Pumpkins!

The Grace College Mu Kappa chapter invited us over for a bonfire and pumpkin carving. They invite us to quite a number of activities, but this is one that I don't miss if I can help it. It's fun to connect with recently-landed MKs, enjoy new fireside recipes, and, of course, carve pumpkins.

I'll give you a minute to figure it out.
Give up?
It's a gastropod with an iPod. OK, stop looking at me that way. You already knew I was a geek...

Fiona drew her design before we even left the house, and Deborah transferred it onto her pumpkin. Aiden's pumpkin is the result of his constantly changing the specs of what he wanted while we were carving. The third eye was the icing on the cake.

In related news, the third time was a charm, and I finally was able to make a harvest in my pumpkin patch of... one pumpkin! Now most people would be disappointed to have planted three years running and only get one fruit, but I'm excited to have finally gotten ONE! Maybe I'll do even better next year...

Thar she be. What shall I carve on this one?

Saucy Pictures

You know you're in trouble when the recipe calls for ingredients in bushels. But, when you have several bushels of tomatoes, that's the sort of recipe you reach for. We'd already made a few weeks' worth of salsa (which is saying something for us), and several months' worth of pizza sauce; why not take another crack at that spaghetti sauce that gave us so much trouble last year?

Wash, rinse, and photograph tomatoes. (Sorry, I dig the reflections here...)

Batch two of six. (The cherry tomatoes were for snacking; they didn't go into the sauce.)

Chop and add other ingredients. Never, ever, did I imagine that I would look at this pot and think it was too small...

Cook it all down for 2½ hours...

Take turns running it through the food mill, and blending the bits that won't go through the grate...

Cook it again... (Note how much less the volume is here. We poured off a lot of liquid to make a thicker sauce.)

Rack 'em...

Boil 'em to disinfect and seal the jars...

...and you're done!

Costs: 6-7 hours of time, one dead blender (RIP, Oster; you had a long and interesting life), and marginal increases in the gas and electric bills.

Yields: Seven quart jars of spaghetti sauce.

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out if it was worth all the trouble, too!

I Have a Green Pinkie

After working in the garden the other day, staking up the tomato plants, I note that I do not have a green thumb. All my other fingers were definitely green, though...

I'm starting to become convinced that tomato plants will continue to grow until they reach the ground... and by staking them up, I'm just making them spread more. Anyone know if there's any truth to that notion?

Things that Don't Stay Small for Long

In todays' post, we'll take a look at four things in my life that aren't staying small.

The first comes with the sad preamble that, after more than five years, Yertle stopped swimming around the tank in the living room, and took a permanent nap. I walked him across the street and dropped him gently off the end of a dock with a sad little *bloop.* Poor turtle. Fiona still occasionally asks where he is.

Now that we don't have a hungry, carniverous reptile that eats any non-armored fish (my clown loaches, my beautiful clown loaches...!) we can have fish again... so we got a hungry, carnivorous Oscar that eats any and all non-armored fish. So, here we have "Snaps" Provolone, just a day or so after we got him.

OK, so autofocus cameras and fishtanks don't get along. I'm holding a quarter for size reference.

Next we visit the garden we've been working on over at Paul's house, where our efforts are about to be rewarded a hundredfold. I picked three red little cherry tomatoes off the vines last night. They were wonderful. Rich, savory, juicy, with a dark saltiness. Mmmmmm.

The tomato plants, with Aiden as a size reference. Yes, they're a good deal taller than he is. Keeping the plants off the ground has been a challenge in impromptu engineering.

Our squash and giant pumpkins are coming along nicely, too. I can see quite a number of crookneck squash budding and filling out under the massive leaves. (I'd better learn to like these, quick. It looks like I'll be having quite a few for supper come fall!) The pumpkin vines have stretched out more than 10 feet now, with their own impressive leaves and wine-glass sized flowers, although I haven't seen any fruit start to form there yet.

I had no idea that the plants would be this big. Aiden, again, serves as a size reference.

The fourth thing that isn't staying small here is... Aiden. He's getting big! I love that smile!

Mulberry Musing

I do occasionally wonder, while trimming my trees, why the lowly mulberry gets blessed with so many shapes of leaves, while the oaks and maples only have one.

Perhaps someone more mathematically minded than I can figure out the fractal formula for mulberry.

My cup overfloweth...

The garden has certainly been productive. That's just from one picking, and there are plenty more, ripening. What in the world am I going to do with this many peppers?