Fall Cream Soup

Remember the pumpkins (red kuri squash) that I grew from seeds? (click here) Well, they grew and I ended up with 3 beautiful ripe squashes and I couldn't wait to taste them! Today being a very Fall'ish rainy day, I decided to make a lovely, warm and yummy cream soup.

Simple and easy cream soup for rainy Fall days

Ingredients
- 1 red kuri squash
- 1 big onion
- a few carrots (6-7 small)
- 1 big potato
- a piece of fresh ginger (I use a piece about the size of my thumb from tip to where it first bends)
- Chicken bouillon (preferably real)
- salt and pepper

Cut the squash in quarters, remove the inside part, peel the pieces and cut in cubes. I use a small knife and a spoon to cut out and scrape the inside, and an ordinary carrot/potato peeler to peel the outer part off.

Red kuri squash

Peel and cut the carrots, potato, onion and fresh ginger in pieces. There is nothing precise here. Just cut them out and throw them into a cooking pot. Add chicken bouillon until it just covers the veggies. Add salt and pepper.

Squash, carrots, potato, onion, ginger, chicken bouillon, salt and pepper. 

Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Remove from heat and blend together. You should obtain an even, fairly smooth texture.

Blend together when all the vegetables are tender.

 That's it! Serve with a sip of cream and a piece of bread. I personally enjoy eating cottage cheese with my vegetable cream soup. Try it! It's not bad at all. :)

Yummy!

Crochet

As the weather is getting colder, and I am spending less and less time out in the garden, my motivation for indoor arts and crafts is climbing again, as it tends to do every Fall.

My hobby focus lately has been on crocheting. Good friends of mine brought to the world an adorable baby girl at the end of July, and I have been having a lot of fun crocheting small items to her.

Hat, dress and "shoes" in newborn size

Mini shoes in the converse style

My husband also requested a new scarf, as the one I had made for him a few years ago is getting quite worn out. So I made him a scarf and ear warmer set, which I think he is happy for. :)

These are blankets I made a while back. The yellow and white one was made a few years ago, when I still lived in Canada. The other one I made sometime this year. Unfortunately, I misjudged how much yarn I would need and ran out of 2 colours. They were balls of yarn I took with me from Canada, so I could not just go and buy new ones! So it ended up as a very small blanket. Oh well! I still had fun making it.

I enjoy crocheting in front of the tv in the evening. However, I do miss the easy access to a vast variety of yarn at good price, which I was used to from Canada. I find the selection limited here in Denmark, and the prices higher, unless there's a good sale somewhere. But the good sales often are for yarn that are not, in my taste, soft enough for baby items. Perhaps I am yet to find the right places to shop at. :)

Dried Flowers and Leaves

Do you remember my flower press? (click here) It is about time I let you guys know how this experiment turned out. I let the flowers and leaves dry a few weeks, and when it was finally time to open the press and see the results, I was very exited and curious! But my excitement died a little when I saw that the previously pretty and colourful flowers had been turned into fade, dirty looking and rippled ones. :( I knew they would loose some of their colours, but I didn't know they would become quite that fade, and didn't think the white would become quite that brown!

As you can see, the pretty red poppy flowers are now a dull pink. The pure white flowers became brown and spotted. The rich pink ones and the purple ones became dark fade violet.
However, the tiny blue/purple ones are the ones who survived the drying process the best by keeping both a nice shape and a vibrant colour.
I also made the mistake to use rippled cardboard. It was not rippled on the surface, but once pressed, the texture showed through and as clearly visible on the far right of the picture, printed itself on the delicate flowers. What a sad result. :( Lesson learned!

But all was not lost! The leaves, which are by nature more robust to start with, turned out pretty well! They dried nicely and retained most of their lovely green shades.

These are now stored safely for future use. I'm sure I'll be happy to get a little taste of summer by finding and using them in a project somewhere in the middle of the cold season. We'll see.

I will of course try again with different flowers and with even more leaves. I think some flowers react better to drying than others, so it will be a little quest to find out which ones give good results, and which ones should be avoided.

Seed-a-lee-doo...

This season, I learned a lot about sowing and caring for a garden. I've also come to realize that while it is indeed a lot of work, it is not necessary, unlike what I was led to believe, to be absolutely perfect in the art of gardening in order to enjoy a decent harvest. There are weeds in my garden. Yep... But there are also perfectly fine vegetables which I was able to add to many meals and happily savour. It certainly was successful enough in the end to make me already look forward to next year and a new garden season.

