Tagetes lucida ~ Spanish Tarragon ~ Thanks Sharon

Good morning Folks ~ It is another rainy day.  It rained most of the day yesterday and the day before, and for the most part it’s just been gentle rain. No bright flashes or loud booms. This is how it looks on the weather map. The yellow/orange areas are full of thunder and lightening, and I’m hoping we won’t get any of that.

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I want to thank Sharon Lovejoy for letting me know what type of tarragon I have.

It is Tagetes lucida otherwise known as Spanish Tarragon or Winter Tarragon.

I don’t even remember when or where I got this tarragon, but I love using it and have found it ‘easy’ to propagate in a glass of water. It is great with carrots, fish and chicken.

For more info on it go to Mountain Valley Growers, and to Wikipedia.

You can use the flowers for dye, how neat is that?

Today I plan to fix a turkey.  I will save both breasts, one will be for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas. We’ll have sandwich material and turkey for recipes for suppers too.

That’s it from Plum Cottage for now.  Hope you all have a great day.

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Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
Langston Hughes,  April Rain Song,  1902 - 1967

Another gray and windy day

Good afternoon everyone ~ Hope you all are having or have had a great weekend.

We were ‘supposed’ to get rain last weekend, got a few sprinkles, more rain is expected over the next couple of days and I do hope we get some.  We’ve had a few light sprinkles today.

I was able to get the picket fencing washed down with TSP and what a difference.  Now when the weather is not so iffy I can paint it. Yippee!

DH has finished framing the pair of little stained glass windows for the back/east wall of the gypsy shed, and has the lines marked out ready to cut.  That will be done in the next day or so and then the windows will be inserted.

I’m going to be raking out smoothly as possible the area between the clothesline and the gypsy shed so that I can lay down some tar paper before laying down broken paver stones fit together as much as possible.  The paper will keep ants and weeds from wreaking havoc with the area.

I have been visiting the Stitchin’ Fingers website and am being inspired left and right.  I just can’t get over all the wonderful needlework out there. My mind is reeling, my fingers itchin to start a new project.

I haven’t done much in the way of gardening this past week. Although, wait a minute, what’s this fading blister from? Ah yes, we trimmed some tree branches that were hanging over the fence from the apt. complex and I trimmed the front hedgerow too. We have more limbs all along the driveway to take care of, a little at a time as we are only allowed to put out so much a week for them to come pick up, to take to their facility and ground to mulch. It is free to the public any time.

So, here are pics from the week.

I’ll start off with an early morning picture the other day, just before the sun started coming up.

French tarragon

Philippine violets

Louis Philippe roses

Back of the gypsy shed with window lines drawn on.

One of the waiting windows.

Fall decoration in the kitchen porch entry.

Our weather is a tad cooler and I saw predictions for the end of the month where the temps are supposed to get down into the late 50’s.  That is really going to be nice, if it happens.

Hope you all have a great week wherever you are, whatever you are doing. If any are going through rough times, may you feel God’s love and peace surrounding you. He is with us always, it’s just that we sometimes do not notice.

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"Winter is an etching,
 
spring a watercolor,
 
summer an oil painting

and autumn a mosaic of them all."

Stanley Horowitz

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A junker gone & blooming blooms

Good afternoon Folks ~ We sure are enjoying the cooler weather with less humidity.  It is really wonderful.  I hope you are all enjoying autumn here in the US.

For the next six months or so we will be enjoying nice weather and will be able to get some outdoor projects done, we hope. Things have a way of popping up and changing plans.

Here are some blooms from the past day or two.

Don Juan.

Gaillardia or Indian Blanket flower, along with tarragon, and spiderwort, growing in my shed’s garden.

Louis Philippe or Florida Cracker rose, this is also in my shed’s garden.

‘Love’ rose.

Here is a piece of coral with some little baby Mom-of-millions growing in crevices.

The next few pictures are of ‘Penelope’ rose.

I didn’t see the spider until I was editing pictures.

Here we have another favorite bloomer growing here, Philippine Violet. They volunteer all over the property and are very hardy.

French Tarragon with spiderwort in the background.  I love cooking with fresh tarragon.

‘Chrysler Imperial’ rose and another heart sachet in the works.  I love embroidering. I read today that knitting, crocheting and stitching are good for our health.  Great news.

