Oh no!! Don't grow!!!!

You probably don't remember how  I lamented last fall that I missed my usual source for amaryllis bulbs for holiday blooms.  Then it turned out I was able to find bulbs early  Dec. at a Walmart closeout and they bloomed when I came home from heart surgery in late January. Too late for the holidays but I enjoyed them immensely into February during my recovery.

Every year I try  to get them to go dormant with no success.  But this year I watered the foliage until it wilted of its own accord and seemed dormant.  I figured if I started watering them in October I would have blooms for the holidays..

Then mid July with no water and no encouragement  the darn things  just started growing and I'm distressed as it is way too early for holiday blooms but what do I know.

And when we got home from Norway they were looking terrific and if all goes well I will have amaryllis for a holiday but it will be Halloween instead of Christmas.

So now if I buy more bulbs at the usual time I can still have them for December.  And if I get more at closeouts in early December I will have blooms again for February and if I get the ones growing now to go dormant again I can have blooms for March and if I continue I will have blooms every month and pots of dormant bulbs under every bed and in every window.




Now that I know the secret to get them to go dormant I will try again and again. 

Things are looking up for selling the farm and may be doing it earlier than I thought... Again my careful planning may be all for naught.

Traveling

 It has been a good while since I posted and it was for a good reason... we took a travel package to Norway.  We have always traveled on our own and never with a group but I have to admit that a group tour was the best way to see Norway.  We traveled by bus, ferry, cruise boat, and train and it was all spectacular.  We were especially lucky we were told because except for one day and one evening, we had beautiful sunny weather and I seldom needed more than a light cotton sweater.  But on this particular day it was indeed raining and I am soaked but we were on a ferry and I was determined to be out on the bow of the boat to see everything.

This photo is of a tiny town where we took a cruise boat up this fiord and I took this shot as we leaving and climbing a mountain on a narrow road with one hairpin turn after another in a very large bus.  Most of the time I tried not to look down as the only guard rails were a row of stones....and not very big ones.
  I know if sounds grandiose to say the scenery was breathtaking but honestly it was just that.  I especially loved traveling through all the farm country and smaller towns.  Ninety percent of the houses in towns and villages were white and all looked freshly painted.  Our guide told us that in early days white paint was the most expensive to buy and so to have a white house gave the appearance of being prosperous... True???









But there were many mustard-yellow houses that I loved and it was considered a royal color.  The remaining  houses were shades of grays and red/brown. Only saw one green house in all the miles we traveled. Having a yellow house with lots of gingerbread trim is now on my bucket list.

We ate lots and lots of cod and salmon and the bread and cheese were to die for.  At the wonderful fish market in Bergen DH ate a sea urchin....a first for him.  I settled for tiger prawns.  The dessert I liked best was Kvæfjordkake....a classic Norwegian dessert  similar to English trifle and Italian tiramisu  in that it was constructed in layers but one of the layers was a meringue.  I found the recipe and will definitely make it.  A café was opened on the island of Hinnøya in the town of Harstad  in the 1920s by Hulda Ottestad and her sister who were from the neighboring area of  Kvæfjord.  She is given credit for making the cake a famous Norwegian classic.

With only a glitch of a strike in Amsterdam airport that fouled our reservations and some lost luggage it was a grand time and I managed to climb on and off the buses and boats countless times and wander cobbled streets without falling once... but so good to be home again.

I love cooking for friends....

I love cooking for anyone actually but especially friends and this special friend Cristina  loves to cook as much as I do.  For years and years we've gotten  together on Sunday afternoons with our husbands  and played bridge and had dinner.  Not as often lately because they started going to CA in the winter and her mother has been sick and required trips away.  So to have our "usual" Sunday get-together was  special. 


I didn't get a picture of the table setting  but it was fall colors as that is where we are headed now.    The menu included broiled halibut, crispy rice cakes (made with a mix of brown rice, wild rice and white rice), sliced tomatoes from the farmer's market and a side dish of spaghetti squash mixed with kale, caramelized onions, chickpeas and grated parmesan cheese.  For dessert I baked cannoncini and filled them with Italian cream and wild huckleberries.  They were pretty sad looking when I was first learning how to wrap the puff pastry on the molds but now I can do them very quickly.  Its a great dessert because you can do the pastry the day ahead and it's not too sweet and you can fill them with anything.  I did some filled with peach sherbet and berries...

