Now, another item that I think is totally over priced is batteries – particularly specialty batteries. In our case, the kind you use in cordless phones. We have a cordless phone set with an intercom that has four stations which makes it really nice – one on the deck, one in the red barn, etc. keeping us in touch. But, the replacement batteries are so expensive, it was almost cheaper to buy a new phone set… until David found the batteries on Amazon selling for around $4.00 each.     They were the same batteries that were priced around $19.00 at other stores where we’d priced them. Buying them from Amazon – he also got free shipping!  Visit Amazon to see the list of cordless phone batteries available.

Over the years, we’ve found that doing a little comparison shopping on Amazon before buying something usually saves us money – and who doesn’t want to save money these days.

We had an Omaha lasagna for lunch this week. It came in one of those ‘special’ sale packages they offer where you get steaks, potatoes, dessert and something else – in this case it was a lasagna. Up until today, I’d not tried one of their lasagnas – but while searching in the freezer for bread the other night, found the lasagna hiding in the back corner and decided we better eat it before it got too old.

Read the directions for preparing and didn’t like any of them. I find that cooking by microwave makes casseroles tough on the edge, baking in the oven takes too long – so decided to split the difference and make things easy by microwaving for half the time as directed on the box ( 5 minutes on half power ) to get it started and then baking it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees (half the recommended baking time) to finish it off. Granted this was not a recommended method – but it worked very well. So, if I’m fixing either my own or a store-bought frozen casserole – I’ll microwave for half the time and then bake for half the time – resulting in a dish that doesn’t take quite so long to fix – but tastes like it’s been slow baked.

News Flash!   If you think every ‘alternate’ method to cooking and ‘fixing up’  I do works out . . . it doesn’t.  Just came from getting a bottle of HEB Sparkling Water Beverage.  They come in different flavors and are sweetened with Splenda . . . but the flavor I picked didn’t taste sweet to me . . . so thought I’d fix it by adding a partial packet of Sweet-n-Low. What I didn’t know was that when you add Sweet-n-Low to this particular bottled water – you get a volcano. Now while this might be entertaining to those that like seeing white foam shooting out of a bottle – it was definitely NOT what I expected. I trailed water everywhere as I carried it to the sink – the whole time foam boiling out of the bottle neck about 3 inches high. When everything settled down, over a third of the water had been been converted to foam and was gone!   So, if you’re looking for a good science project – this would make a great active volcano – just be ready to mop up the mess!

My yard is a disaster!!!! We’ve got gophers running amok everywhere. To that end I found a ‘recipe’ that is supposed to get rid of gophers. I’ll give it a try this coming weekend when the yard has dried out a little. Best thing about this recipe is that it only uses home products. The recipe is below for anyone that is having gopher problems.

Mix….

• 1-1/2 tablespoon Tabasco Sauce
• 1 tablespoon of liquid dish soap
• 1 teaspoon of chili powder
• 1 quart of water…

pour this mixture in mole runways and they theoretically run away… we’ll see.

What with the peach trees in full bloom figured I better use some of the frozen peaches   from last year – and I wanted to see if they would keep the texture  of  a fresh peach or turn into mush.

Put this to the test over the weekend by making some apricot-peach fried pies.   Recipe for apricot-pear fried pies is here - just replace pears in recipe with peaches for a new taste.

Took five of the frozen peaches to use in the recipe . . more than needed but I wasn’t sure how they would ‘defrost’.

 To get them ready for making the filling, dropped the whole frozen, straight from the freezer peach into boiling water, let them boil for about two minutes, and then placed them into ice water.

The skin all but slid off and the peach looked just like it had come straight from the tree.   My curiosity got the better of me – so I cut off a portion of one peach to eat  raw – wanted to see how it tasted.  Again, just like it had never been frozen. I was pretty amazed.

