Of Snails and Pokeys and Bluebonnets

I am learning Accounting! Finally. Something I can use! And it’s really hard. Credit only sometimes means positive and debit only sometimes means negative. I thought math was supposed to be easier than this. Calculus is easier.

Today’s Exploit:

I have been longing for a garden for years. I have big plans for when I own a house, for a billion flowers in the front yard, and raised vegetable gardens and fruit trees in the back yard. I want so many kinds of trees I’ll probably end up with an orchard. And I want a swing set.

And LOTS of party lights and wind chimes and lightening bugs. 

*Side note: lightening bugs are pretty awesome, I see them sometimes if I go running in the late evening at the right trail down by the river.

This year H. decided to fix his yard, because he now lives alone and is in charge of all of this stuff and actually has a yard. So I gave orders on how to do it and played in the dirt and discovered that Texas has some super large snail shells, and lots of them still have snails in them.

I got to plant flowers along the walk way, and told H. to pull all the scary bull nettle super-duper-quadruple-stickery-and-poky giants that lived in the back yard (that are actually called Prickly Poppies). They were probably 4.527 feet tall. And leather gloves don’t do much to dissuade the stickers from sticking you. (I meant to help, but then I had to do homework and it took lots longer than expected.)

Then he added grass seed to the big gap where the monster pokeys were, and a timed sprinkler system to the back yard and drip hose to the walkway. So the flowers are getting lots and lots of water and not interested in flowering anymore, but H. won’t listen to me and they are still getting lots of water. 

Lastly I planted some bulb plants that I can’t remember the name of, but have big pretty orange and red flowers and a transplanted bluebonnet that I rescued from the middle of the yard. They are along the back fence where they get plenty of scorching light and the sprinkler still hits them. Who knows if we made it before the end of bulb-season, but maybe next year, and maybe they will put up leaves. Maybe. 

My Family is Growing

I am taking 2 classes right now, this evidently means that I am a full time student.

Also, Accounting is hard.

Today’s Exploit:

My family is growing.

Ok, I think you have been introduced to all of them, but they are growing up.

They all have their very own REAL pots now.

I spent the afternoon the other day mixing up dirt to add to Allie and to pot Jack in a pot instead of the bottom of a plastic jug. And also to pot Pete in a pot that won’t blow over when someone walks by or sneezes three doors down.

Aren’t they lovely?

This is where they live when I am at home and they are not living in a crate or on the ground at a rig.

Petey has new needles, and I am excited that he is not dead after being left alone on my trip to Canada, when Cupcake was in Wyoming and not available to water him.

I got the pot before I the new growth, I didn't intend to be matchy-matchy.

And Jack has turned out to be a Jacky, with very lovely flowers. The flowers are much preferred to the fruit thingies that she produces.

She has so many buds!

I Feel Like This Makes Me a Big Kid

I had a long list of posts to write about last night. 

Naturally they are all gone because I didn’t have a piece of paper within arm’s reach at the time.

Today’s Exploit:

I was very brave today.

I did something that I have never done alone before.

It was a big step for me in my kitchen experimentationalism, or something.

Anyway.

The thing I did.

I did it by myself.

For the first time ever.

I canned!

They sealed and everything, on the first try!

That was somewhat less exciting than I had hoped.

But the canning was not.

Yesterday I stopped at a truck on the side of the road with H. to buy some strawberries.  I don’t know if I have mentioned it before, but I live rather near the strawberry capital of Texas, and they make sure you know it.  They have a water tower painted like a strawberry, a huge sign saying “Home of the Strawberry Festival” and everything is painted green and red.  Everything.

So I got a flat of Poteet strawberries.  That’s a lot of strawberries.

I helped Tammy make some jam once, and I helped my dad make some syrup a few times, but I never did it by myself, and I was never in charge. 

So I looked up a recipe for Strawberry Preserves, disregarded it, and looked up instructions on what to do with the jars to make them seal.  

Then I gave up on recipes and tried to remember what we did to make syrup.

I didn’t have any dish washing gloves, that was a major setback. But I got some cool silicone tongs to make up for it.

I hulled 4 pints of the strawberries with my spring-loaded-super-duper-strawberry-huller from Aunt Sarah, and then I sliced them with my extra-sharp-and-kinda-scary-strawberry-chopper/slicer from Cupcake.

It took me about 20.462 minutes to do a million strawberries.

Then I added some sugar and left it to sit overnight in the fridge. 

Today I got out my steamer to my BIG pot, that I magically saved, and put my jars in it, and put my strawberries in my other pot to simmer.

When the jars were hot and the strawberry juice was no longer opaque I used my antique ladle, because it’s the only one I have, to add the preserves to the jars.  I sealed them and turned them upside down on a white towel, because that’s what Tammy did, and because I only have white towels. 

I waited and waited for them to pop to mean that they were sealed, but they never did.  So I checked and they were sealed, they just didn’t do the fun part. 

And now I have 6 jars of home-grown strawberry preserves, that may turn out to be strawberry syrup, but that’s ok because I made it.

By myself.

Aren't they pretty strawberries? They were the small ones, and therefore less expensive, but it also meant I got more of them. Yay