I Love My Camera

(clicking photos will enlarge)
It's something I still love to do...take my camera along, especially in the garden or on walks. I enjoy blogging so much more when I have pictures, and I love going back and comparing this year's with those of past years...so many memories!

For more ramble on how a camera has been one of our more enjoyable luxuries at our homeplace, you can read my post today over at NotDabblingInNormal.

Say cheese!

Pulling In the Same Direction

...something I've given a lot of thought to lately as our endurance is tested. More thoughts on it at my post today over at NotDabblingInNormal...

Calabaza: So Many Uses

I love multiple-use plants, especially if they're really hardy. Our calabazas recently had to be harvested after we found evidence of some borer damage, but what a bounty that one vine provided us!

We harvested over 90 lbs from the one plant, and it gave no evidence of quitting! Here is what it provided us:

1. Leaves for cooked greens
2. Blossoms for fresh salads or frying
3. Immature fruits for use as summer squash
4. Mature fruits for use as storage pumpkins
5. Seeds for roasting
6. Really beautiful variegated foliage and stunning flowers

For more about our experience so far with growing this plant, it's my post today at NotDabblingInNormal...maybe you'll want to try calabaza, too!

New Gardener Learning Curve

For more about some things we've learned as beginning gardeners, it's today's post over at NotDabblingInNormal.

And greetings to the new folks who've come here...welcome!

Eating Cowpea Greens

They're not just good for animal fodder, a plate of purple hull peas with cornbread, or fixing nitrogen as a cover crop in the garden. The leaves are a really nutritious edible green! For more on our experiment on how to use cowpea leaves as edible greens, it's my post today over at NotDabblingInNormal.

Hope to see you there :)

Breakfast on the Run, No Drive-Through Necessary

Eating breakfast on the run can still be a fast, simple, delicious, and nutritious matter...and a lot cheaper than going through a drive-through. I yammer on about it some more over at my post today at Not Dabbling in Normal in a brief treatise on why eggs are now back on my plate, (having made a comeback in my kitchen from a bleak history of culinary disgrace), and how you can cook em', eat 'em, and be out the door in less time than it takes to say "No, I don't want fries with that."

(And as evidenced above, I may also continue perpetuating occasional run-on sentences littered with superfluous parentheses to prevent their teetering on the brink of extinction)

I have no idea what I just said...

Ok, and now I'm hungry again! :)

Pigeon Pie?

Jack and I discovered inadvertently that both of us have forbears who raised pigeons and doves. That led us to contemplate their possible uses for the backyard homesteader or rural farm alike, and whether they might be a good and affordable "fit" for us as far as harvesting for food, feather, and fertilizer (and beauty...I love birds...)

For more ponderings, this was the subject of my post today over at Not Dabbling in Normal...

Got squab?