So I proceeded with making my fried pies.  Do have one ‘tip’ for you …. if you’re planing on cooking any fruit pie fillings with a combination of dried and ‘fresh’ fruit, pre-cook the dried fruit a little before adding in the fresh fruit.  If you do not, you’ll end up with either dried fruit that is undercooked and tough or fresh fruit that is overcooked and mushy.

Herbs Away!

Finally got started on the herb box!!  

Of course the whole process was more involved than we planned on. We ended up having to dig up all of the grass in the area so we could level the ground before doing anything else.

We then put down a double layer of weed barrier with the metal panels on top of that.  (Got the panels by taking apart  a roll-around shelf we had bought that we decided I didn’t need.)

We’re only going to this much trouble to try and prevent the moles from destroying the dirt and plants. If I didn’t have the mole problem here – I definitely would not have gone to this much trouble.

Right now the box is  two-stories tall - but I’m thinking that is too much. For one thing the dirt where the two frames meet will leak  and wash out.   And, I don’t think my short herbs need that much dirt  for their roots.  Anyway, I can always add on the extra layer if this doesn’t work.  My gardening style these days seems to be one of  ‘trail and error’.

Guess I’m not the only one looking to have a box garden with herbs.  I was stunned to see the ‘box gardens’ at the Lowe’s garden center selling for over $100.  WOW!!!   And, they were no bigger. Granted, they were prettier but when I get my $3 box garden finished and painted – it’ll be pretty too! and I’ll have $97 + tax in my pocket.

The trip driving to Palestine, i.e., Lowe’s on Monday was beautiful.   This time of the year all the flowers are beginning to bloom and we passed fields filled with flowers. The dogwoods are in bloom as well and since the trees don’t have all their leaves, you can see the white blossoms  scattered everywhere throughout the woods.

Even my pink dogwood decided to bloom this year.

Bluebonnet Trails

If you’re planning a trip to see some of the wildflowers,  Brenham is a good place to start.  For information on Brenham and to get the telephone number for the Bluebonnet Trails visit Day Trips – Brenham.

And… if you love antiques, don’t forget Round Top/Warrenton is in full swing (March 22 – April 2) For a list of the antique shows visit Texas Antique Mall- Antique Shows .

We were not disappointed. No high pressure sales (in fact no “salesmen”), no car lots to trek across (the cars are kept in a large warehouse), and no negotiating – what you see is what you pay… but the prices are significantly lower than what you’d find at a dealership.

We ended up purchasing a 2008 GMAC Denali that’s pretty much loaded. (I’m still trying to figure out all the buttons.) We’re very pleased – and oh so glad to be back home in the country. I’d forgotten how crazy the big cities can be. If you’d like to see their website you can find it at www.midwayautogroup.net and tell Victor we said ‘Hi’. 

Yard Duty

After that experience, working out the yard over the weekend was very relaxing.

We’ve started on the garden and have it partially ready for planting -I did plant my black-eyed peas – moved the rose bush to inside the yard (the deer kept it stripped of leaves so it never did grow), moved the four blueberry plants to what I hope is a better location (they definitely  did not like where they were), and started work on one of the flower beds in the back yard . . . it needed weeding and I’m having to replace the wooden border.  (The red-dotted line was the old  border that had all but disappeared into the dirt!)

So that we wouldn’t have to buy anything – David took scraps of leftover cedar fencing and made a border for me. Looks really nice. I’ll finish the remainder of the bed when he has another batch of ‘scraps’ he can cut up.

And, finally plan to start on the herb garden this coming weekend – weather permitting. All of the plants at the nursery and Lowe’s all look so tempting – but, I’m trying not to buy anything until I can set them out.

Moles Really Don’t Like Daffodils!

Everything is starting to bloom around here – red buds, wildflowers, plum, peach, pear trees, blueberries, strawberries – and the dewberries shouldn’t be far behind. Guess I’ll be freezing a lot if they end up producing like last year. And the way prices are going, I’ll be glad to have extras in the freezer.

