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.

Pretty in purple......

  I've been obsessed with the lavender the last couple weeks.  It is especially lovely this year  and it's all over the garden and beyond.  I have so much of it because when I had the nursery every time I planted a  propagated rose I planted 3 lavender plants  around it so the deer would leave it be.  Deer do not like lavender or most furry, grey or  strongly scented plant such as sage, etc..  It worked but over the years the roses in the wild part of the garden gradually died off from neglect and the lavender thrived so I have huge patches of it here and there and everywhere.  It's blooming time varies in different areas of the garden so I have it over a long period of time. The variety is Hidcote and it is the darkest purple of the lavenders....

 

For years a group of ladies from a local church used to come and pick laundry baskets of it  and dry it to sell at their Christmas bazaar.  But as they aged they finally were unable to scramble about the garden. But the lavender continues to grow and thrive. 

This year I have picked baskets and baskets of it and it is drying in the barn and will give bunches of  it as gifts all winter... I have even invited friends in to pick as well and we haven't even made a dent in it

The flowers in this bouquet look blue but actually are shades of purple.  They include lavender, salvia, and perovskia.The mauve flowers and the small maroon flowers are two of my favorite perennials.  Can you identify them???

Some things just can't be hurried.

When I had my hair short it looked okay the first couple days after it was cut.   But in two weeks I looked like a shaggy dog.  It seemed my hair grew an inch a month.  I was sure that in a year I could get it into a pony tail but apparently not.  It has been a year and a half and I can barely get it clipped backed without wisps working loose... So I figure at least another six months anyway.  Hair is one of the thing that can't be hurried and if I want it long I have no  choice but to be patient.  I'm grateful for all the things   in my life that have taught me patience.



Patience is something which must be learned and practiced. Embroidery was probably the very first thing that taught me patience... It has to be stitch by stitch and nothing can hurry it... stitch by stitch.  I always love the rhythm of it.. It always calmed me and freed me of  anxiety.
I really miss it.

Gardening is another passion that requires patience. Things grow and bloom in their cycle and I just have to be patience and wait.  I have blogged about how I wanted the clematis "Duchess of Albany".  It has taken 5 plants and 3 years but yesterday I had my first bloom..  All I had to do was to persevere and be patient.  The largest plant is loaded with buds.  The next larger plant will bloom next year and the smallest plants will require more patience.



My love of cooking is another exercise in patience. . Instant pots are all the rage now but I am not an instant pot gal.  I like putting my ingredients together and putting them in the oven at a low heat and being rewarded with taste and flavor that just can't be hurried..... time and patience.

Of all my samplers on my walls my favorite is " Yard by yard, life is hard.  Inch by inch it's a cinch."   Time and patience. I enjoy the anticipation of waiting for something I saved, worked or wished for. 

For me patience is perserverance and an attitude.   Yesterday I was rewarded for  patiently persuading DH for the last four months that we needed to sell the farm and downsize... Now he finally admits that it was indeed time so now we can move ahead with the process.  But I had to admit I was running out of patience on this one... husbands just can't be hurried....at least mine can't!!!!  Time and patience.

I want my pies to be posh!!!

We fell in love with pot pies in England and a  couple years ago I set about that fall  experimenting with the making of the whole winter's pot pies for the freezer...  All in all it was wildly successful but there were a few issues.  First some vegetables work better than others.  It has something with the crystallization when you freeze and thaw them. Many become mealy or mushy once frozen and thawed....As I'm working on my ingredient list for this fall's batch of pies I am paying particular attention to the veggies I choose.  Not only do I want veggies that hold up better, I want different veggies for each batch of pies. 90% of pot pie recipes call for peas, carrots and potatoes no matter what protein  is used....how boring in that????

Second no matter how smooth and thick my  sauce was when I froze the pies, when I thawed and heated them the sauce became watery.  Apparently it is  a similar thing but with crystallization of the thickener because other people have googled the same problem.  It was suggested using rice or tapioca flour as a thickener,  I will try that this year.  They still taste great but I want smooth and thick sauce!!!

Previous years I made chicken, turkey, seafood, pork and beef pot pies.  This year I am dropping the turkey and adding lamb pies.  I usually freeze turkey dinners and doing turkey pot pies was too similar.  There was a definite correlation between the depth of flavor and the number of ingredients....  more ingredients....more flavor.  Even more so when I added two meats... like pork loin with pork sausage for example.

I want to try some different toppings than just plain crust  and found a recipe for a parmesan crust that would be great on a chicken pot pie... maybe a polenta topping or a cornbread stuffing topping... will explore this a bit more. How about a mashed celeriac topping... yes indeed! Also I have been on a quest to add more legumes to our diet so here is another opportunity.  I will add chickpeas to the lamb pies for sure and maybe lentils to a couple others.

After I spent the day banishing my reciprocating saw I crawled onto my bed and relaxed with a clipboard and starting listing possible ingredients for this year's posh pot pies. I always have lots of soups in the freezer but the pot pies are our favorite winter treat... Stay tuned for my pies as I make them..

Favorite garden tool

 Of course I have my favorite gardening tools like my clippers and "short person" gardening fork but right up there is this reciprocating saw which has made my garden chores so much easier over the years..  I use it to loosen soil for planting something new, for cutting something loose to transplant it and for pruning and heavy cutting of anything.  You can put a 12" blade in it and stick it right into the ground to rout out a stubborn tap-rooted weed or loosen soil around a fence post you want to pull up.  Most men just don't realize all the potential of this tool. They just use it for building and cutting wood.




I have a grove of sapling bird cherry trees that the birds have planted and they have suckered and thrived because they are over the drain field and I need to get them out.  They have a trunk about 3-4" and would take forever with pruning saw by hand. There are about 40 of these trees and I figure it will only take me a couple mornings to clear them.   I will cut them off at ground level and spray any new growth as it appears.... a technique I recently saw on BBC's Monty Don getting rid of Japanese knotweed.   I swear this tool was invented for women and should be sold as such.  Think of it as a electric knife on steroids and we all have used electric knives in the kitchen... .right?   Same principal just a bit larger... Plug it in and go - go - go....

I realized today I should not only be teaching granddaughters how to bake sour cream rolls, I should be teaching them to use power tools as well.  I was my dad's only child and he was never quite sure how to entertain me when I visited him... finally  he would take me fishing which I hated or  take me out to his shop and let me play with power tools.  I loved that and have been eternally grateful.