In preparations to that, the next thing I wanted to explore was seed harvesting. How fun would it be if I could eventually harvest all my seeds from my own garden and use them in the following years! Not only would I save a lot of money over time, but I would also ensure the quality of my seeds. I decided to start with the obvious: Everything that grows in pods.

So I am intentionally leaving some peas, green beans and yellow beans on the plants to mature and dry,  whereafter I will be able to crack the dried pods open and save the seeds for next year.

In the meantime, I looked around the yard and garden to find seeds that I could already harvest, and here is the result of my mini-quest.

Zucchini
(Same process for pumpkins)

1- Allow one of the zucchinis to grow and mature on the plant. I learned that they can become really quite huge!

42 x 12 cm (around 16.5" x  4,5") 

2- Cut the zucchini open and scrape the middle out.

Cut and scrape...

3- Find the healthy looking seeds. They look pretty much like pumpkin seeds. Discard the rest of the gooey stuff. The flesh can be eaten, of course! Lay the seeds on paper towels or on a screen net tray. Set somewhere warm and dry and leave them for a couple of weeks. When the seeds are completely dry, store for next year!

It's not only vegetable seeds that can be harvested. Flowers are fun too, and some of them are quite easy to deal with.

Iris

I spotted my blue irises earlier this year. When the flowers were done, the plant started forming pods in their place. I didn't touch anything and waited through the season for the pods to mature and dry.

1- Wait for the pods to dry and turn brown. They will start opening at the top and they will sound like mini maracas when you shake them.

Dried iris seed pods (featuring a blurry Kashew  in the background)

2- Pick the best looking ones, and crack them open.

3 - Clear residues out and store the seeds away. 

Lavender

Harvesting lavender seeds is a bit of a different process. 

1- Wait until the flowers are done and dry. They will have holes all over.

Dried lavender flower. (Featuring a blurry Tiana in the background)

2- Cut out some of the dried flowers and place them in a container with lid.

Lavender flowers, even at this stage, have such a nice fragrance! 

3- Close and shake the container. The little seeds contained in the flowers will fall out. 

4- Take the flowers out and set the seeds aside. Repeat the process with the same flowers until no more seeds are obtained. 

5 - Clear the residues out and store the small seeds. 

Tiny lavender seeds

I don't actually have any intention of sowing lavender directly in soil. I have a lot of it and one of its way to propagate is to run roots out under the soil in and pop baby plants everywhere. So as nice looking and as beautiful a fragrance it can have, it can be quite a pest at times! However, lavender in pots can also have its charm. :)

That's it for the time being. If any of you also harvest seeds and have tricks to share, please feel free to comment! I would love to hear from you. :)

Oh, the zucchinis... and the other green things

I can safely say that my very first vegetable garden is successful, if not as varied as I had planned at Spring. I've had so much fun harvesting zucchinis, sweet peas, lettuce and yellow and green beans, as well as various fresh herbs. I must say, though, that we have zucchinis coming out of our ears, as even giving some away is not enough to keep our stack down. I have already decided on only 1, maaaybe 2 zucchini plants next year, in stead of 4. (What was I thinking growing 4 of them, right?)

There's also the issue of mildew on zucchini plants. This is the white'ish layer you see on the leaves on the following image. The fruit is still very safe to eat,  but the plant is less healthy. I am trying to remove / control this powdery mildew with a homemade all-natural remedy (2 teaspoon potassium bicarbonate, 2 teaspoon vegetable oil and 2,5 L water), but it has not been an easy task! The only real solution is to remove all affected plants so it doesn't spread. :( I am still reluctant to revert to that solution at this point!

Garden in August

As it is now, the rest of the vegetable patch does not seem to get affected by the mildew. However, the tomatoes seem to have a hard time turning red. I have a lot of them, but they're all green, even though we are nearly at the end of August. I can't figure out why! 

The pumpkins, on the other hand, have grown quite a bit bigger and in the last couple of weeks, have taken a very lovely pumpkin color! Even though the plant itself is huge, and comes up with tiny baby pumpkins all the time, I only have 3 pumpkins that seem to be developing properly, and here's a picture of the biggest of them, at 2 different times this month. 

pumpkins - August 10, 2012

pumpkins - August 24, 2012

Meanwhile, on the terrace by the shed, my chili in pots are producing cute little chili peppers. Like the tomatoes, they are still green, and I don't know if they'll have time to turn red before the colder season, but it's still fun to see! 

Will they turn red before winter, you think?