Have to say I was very pleased to see that the daffodils I planted survived and are blooming.  You may remember that I did a little experiment and tried planting them without the protective wire baskets just to see if they would make it.   It seems that the moles really don’t like to eat the bulbs – so, you can bet next year, I’ll be setting out lots of daffodils . . .  may even try mixing in other bulbs to see if  having the daffodils  mixed in will keep the moles from eating the other bulbs.

Yuck!

With everyone so health conscious – you know they even have those little stations next to the grocery baskets so you can sanitize the handles – I was appalled the other day when we were in the pharmacy section of  a Walmart and I notice that the ‘pharmacist’  had dumped a large pile of prescription  pills into his bare hand  and was counting out the pills into a bottle for a customer…  he wasn’t even wearing  a glove on the other hand to count them!!!!

I mean don’t they have those trays for counting  and then pouring the pills into the small bottle for the customer?!   Anyway – I’ll not be having any prescriptions filled at that Walmart.

Quick Tips

These are some of my favorite quick fixes to make things more tasty.

1.  Use butter-flavored popcorn salt in your veggies – it gives them a little extra flavor and color – especially mashed potatoes (see photo).

2.  For extra tasty ‘garlic’ mashed potatoes - cook a couple of peeled cloves of garlic while boiling the potatoes. After you drain the water, mash the garlic right along with the potatoes.

3.  Cook about 1/4 pound of ground hamburger beef  and add into your favorite canned chili – really perks it up and gives it more body

4.  Add a few extra blueberries  to your packaged blueberry muffin mix – the larger berries add extra flavor and texture

5.  Add 1 tablespoon butter when preparing pre-packaged gravy mixes – improves the taste

6.  Next time try topping your meat loaf  with a mixture of about 1/2 cup ketchup and 1/4 cup taco sauce (of choice) the last 10 minutes of baking – gives it a nice spicy flavor

We’ve given a lot of them away . . .  hate to see them go to waste – but we’ve still got a huge bowl full and a grocery bag in the fridge full. Haven’t tried my hand at making jelly or preserves – somehow that doesn’t interest me. Probably because I’m afraid I wouldn’t do it right and  might end up poisoning  us with some sort of bacteria.   So we’ll just have to eat what we can, give the rest away and share what’s left with the birds.

Have to say – again – that the garden is doing well. The coffee cans seem to have stopped the moles and the plants have never looked better.   I’ve got squash, tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers (the little pickling kind) and green peppers. We’re having to water quite a bit – it has been unseasonably hot (over 100 a couple of days already) – but luckily we have a well. If we didn’t I don’t think we could afford to water as needed.

What with the afternoon temperatures being so high, working in the yard has been an effort. We’ve been drinking a lot just to stay hydrated. I know Gatorade is good for that but I don’t like the taste . . . so I add a little lemonade to it to make it more tasty. David even likes my remix and will drink it. We use the dry Gatorade because it keeps better  and can be mixed in whatever amount needed –  but this concoction will work with the bottled kind too.   

In a regular sized glass put 1 envelope of Sweet-n-Low (optional) along with 1 level teaspoon of the ‘dry’ Country Time Pink Lemonade mix. (I find the pink tastes better – go figure!)  Pour the liquid Gatorade into the glass and stir it all up. Add ice and enjoy.  

I’ve also read that Gatorade is good for headaches – so if you’re prone to getting a headache while working in the sun – this might help with that too.

I’ll be adding 2 new recipes to I Can’t Believe It’s Sugar Free a little later this week so be sure to look for those. Haven’t decided which ones to put up – but with things as hot as they are bet they’ll be something cool and delicious.

Did manage to get my garden almost totally weeded. I’ll be ready to start planting in a couple of weeks. I learned long time ago – don’t plant until after Easter. Had to do a little damage control on the pear trees – the deer got to them and ate all the leaves off!   One was pretty much just a stick – the other lucked out and had a few leaves on top. Guess the deer were too short to reach them. So David and I put up wire fencing around them to keep the deer from gnawing them down to the ground – like we did for the raspberries. While I was working in the garden, David was working on putting some piping underground. Putting a water line out to the orchard and another one to the back porch so I can water my plants. When he gets that finished, he’s going to extend the piping outside the fence to the car port so we can wash the cars a little more easily. Lots of work!!! 

