Honeysuckle

On By CarynIn Garden

Once again the Japanese honeysuckle has exploded. The metal arbor that holds it is completely engulfed and the scent can bowl you over on a warm morning.

Photo description: Japanese Honeysuckle in bloom, about 10 feet tall

I do plan (again) to harvest the vines in the fall, but now I have a secret weapon: a stem stripper. This small metal tool is marketed for stripping thorns from rose stems, but works awesome on removing leaves from honeysuckle as well. It makes prepping the vines much faster.

Photo description: metal stem stripper tool with a stripped honeysuckle vine and one with the leaves still attached

I did take stereoscopic images and put them together. There is depth, but it lacks diversity. It is a great huge mound of honeysuckle, after all.

Photo description: stereoscopic parallel view of Japanese honeysuckle mound

Somebody’s happy

On By CarynIn Garden
Photo description: cactus with one white bloom, carved stone dog in a terrarium

I have one happy cactus in my terrarium blooming away, one that wanted to bloom and I either missed it or it changed its mind, a few that are holding steady, one that slowly died, and one that bit the dust within days of replanting. I put up an artificial light that runs 9 hours a day (my choices are 3, 9, or 12), and water sparingly once a week. Here is the original post.

Hot water crust pockets

On By CarynIn Recipe

We recently had a pastry pocket party, with three different fillings in hot water pastry crust. I love the hot water crust because it is easy to work and stays strong. To differentiate the fillings, each one had a different pastry shape. Rectangular for the apple pie, round for the chicken with mozzarella and roasted peppers, and half circle for the beef and peas. I ended up making three batches of hot water crust, but wrapped each kind of filling in each batch. I would do it differently next time, only doing one filling per batch to go in the oven, and putting some kind of topping on each one, to liven up the crust.

Photo description: three different shapes of pastry pockets in the first batch, sitting in a cooling rack

Grape vine ends

On By CarynIn Craft

When we cut off the ends of the grape vine for our hand railing, my eldest and I curved the ends into a circle and lashed them. It definitely took two pairs of hands, but they bent without breaking. The idea is that when they dry, I will trim them and make loops for either wreaths or other craft projects.

Photo description: two thick grapevine circles wrapped with jute twine

May the fourth be with you.

The trees have ears

On By CarynIn Fungi
Photo description: wood ear mushrooms on a log pile

Here is another potentially edible mushroom in our yard: wood ear mushrooms. I did look it up, and one enthusiastic blogger described eating one as “crisp, followed by slither and slurp”. Um. No. I’ll file these with oysters and cilantro on my “thanks, but no thanks” list.

They are quite wiggly after the rain, and I quite like the soft brown coloration, but they can happily stay and do their decomposition job without fear of me gathering them up.