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

In Which We Make Nut Brown Ale

"My two large Piggs, by drinking some Beer grounds taking out of one of my Barrels today, got so amazingly drunk by it that they were not able to stand and appeared like dead things almost... I never saw Piggs so drunk in my life, I slit their ears for them without feeling. "
Diary of a Country Parson Rev. James Woodforde 1778


The above was quoted from the book The Country Kitchen by Jocasta Innes . I just thought it was funny. Today we were making Nut Brown Ale. I've had it on my to do list for ages. I already had the ingredients. I was just lacking in energy , but today , come hell or high water (and there was lots of high water with all this rain ) , I was going to do it even though what I wanted more than anything was to crawl back to bed and sleep for another 4 hours. ANYway, we got it done. It only took about 5 hours from start to finish. That didn't include the scavenger hunt earlier to find where we had stashed all the different materials and ingredients.
Beer making is now becoming a popular hobby but it actually used to be a standard skill in a homemaker's repertoire . This is from the same book quoted earlier...

"During the 19th century beer brewing was a normal part of household routine, a chore housewives undertook along with baking, raising poultry and curing meat for the winter months. They brewed fine ale for special occasions, 'small' or weak beer for harvesters , and strong stouts for expectant and nursing mothers. Indeed, beer was so nourishing that William Cobbett, in 1825 , lists it along with bread and meat as essential to the farm labourer's diet.

I find it rather amusing that they saved the strong stouts for expectant and nursing mothers. People would be rather shocked today. Maybe it kept them mellow. Who knows, but we are all here today and our ancestors lived like this so it couldn't have done that much harm .
This has nothing to do with beer but it was funny with Jesse poking his head around the corner like that. He is standing on the back of the couch .

This is the malted grains steeping. The water is 150 * F and it steeps for about 45 minutes. You are trying to turn the starches in the grain into sugars. It smells really good at this point.

So far we've been getting completely organic beer kits from Seven Bridges Co-op and we've been very happy with the results. You can find them at http://breworganic.com . You can even call and talk to real people if you have a question. Always a nice thing.

Next comes the sparging of the grains where we slowly and tediously pour 170 degree water over the grains to rinse all the goodies out. All the water is collected in the main boiling pot then we add the original steeping water too. This all goes together to make your wort.

Then we bring that whole mixture to a boil , then add the barley malt extract. Skimming foam after we finish.

A good rapid boil.. Then you add your bittering hops .. for this recipe they boil for 40min.

Then we add the aroma hops and Irish Moss (it helps settle out the proteins in the wort) and boil for 20 more minutes .

Mmmmm. it has a very .... earthy smell.. Well, my older sister Violet said it smelled like sweet potatoes. I haven't smelled any sweet potatoes like that , but anyway.

Then you have your brother Buck run over to the 99cents store and get you a bunch of bags of "old" ice..... whatever that is.. I'm not eating it. I just want to make things cold so what do I care if it is freezer burned. Can you really freezer burn ice? I mean.. it is water for cryin' out loud. I know it can take on that "freezer" taste... hmmmm. Anyway, it was very cheap and very cold. Just what I needed because I don't have a wort chiller and I couldn't have hooked it up to the hose today anyway because it was rather wet outside, to say the least.

Then you forget to take pictures of the transfer of the chilled wort from pot to fermentor as well as the adding of the yeast but you can just imagine that okay? Here it is behind the dining room door next to my vinegar barrel full of about 20 gallons of cider in the process of going to vinegar.(that is cheesecloth shoved in the bung hole to keep critters like flies out and let air in ) . I've never done it in a barrel before so we'll see how this turns out. If it is a flop, I'll have a lot of floor cleaner to use. ANYway, the beer gets to ferment for about a week and then we will siphon it off to a glass carboy and ferment it longer until we finally get around to bottling the stuff. But the big part is all done. Yay.

Stormy Skies

We've had a LOT of rain over the past few days . It is still raining, and will continue to rain . But there was a break in between storms yesterday. So we jumped (carefully, with shoes on.. ) out on the roof and took some pictures of the sky which was gorgeous as the sun was setting.

We could see the new moon.

If only those lovely power lines weren't there to spoil the view.

I love those big clouds

I wish I could walk on them. I remember how disillusioned I was when I found out you couldn't actually walk on clouds . The plane flew right through it. It was very hard to swallow. You mean they are just ... air ? And moisture? How very heartbreaking.

The sun was setting . Since the leaves are all off the trees we can now look right in to Downtown Big City . Curses. I didn't realize we were quite that close. Well, when they blow it up we'll be able to see it from our roof.

So beautiful.

The tree is still covered with rain droplets. Like little diamonds or beads.

Looking down on the very wet garden of barrels where we currently have onion sets and lots of parsley growing. Punker Man is doing his best to pull up those onion sets but I hope to come out ahead at the end of the season.

We'll need a boat here pretty soon with all this rain. Oh.. we do have a canoe... over the pool . So we just have to untie it and we'll be set. We've had some thunder which is rather unusual for us but always very exciting. J.B. does not think so . Okay. I'm tired of typing out J.B. and Punker Man , which aren't their real names anyway. So we are going to change their public names again to Frank (Punker Man) and Jesse (J. B.) James since they are named after outlaws anyway.. only not those two. Anyway. Frank and Jesse.. the James brothers. Since they are brothers. Okay.. phew. Glad I got that off my chest. I may occasionally call Frank , "Sugar Babe" because I do call him that (and he comes... amazingly.. not that he answers to Sugar Babe but that fact that he comes at all . ) and Jesse "Stinker" because he is one. Okay, now we got all that cleared up. Later on everyone (yeah.. all those hundreds of readers.. haha) is going to wonder why their names suddenly changed because they won't see this post ... for whatever reason.. Maybe because it has nothing whatsoever to do with dogs. ANYway.. it is raining .. again. And it is bedtime for the James brothers.