Miniature Irises

Bunches of Sage

I spent a couple of hours this evening weeding the herb garden and ruthlessly thinning out applemint, spearmint, and the artemisias. I love working with herbs. There are so many different scents, flavors, and textures in the little herb garden that is outside my kitchen door. I love all the combined scents of the herbs are they get slightly damaged with the weeding and pruning...the sweet lemony scent of lemon balm, the soothing fragrance of lavender and chamomile, the spicy smell of thyme and oregano, the pungent odor of catnip, and all the wonderful minty-ness of spearmint, peppermint and applemint.

And then there is sage. To me sage smells like comfort. When I was a child, my mother would make sage tea if we had a cold or a sore throat. I have one sage bush that I have to cut back dramatically every spring to prevent it from crowding out the tarragon that lives next to it. Today I cut it back by about half and bunched up the trimmings and hung them to dry in the dining room. They will be turned into sage tea and chicken soup all winter long.
Bunches of sage brighten up the kitchen/dining room. It's nice to have herbs drying again!

A close up of the wreath...it is last year's spearmint and strawflowers.

13 acres and a backhoe

Because if you have 13 acres, you need a backhoe.

I can't quite believe this happening. On Sunday we are meeting with a real estate agent, drawing up a contract for putting our house on the market, and making an offer on 13 acres and a house contingent on selling our house. On a sopping wet day this week, I walked every square foot (just about!) of the 13 acres and loved what I saw. Yes, I could wake up every morning and look out on to those 13 acres and be glad they are mine. It has gently rolling hills, with a little bit of wet land, a little bit of woods, plenty of flat space for garden and orchards--and oh, the potential for flower gardens and landscaping! It is well set back from the road.

A great big plus is the huge pole barn (the former owner built biplanes in it) and a large garage/workshop/horse barn that you could park 4 cars in with room to spare. Terry will be in heaven. I am sad that the woods were almost destroyed by loggers maybe 3 or 4 years ago. You can see that they were once beautiful woods, but were totally ravaged by someone who's only thought was how much money he could get for the lumber and cared nothing about preserving the beauty or health of the woods. None the less, woodland in Michigan is quite resilient and in 10 or 15 years they should be beautiful again.

Oh, and there is a house. You have to have some place to actually live while you are planting your gardens, caring for your orchards, tending your flock of hens and all. It is cute house, a bit different, and needs some updating (new kitchen for sure). But one could move it tomorrow if you had to.

Terry is happy that the property is close to his backhoe. He got the backhoe for free off of Craig's List last winter. When I heard about it, my only stipulation, was, "You CANNOT bring it home and put it in my yard!" Good grief, our neighbors put up with a lot from us, I don't want to know what their reaction to a backhoe as a lawn ornament would be! (The backhoe had some engine problems and he worked out an agreement with the owner that if he fixed the engine and let the guy use it, he didn't have to take it home until he has a place to take it home. I'm happy with that arrangement. Though I can see that it will come in very useful once we get a piece of land out in the country. I will need it for digging out my pond, for one thing!

Of course, actually buying this place depends on selling our home, and the owner might not even be willing to take our offer, so I'm not getting my hopes up. There will be another piece of land somewhere else if this one doesn't work out. We are putting our house on the market on Sunday regardless, and starting the process of getting the place ready to sell. That means finishing up a bunch of details in the house and putting in a decent driveway. Even if we don't sell the house, we will be better off with getting these things done, so it is nice to have the extra motivation.

I've had to rethink what to do with my garden this year. I decided to go ahead and plant it just as if I had no other plans. I did decide to make it a bit smaller, though, and make it square instead of a misshaped mess. I was going to make it square this summer anyway, except that I was going to make it a bigger square rather then a smaller square. Actually I won't really be loosing any growing space for vegetables. Because of the black walnut tree most vegetables won't grow past a certain point anyway, so that extra space was flowers, I will just be pushing the flower border back. I think having a neat flower border will be more attractive to potential buyers.

Morels for dinner

I was down staffed from the evening shift tonight, and as that is always cause for celebration, I went out and picked the morels growing in the back yard. I always leave a few mushrooms to go to "seed". I really don't know if that makes a difference or not, but to be on the safe side side, I leave a few. A clump of morels in the raspberry patch.

Morels are hollow on the inside. You have to split them open and wash them carefully to get all the tiny insects out that like to take up residence inside the hollow stems. I was reading today, that soaking them makes them lose their flavor and you should only do a very quick rinse under cold running water.
With cooking morels, it is all about the butter. There are all kinds of fancy recipes for cooking them, but I can't imagine anything gets much better then simply sauteing them with a little green onion in lots of butter.Morels sizzling in butter.

I served this tonight with plain rice and pecan fish fillets--another very quick recipe and one of my favorite ways to cook fish.

Pecan Fish Fillets

4 mild fish fillets ( I use pollack or tilapia)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup fresh parsley or celery (finely chopped)
3 T lemon juice
1 T olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Combine cheese, pecans, parsley, olive oil, and 2 T lemon juice.
Place fish in a single layer in a baking dish and spread with pecan mixture. Drizzle with remaining lemon juice.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until fish flakes with a fork.

Spring in the Woods

Jack-in-the-pulpit


Cowslips

Violets

Opened hickory bud


Barberry blossoms


Pink Trillium


Wood Anemone

Morels!

These mushrooms pop up in our back yard every spring. Usually I find them after the grass is cut and they have been run over by the tractor. This spring we were luckly enough to stumble on them prior to shredding half of them with the mower! My brother and I counted 7 little buttons popping up in grass and I see a few more coming up in the garden. They are still a few days away from harvest.

Collecting Eggs

My six year old niece spent a rare overnight at our home this weekend (she lives in Virgina). I didn't collect the eggs the evening before she got here, so that she would be able to collect them herself for breakfast when she got here in the moring. She loved it and I could hardly keep her from collecting the new eggs as they were being laid. The rest of the day she spent a good deal of time going outside to watch as hens laid new eggs.

Collecting the eggs

She also loved feeding the hens. She entertained herself for a couple of hours out side by herself feeding them bread and ham and bits of grass.

Feeding the chickens.