And what have you been doing they ask!!!

Pruning and pruning and pruning I say!!!!!
And DH is getting to help every step of the way.  This is a fabulous climber on the chicken house but it has not only grown over the roof, it has grown under the eaves and just about this big on the inside of the coop.... I have been running around like a mad woman with clippers on my belt and both the loppers and the power saw in hand.. If you look back at the barn another big rose bush has completely blocked the window.  I started on it but there is a big yellow jacket nest by the window...


 Here is the climber  all nice and tidy and ready to set the new growth for next year's blooms. It still needs a few cuts high on the roof but DH can reach that better than I can.. It is DH's job to follow behind me and rake and clean all the pruning and haul them to the county clean green operation.  He has made many many trips already and will make  many more before I'm done.

Today it was 95+ degrees so I quit early and will blog.  It is supposed to be that hot for the next few days so I might take a break for a few days  and do some cooking and other inside chores.

 Another huge task finished this week was taming this autumn clematis. This is the before picture.  I have written often about my love/hate relationship with this vine.  Here it has engulfed the lilies, rhubarb, and the mahonia.  In addition it has gone over the roof of the wood shed and is heading toward the garage.  But (and a big but) it smells absolutely heavenly in the spring when in bloom, birds nest in it and also the birds go crazy over the seed heads in the fall.  So I keep it... and it is pretty easy to cut back... Whoever buys the farm will probably get rid of it..sadly.

The trees you see behind it are saplings of Hawthorne that need to be cut down. I do have one Hawthorne tree about 100' from these that I did plant.   I did not plant these.  The problem with planting things that fruit for the birds is that the birds spread the seed everywhere.  These are under a power line and need to be gone...next week.


Then there is the beauty bush I planted 35 years ago behind the antique farm wagon... It is indeed a beauty and if you look closely at the bottom of this picture you can see one of the wagon's wheels peeking out.  This has to have a major pruning  about every 4-5 years/

Below is a picture of the wagon when we got it and when I planted a tiny little beauty bush behind it.  You can see how sparse the garden was then.  Even though we are zone 4 and have only about 12" of moisture a year, we are blessed with very heavy rich clay soil and if you plant carefully things will grow and thrive.  My garden receives NO supplemental watering except for the veggies.

Our veggie garden has an deer fence all around and a divider besides  and one side is DH's corn and on the other side I grow squash for the chickens, a few veggies and mostly clematis on the fence. The purple clematis on the right is early and just finishing and the white center one is in full flower.  The duchess on the left is quickly spreading over the old gate and will bloom into September.  There are species clematis for every season.  The sunflower are courtesy of the birds...

 I can't remember if I posted this but it was taken last month when the purple clematis was in full flower at the same time as  the lavender in the foreground.



If we move into a place that has even a tiny patch of earth.....the clematis and peonies are coming with me.

Our very own huckleberry hound!!

Yesterday we  went to pick the huckleberries. We drove about 90 miles round trip on dusty dirt roads  to the top of some mountain. The hillsides were steep and the brush was thick.  I fell, stumbled, tripped,  nearly spilt my berries and managed to end up with about a cup of huckleberries. The area had already been picked and the berries were sparse.
With mine plus what DH picked and what a friend added to my container I will have enough for a batch of freezer jam.

Now I remember this as a fantastic experience from when I was a kid.  But when I really thought about it, when I was a kid I didn't actually pick any huckleberries.   I just ran around and played with my cousins and the adults pick huckleberries.  None the less I developed a love for them.

Huckleberries are specific to our area and are quite different from blueberries... much tarter and juicier.   Huckleberries  only grow wild at very high altitudes. All attempts to domesticate huckleberries have failed  but you can buy ones picked by commercial foragers for an outrageous price... last year it was $70 a gallon (which is about enough for two pies). They pick in prime areas controlled by the forest service who limits the number of  commercial pickers and the amount which can be harvested.

As it turns out we discovered that Morris just loves huckleberries and thought the day out was almost as good as his vacation at the ocean.  You can see that he could easily reach out and nip them off the bushes but no.... he wanted someone to pick them and hand feed them to him.  He would sit and stare at the bush being picked until that very thing happened. He would move in closer and closer until his nose was about in your hand.   He went from picker to picker and begged like a baby bird... he is indeed a huckleberry hound.