Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Other stuff’ Category

I saw one standing in a field just between the holidays. Hey, that’s an eagle! They like to winter here in Arkansas, but I don’t always see them. The local census of them isn’t as high as it’s been, but that’s because of the mild winter weather everyone seems to be having this year, not because there are really less eagles… just less of them being spotted here.

Then there was last year. Our (now ex) neighbor the chicken farmer was throwing culls out the back doors of his chicken houses. He’s not supposed to do that… they have an incinerator for disposing of culls. But the local wildlife loved it… including the eagles. We had an adult pair along with 2 youngsters hanging around for a couple weeks. It was super, except that I never did get a good photograph. Dang camera. Some day I’m going to have to save up and buy a DSLR.

The eagles are back again this year… I haven’t tried to take any photos as I haven’t seen them like I did last year. But it’s pretty awesome when you are standing on your front porch and a pair just fly on by low over your yard… on their way towards the lake and/or that little valley right next to us. Ron was standing right there, so I got to say Hey look! We have eagles!

Then we see on the news how some excursion company is selling boat rides for eagle watching. No need for us to do that, we just have to go out in our yard. :) It helps that we live fairly close to a lake, eagles like to hang out near water like that.

In other wildlife news here… we startled a great big blue heron at our pond. They are awkward fliers, and being startled I’m sure didn’t help any. I wasn’t sure it was going to clear the trees! We get ducks once in a while, and they are much better fliers. The heron is an infrequent visitor, there are easier ponds to get to than ours! Geese fly over while migrating, but never want to hang out in our pond, just too hard for larger birds to land in it being surrounded by trees. I wouldn’t mind having some tame ducks or geese around, but I wouldn’t know how to care for them. Probably wouldn’t be so great for the frogs and fish in the pond anyhow. :) And I can just imagine how it would go when we walk the dogs… pretty soon I wouldn’t have any ducks or geese because they would have left in disgust, tired of being chased. :)

Also this week I saw a critter every morning on my commute to work. Monday was a raccoon, Tuesday a skunk, Wednesday a possum in the pouring rain and finally Thursday a rabbit. I can go a long time without seeing anything, so it was interesting I saw a critter every day. In the past I’ve seen a bear, a wild pig, and of course plenty of deer. Raccoons, skunks, possums, armadillos and rabbits are more normal. Both the bear and wild pig were within about a mile of the house! Whenever I see something unusual like the bear at first I think, wow, that is a big dog and how is it climbing that fence like that? Then it shambles into the road and I have to slam on the brakes to not hit it and realize that it’s a big huge bear! I’d never seen a bear in the wild before. Same with the pig, I thought, that’s a funny looking dog… and then I realize it’s a hog not a dog. Heh, a neighbor at my old house had some Barbados sheep, and the first time I saw those I thought they were funny looking dogs. My brain is flipping through all the animals I know… and I realize they aren’t dogs, nor are they deer. Sort of look like goats, but not. I asked when I got home later and found out that they were Barbados sheep. :)

Funny how the brain tries to make an unusual animal fit into something more normal, like a dog. Or at least MY brain does. :)

In unrelated news: my son has decided he wants websites and/or blogs. I told him I’d help him blog, we can do a Son and Mom blog or something. Collaborate. I’ll also help him set up his forum, since I have experience with that. His goal with all this is for experience… it will look good on his resume when he graduates next year to have some stuff he’s done. Plus it might turn out he’s talented and can earn money doing it. I blog because I’ve had a website of some kind for a long time. I like to share pictures of stuff and having a blog is a much easier way of doing it than a straight up html site. Seriously, the last plain website I had, I was going in, and moving the previous post down, and writing something new. Just like a blog. Duh! WordPress makes it sooo much easier!
Anyhow… look for links here when we go live with stuff. I will of course let y’all know. :)

Hugs,
Vyx

I seem to be about a once a month blogger.

Well, that’s about what it’s come to these days.

The sad thing is that it’s not that I don’t have anything to say… it’s that I’ve been too lazy to sit and write it.  Not really lazy… but I’m not a fast writer.  I can and do spend hours writing about simple stuff.  I just don’t have time most days to sit here at the computer for all those hours.