Now, here is where the ‘junker’ comes into the story.  This was my car up until a couple of years ago. We bought another one as this one had problems, and after getting the other car, this one croaked.  We were going to sell it, but have been thinking that it would cost too much to get it going again so it’s been sitting there.  I just never showed it in pictures.  We had concrete blocks and patio stones stacked in front of it, and a few things leaning up beside it.

Yesterday morning as we left the grocery store parking lot we saw a sign that said they buy junker cars for $400. We wrote down the number and DH called them when we got home.  Well, they said they could be here in about 30 minutes.  YIKES, we had to hustle the stuff away from the car, and check the inside too. We had no sooner finished when the guy pulled up. In about 20 minutes the car was out of here.  Hurray.

This was taken yesterday. I did some more clean up this morning as I wanted to figure out how much more picket fencing we had to go from the other side to about 3’ away from the Gypsy Shed. (Remember, we got this picket fencing in sections about 24”-30” wide when someone cut up their fencing to throw away.) We even have a gate with neat hinges, and a latch. I just had the idea to paint them the plum color. I’m standing near the back of our property. We’ve got the little pile of junk (concrete blocks, etc.) to move yet.  DH sanded the spackled screw holes today and after he does a little more trim work on edges will probably be painting the wood on the shed. We put two ‘curbside shopped’ smoked windows over the original windows of the camper. He also caulked around those today too and some other areas that needed it.  This is a fun little project and once we’re all done, I’ll do a post of pictures from when it was a camper to what it will be.

It will be neat having the stove and sink, and little refrigerator back inside. When it was the ‘junker’ camper, we cooked in it for almost two weeks after losing electricity from hurricane Wilma. We have changed it’s look and will enjoy it as a little ‘get away’, now and then. Planted right here in our little haven.

There it goes! Yippee, the ‘junker’ is gone. Uh oh, I need to wash the lattice gates. With all the rain we’ve had, mold grew on them.

I mowed after the car left, as that had been my original plan, before we knew he was coming.

So, there’s the latest from Plum Cottage, maybe more than you wanted to hear or see.

I heard from my boss today and I’ll be working tomorrow through Friday.  He decided to go from the show in TX, to do a show in Atlanta, so will be back Sat. and will unload the truck and be at the shop that day.  I was going to the library tomorrow, but went after lunch today.

This probably is it from me for a few days.  I hope you all have a great week.

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"The very essence of the creative is its novelty,

and hence we have no standard by which to judge it."

Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person

Latest project, etc.

Hello Everyone ~ Hope you are having a great day wherever you are. It's a partly cloudy, warm and humid day today. We've had a few sprinkles, but that's it. It would be nice to get more, time will tell.

This morning I wanted to tackle a project I started about a week and a half ago. Progress was waylaid because I helped DH with another project for a few days, which wore us both out. All we have to do to finish my project from this morning, is dig out some dirt, cut some roots, mix up cement and fill in the area from patio up to the border.

I had done the border around the palm tree, and when DH saw that and how nice it looked he thought it would be nice to make the area around the strangler fig (ficus, not a real fig tree) smaller, and give us more patio space.

While I was outside working,
a loaf of bread was making in the bread machine. :-)

The pics below show before.





Here we have from this morning.


We curbside shopped the cement border blocks quite some time ago and I thought of using them this morning to contain this area. Then I got the idea to place the rocks that had been the old border, on top. We collected these rocks years ago, mainly from TN.
I then went around the property gathering up Moses in the basket plants and set them inside the border. When I showed DH what I had done he said, "Nice." That made my morning.
Now he gets to do the hard work of mixing and pouring cement.





The next two pictures are of the Duchesse de Brabant blooms I saw out my window this morning so I had to go out and get pictures.






Below is the basil I grew from a sprig that I rooted in water, think I'll do some more.
The yellow flowers are from my tarragon. I love this plant and love cooking with it too.
I need to get more cuttings going in water from this also.



The planter below was out in the screened porch off the kitchen when I got home from work last evening. I brought it indoors to take a picture of it.
DH had gone to a yard sale and got this for $10. It is 15 inches high and 15 inches in diameter. It reminds us of Spain, and all the pottery made there.
This one is made in Mexico.
I don't know yet what I will put in it or where it will be placed,
but I am very happy with it.




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The very essence of the creative is its novelty,

and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person

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That's it from Plum Cottage.
Hope you all have a great week.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL