Makin' Marmalade .. Tangerine Style

With this vast excess of tangerines lying around from the tree massacre, Elly May decided she wanted to make marmalade out of them. She can eat all those delicious sugary things. The lucky dog.

They are so orange.

She was using the Ball Bluebook recipe for marmalade. Well, except for the tangerine part. That wasn't in the recipe. First she had to peel all the little dears.

And slice up the peel..

And the pulp part too. Only did you know tangerines have lots of little seeds (unlike those lovely navel oranges that the recipe probably called for....) and they had to be removed one by one. Oh the joy. She enjoyed every minute of it I'm sure. I think the lemons were easier. If only because there were fewer .

The whole lot goes into hot water, comes to a simmer and then gets to sit (turned off) overnight so you can sleep. (really, it does have to sit overnight, but what you do with your time is up to you... we chose sleeping) .

Then you add 3 tons of sugar to make the whole thing palatable and boil it to candy stage or something like that (she knows) . Then you get to put it in jars. If you think you are getting any vitamin C at all from marmalade , think again. Every last atom of the stuff is viciously murdered by boiling and sugar so I don't really think there is anything left but the orange color. But it tastes good and that is the whole point of this exercise anyway. So there.

All ready and waiting. Wasn't that nice of them?

More marmalade than we shall ever get through , or if we do we shall have some awful cavities. But hey, those tangerines did not go to waste. They have been embalmed with sugar.

It makes me think of Paddington Bear. He was always eating marmalade. It has such an English sound to it. Max de Winter had it on his toast in Rebecca.... but I think of Paddington more.

Making Sunshine

Over the years, trees around here have been growing pretty much unmolested. Well, occasionally they'd get whacked... but it has been a long long time since anything like that happened. They continued to get taller , and bigger .... and started to hog more and more sun from other things (like the garden) that really needed it. So it was time. After spending half the week in bed, I had a sort of alive feeling day and wanted to see how much of a dent Elly May and I could make on the avocado next to the garden. Of course the men folk were all gone and had taken all the saws with them. How very typical. So we asked a neighbor who is always around and he advised us against the old fashioned type of hand sawing and offered his electric chainsaw. Then, since he had nothing else to do that day , he offered to come out and take a look. You see, this is the way you get things done when you are feeling pathetically useless like I do . You start doing something way beyond your ability and hopefully, someone else sees it and decides you are going to do a lousy job or you are completely incapable or they want to be your hero and they take over. You just smile and profusely thank them and you can get all kinds of things done without actually having to do them yourself. This doesn't always work, but around here... I've had a lot of luck. ;-)
Anyway, I got waaaaay more done than I ever thought possible and all I did was drag branches. But that ended up being more than enough anyway because I've spent the past two days recovering. But I can look back and feel accomplished in the midst of my inactivity. Elly May did a lot .. she was lassoing branches and hopping around on roof tops and so on. Now we have lots more sunshine on the garden. And since he still had time , our neighbor did our tangerine tree too which had gotten way too big. We of course neglected to take any before shots.... but just imagine it about 6 feet taller. It'll grow back....
These came off the branches that got whacked. Well, not the lemons. Those came from the lemon tree. Duh.

Cover crop with lots of sun now..

The avocado with a severe hair cut.

And the tangerine , with only half its glory left. Like I said, it'll grow back .

All the trimmin's . Awaiting grinding up so they can be made into a massive compost pile. They have to dry out a bit first or they will jam the chipper.

It really didn't look like so much when it was on the tree...

The boys had a blast running off with sticks and branches which they shredded and played tug with and generally just made a mess with.

A tree we have no control over as it is in someone elses yard. Humph.

A bit blurry but he was so cute.

Now for some tangerine marmalade...... by Elly May.... all by her lonesome.

When the Sun Slips Below the Horizon...

And there happen to be clouds in the sky.... it comes out very beautiful. We are expecting more rain here shortly but in the mean time we've had a couple of gorgeous sunsets . These first few are from yesterday...

And these are from tonight. I think tonights was prettier.

I love that pig.

Winter Fun

Gardeners, in winter, pour over seed catalogs. Unless of course they have saved ALL of their seed from previous years and don't need anything new at all . But I can't imagine not trying something new. And since I had such a lousy year least year with mostly nursery stock (not that that was the problem , It was just a really weird year for tomatoes here) I wanted to start with fresh seed.
I love the colors.. all the choices... It is so hard to chose.

There is only so much space , so much energy , so much time. I've ordered my hop rhizomes for the side of the house. This will be a new experiment. If it works, we'll be taking our brewing up a notch. Or we'll just a lot of green vines on the side of the house. Either way is okay I suppose. But I hope they do well.

I've already got more tomato varieties than I have room for. But I'll figure that problem out later. Right now I'm drooling over the idea of Hillbillies, Black Cherries, Jersey-Devils , Cherokee Purples , Italian Heirlooms and whatever else I ordered (there were more... lots more... oh dear. ) . There will be lots of peppers too. And beans. And greens. And I'm counting my eggs before they hatch but this is the fun part. The dreaming. There will be plenty of time for reality to come crashing in later . Gardeners are eternal optimists. There is always next year . And next year.... you will have the perfect garden . Never mind that that has never happened and this is a fallen world with wacky weather , diseases ,bugs and varmints that love to eat garden fresh veggies. Not to mention exhaustion and illness that can strike the gardener... However, hope springs eternal each seed catalog season. ;-)

Oh look, the sock fairy came again. :-) I love the sock fairy. Stripes are so much cooler than solids.

In Between the Rain Drops

It has been raining, and raining, and raining and raining all .... week..... long.. You'd think we lived in Oregon or something. Anyway, we desperately needed the rain, maybe not the entire seasons worth all at once but here in drought land, you should be thankful for what you get , whatever it is. We've had a few breaks (like minutes ) between storms and yesterday we got such a respite . The sun came out for a second and I grabbed my camera and went outside.

Diamonds on tomato wire.

Onion sets sprouting , those that Frank hasn't pinched of course. I've watched him, he sneaks up to the side and turns his head sideways and reaches for the tips. He never eats them, just yanks them up and mutilates them. Who'd a thunk you needed to protect your onion sets from marauding puppies?

More onion sets. Some very very well watered onion sets....

These branches had leaves on them a few weeks ago.

There is something about these things that just fascinate me to no end. I can't stop taking pictures of them. They always come out different depending on the angle and the lighting. They are just so beautiful . They remind me of fairies or some such enchanted creatures.

This used to be a lawn. Now..... well, I don't think it qualifies as a lawn anymore. If anyone wanted to do a slip in slide thing it would be perfect. Of course, those James brothers kind of do that all the time. Then they come inside , the little dears.

Hello Franko. He wants to go into the far back. He loves it back there. I don't know why everything back there smells better but it does. He said so . He has to sit and stay and wait until I go through the gate and cross over the bridge and say okay. Otherwise, he may not go. It took him awhile to figure that whole process out but being a relatively bright boy when he wants to be (and it serves his own purposes in the end) he caught on.

Some soggy ladies. Too bad they aren't ducks. They might like it then.

Hmmmm.. All I can say is I'm sorry. You were expecting nice "after the rain storm" photos and I slipped this in. But it IS after the rain storm . And the rain had a powerful effect on this whole mess. And.. it was there and I just HAD to take a picture. It was formerly bait ...in a trap, (he was already dead) for a skunk, but I told Dad all he was going to catch with that kind of bait was a cat.... and he did. Then he just left this in there and it is in the process of melting into the ground. Quite exciting don't you think?

MOVIng on. There, a nice little mushroom.

Rain drops on field peas. Not quite the same as rain drops on roses but the field peas were there, the roses weren't. And I think rain drops on field peas is one of my favorite things.

Arugula working mighty hard.

The cover crop of rye, vetch and field peas in the top bed . That is a bunch of compost at the end that we sifted out earlier in the week (just as the rain started falling... we got very wet and muddy but it was lots of fun), and then covered.

On dreary days, bright colors are most cheerful. And why have a white petticoat when you can have a day glow green one?

Looky there.. chicken bokeh!!*

Enjoying the rain ladies? Not...

Tis very wet out here I must say.

Isn't it glorious? All the mess? Well, that will be cleaned up soon. Hopefully. I've got plans, yes I do .

There was a flock of feral Amazon parrots flying over.

And over,

And away.

Oh look, I could have rain drops on roses. But I can't see them without getting very very wet and very very cold. There is our boat , which, if this rain kept up, we would have had to put into use shortly.

Not long after I came in and tried to defrost my nose and hands, it started raining again. But now, NOW, the sun is out, the mountains are frosted heavily with snow and it is gorgeous and cold.

*Bokeh refers to the out of focus area/objects of a photo