Anyhow, I’ll try to catch up on some of it…

First a simple recipe.  I was browsing around some of the blogs I sometimes bother to read and came across a meringue recipe.  Well, howdy!  I’ve got a tub of 8 egg whites in the freezer needing to be used.  I looked around at some other cooking sites to make sure I wasn’t heading into a disaster, and then I went for it… with all  of the egg whites!

Easy Chocolate Meringues  (adapted from http://www.bakerella.com/chewy-chocolate-meringues/ )

1 cup egg whites (7 or 8 large)

2 cups sugar

5 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder

4 ounces  finely chopped baking chocolate (or skip this, I will next time)

On very low speed beat the egg whites with the sugar until the sugar is dissolved.  This can take a while… no need to stand there,  I left the mixer running and did chores.   Line your baking sheets with parchment, and get out your cooling racks.

When the sugar is dissolved, switch mixer to high speed and beat the mixture until stiff and glossy.   If you have a good stand mixer with a whip, this will probably go fast.  If you have an ancient Kenmore mixer with just beaters, this is gonna take a while, too, so go do some more chores.  Oh, but you might want to turn the oven on now.  Heat it to 350 degrees F.

Finally, those egg whites are beat into stiff peaks!  Now sift the cocoa powder into the egg and tip in the finely chopped chocolate, too.  Fold that in gently with a spatula or spoon.  Mix it up!  You might even get away with using the mixer, but I didn’t… used a spatula and folded gently.

Now, get out your big cake decorating bag and a big star tip.   Put the tip into the bag, then fill the bag with meringue… that’s the stuff we just mixed up for the last 45 min.  :)   Make pretty little flower shaped poofs about an inch apart on the parchment lined baking sheets… I think I ended up using every baking sheet I own.  Make the poofs a nice size…  say, 1.5 to 2 inches across, and about 1/2 as tall.   Have the bag clog up repeatedly with bits of chopped chocolate that weren’t chopped enough.  Decide to leave that ingredient out next time because you’ve just bent all to hell your brand new tip.

Bake one sheet in the oven at a time for 15 min or until they look like tips are starting to get brown.  You are going to be baking these for hours if you use all the meringue and make them just slightly bigger than bite size.

I didn’t count how many I actually made, but I took a gallon bag bulging with them to work.  Oh, and we still have some left, even Ron is getting tired of them.  1 cup of egg whites makes a LOT of freaking meringues!  So, because I’m nice, I am recommending that normal people use one of the smaller recipes to be found…  like HALF as much.  Seriously, I had to dump some of the meringue out, I wanted to live the rest of my life, not be forever stuck in the kitchen making cookies…  lol!

Sealed up in an airtight container, these seem to keep dang near forever.  They bite really fragile, but they carry pretty tough… and probably if you tried to ship them somewhere the recipient would just get a box of crumbles.  Still, they are mostly air with chocolate flavor, they feel like you are eating nothing much at all.  The big bag I took to work lasted only a couple days… but we have a lot of women where I work.  Some of those gals really liked the cookies.  Some said “ugh, meringues!”   And one said she doesn’t like chocolate…. huh!

Okay… so… on to the next post…

hugs,

Vyx

 

 

It’s really amazing…  normally it’s all dead, waiting on autumn rains.  I would have been struggling to keep things alive and probably failing.  I am still having to water some stuff, but I’m no longer worried about our big trees going dead.

This year… well, we got over 5 inches of rain in August.  VERY unusual.  Our hay field which would normally be brown and dry and nothing… is now all green.  I wish I could show you, because it’s incredible.  The johnson grass especially loved the rain.  Grass is taller than I am, and this is September, not May.