I did a little reading in a book I bought when we first moved up here and found a couple of ‘tricks’ for keeping deer from eating on the trees

• Hang a bar of Irish Spring bath soap in the tree (this works, I’ve used it before)
• Hand a fine mesh bag of blood meal in the tree or dust the leaves with it (works but smells bad)

Also had a couple of hints I’d forgotten about for fighting the moles:

• Plant daffodils around the areas you want to protect, moles don’t like daffodils.
• Place small portions of a limb/branch of a thorny plant in the tunnel – they don’t like getting scratched. Roses, barberry or anything with thorns would work. I’m definitely going to try this one.

We’re supposed to have a nice week – so maybe I’ll have time to get out there and finish up my garden. The potatoes and sweet peas I planted are coming up – so I’ve got my fingers crossed that everything else will do well too!

We took a drive down some East Texas country roads until we found a nursery (recommended by Cousin Joe) that sold fruit trees suited to this area. The old gentleman running it had all kinds of trees – pear, plum, peach and apple. I didn’t know you could grow apples here in Texas. He took us out into the ‘patch’ where he had them growing. Coming from the city, I’m used to buying my trees, plants, etc. from the nurseries there in pots – big pots! Not here. These trees appeared to be growing right in the ground. Hmmmmm…surely they MUST be in pots in the ground, I just couldn’t see the pots….right? Nope. When we picked our trees he yanked them right up – roots and all! I was stunned. There was a little dirt hanging on to the roots – but he make quick work of that and washed it right off!! OK, so now we’ve got pear trees with no limbs and naked roots. They look like walking sticks that need to be trimmed. The whole time I’m wondering…’can these things survive?!’ The old gentleman running the shop – seemed confident they would – so we brought them home. On getting home (power is back on – yeah!!) we immediately set out to plant our two stick pear trees. It is supposed to start raining and getting really, really cold, and I’m not letting those roots be exposed to any more air than necessary. We put them in the orchard area and planted them according to Mr. Russel’s directions. So right now my pear trees are planted per instructions, getting soaked in the rain and likely to freeze tonight. I have high hopes for them though. When they start producing they’ll have crisp pears (don’t like those mushy ones) and be good for eating or cooking.

This link is for a good half-sugar free recipe for a pear crisp. Pears are also good when used in pies with apples, plums and peaches.

And if, you’re looking for an alternative pear recipe, we like upside-down pear cake. Using a store bought cake mix makes it easy. My version is to use only half of the cake mix (per box directions), 2-3 sliced pears, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.

Mix up half (or less) of the cake mix (my secret to a better boxed cake is to add an extra egg, add 1/4-1/2 teaspoon vanilla and use real butter instead of oil).

In a round baking dish or flan pan, place 1 tablespoon of thin butter slices on the bottom. Sprinkle 1/4 cup brown sugar over the butter, shake a little cinnamon over the brown sugar and then lay the pear slices on top in a circle.

Pour the cake batter over the top and bake at 325-330 degrees until done. Allow to cool for about 10-15 minutes and then turn cake out onto a flat plate and enjoy!

The deck kitchen is finished!!!!! David put the last of the quarter-round down along the tile counters Saturday. That has been a 2-year project – so I’m am thankful to be done  and ready move on to something else. Think I might take a rest before we begin anything else big. When we decided it would be ‘fun’ to have an outside kitchen – little did we know what all was involved. David did all the construction and wiring – but to me laying the tile was the most tedious and time consuming. It wasn’t a particularly expensive project. We had a lot of the materials given to us by friends, and we also make a few excellent purchases at auctions. After all is said and done – I think we’ll really enjoy having it . . . if only to sit there and admire it . . and say ‘ Look what we did!’