I think that's it for the garden update!

I will end this post by saying that there soon will be a new exciting development in our garden, and I CAN'T WAIT to share the whole thing with you guys! So stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

Oooh my oh my. :) :) :)

Extending the flower joy

I absolutely love the warmer months, from the moment the first flower blooms, until the fall of the last few leaves in our trees. I enjoy them not only for the warmer temperatures, but also for the palette of colors Spring, Summer and Fall has to offer. It is a delight for the eyes and an inspiration for the artist's mind.

When I moved from Canada to Denmark, I lost a bit of heat in the summer months, as temperatures don't go quite as high, and the danish (near constant) wind tends to cool the air down. However, I did gain longer Spring and Fall seasons, and milder winters, which suits me juuuust fine.

But it doesn't matter how short or mild winter can be, it will always be too cold and too grey for my taste. This must be the reason why my motivation to paint usually resurfaces at Fall, after a break during the warmer months. I love colors and can not be long without them!

I got (and still get) so much joy out of my yard / garden this year, that I wondered how I could carry this joy with me through the winter time. I know it's still early, and summer is still here. August and September tend to be really nice here in Denmark, but still... I have to be prepared. And if I want to preserve a bit of summer, it is now that I must act. My solution: Flower pressing.

Like most of us, I have tried pressing leaves here and there between the pages of a book, but this time, I wanted a proper press. So, a new project was born, carried out and completed, and this is how it went:

I took a leftover piece of hardwood floor and cut it in two. I drilled wholes at the 4 corners of each panel, for eventual bolts.

I sanded the backside of the panels, which I then painted and varnished to make them more appealing.  The smooth hard wood becomes the inner sides of the press. There's no real technical reason, I just liked it better that way.  :)

I cut out pieces of cardboard and sheets of papers to fit the press. The layering should be as followed:  "Wood, cardboard, paper, flowers, paper, cardboard, wood". Many layers of cardboard and paper can be added.

 I then went around and clipped pretty flowers and leaves, and placed them in my flower press, which I tighten using bolts and wing nuts.

The bolts I had at my disposal are not quite long enough. They work fine for now, but I will eventually get longer bolts, which will allow me to add many more layers to my press. 

In 2-3 weeks, I should be able to take the dried flowers and leaves out and use them in artistic creations. This will be a first for me, and I am very much looking forward to it, as ideas of what to do with these pieces of nature are already forming in my head. :)

What would you do with dried/pressed flowers?

Veggie Garden After All

Apparently, vacation is not only good for people, it's also good for gardens! Remember my earlier poor attempt at growing lovely vegetables from seeds?  After this first near total fail, I had decided to sow again, but in pots this time, to keep a closer eye on the development. In my last update, I was getting ready to transfer that second round of baby plants onto the garden patch.

I had not set my hopes too high, as it was getting quite late in the season (almost July!) for starting a garden anew! But to my delight, everything survived the transfer and started growing... and producing!

Second attempt at a garden patch, nearly 3 weeks after transfer - July 18, 2012

Tiny little baby pumpkins! They look like small elves. heehee :) - July 18, 2012

My parents and grandmother visited us from Canada in July (hence the lack of entries in that period of time, by the way), and when they arrived, I got a few tricks from the experienced! The tomato plants were the only thing remaining from my original garden attempt, but I couldn't understand why they were growing so big and nicely, yet had so few flower buds. So I learned that it was better to prune the plant, so it could concentrate its energy on producing nice tomatoes. As the plant develops, shoots, commonly called "suckers", form in the axils, and these shoots need to be removed.

The shoots at the axils need to be removed for better development of tomatoes

Within a few days after pruning / cleaning up the plants, I started seeing an increase in the amount of buds, and in the speed in which everything was progressing. By now, about 3 weeks later, my tomato plants are full of buds, flowers and green tomatoes growing by the day!

Fresh tomatoes in the making - July 31st, 2012

I have already made several salads with fresh zucchinis, fresh lettuce and fresh basil and chives. I can't wait to replace store bought tomatoes with fresh tomatoes to go with the rest. No vegetable taste better than the homegrown ones!

Second attempt at a garden patch - July 31st, 2012

This project may not have worked exactly as I expected from the start, but in the end, some of it worked out and I come out of it with a little more experience than I had when the season started. Hands on trial and errors... and some good advice from experience gardeners. There is no best way to learn. :) I'm afraid I've been stung by the gardening bug. I wonder if the symptoms are contagious? ;)