Category Archives: Garden

Bright and Cheery

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More tiger lilies...

More tiger lilies...

For those who wanted more tiger lilies, there you go. On the other hand, for those that like pesto:

Harvested basil

Harvested basil

Laid out on the counter, you see about 25% of the basil I harvested in today. It’s a mix of about half large leaf Italian and half sweet basil. In the bag on the blue tray is another quarter. The remaining half of the basil is already pesto, in the fridge. I’d have kept processing, but I ran out of pine nuts, garlic, and parmesan cheese. So, I’ll whip up the second two batches tomorrow, and freeze the lot. I did put a generous helping on to the penne pasta this evening, along with fresh tomato and some mild italian sausage. Yes, you do see some more tomatoes in the background there. They might be enough for a small batch of salsa. That could happen tomorrow, too.

Be well.

GOLD! Errr, Vegetables!

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Cucumber, beans, and tomatoes: Hurrah!

Cucumber, beans, and tomatoes: Hurrah!

It’s getting to be happy veggie time, fo’ shuzzle. This evening’s haul was everything I could fit into and balance on top of a stainless gallon bowl. Sure looks pretty, right? It’s delicious, too. I put tomatoes and green beans in with my pasta and chicken for supper. Absolutely superior. Soon … Salsa. Another week, perhaps. And out front, the tiger lilies are once again spectacular.

Tiger lily, up close and personal

Tiger lily, up close and personal

The day’s gone fairly well, too. The temps are down 10 degrees from the peak a couple of days ago, and the humidity is down, too. I was able to walk Lexi after supper without breaking a major sweat. After helping out with Marcia’s appointments today, I made a big dent in the next database class project. The “hard” stuff is done, now I’m just making up fake data and proving that I can retrieve it again. While many students are using the Oracle 10g instance running on one of the school’s big Solaris servers, I’ve downloaded and installed Oracle 11g Express Edition for Linux. Works like a champ, although I’ll bet dollars to donuts that Ubuntu current isn’t an Oracle supported platform, eh?

Back to the grindstone mines. Ciao!

Nothing to see here…

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Typical boring weekend day for “homeowner with yard in summer”: Yardwork. We actually got a good chunk of rain yesterday – nearly an inch and three quarters, most of that within a one hour span shortly after four in the afternoon. So even though the lawns are pretty darned dead dormant (except around the flower and garden beds), I mowed everything, just in case there’s a moisture-induced explosion of growth. That and burning some coffee beans pretty much filled my day.

Yes, I said burning. I was reading, and didn’t pay as close attention as I should have. The beans plowed straight through the first and into the second crack before I realized what was going on. Tomorrow we’ll know how much I over-roasted by. If it’s burnt too much (too ashy-tasting, like that popular coffee house chain), I’ll just roast more tomorrow. It might be okay, though – it’s a Sumatran that’s supposedly good up to a Viennese roast.

Now, time to walk the mutt one last time for the day. Ciao!

Where’s the beef?

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No potato famine here!

No potato famine here!

Who needs beef when there are fresh potatoes? Okay, I do … but not tonight. I just finished harvesting out the rest of the potatoes (25 pounds worth), bringing the grand total return for 10 half-potatoes plunked into the ground in April up to 40 pounds. Holey Moley!

Garden Ka-boom

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First things first: Happy Birthday, USA!

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Okay, not *really* ka-boom in the Mythbusters C4 sense, but more like the garden is exploding with growth and veg. I took this shot right after harvesting out a bunch of cucumber, and before applying the weekly dose of Neem Oil to discourage bugs and disease.

Garden explosive growth

Garden explosive growth

The output of the garden seems like it’s going to be prodigious this year. Just look at two days worth of cucumber harvest, plus a couple of zucchini that did not make it into last night’s supper:

Zucchini and (mostly) cucumber

Zucchini and (mostly) cucumber

Now I’ve got more chores to do, and school work, too, to stay ahead of the game. Marcia’s doing some consignment sewing, today.

 

In the style of Jepoardy

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It is pumped from the ocean bottoms to the top of the spill mountains.