I can show you a bit…  the bermuda grass and other grasses aren’t as tall as that johnson grass…. and the johnson grass is mostly up by the house.  Photo from the corner of the dog walking path…

See how tall that grass up by the house  looks?  It IS tall, it’s way taller than I am.  The short stuff is almost knee high…

If/when the guy comes to cut the hay again… he’s gonna get some good hay this time.  We had a thing where this guy would come hay our field and haul it away and we never got anything from it other than it was cut twice a year or so.  For a while they also put chicken litter on it (I’d rather skip that step, thank you… it’s bad enough I have to smell it from the chicken houses to the north as it is).  Anyhow, this year I decided that someone else should cut our hay and sell it for us.  The only thing is that the guy I picked had too much on his plate.  He has a farm, he runs a business… and cutting 160 acres of hay pays a lot better than cutting our 3 or 4 acres.  But he swore he sent someone out… I remember the tractor driving by with the hay mow.  Went and cut someone else, lol!  (we keep forgetting to ask about that…  bet that was a shock for someone)

So, when we’d given up hope, out regular guy came over and asked why we didn’t want him to hay us any more.  I told him because it’s worth a bit of money, even if he does all the work.  I keep it free of thistles and such, and fertilize it.   He should be paying, even if it’s just $5 a bale.  But he was here when it was all brown and dry… No one was expecting another cutting at that time.  We told him if he wanted THAT hay, it was free.  Next time, he’ll have to pay us.  He agreed…  we have good hay with it being mostly bermuda or johnson grass.   In an average year hay runs about $30 to $40 a bale (BIG round bales).  We want what is fair… he does all the work of cutting etc., but it’s OUR hay.   In a bad year for hay, good hay can run $60 a bale.  So, the normal guy agreed to pay us.   He knows how to cut it and when, so this should work out well.

I’d love to show a photo from the house down to the end of the property… only I’d have to stand on the roof now to take that photo.  Not happening.  :)

Still waiting on my muscadines to get ripe…  probably another month before that happens.  Red grapes got picked a bit late, but I still got about a 1/2 gallon.  Those are some sweet grapes…  just pure sugar, eating them is like eating cotton candy.

I’m having a staycation this week…  off from my paying job, lots of work here at home to catch up on.  Maybe a day of fishing during the week, and of course I’m firing up the bbq tomorrow and cooking a huge pork roast.  Low and slow… I’ll let it smoke all day, then cook it even longer wrapped in foil.  As a friend pointed out, I can always freeze the extra.

That’s all for tonight…  I’ve gotta run out and grill some burgers quick before chat time!  :)

hugs,

Vyx

I’ve got grapes!  Not a lot, but enough to pick and maybe do something with.

I picked these Wednesday evening.   This is just from one vine planted last year… I have two vines of this variety and  the other vine didn’t do as well.  I didn’t even bother picking the few grapes on the other vine.

Some kind of white table grape… I was going to look up the name, eh.  I have a chart with what grapes I planted where, but I don’t remember what I did with it.  Not on the computer.  Oh well!  White table grape works for me.

The skins are tough, they didn’t pollinate well, and they probably didn’t get enough water.  Some are seedless, but some have seeds, which is weird.  I figure I’ll be cooking them up and putting them through the food mill anyhow, and freezing the juice/pulp for later use.  The flavor is kind of Meh…  they are grapes.

I also took a photo of the vine after I’d scissored most of the grapes off…  It looks pitiful, but that’s partly because of insect damage.

And yes, bermuda grass is right up there, poor grape vines!  There is landscape fabric and 3 inches of mulch under that grass, though… and a soaker hose for water.  I do the best I can with roundup on the grass…  wish the darn stuff would go take over the hay field, bermuda hay is better than “mixed” hay.  Stay away from my plants!

I wasn’t real hot about training the grape vines I bought locally…. I did better training with the muscadines, as they were smaller stems that weren’t all curved and such already.  I figure as long as I prune well in winter I can eventually train the others better.  I hope.  Heck, I know nothing about growing grapes except what I’ve read online and learned the last year or so.

While I was out with the camera I took a photo of some flowers I grew from seed this year.  Milkweed family, I guess.  Common name is Snow on the Mountain.  My friend Jan had some of these last year, and I had to have some too, so I hunted down seeds after she told me the name.  I hope they reseed well, although fighting the bermuda grass like everything else does here… well, it’s iffy.

I love the white and green variations, and so do the butterflies (and some wasps).  They aren’t as big of a draw to butterflies as I thought they would be… the purple flowered weed does much better with that.  I don’t care, I love how they look, they are different!

