Monday, August 18, 2014

Sea side, Festivals, and Veggies

The last few days have been relaxing.  Or at least I intended for them to be since we have experienced three losses in less than a seven day period.   The weather has been fabulous for the last couple of days although it was hot last week!  We venture into the big city to see what was happening.

Well, not much!  we were too early.  But we could see how all of the vendors had their booths set up and ready to roll when the time came.


the beach was quiet.  The perfect place to be for now......:-)


 Chris made us a beach seat while we were waiting for the tide to come in.  If you look closely, you can see it at the edge of the water....:-)


We spent quite some time there before things started to get busy around the booths.  Right across from the booths were the community gardens......:-).


the vendors were finally open and people began to fill the promenade.


The gardens were very pretty with all manner of things growing.  Here you can see some petunias and in the very front some basil.


There were different things growing in each bed which made for a beautiful display of color.


There were several tent areas set up, but we found a place by the fence that seemed to be looking for us!


And before you knew it, it was dinner time!  Not a very wise choice, but there weren't that many choices.  The cup if filled with "signature meatballs".  That's what they called them anyway.  I'm glad I didn't know whose signature it was!  They needed a lot of help!


After filling our bellies, we headed back to the beach and used our beach mat for the first time that I could remember on the sand.


After another hour or so of that, we headed home and stopped at the forest and picked some wild blackberries....:-).


The next day we headed for the border.  We were going to spend some time in Seattle...



It was a grueling wait at the border even with having Nexus passes.  I think we crawled along for a good 40 minutes before we finally reached it.  Home sweet home!


We spent a day in Seattle taking care of some business and then headed to the river to sit and watch the boats go back and forth.  This was a party boat of some sort.


I don't know how long we stayed at this stop before deciding it was time to go.  I think the mosquitos may have had something to do with our decision, though!


I know it seems that we are always eating.  That's because we are full on foodies and enjoy sampling different food from different places.  This was a typical fish and chips meal.  Actually, it wasn't that great.:-(.


After spending some time in Seattle, we traveled back home and stopped at the garden to check on things.

These are Hot Banana Peppers. Some of them had gotten to be about 3 inches long.
I took three of the larges ones to use for dinner that night or the next.
I planted the marigold flowers from seed earlier in the season to encourage pollination from the bees and to attract lady bugs and other beneficial insects.


The bell peppers that we planted where said not to be ripe until they turned orange.  These are on their way since they are turning orange although slowly.  They are also smaller than the ones you see in the grocery store.  But I have found that growing organic sometimes means that the product is smaller but chemical free.


This is my basil which seems to be doing a lot better since I moved it out of direct sun light.  Time to harvest some again.


We have harvested so many green beans that I cannot keep count but it was time to get some more off of the vines.


The carrots were starting to protrude out of the top of the soil.  But we decided to just add a little more soil and let them be since the others while the tops were great, the root was very small.


Some one had given us a cucumber plant.  We had a choice of which plant and I chose the sick one to see if
I could get it to survive!

Behold... it liveth!!



A fellow gardener informed us that we should take as much Swiss chard as we like since she didn't like it.  We were puzzled as to why she was growing it in the first place.  She said " I just like the way it looks, but I don't eat it!".....ok then!


Our tomatoes seems to be slow in the ripening process, but they are coming along.  The cherry tomatoes are great!  The Champion tomato seems to have a much tougher skin and I think would work best for drying or roasting.


Well, we gathered our stuff and after a thorough watering we headed back to the house.



We gave everything a good cold wash and a soak in a mild vinegar and water solution.



This was the swiss chard that we harvested getting a bath.


Here are the greens beans that have been bathed.  We decided that instead of eating all of these, I would blanch and freeze them instead.


 Chris removed the ends and assisted in getting them ready for the freezer.



 After clearing the seeds out of the peppers, I decided to roast them.



I don't know how we found ourselves back at the beach, but somewhere in there we made that happen.



Chris was building another "grand construction".


The next day, we decided to go for a ride.  I took Raspberry since she hadn't been out in a while.....
I have found that my airhawk works much better with the bike than going "bare saddle" you might say.

Ain't she cute!


Chris decided to ride "Thing two" this time instead of Ruby.  Thing Two seems to be running fine....:-)


We talked about how the corn that we had seen the day before seemed to be just about ready for harvest, but since we had never grown corn before, we decided to take the leap and harvest two ears.


Chris washed them and I wrapped them to save them for dinner the next day.



Well, the next day came today.  I was anxious to see how the corn would turn out.  We had salmon steaks as the meat dish.  The salmon had been caught by a friend who is a serious fisherman....:-).  I marinated it in my own special sauce.

.
and the corn was SUPERB!!  who knew home grown food could be so much better than the grocery store!?  Only those who have done it......:-).

See you next time!