Great Flats Pic 12/18

December 18, 2009

Great Flats Pic and Today’s To-Do List

The tide has turned.  Fall doesn’t technically start until Tuesday, but it is pretty chilly now.  Tonight it’s supposed to be 40 DEGREES F.

Normally, I love fall, it’s the reason why I picked September to get married, the season of my birthday, my most favorite time of the year.  But this year’s different, possibly because I didn’t really get a summer this year, between surgery and all the rain.  Which is funny, because summer is usually my LEAST favorite time of the year because of the heat.

September 19, 2009

Today I woke up not feeling very excited about the day.  Some of my readers probably know why.  But I’m trying to make the best of things and am going to throw myself into the myriad of things I have on my To-Do list.

• Making 100-mile Pear Upside Down Cake with Whipped Cream.
• Making Allison’s @ Eat Clean Live Green‘s Great Scott Granola Bars.
• Going to the garden to plant fall crops and get it ready for winter.
• Picking up my car from the mechanic, who just gave it a transmission flush.
• Possibly making more butter, in these cute little butter molds I picked up from A Different Drummer’s Kitchen, a local cookware shop in Albany.
• Canning cherry jam.

Speaking of Allison, did you know she was doing a giveaway?  Head to her page to win a sample pack of Taste of Nature granola bars!

But before I get started on today, hubby is going to make me some french toast with our local bread, eggs and milk.   That will definitely start the day off right.

Great Flats Pic This Week

August 27, 2009

Great Flats Pic O’ The Week 5/19

May 19, 2009

Man, when you compare this pic to the one taken only a month ago – it’s like night and day!

To see all my Great Flat pics throughout the year, check out my Great Flats page.

A month in the life of the Great Flats

I’m thinking about devoting a page of my blog to that which inspired me to name my blog after it! Got that? 🙂  Every day I am treated to views of the Great Flats and I’ve been taking weekly pictures from the same angle to hopefully see the change the seasons bring about in the Flats.  To be honest, I haven’t seen much of a change yet…but it should be coming soon.

So far…

March 14, 2009

March 21, 2009

March 31, 2009

April 4, 2009

April 13, 2009

Well, obviously, the ice is gone and and the trees are starting to sprout, but beyond that – well it’s only April.  It’ll look a lot different soon enough!  This is last year…

July 28, 2008

Hey, where’d the aquifer go?

Go Spring!

First Mosquito Bite of the Season

Hubby has class on Tuesday nights, leaving me pretty free until 8pm-ish.  We spend lots of time together, cuz he’s my best friend, but I sort of look forward to Tuesday nights which give me some alone time.

Today after work I headed to Honest Weight Co-op to buy some fruits and veggies, and some milk.  We have so much food left over from the last few weeks we needed very little from the grocery store.  I bought some asparagus, organic strawberry and Meadowbrook milk (yay glass bottles!) and it would have been a very cheap grocery week indeed if I hadn’t gotten sidetracked by the Fedco seeds.

Oh, who am I kidding?  I went to the co-op to specifically CHECK OUT the Fedco seeds!  And I ended up buying eleventy billion of them.  I am so gosh darn excited though – what do you want me to do?

So, what’d I buy? So glad you asked!

• Sugarsnap peas
• Scarlett Runner Bean
• Provider Bush Green Bean
• Black Valentine Bush Green Bean
• Danvers Carrot
• Golden Chard
• Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
• Salad Bowl Lettuce
• Long Standing Bloomsdale Spinach
• Caribe Cilantro

Oh man, I went a little crazy on the beans – and I’m not sure why! I should see if I can return some.  Because we still need to get tomatoes, eggplant, and zucchini.

I also got some organic soil to container plant with – and it’s local! From the local dirt farm?  Heh heh.

McEnroe Organic Soil, from Millerton, NY

When I got home with my purchases I wisked everything out to back deck.  I put a load of wash on with my homemade laundry detergent, set water on to boil to eat pasteles later, and then went back outside to plant my organic cilantro.  I’ve been dreaming about organic cilantro a lot lately.  Most of these dreams coincide with organic tomato dreams in which I make the most delicious salsa in the late summer and then can it!  Mmm….

Newly planted cilantro on the left (organic), regular old cilantro on right

We actually have a little bit of regular cilantro left from last year that we kept going on the window sill over the winter, but it’s pretty dead.

It was such a great evening…warm (50s), and I heard the peepers in the aquifer, saw a family of deer stumble through the Great Flats, woodpecker tapping the trees…and some cars in the distance…boo.

The last of the deer family

After the cilantro was done, I pulled out some seeds we saved from last year and started planting those.

Seeds saved from last year

Flower seeds

We got a real kick out of saving the above flower seeds late last fall.  We were in the heat of the election season and I think these were something Alaska related.  They were beautiful flowers, but shallow 🙂  So we named them Alaska Sarah Palins.

So there was my Tuesday night! It really was wonderful and very relaxing.  Until I got my first mosquito bite of the season, dang it! I don’t understand how we can go from snow last week to mosquitoes this week!

Will winter ever end?

Not that snow is unheard of up in this Antarctic tundra they call upstate NY, especially in April, but this was an especially bad winter, so I’m SO over it.

The Great Flats are gray today.