Along with table grapes I planted some muscadines.  One never grew, that’s why I have 2 of the white grape.  Another one bled to death this year after I pruned it… died all the way back to the root.  But it came back to life!  It sprouted out from way down on the stem and is starting over.

 

Now, it’s not as great as it looks…  all the lower part is the muscadine.  But along that top wire is my RED table grape which was getting 90% of the water this year until I figured out that the soaker hose had a split in it.  The red grape made a LOT of vines, but also some good clumps of grapes.  They aren’t quite ready yet, but that’s a grape thing.  Did you know that grapes don’t all get ripe at the same time?  You’d think they would, but a cluster of grapes are like anything else… some ripen earlier, some later.  You try to pick them when most are ripe.    I’ve tasted the red grapes and they are wonderful…. very flavorful.  Took a photo, too, of course, so you can all see how some are getting ripe and others are not.

Hmm, not such a great photo, but see how some are red on one bunch and another whole bunch hasn’t even started?  These are another locally grown table grape that I should know the name to.  I’ll find that paper or notebook… and then tell ya.  But in the meantime, I can’t wait for the red grapes to get ripe!  LOVELY flavor.  Still that same tough skin, but heck, that’s probably my fault.  I’ll eat some, I’ll cook up the others and mix it with the white grapes and have some strange hybrid jam.

Oh, but wait, there is more!  I said I’m growing muscadines!  The one muscadine that survived set fruit like you wouldn’t believe.  That beer flat of grapes?  That’ll be nothing compared to what I’m going to get from the muscadine.  Let me show you a close up of a cluster…  and the vine is covered with these clusters…

Of course these won’t ripen until really late in the season…  perhaps September or October, I’m not even sure.  I have a freezer for the early stuff, you know me, I don’t can anything in summer if I can help it.  Certainly not jams.  I’ll use up the white grape juice to stretch out the muscadine juice…  but yum yum!  I am really fond of muscadines, the flavor, that is.  They have tough skins like the other grapes I’m growing, so all that I can do is juice them.  Well, I know I’ll eat some, but that’s squish the grape out of the skin into your mouth, and then spit out seeds.  Like eating concords.  :)

Well, that’s all the story tonight… I’ve got grapes.  I apologize for not blogging as much lately…   it’s summer and I like to be outside.

hugs,

Vyx

I know I haven’t been blogging as much lately.  Just too busy and/or tired out to even sit at the computer for more than a few minutes.

But I’ve got lots of random things to share, starting with Milo the cat.  He’s a boy cat, and disappeared a few months ago.  I didn’t realize at the time that the Momma cats had run him and Tonic off.  Figured it out when Tonic came home and got beat up for trying to come to the porch to eat food.  Tonic shows up every day at dinner time, but won’t come to the porch, he’s a wimp after being beat up by the girls.

So, when I had all the cats given rabies shots, Milo was the only one I couldn’t find.  Tonic got to go for a ride to the vet a week later, but while Milo was here later that day that the vet was here, I haven’t seen him since.

He turned up yesterday evening.  At first I thought he was his sister Lionel, but he wouldn’t come to the porch.  So I went out to see this stranger cat, and of course I recognized him.  He’s not skinny like he’s been living wild, he evidently found a place to live that gives him food.  Starved for affection, though.  So much that he was almost a pest.  Not shy at all today, came right up on the porch to claim his share of the kibble.

Tonight  he’s growling and hissing at all the strangers.  The strangers are kittens that he’s never met before.  It’s interesting to watch… his interactions with the adult cats is like, okay, I remember you.  No growling or hissing going on much, unless he starts it because he’s startled.   With the kittens he’s totally uncool, however.  I had to give him a little snick on the head a couple times and tell him NO!  It’s so odd… he is following little dog Rita around trying to love on her, but hissing and growling at little kittens who are just curious.  I hope he gets over it, otherwise the grown up cats will run him off again.  Hopefully I can get him neutered before he runs off again…

On to other stuff… Yesterday Ron took the cover off of the generator.  I posted pix of the nice cover I made and then dyed.  It fits pretty well, but some kitten thinks that it’s a good sub for a litter box to crap on the fabric they can pull down.  (if I knew which kitten that was…grrr!)  So, it needed cleaning, and Ron went and pulled it off.  He’s doing a bit more around here, as he can, still pretty weak but he tries to help me.

