7 Quick Takes Friday, on a Friday! I so have my life together!!

1) take a look at this summerchini!

Look how massive it is! It totally dwarfs that tomato!!
Okay that's a very small tomato. But it's still a really big... something. It came from a cucumber plant, and when it appeared I thought it was a zucchini, but it never turned green. My (actual gardener) neighbor said she's never seen anything like it, and that it might be a hybrid. But seriously, it's big. Here it is with an actual remote control! Cable, even!!

 

 I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I am in the midst of a passionate love affair with zucchini, so I have lots of recipes cued up. I'll let you know how it tastes. 

2) we have two new kittens! When our oldest cat went to "kitty heaven" we tried to adjust to living in a catless house. It was a surprising hard thing to get used to. I didn't enjoy the freedom like I might have expected to. We started to hear from our scouts (Scott's family) that there were two adorable kittens in the lobby of a nearby cat hospital. On a whim and with nothing ready, we drove over to take a look adopt them. They're littermates, about 16 weeks old, gangly and silly. It's been so fun having them, so far, despite all the scratch marks on Scott's ankles and the broken items around the house. Scott is absolutely besotted. Well, here, have a look: 

We're still a little hard-pressed for good pics so far, they are awfully wiggly. Stay tuned. 

3) I'm a little bit trapped in my living room, as Scott and some of his youth group kids are out in our yard. Somehow he suckered invited them to come up and paint our deck for us. I love his kids but have kept my distance from the group today, because it's my day off and I'm home and in my garden clothes (unattractive!). But I've been listening in on their conversations and checking in on them. I do miss hanging out with a group of kids. 

4) My dream job is open in my home diocese. Oh, how awful! And what's worse, I'm qualified for it!! I moved out of Maine in 1992... good Lord can that be true? I've lived here longer than I lived there. I've forgotten where things are in Maine, and lost track of the situation up there...  but when I moved to Massachusetts, I never dreamed I'd stay. Now I'm without a country, in a way, not willing to claim Massachusettianism and not willing to give up my Mainer-ness, but really, I'm pretty settled in down here. I can't very well pick up and leave here now, I have a wonderful job and a big social life, and pretty much the best place to live that we could possibly hope for. But oooooh that job looks cool.

5) Maybe this is my alternate timeline, coming around even though I left that path. My plan was always to come here for a while, get some experience in parish youth ministry, then go back to my beloved Diocese of Portland and work in the Youth Ministry Office. This dream job is not in the YM office, but it's still a diocesan position and would be, as I imagine it, awesome. I'm teasing myself with it, thinking about this alternate universe of my potential life, and I'm 8% worried that I'll let it go by and then find myself without a job in the new reconfiguration plans here in Boston. Well. We'll see, I guess. 

6) I can't tell you how many times in the past few minutes I've had to remove a kitten from my keyboard and then delete "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeokj." Kittens are very different from old cats. Wow. 

7) I've got nothing for 7. So, you know, go read this instead! HOW ABOUT THAT??

Mega-Veg

Just strolled out to my garden after what seems like forever and may have been weeks. I had spied some red tomatoes out there and wanted to see what time had produced. What I found, my friends, was a MASSIVE cucumber. It's so big, I don't even know if it will taste good... it's bigger than our remote control, longer than Scott's head. That onion in there with it? It's a vidalia- so there's some contrast for ya. Looks like tonight we'll be having cucumber soup with a side of sauteed cucumbers, and cucumber ice cream for dessert.
No, we won't have any of that, really. But we may have some cucumbers, cut with some salt sprinkled on. What else is necessary?


















By the way, that's our first carrot, in the corner near the onion. We continue with our tradition of producing non-carrot-shaped carrots. Ah well, I'm sure it'll taste just fine... with a side of cucumber.

Zipadee doo dah and BLAM!!!

Today was one of my favorite kinds of days. I got up at a reasonably late hour (nowadays I can't sleep very late. Is it old age, or just the fact that my cat begins to mercilessly lick me at a certain time every morning?), had some breakfast, watched an old movie that thrilled me (it was inner child perfection!!) and then headed out to the garden.
As I sat next to my garden frame, weeding it and counting cucumbers, and listening to both Radio Lab AND the second crop of baby birds in our birdhouse, with the sun shining on me, I thought: my life is WONDERFUL. I am truly fortunate and grateful.
But I have to admit that the best second of my day was... well, let me set this up.
We live in an old house. The plumbing is not modern. Our sink backs up all the time, and we've tried all the green and not green ways to clear the drain. Baking soda and vinegar, boiling water, and all the different brands of drain de-clogger. Running the dishwasher leaves a couple of inches of gray water in the sink (both sides... ewww!) for a while. We are careful, have a mesh cover over the drain and lately we've even been pouring everything through a coffee filter! Old-house living is not for the impatient.
BUT TODAY! Today we bought CLR Power Plumber. IT IS AWESOME!!! I found it on Amazon and the reviews were great, so I bought it downtown, and gleefully invited Scott to join me. His job was to hold a towel over the other drain, and I filled the main side and stuck the CLRPP into my drain, and pushed...
BLAM!!!! It shoots some kind of (supposedly gentle) chemicals and compressed air into the drain, which we were not exactly ready for. But it was SO EXCITING! And yes, the drain cleared out immediately. We have 14 more applications in our can, and if you have a slow drain, we would be happy to come and clear it out for you. It was that fun.
I also made pesto (first time! In the blender! I used this recipe, but used toasted sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts. Could not find pine nuts anywhere!!) from the basil in my garden today, and we had it on haddock for dinner. And I got my laundry done, and cleaned the kitchen, and just loved this day. Ahhhhh Summer, and there's still a whole August to go!!

