Posted on 01/31/2026 6:26:44 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
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I’ll bet those three give GREAT, slobbery Valentine Kisses! :)
Yes...so far, so good. :-) She’s juicing a tasty breakfast cocktail at the moment...yum!
❤️I’ll BET! ❤️
What do you use for fish in your fish tacos? How do you prep it? And do you use slaw? (So many Qs!)
The ‘Garden and Green Living Expo’ is this weekend, but I will not be attending.
After manning booths for both Jung’s and Seed Savers, I never want to step foot in there again, LOL! Man that was a LOT of work and WAY too many people to deal with at one time!
I’m gonna stay home and play in my own greenhouse, today.
I see they have a Photo Contest, now. Hmmm...I’ll have to consider that for the future!
Photo winners from 2025, here:
https://wigardenexpo.com/2025-photo-competition-gallery/
Mom! These would make some nice images for your puzzles! :)
I stole your graphic and posted it on Today’s Jerusalem Thread.
❤️❤️
I, of course, pinged you to the thread. FR Etiquette! 😁
Sweet! Thanks for the link!
Humph....I knew you loved fish tacos......then pepper steak.
Dear old dad! I worked at a family-owned (not mine) dairy farm (approx. 300 Holsteins), prouder/retailer in the late 60's and early 80s (many stories, by the grace of God, just ask) and could get manure for free, yet had no garden. But my dad made a small one when he retired, and so I asked the boss if I could borrow a dump truck and have a worker (binge alcoholics) get some manure. The worker asked me if I wanted one or two scoops of the front-end loaded. Two are better than one I thought.
Well, I drove it home, about a mile the way the crow flies, and dumped it off to the side of the front yard and left it there and went back to work at the dairy (deliveries). Well, working at a dairy farm you kinda get used to the homey smell, and the manure was still rather "ripe" as we say, but a close neighbor couple did not share my tolerance to this fragrance, and reasonably objected. And mom said that she could smell it from the bottom of the hill we lived on.
So I got the wheel barrel and put 25 loads on dad's approx. 20'x12' garden. And only half was gone. So I found another spot, and my younger brother took some to some friends of his (they remained so), to help grow food, and thus the cycle of nature was complete.
As said, lots of memories (I can remember at age 73 - likely about average on FR) thank God. Yet ice cream melts, and souls live forever, and God later called me to leave all in '86 to serve Him for free. Thanks and glory be to God in Christ
We finished the late-winter pre-mow Thursday evening. I dropped the Kubota zero-turn and Pops' RedMax lawn tractor off at the mower doc store after work yesterday for their annual maintenance visit. They'll be done in a couple weeks and we'll be ready when the grass starts growing again.
Forecast for tomorrow is dry with temps close to 60°F, which will be perfect for the task that we have planned. Geologist guy will be here in the morning to do the ground penetrating radar survey of our family cemetery. We're hoping to get the LIDAR scan done while the GPR work is happening. Our LIDAR scanner is a bit under-powered for outdoor work, so we'll need a little bit of cloud cover to get it accomplished. If it's too sunny to get good data we'll go back later and try again.
Miss Booger and Mrs. Augie are on their way to a cabin at Truman Lake for her BFF's birthday celebration so Howard and I will be fending for ourselves the rest of the weekend. I've got plenty of groceries on hand to feed myself. Howard has a big sack of his favorite chewy treats and a heater next to his cushion. We should be good for the duration.
Happ’Peas!
“Interesting” day so far ... opened up the freezer to check for some items & one of the jars with my homemade chicken broth caught my eye ... broken. Jar #2 as well. One wide mouth, one regular - lids were not screwed on tight. Jar #3 is fine. I have been freezing stuff in canning jars for years & have never had this happen before. I am thawing both jars in a big pot. Once I get the jar pieces out, I am straining the broth through some fine cotton toweling I use for straining purposes & then will put it through coffee filters. That should catch any glass - I’ll see how that goes & make a decision on whether to keep the broth or not then. I don’t like using plastic - I need to check my jar stash in the basement - might have to buy more jars.
Next adventure - finding quinoa at our grocery stores that cater to ‘country’ meat & potatoes type people. Walmart had white & surprisingly, I found organic tricolor at Food Lion. I am trying some quinoa salads because quinoa has more protein & less carbs than rice. Yesterday, at the luncheon, there was a tabbouleh salad made with quinoa rather than bulgar wheat so that inspired me. I got what I needed to make this salad:
Thai Quinoa Salad with Fresh Herbs and Lime Vinaigrette
https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/thai-quinoa-salad.html
I love Asian dishes (Chinese & Thai in particular) & if it turns out, I will take it as a side dish for tomorrow’s picnic lunch.
It’s now in the 50’s- I need to get out & do some measuring in the shop. Different layouts were running through my head all night. I am not moving anything today (it’s all heavy) because after 3 hours of shoveling Wednesday, I have a touch of sciatica. Tomorrow is church & musical day & hopefully by Monday, I will be ready to move some things around.
Greetings on this 54 degree sunny day!
Re: crowded garden expo
Last weekend I went to Monona Terrace for the annual 2 day Orchid event.
It was very crowded.
Hard to view the judged orchid displays, and sale area.
It costs $10 per person to enter and $5 to park.
So we had $25 into going.
It was difficult to choose an orchid to buy with others swarming the sale area.
Might skip the whole thing next year.
Olbrich says on their website, that their month long Orchid event, now requires pre-registering for a time slot to get in to see the dome with all the orchids placed in it. Now I’m not going to that this year. Too much trouble. Went the previous 2 years.
🌞
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Spring trying to make an appearance here in WI with temps in the 50s.
Cheers!
🌞
PBS expo....sent to my sister in Racine. Told her to share if she would not be going. (She won’t but she does have friends.)
My garlic and potato onions are poking up, my Japanese green multiplier onions too.
I have 2 good varieties of sweet potato.....Korean Gold and Caro Gold, both from Bakers Creek. I put dirt in in an old used dispan. I took the longest skinny roots for either and put them in the pan and splashed them with water. (The skinny ones, rather than the thick ones, are most likely to produce usable slips.) I will move it inside tomorrow by a heating vent and see what slips I get in a month for a Late April move outdoors! I think this year I will grow them in some woven nylon feed bags rather than in ground, or, maybe in some cloth grow bags. I had a lot of sweet potatoes last year, but Voles and mice damaged a most of them. It will also be easier to cut the runners and force them to focus on tuber size rather than producing hundreds of yard of vines. (And edible but not that tasty leaves.) It should also simplify harvesting to be able to dump them out of a bag rather than digging them up! Lots of Youtube videos from Thailand and vietnam of people doing this. I have the heat for this it should work well!
I will go out and sprinkle some lettuce and turnip seeds when it stops raining. I have a brief window of spring that works for cool season vegetables.
Nice picture of the Shenandoah valley in the Expo Picture winners! (Every other picture is of something or some place in Wisconsin!!)
https://www.countryliving.com/gardening/garden-ideas/a64970119/how-to-attract-orioles-to-your-yard/
Re: quinoa
I like Costco’s Kirkland brand organic quinoa.
Am making some right now.
😄
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