Well, underneath that nice fabric cover on the top of the generator was a HUGE snake!  Just a common black snake, about 5 ft long or so.  Took me a while to get a good look at it’s face and underside to identify it  In the meantime we are both freaking out…  I’m running out to the cellar for a rake and cultivator and shovel… and Ron is going in the house for his gun.  I don’t like to kill snakes, but I know how Ron feels about them.  I brought pronged long handled tools to try to grab the snake out and move it off the porch.  It doesn’t belong on the porch,  there is no food for snakes (unless they eat kittens).

So, I tried to snag the snake out, and it wasn’t going.  Hanging on, moving around, but not down to the porch just coiling up better underneath the gas tank of the generator.  Nice handy little shelf there for it.

Ron got brave.  He moved the generator around until he could unlock the chain holding it to the porch, then moved it out to where we could start it up.  He actually used the rake handle to push the start button… it was that close to the snake.

Still, the snake wasn’t going anywhere.  It can see us, and it doesn’t want to get out there where it’s vulnerable.  Especially after I’ve been poking and prodding at it, and one of the cats had a go at it, too.

Ron got a heater to plug in and put the generator under load.  I plugged it in, I’m not that afraid of snakes.  :)   The engine sound changes and makes a big racket and more vibration when under load, and that did the trick.  Within a minute the snake was looking for a way down and get outta there.  We watched it slither down and then almost come back towards us, but I got between it and hiding places.  It went out in the yard, first under Ron’s car and then towards the flower bed.  We actually watched it go in through a crawlspace vent to under the house.  Ron would have been happier if he was allowed to shoot it, but I won’t let him shoot harmless snakes.  This is the second snake we’ve seen go under the house… a king snake slithered under a few weeks ago while we were watching.  (cats were molesting it, and I scared them off with a broom)

More random stuff…  People in the area actually have tomatoes getting ripe.  Not us, though.  I planted at the right time, but then it rained and rained and rained.  I never got out and rototilled this year… I think the best weekend for that was back in February when I planted turnips and radishes.  So, I had grass and weeds around my tomatoes but was keeping them mowed down.  Not good enough.  I finally got out there and put the soaker hose down and the black plastic that I use to keep the weeds away.  It’s only been a week and I see a big improvement.  We probably won’t get a lot of tomatoes this year… it’s already too hot to set fruit… but if I can keep the plants alive it’s like a really late start and we’ll have tomatoes late into the fall.  Oh, I also put in 2 new plants last week.  I’m sure I can buy good tomatoes at the farmers market… but so far I’m not missing them.  I’ve had LOTS of turnips…  so many that I had to throw some away.  The turnip row is still chock full of turnips and I’ve actually mowed over them now.  You’d think they’d be soft from not enough water, or getting tough… but no, they are fine.  Dang strange… I thought they would have bolted by now like the radishes did.  I don’t know turnips that well, though… this is the first time I’ve grown them!  I love raw turnips like I do the first radishes in the spring.  Yummy!   Well, until you go out and pull a grocery sack full and don’t even make a dent.  LOL!  I don’t eat turnip greens, but I love a good crisp tender turnip raw or cooked.  I’m sorry I didn’t get more veggies in this year… but time has been limited for me.  It’s not too late for some things… I could plant squash.  But that means either digging or getting the tiller out, plus more plastic mulch down for weeds, another soaker hose… and I don’t seem to have the time or energy.

I feel sure there was more stuff I was going to write about tonight, but I went and got some wasabi peas to snack on and I think my brain is clouded now with the distraction of that wonderful flavor.  Sometimes a bit hot, clean your sinuses out hot… but I’ve always liked that flavor.  I vote for wasabi over jalapenos or other hot peppers any day.  Probably why I love spicy turnips and radishes, too.

until next time…

Hugs,

Vyx