Triduum

Happy Holy Saturday, everyone! It's super-gloomy out, which I expect will change at around 8:00 when people start ringing their bell and singing Allelu... oops, can't say it yet!
We are on the backside of a marathon of work, which for Scott means the 24-hour (read: overnight on the parish hall floor) Food Fast for Catholic Relief Services, and for me means achy feet and bones from just running around constantly from Thursday to tonight. I don't host any big events but am involved somehow in everything that goes on at the parish during Triduum. Both jobs are exhausting and inspiring and exhilarating, and we both end up so pooped and happy by the end of it that we can't wait to wake up on Sunday morning so we can relax.
I find myself tearing up often over this weekend, wondering over and over why I am a blessed as I am... but that's another blog entry. (Really, I think I've written that one already, maybe I'll find it and link it later.) Teenagers laughing, watching my friends and fellow Christians returning from Communion, the Veneration of the Cross, middle schoolers awkwardly diving in at the Food Fast... for some reason, watching kids play Pull-Up gets me every time.
Meanwhile, I'm darting home to fix things so that tomorrow we can be primed and ready to do nothing but sit around in our Easter pajamas and feast. Here are two updated pics from my future garden, just to keep you grounded... yuk yuk yuk!

I've got the fever!!

I suppose I blog about this every year at this time, but WOW I feel better, now that the Spring seems to (don't jinx it!) have arrived. I spent half the day Saturday raking up last Fall's gross wet and surprisingly deep leaf cover, and bagging it all up. It is super-fun to pull back the grossness and see shoots of green. SUPER-FUN! I totally mean that.
Meanwhile, I've assuaged some of the guilt of using K-cups by pulling the lids off after use (and we use each one twice) and dumping out the coffee, pulling out the filter, and then using them for seed starters.
In order of appearance, that's peas, morning glories, I think the morning glories again, and carrots. As each plant gets too tall for the plastic wrap that covers the tray of cups, I move them to a window sill and replace them with more seeded cups. We drink a lot of coffee around here!
Happy Spring everyone! (un-jinx!)

Easy Seed is for Wimps

Yes! You can transplant grass! Of course you can, that's the whole idea of sod. You just cut it out, lift it up leaving an inch or two of dirt attached, and plant it where you've prepared the soil! It's incredibly... hard, back-breaking work. But so cool! We have some dead spots on the front lawn that we've tried seeding but have never had any luck with. Now there are oddly-shaped patches of thick, lush lawn and clover.

We harvested the lawn from the spot where we put in a raised bed. Cut the square, shovel underneath the dirt, roll up the grass, dig out the go-to spot, plop down the roll of grass, stomp on it, and water. It sounds so simple.
Ah well, as sore and tired as I am (and I AM) I am also pretty tickled and proud of myself and my new muscles. And the garden, and the new lawn. Here's a couple of pictures:

Looky!!!! Loooooookyyyyy!!!

half longs

Every year I think I'm a wicked cool gardener and plant vegetables from seed. It is a ridiculous endeavor. My neighbors put in little plants and by now have big raging bushes of vegetables that they are overwhelmed by and have to give away (thankfully). But not me, I nurture hair-breadth seeds to minor success and weird shaped bounty.
Behold the cucumbers from my garden this year:














They came out as golf-ball sized roundy cukelets. My neighbor asked me if they, like my carrots, are "Danvers Half-Longs." Well, undeterred by their weird size and shape, we sliced them up for lunch today and let me tell you they were delicious.

Scenes from Spring on the Hill

Today is almost a day off for Scott and me, and we had gleefully planned to go out in the yard and uncover the gardens. They're just starting to peek out from under the leaves that we use as mulch (read: don't rake) and I am ITCHING to get out there and play. But it's been raining all day long, and so we're stuck in the house. Too bad it's raining.
Tomorrow it's supposed to clear, some, hopefully just enough for us to get out there for a bit and see what we can find. In the meantime, I did a little cooking and thought I'd share a peek at the view from in here.
It's the last Lenten Friday at home and that means NO meat- next week it's no meat, too, and also it's a lot of nothing else, as we'll be fasting. But I couldn't look another egg in the yolk and wasn't in the mood for tuna, so I pulled some Maine shrimp out of the freezer and stir-fried it! YUM!
Before:


















After:














(It was even prettier in real life, and delicious.)
Our Grape Tomato plant has ONE BLOSSOM, and promises of more:





We planted this from seed last Summer but it didn't get very far, so I brought it in for the Winter- it's growing in leaps and bounds and I'm thrilled with the blossom!










And finally, my sister Cate gave me this mystery bulb (because I forget what it is) a couple of Christmases ago, and it didn't bloom- but a big wide, long leaf shot out of it. I let it hibernate for the Winter this year and just brought it back out into the sun about a month ago, and look how it's grown!