Thursday, June 26, 2014

Strawberry wine -- maybe? HOPEFULLY!

LOL!!!!
I think this picture truly says it all!  The late nights and early mornings of summer are starting to catch up with this lil' girl.  I'm surprised I'm not more wiped out than what I am too.  Waking between 5-6AM every morning;  staying up well past 10PM --- and going nonstop inbetween! ;)

BUT!

STRESS.  FREE!

And THAT, my friends, is the biggggggest difference!  

Cassie put some hours in with the FFA Ag teacher this morning, helping weed the school gardens and flower beds.  I picked her up at noon;  we ate a lil' lunch, and then she was out with me in OUR gardens, weeding.  I had tilled up both gardens completely, but a few small patches needed our attention.  
Today:  we weeded the lettuce patch;  I had already finished the dill, tomatoes, peppers, beans and potatoes.  
The lettuce patch has taken up the location where our Heirloom Roma tomatoes were last year.  Some may know this already, but I didn't really grow up with gardening knowledge -- it's all been self-taught/learned over the past 10-or-so years.  Heirloom variety seeds were my new knowledge just a couple of years ago.  I never really paid attention to seed packages -- have you?  Did you know that Heirloom varieties will regerminate in future years if any seeds dry and fall to the ground???  Now I know.  And now I know why certain tomato plants over the years have popped up in various spots in the garden, year to year.

Anyway---while Cassie and I were weeding the lettuce, ......(shhhhhhhh, don't tell Paul)....... I transplanted 5 (or 6??) rouge Roma plants into my tomato patch. :D  I am now MAXED along the tomato fence line that we set up at the beginning of the garden season.  In fact, I probably have a couple too many along the fence, but....**shrug**... we'll see.  I'll sweet talk 'em into growing tall, and big, and they'll play nice with each other.

The strawberries were next on the list to tackle today.

Cassie was excited to see this one reach ripeness today;  she eyed it up the other night when we were picking.  Talking about a mutant!

We picked another 4 containers today, reaching almost 4 1/2 pounds.



Paul mentioned strawberry wine the other night and he looked up the recipe.  It called for either 3 or 4 pounds of strawberries, so this picking will (hopefully) get processed in order to start a batch of wine.  Wine-making is Paul's baby, but I'd like to follow along with the process this year.  It's a bit secretive and mysterious to me!

Happy Thursday -- golly.
I seriously just typed Happy Wednesday;  these days are starting to blend together!

5 comments:

Andee said...

Oh strawberry wine sounds delicious! Do let us know how it turns out! Strawberries are my favorite berry, yours look SO good!

Joanne said...

The sneaky thing about strawberry wine or cherry wine is it tastes so light you do not realize just how much alcohol is in it. Have fun. Years ago my Mom gave DH a paperback book about making wine from just about anything. We used cherries, strawberries, pears, peaches any fruit we could get in quantity. Some were better than others.

Angie said...

Some of the best tomatoes we ever "grew" were volunteers that appeared behind our garage a year after Hurricane Katrina. We've tried to grow plants in the same location, but they never did as well as those first ones that were completely unexpected.

Deb A said...

Strawberry wine sounds amazing. I envy your garden. I had a nice little one in VT but have not figured out the hot and unruly temps down in Florida yet. I'm going to try again in August.... hopefully I'll have better luck and the wild rabbits will find food elsewhere =)

scraphappy said...

Blending days is such a nice part of summer. And busy as it may be, it is such a good kind of busy with plenty of time to enjoy every minute. Get some rest though, you'll need it when school comes again.