way the storms were supposed to come in and it seemed to be getting dark. I asked Debbie if she thought it looked darker and we both agreed that we should probably go ahead and call it a day. We got packed up. I left, made a pit stop at Freddy's for a shake and got on the interstate. The sky seemed to be much lighter towards the south (the way I was headed) but when I got off the interstate, headed west, I thought . . at best, I'm going to get in some rain but hopefully no hail. I prayed that I would make it home safely. The memories of the Joplin tornado can get me really nervous on days like this.

I drove into the driveway, got out and walked around behind the car and it had started raining.

I thought . . that's weird. I JUST pulled into the garage and there's not a drop of water on my car. I started looking more closely and nope, not a drop.

After I came inside, talked with Vince for a minute, loved on the dogs, then looked at my phone and saw a note from a local news station "Gnarly Storm headed to Carl Junction/Asbury area. History of damaging hail and power lines down." I'm not in those towns but they're 5 - 7 miles northeast of me. I was cutting it pretty close and was very thankful that I made it safely. 

It seems like lots of places near us have way worse weather predictions than we do so I'm hoping and praying everyone stays safe and hopefully doesn't sustain damages tonight.

Index With Symbols Received

 Thanks to a VERY nice reader, I now have a copy of the key (symbols that go with each color).

I do believe I could have matched colors with what I've already stitched and compared those symbols to what I needed to use but that was making me quite nervous and stressed. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have this.

Thanks to all of you who offered assistance, even if it was just moral support.