Making Room for New Projects

I am getting near the bottom of the unfinished objects pile. I put this top together yesterday:

This is the Scrapper’s Delight quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts. I made one of these several years ago and it’s currently on our bed on top of the duvet. The original pattern called for thirty-six 12” finished squares, which makes a quilt 72” x 72”, but I wanted a bigger one. This version has forty-eight 12” squares. Obviously, I had plenty of scraps. The squares have been done for a couple of months and just needed to be assembled into a quilt top. Now that’s done.

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I haven’t been out to the garden or greenhouse except to water my lettuce seedlings and check on ripening tomatoes. We’re in a lull right now. In another month, I’ll be frantically trying to get beans dried and shelled, grapes picked, and potatoes dug up. I do need to put up some carrots for using in soups and stews. I just buy a couple of 10-pound bags of organic carrots at Costco for that, which is far easier than growing my own. It’s taken a few years to figure out where to put my gardening energies, and it’s not in carrots.

I didn’t get my egg bites made yesterday—that will get moved to today—but I did spend some time in the kitchen cleaning out the fridge and using up some veggies. I made a batch of Red Lentil Coconut Curry following a recipe from this book:

Simply in Season is a favorite cookbook of mine. One of the authors, Cathleen Hockman-Wert, is the wife of our Mennonite conference treasurer. The Red Lentil Coconut Curry recipe is one I use often because it lends itself well to modification based on what I’ve got available. (I hardly ever follow recipes exactly, which is why I am such a lousy baker.) I’ve subbed in canned pumpkin for sweet potatoes, broccoli for cauliflower, and spinach for cabbage. Yesterday, I cut up and tossed in a patty pan squash that came from Elysian’s garden. This also freezes well, which is good because it makes enough to feed several people.

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The pigs have been busy with a plowing project in the back of the pasture lately. I’ll try to get a picture of them today. I think it is very funny that they selectively plow around the mullein plants. The pasture has entire sections of rooted-up dirt with mullein plants sticking up here and there. I don’t know if it’s because they don’t like the taste, or they know that mullein is useful, or what. They do a great job of taking out the nettles and thistles, though.

And I’ve been listening to roosters for the past hour and a half. It’s still dark, but they start crowing as soon as they see the porch light go on. I am going to go let them out. Hopefully they’ll hush up.