Saturday Gardening and Puttering Thread, New Years Day

Happy New Year! Are your Christmas decorations still up? These decorations are in a neighborhood where a killer bobcat is on the loose. I think some pets have been lost. Critters coming out of the hills during winter.

How is the weather affecting your yard? Looking forward to a new year in the Great Outdoors or the Great Indoors?

Below, a scene from the same yard featured in the photo above:

'tis the season for seed catalogs

Have you received any? Need one? Have favorite varieties of seeds to recommend? This is a not-so-old catalog:

Edible Gardening

We had a lurker de-lurk today as Rex Nemorensis:

"Pic of a goji berry in my garden in December"

Such a striking color! And a lovely composition in the photo.

Recipe for New Years Day

Here's your superstition salad with blackeyed peas that you grew in the garden and froze or canned (or bought). In case you don't like Hoppin' John. You can also use other beans, including garbanzo beans:

Blackeyed Pea Confetti Salad

Amounts of ingredients can be varied to taste.

The honey in this recipe seems to go especially well with blackeyed peas and mild chiles. Feel free to use sugar instead if you're in a hurry.

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon celery salt with regular salt and fresh-ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup salad oil or olive oil
1/4 cup honey

1/4 to 1/3 cup diced onion or scallions, or up to 3/4 cup diced sweet onion
1 pound frozen blackeyed peas, cooked until firm but tender (about 3 cups)
(or substitute canned blackeyed peas - up to two 15 oz. cans, drained)
about 1/3 to 1/2 cup diced red and/or yellow bell pepper, diced
about 1/3 to 1/2 cup diced Pasilla chile (or Ancho, Poblano, Mulato Isleno, Anaheim
or other mild chile)

Combine vinegar, seasonings, oil and honey (measure honey in the same cup as the oil). Add onion and allow to sit while cooking blackeyed peas according to package directions - but just until you can mash a pea easily against a spoon with your finger - as little as 5 minutes after bringing to a boil if they were not fully ripe when picked (the best), longer if they were ripe. Watch carefully that you don't cook them too long or they will be mushy. Drain and rinse to cool peas to lukewarm.

Mix all ingredients. Allow to sit for two hours at room temperature to blend flavors, or refrigerate overnight, stirring a couple of times. Serve over salad greens or steamed vegetables.

Puttering: Photography

Snowdog and By-Tor photographed critters at UC Riverside and some other places a while ago:

From Snowdog.

These are from By-Tor

Damselfly:

Western Fence Lizard:

Beyond Puttering

From Illiniwek:

So much going on. going solar is kinda against the grain. But hey, if they throttle us on oil, a country boy must survive.

This pic is securing the last panel on my ~9000 watt array. Scale is weird since 375 Watt panels are 40" x 80', and I am 77" tall.

This may not fit with Garden thread, but it is a farm project. Deer have munched on some giant red top turnips by that rusty roof barn.

And more surprises from Rex Nemorensis:

From my pyro days (some edited). Pyro pics were taken from a barge or field with mortar tubes loaded with fireworks. Some were hand lit (road flare) and others were electronically ignited (wires into tubes). Fireworks have a lift charge (like the gunpowder behind a bullet) that shoots them into the sky, and the ball (like the bullet) with all kinds of good and interesting chemicals carefully arrayed within to go explody and make stars and flowers and hearts in the sky. A low break is when the lift charge fails to launch the ball high enough into the air and it goes explody near the people who are on the barge. Loads of fun.

Wow.

If you would like to send information and/or photos for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:

ktinthegarden
at that g mail dot com place

posted by K.T. at 01:11 PM

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