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Zidane is dead. Today we (and by we I mean Greg) has finally had the plug pulled on the third (or second) iteration of a box that we (and by we, I mean both of us) hosted assorted sites for us and friends and associates. The take barely paid for the box, but overall it was both a worthy and worthwhile endeavor. I know I became a better system administrator through working on the system, and got a fair taste of the joys of running a Hell Desk.

This place is easy to admin: keep the updates in place and do backups. The email, courtesy of Google, is as spam-free as I’ve had in twenty years. I’ll never complain of that. Someone was asking about the advisability of trusting the Goog. I replied that they probably already had the email, they might as well store it, too. I still keep an IMAP server running here at home, and that has copies of everything I want to preserve.

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No, I don’t know what brought the question to mind that prompts the Jeopardy answer. But I had to get it out of my head, and yours is a perfectly good place to store it until I need it again.

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Yesterday was house-cleaning. Not the whole bloody thing, just the hardest part – the main floor. I’ll possibly do the second floor tomorrow. Today was shopping and school work. I got a draft version of my first database class project done and sent in for review by late afternoon. Tonight, thunder and lightning and a delicious turkey and zucchini dish delectably concocted by my lovely Marcia. Now the fireworks are starting up in the neighbourhood and surrounding areas. Lexi hates the thunder, but the fireworks appear only to anger her.

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Oh, yeah. Last bit of news for now: First tomato! A cherry tomato was ripe enough to pluck from the vine, cleave in two, and share with SWMBO. We were both happy. First tomato is the harbinger of many tomatoes, which makes me very happy indeed. Ciao!

More bonanza from the back yard

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Potatoes, zucchini, and cucumber

Potatoes, zucchini, and cucumber

Hey! We just got 6/100″ of rain! It’s been bloody dry around here – the only green grass is near the flower and garden beds.

Isn’t that a nice-looking bowl of potatoes? I sliced up one of those, a zucchini, some garlic, and a pepper out of the garden, sautéed all of that in olive oil, and called it supper. Yum! I also have already roasted a pound of some Kenyan coffee beans this evening. The roaster lives in a vent hood I built that exhausts out the basement window. The exhaust is mobile; It doesn’t stay in the window.

Brian's coffee roasting setup

Brian's coffee roasting setup

Now, on with the schoolwork. Ciao!

When there are no tomatoes

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Potatoes and zucchini

Potatoes and zucchini

When the tomatoes are still two or three weeks away, eat what’s coming out of the garden. So, some potatoes and zucchini, a couple of small serrano peppers, and an over-grown green onion (all that out of the garden) with a chunk of garlic and a bit of left over pork, all simmered together … well, that  makes supper and two lunches. Yow, and those peppers are HOT!

What? No, I used just two of the smaller zucchini, and about 1/3 of the potatoes. Going to have to think of more stuff, because unlike salsa, I don’t see zucchini as a breakfast food.

Zucchini

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Zucchini from the garden

Zucchini from the garden

The zucchini – the smallest is 3/4″ diameter by about 5″ long, and the cup measure partly visible in the upper right corner yields more scale for your eyes. Good to harvest out so that the plant keeps working at new veg, rather than making monsters (which we’ve done in the past). Not much else to say – school work this evening after spending some of yesterday at work, and the balance of the day helping the folks from Cottonseed Glory set up Marcia’s new Handi Quilter machine into the evening. Marcia == v.v.happy! Ciao!

June weather visits for a bit

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Potatoes and zucchini

Potatoes and zucchini

When I go out into the back garden after work, it’s a good time to let Lexi roam back there for a bit.  We’re concerned that she’ll discover and widen a rabbit gap, and make her great escape. So she doesn’t get unmonitored play time in the back yard. I suppose I should do something about that one of these days. Not today, but maybe in the fall. Meantime, the garden is becoming productive. Frankly, those potatoes look yummy. Red potatoes have always been more visually appealing, but fresh out of the ground is a world of difference compared to the dirty brown/reddish color of the store-bought ones. Count me as super-pleased on this experiment.

Today: the second day of June weather. Previously, we’d been “enjoying” late July weather, with overnight lows in the mid-80’s. For this week, we’re barely breaking into those temps for highs! And better yet, this is supposed to last for the week. If only we’d get a couple of good soaking rains.

Tonight: Relational Algebra and Relational Calculus: I sure know how to party, eh?