Got the garden cleaned out and tilled; dug out the grass from around the orchard gate and laid stone pavers there so the gate would open more easily, and continued to work on the last flower bed that’s next to the deck. Even after all that work, there is still more to do to get ready for winter.

Some of my chores left are pretty basic and pretty much what anyone that has a yard or garden will have to do. . .

• Finish cleaning yard and flower beds – don’t let those weeds go to seed
• Use oak leaves & pine needles for mulch. They can be used even though they are acidic. It is better to mulch leaves as this will allow water to seep through more easily and they will decompose faster.
• Plant last edible crop, i.e. onions, shallots
• Have covers ready to protect plants that may be sensitive to frost ( Christmas cactus – these belonged to my mom and they are at least 25 years old and huge!! )
• Cover strawberries with extra straw or cut grass. I don’t use anything that may have seeds in it – don’t want to have a weed patch amongst the strawberries in the spring.
• Leave plants standing that may have seed heads the birds can eat during the winter
• Mulch day lily beds
• Plant pansies or ornamental kale in the yard. Protect with mulch as needed.
• Watch for end of year sales for any garden tools, planters, etc. that I can use next year
• Collect, mark and store seeds for next spring – garlic chives, cypress vine, zinnia, etc.

Sounds like a lot but it really isn’t. I’m hoping for an early frost so that we can hopefully have some beautiful color this year. If we do, I’m hopping into my yellow jeep and taking a ride down the back roads. May even get a few pictures to share . . . or paint.

The crape myrtle blossoms are almost gone with only a few still in full color next to the gold fish pond. And the flower bush I call ’4 o’clocks’ were blooming in the front yard even though it was 9am when I took the picture. I think temperature must be more of a factor than the time – as with the Morning Glories that sometimes bloom all the way  into the afternoon on a cool day.  There is a large rosemary plant in the garden – and it is just covered with tiny little pale blue flowers. We give it a wide birth when walking by because of the strong  fragrance that transfers to our clothes   – David says it stinks and would probably cut it down if given half a chance.     Guess we’ll be working in the yard this weekend – getting the leaves raked and then burning them. Can’t wait . . . nothing smells more like fall than burning leaves.

Woke up this morning to see the sage bush – that we’ve pruned and trimmed to be more of a tree – in full bloom. It is spectacular and full of butterflies and hummingbirds. We planted 3 of the same type of shrubs at the same time – and this is the only one that has blossomed. Oddly – it is the one I thought might not even survive because it is in a cramped location on the north side of the property. It only seems to bloom but when it gets a good rain – and I have to say it out did itself this time. And kuddos to David for taking this beautiful picture for me.

“Rattle Snake Hospitals across Central Texas say they’re seeing an alarming  increase in rattlesnake bites.   Hays County treated five people for the bites  in recent weeks while Travis County has reported 11 rattlesnake bites in the last  3 months.   Experts state that it is mating season, but it’s mostly the drought that’s pushing them into residential areas to find water.  

During the day, you most likely won’t find snakes in the grass, but under  rocks, porches or in drainage ditches trying to stay cool. At night, they are more  prevalent in areas with high grass, near some source of water. Rattlesnakes  won’t chase you, but if someone gets too close and the snake  feels threatened,  it will most likely strike.   

If you get bit by a rattlesnake, it can be deadly.   Experts say to call 911  immediately, try to stay calm and keep your blood circulation as slow as  possible.   The sooner the venom gets to the heart, the less chances of  survival.”

I plan on wearing boots, a heavier canvas-type glove for gardening, and when I’m working around the goldfish pond I plan on beating the ivy with a stick to scare away any snake that might be around.   The pictures will give you a general idea of  the poisionous snakes here in Texas but if you looking for more information – Google ‘Texas Snakes’ – there are a lot of good websites out there with lots of information.