The Zucchini Has Arrived

These two zucchinis were the first to be harvested. One yielded 3 cups of densely packed zucchini shreds that are currently residing in two zucchini bread loaves in my kitchen. They smell amazing but are just too hot to cut yet. I'm excited to try it. Unfortunately, my Flickr is at it's max upload for the month of June, so no recipe & pics until July, unless I decide to fuss around with my photobucket account. These zucchini plants are overachievers. I swear, these two that I picked are around 2 lbs a piece. They're huge! And Now one is bread. The other will become dinner sometime this week. I'm thinking about trying a zucchini Parmesan using a baked eggplant parm recipe. The texture of this first one was really close to an eggplant, so I think it will work.

In knitting news, I'm almost done with a baby sweater. So pictures of that to come soon. And Steven's black sweater of doom has only 1.5 arms to go and a few small finishing details before it is done. The edging of doom on the PNW shawl is still in progress. I believe I've finished 18 or so out of the 31 edging repeats, so the hope is to finish these three projects by the end of July. We'll see how that goes!

End of July plans have been finalized! We'll be on the Oregon Coast for the last weekend. A whole 5 days off work! It'll be the closest thing to a vacation we've taken since our honeymoon. I'm pretty darned excited. It should be fantastic. Several of my relatives from Cali are coming up that weekend and my birthday is the 31st, so it should be lotsa fun!

Knittyboard SP9!

I've made a connection with my upline and with my downline! I'm so excited.
I really need to make more friends in my own town, but virtual friends are so much easier. All my college friends have left for the summer and most graduated this year. I think only 1 or 2 are coming back next year. Guess that's my pennance for choosing to live here instead of moving when we stopped classes.
But the heat (!!) is great for the garden. Those pictures down there are sooo outdated now. I have zucchini as thick as my arm growing, and it's no where near ripe yet. The cucumbers are putting out all kind of runners and I have a few very baby cukes on there. Several green tomatoes are up and starting to plump. Lots and lots of baby summer squash. And the acorn squash is sending out lots of runners. The corn is getting too dense to see through and is around 3 feet tall now. I'll try to get more pictures up later this week!
But for now, it's back to work for me. UPS just brought me yarn to label. KFI, so it'll be more Noro and Debbie Bliss. Yummy.

I think I have a problem...

You see, it all began innocently enough. I was so excited that Steven had a porch with lots of sun that I planted 2 tomato plants. Two small plants in their own little pots all alone on his deck. I think I put some flowers out there as well. And it was great. They were cherry tomatoes and growing those tomatoes was the most rewarding thing that I did that summer (besides becoming engaged and living on my own for the first time. But the tomatoes were a part of all these things). The problem was, I don't like to eat tomatoes. I like to cook with them, making sauce and such, but I will not eat them raw. And... Well... My sauce skillz are sadly lacking. But I was hooked on this magic of growing tomatoes. I put this little 4 inch seedling in the ground and watered and watered and watered and before I knew it, these tomatoes were falling off the plant. It was fantastic!

Fast forward to the following year. We had a fairly large back yard and, encouraged by my success of the previous year, I set about duplicating the process. Only this time, I got over-zealous. I planted lettuce. Ohhh boy, was that a mistake! My yard, unknowingly to me, had become earwig heaven when I put in those little lettuce plants. And the one thing that makes me scream like a little girl is the sight of earwigs. I can not stand these little bugs, mostly because my mom had this theory about teaching her kids fear and chose earwigs as one of her big selling points. I used to litterally wake up screaming from nightmares that involved earwigs, thanks to her influence. So, the lettuce crop was a complete bust. But my two little tomato plants florished and did even better than the year previous. And this year I got smart. I only roasted the tomatoes and the pureed them and froze the puree. This way, I could add that homemade tomato paste to any recipe calling for tomato paste in a can, and voila! Sauce that didn't suck!

Now, our story jumps forward one more year. I had learned from my last two years not to plant leafy things that grow close to the ground, but that I was the tomato queen. I also had become a guinea pig mom and those little guys were complete suckers for raw tomatoes. So, I thought, "Great! A Willing audience! I can UPGRADE my plot!" And so I went about building a small raised bed, filled with the best wal-mart soil I could afford. I staked out the plots and in went 3 tomato plants - by this time I'd upgraded to romas - and I got brave and tried out cucumbers and acorn squash. And that wal-mart soil worked it's wonders, along with lots of water and the hot, E WA sun. I had tomato plants so large that they pulled their cages out of the ground. And The cucumbers and acorn squash stretched halfway across our lawn. I found joy in refridgerator pickles and the squash went in a cool, dark place to await stuffing and roasting. And once more, I made roasted tomato puree. But I had many more tomatoes than I could puree. And guinea pigs are fairly small animals. They could only eat one or two a day. So I started giving away tomatoes. I brought them to work, I gave them to friends, I had tomatoes coming out my ears! And this is the girl, remember, who HATES raw tomatoes...

And so we arrive at this year. We are in a real house this year, on a huge lot that had a great flat area that we tilled for a vegetable patch. And you'd think I would have learned my lesson over last year, right? 2 tomato plants, great, 3 are too many, more than that is insanity. And since we no longer have the piggies, but have a dog, I needed to cut back even more, right?

Now what makes you think I had that kind of sense? Oh no, Not me! I put in 5 (that's right, FIVE) different varieties of tomatoes. As well as my very successful cucumbers (twice as many plants, of course) and acorn squash (ditto) and added corn and bell peppers. Now really, I had to give away half my produce from last year so it wouldn't rot, so what came over me? All I can say is that it was a sunny day, the plot was sitting there empty, and I started placing stakes to mark out plots. And it all went downhill from there. By the time I got to the store, I had so many grand plans that the checker didn't know what hit her when I came buy in my bulging cart. I also added a couple of herb pots this year to our front porch.

I really really am crazy. I am the crazy plant lady who works in a yarn shop all day and is so eager for sun that I go a little crazy when let loose in a garden center. And this year I have to weed. Boo. But it sure is going to be fun!