FIMBY

I steamed farm beets for supper last week (a vegetable I'm learning to love) and saved the "juice" left in the bottom of the pan. I stored the juice, about 2/3 cup, in a glass jar in the fridge and pulled it out yesterday for the kids to paint with.

The kids also mixed up a yellow paint with 1/2 cup hot water and 1 tbsp tumeric mixed together.

The resulting artwork is beautiful and my own art (photography) is inspired by my children's creativity. For more natural painting inspirations check out one of our favorites, Berry Smudges and Leaf Prints by Ellen B. Senisi.

Celine recently sewed this adorable circus sea lion.

Here is the pattern. To print, click on the picture, then chose Original. Drag that to your desktop and print from there. I have a Mac and this works for me. If it doesn't work for you get a Mac (seriously they rock) or leave a comment and I'll try to get a pattern to you.

When Celine sewed it she added a magnet to the nose and in the stuffed ball (pattern not shown) to make it "stick". We recommend using felt for easy edge sewing for kid's projects.

Yay, finally a "preserves on a sunny window sill" shot

I don't can, except dilly beans (pickled green beans, so delicious) when we get inundated mid-summer from the farm. Should be any week now I guess.

But I do make refrigerator pickles. No bubbling, boiling water and finicky sterilizing needed. Well, the jar should be clean of course...

I dare you NOT to make these. They're my kiddos favorite cucumber treat, trust me that's a lot of white sugar in this house!

Refrigerator Pickles

8 c thickly sliced cucumbers
2 small onions, sliced
2 tbs pickling salt (I use less)
2 c white vinegar
1 c sugar (more or less depending on taste for sweet pickles)
1 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp celery seed

Combine cukes, onions, and salt in large bowl. Mix well. Combine vinegar, sugar, celery seed and mustard seed in saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until sugar is dissolved.

Pack cukes & onion mixture fairly tightly into jars (to minimize floating in liquid as much as possible). While still hot, pour vinegar mixture over vegetables.

Let cool to room temperature. Screw on lid and put in fridge. Let pickles age 7-10 days in fridge for best flavor.

Will keep for several months under refrigeration. Ha, like that ever happens!

Picture shown is a half batch, fits in a quart Mason jar.

My sis-in-law wrote a good article on garlic over at her blog Inside Out. No need for me to reinvent the wheel, check out what she has to say and while you're at it stock up on garlic next time you're at the produce market.

I thought I was green in using recycled toilet paper. That didn't come out right. I mean toilet paper made from recycled paper. My friend Cori is taking to the next level though with cloth toilet wipes. I am nowhere near there yet and not sure if I even think it's more green what with the soap, hot water and electricity required to wash the load of butt wipes (sounds crude but that's what they are folks!).

But (bad pun) I thought this would be a great post to add to the earth friendly tutorials at Natural Family, the newest FIMBY addition. Check it out.

A week or so ago I promised to post the next day about nasturtiums. Here I am a week later...

The kids are in bed, the kitchen is clean and the floor is mopped for the second time this week. Once it's clean I'm easily bothered by every sticky drip of watermelon juice and dirt smear. After a week or so "this too shall pass" and it will be another month before the floor gets a good washing once again. (don't panic, my house isn't a sty, I'm very handy at spot washes).

Anyway, I'm now ready, finally (sigh of relief) to sit down and finish what I started... a post on why you should plant nasturtiums in your garden.

Firstly, I'm assuming you are interested, even slightly, in growing something in your yard, balcony or windowsill. But maybe you don't have much time, very little space, no money for plants, can't grow a plant to save your life, whatever. Even if all those apply to you I'm fairly certain you can grow nasturtiums and here's why you should:

Nasturtiums (Tropaeolum)

• Are pretty. Vegetables can get away with not being pretty, although I prefer my veggies pretty as well. But in my garden there is no space for a less than lovely flower, who needs 'em. While we're talking about flower types nasturtiums are an annual. Annuals only live for one season (mostly) but bloom the whole time and tend to be very eye catching. But I find annuals' showiness sometimes too... showy. Too pink, too orange, too red, too look-at-me. The nasturtiums I planted this year are more subtle and luscious than that. Be warned though there are construction pylon orange nasturtiums out there. Last year's vegetable garden nasturtiums re-seeded themselves and bloomed this can't-help-but-be-noticed shade.

Black Velvet and Peach Melba

surprise!: Must of been some different seed mixed in with my Peach Melba and Black Velvet

• Are edible. Maybe you only have room to grow things you can eat. Hey, you can eat nasturtiums. Put the peppery greens or pretty blossoms (blossoms are mild flavored) in salads. Better yet, bake a cake, ice it with whipped cream, top with nasturtium blossoms and bring it on over (just forget I'm mostly vegan here for a minute) for tea!
• Don't need great soil. In fact they blossom better in poor soil - how great is that! If you have a patch of yard that you'd like to grow something in but the soil hasn't been enriched yet with compost (you are composting right?) nasturtiums are a great pick. Better soil results in more foliage, less blossoms.
• Are inexpensive and super easy to grow. They grow best from seed which means you might not find them at a greenhouse. I honestly don't know I haven't looked recently. I buy my seeds at Pinetree Seeds here in Maine. Nasturtium seeds are big like peas, they are some of the easiest to plant. Two packages of seeds, $3.42 including tax, filled the space I had for them.
• Do a great job of filling in a future perennial bed. My flower gardening goal is to have almost exclusively perennial beds, to that end I am building a perennial bed between our driveway and our neighbor's house. Our neighbors let us use this space for our purposes thinking we might want to pave it for more parking space. Ha! Pave a possible garden space, like over my dead body! It's a fairly long space but time, money and friends with perennials (lots of my plants are donations) are limited so it's a slow go. This season I filled in part of the space with nasturtiums.

Nasturtiums in "perennial bed"

• Can grow almost anywhere, except maybe really wet and shady spots. You can plant them in window boxes, containers and as mentioned already, poor soil. I've seen them in blazing sun, mine get only morning sun and afternoon shade and are thriving. Oh, and they re-seed themselves but may not come true as was my experience with the pylon orange nasturtium in my vegetable garden.

disclaimer: nasturtiums can have aphid problems, as I experienced in last year's garden. This year, planted in a different location they are, knock-on-wood, aphid free. Instead the aphids are all over my Anthemis - grr....

There you have it folks. The why and some hows of growing nasturtiums. Happy gardening.

Found an easy & fun craft for the 5ish and under crowd today in Brienne's June edition of Your Big Backyard.

Instructions

• Cut animal shapes out of thick paper, we used file folders and cardstock.
• Punch holes for decoration or to define features, like eyes.
• Hot-glue a popsicle stick to the bottom part.
• In a darkened room shine a flashlight on a plain wall. Hold puppets in front of light so they cast shadows.

Oodles and oodles of easy fun!

Brienne's bunny inspired Celine to write the following poem: