Melon - Sakata's Sweet

This was Sakata's Sweet a couple of weeks ago.    They stay small - just larger than a softball.

The one in the photo below is sitting in a regular sized cereal bowl. 

When ripe, they turn yellow-ish and the stem end of the melon starts to crack.

Unlike muskmelons, the stem does not detach when ripe - you have to cut it.    Three of these spoiled before I figured out that I was waiting too long to pick them.

The inside is green - like a honeydew.  The texture of the flesh is rather grainy but it is very sweet.

Delicious, if you like honeydew melons.

Coriander Pickled Carrots

My next experiment in pickling came from a recipe that Shauna Ahern posted herself on the Gluten Free Girl pickle party post.  I had some aging carrots in the fridge and some of last year's coriander seed put away, so I pulled them out to try this. 

These had a nice flavor, but I kept thinking they needed a bit of sweet and more oomph.   [Of course, next to the Szechuan beans, everything seems a little bland.]   Next time I'm going to add 1/2 cup of sugar and  double the amount of coriander.  

Coriander Pickled Carrots

• Carrots - enough to pack 2 pint jars
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/2 cups vinegar - my own white wine vinegar!
• 1 T canning salt
• 2 tsp peppercorns
• 2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 inch of ginger, sliced

Peel and slice the carrots into sticks.   Pack them into the 2 jars.  Put 1 tsp of peppers and 1 tsp of coriander into each jar.    Boil the water, vinegar, salt and ginger.   Pour over carrots, covering about 1/2 inch above tops.   Process 10 minutes for canning.    Let sit for at least 3 days before opening. 

Szechuan Bean Pickles

I love spicy Szechuan food.   These sounded sooo good I couldn't wait to try them.  Plus, I had a bunch of my red Chinese long beans, too - and I want to try those beans as many ways as possible, while I've got them fresh.

In our taste test, these pickles were by far the favorites.   I'll be making these every year.   Use regular green beans if you can't find the long beans.  

Szechuan Long Bean Pickles

•  Beans - enough to pack 2 pint jars, about 1 lb. 
• 1 C Oriental Spice vinegar
• 1/2 C water
• 1/4 C soy sauce
• 1/4 C sugar
• 2 T dark sesame oil
• 1 T peppercorns
• 1 inch fresh ginger, sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced

Clean and trim the beans.  Pack into 2 pint jars.    Put all other ingredients into a saucepan and boil.   Pour over beans, covering 1/2 inch above tops.  Process for canning, 10 minutes.  

Let sit for 4 weeks before opening.

Note:  You can blanch the beans first and then you'd only have to wait a week for the flavors to meld before opening the bottles.   I didn't have the time to blanch, but I do have the time to wait.

Oriental Spice Vinegar

This is the time of year to make those fancy complicated vinegars to use all winter.

Confession:  They're not all that fancy.   And they're not all that complicated.  Basically, you put herbs in vinegar.   It's not hard.

I make a lot of different flavors of vinegar every year.   You can, too.   There are only three things you have to think about:

1.  Bottles.    You can put vinegar in anything glass with a lid.   Save old wine bottles, Perrier bottles, those cute blue TyNant bottles, pint or jelly jars, anything....   Replacement corks can be picked up at any good hardware store.   Just take your bottle in there and find the cork you like best.   Or you can use plastic wrap and a rubber band.    I've done it.

2. Vinegar.    If you're just starting out, get plain white vinegar from your favorite grocery store.   It'll be great!   If you're in the mood for fancy, then go for a fancier vinegar:  red wine, white wine, rice, cider.    They all work.    Remember:  If you're not a vinegar connoisseur already, then just get plain white vinegar.  That's what I did for 20 years before making my own vinegar.

3.  Herbs.   Fresh is prettier in the jar, but if you only have dried, then you can use those instead.   In this bottle I used dried peppers and star anise, and fresh ginger.   It's what I had.   This is food - it shouldn't be stressful, it should be delicious.

I'll be posting more vinegars as I do them this year, but here's a good one to start with.   I used this to make the Szechuan pickled beans I did this year - recipe tomorrow.  I also use it in any oriental recipe that calls for vinegar.   Delicious!

Oriental Spice Vinegar

Robin's Oriental Spice Vinegar

• 4-6 long skinny hot peppers
• sliced fresh ginger
• 1-2 star anise broken up
• white vinegar.

Put the herbs and spices in the jar.   Fill it up with vinegar.   That is all.

See!  I told you it was easy.  Wait for a month or so for the fullest flavor.   These will keep for at least a year.  If the herbs get ugly, take them out.    Mostly, I just ignore them.

Note:   If you want to keep your bottle to use again, make sure that your herbs can come out as easily as you put them in.   It's no fun trying to get a big twig of whatever out of the bottle when the vinegar is gone.  

Curry Pickles

I've been trying a lot of pickles lately.   Just a couple of pints of each to see if we like them.    It's a big adventure because we're sort of a two pickle family:   dilly beans and sweet pickle chips.  The end.

Gluten Free Girl hosted a pickle party this summer and she posted a ton of links to all sorts of pickles for all sorts of vegetables.   It was amazing.    It also made me braver.  

I tried three new kinds of pickles:   Curry pickles with regular old green beans, Szechuan pickles with Chinese long beans, and spicy coriander pickles with carrots.    Over the next couple of days, I'll give you all of the recipes that I used and tell you how we liked them.    I hope you share your favorite pickles with us, too.

UPDATE:   We had a pickle taste test today and the verdict on these curry pickles was that they need some adjusting.    The curry flavor is nice, but the curry powder isn't the way to get there.   These were some of the suggestions for the curry pickles:   Toast the curry powder to get a richer flavor OR use a tablespoon of red or green curry paste instead of powder OR use curry spices instead of the powder and let the flavors meld in the jar.       Next batch I'm going to try the curry pastes.   I'll try red paste in one jar and green in another.  

I've adjusted the recipe below to reflect our findings.  

Curry Pickles

• Green beans - enough to pack 2 pint jars
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups vinegar
• 1 T yellow curry powder curry paste or toasted curry powder
• 1 T canning salt
• 1 dried chili pepper in each bottle.
• 1 garlic clove in each bottle

Wash and trim the beans and pack them into the jars. Put a chili and a garlic clove in each jar.   Boil the water, vinegar, salt and curry powder.   Pour over beans until they're covered 1/2 inch with liquid.  Process 10 minutes for canning.

Wait for 4-6 weeks before opening.  

If you have left over pickling liquid, you can save it!   Just pop it in a jar and label it.   You can use it for dressings, or to deglaze a pan or anywhere else you'd like to use a nice flavored vinegar.   You do not have to refrigerate it, but you can.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Our zucchini was kaput this year.    It suffered an early attack by vine borers and it never recovered.   It's still making a valiant effort, but I'm only seeing male flowers.    Kinda pathetic, but I just can't bring myself to pull it up.   I've got a month until frost [fingers crossed] and it might produce some yet.    In the meantime, I'm eating zucchini from the bounty of others.    Thank you all!  

My kids had never had zucchini cake, so I decided to make one, but with chocolate. 

OK, I know you've seen these recipes before and you're probably rolling your eyes - another zucchini cake recipe - blah, blah, blah - but this recipe is remarkably fudgy.

Yes, you read that right.  

Fudgy.   Moist and dark and delicious.   So much so that I'm going to change the name right now to Fudgy Chocolate Zucchini Cake. 

Now that you've seen this fabulous picture, you're going to want to make one yourself with your own zucchini bounty.   I'll try not to be jealous.


Fudgy Chocolate Zucchini Cake 

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup sour cream, yogurt or buttermilk
• 3/4 cup oil
• 3 cups grated zucchini [1 good sized zucchini]
• 1 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven 350 degrees.  Grease and flour 9x11 inch pan.   Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well - you don't want globs of baking soda in your finished cake, trust me.    Beat eggs.   Add eggs, sour cream and oil.    Mix well.    Fold in nuts and zucchini until well mixed.   Bake for 50-60 minutes.   Don't over bake - you want to keep it moist.  

The kids loved this.   We ate it for breakfast.   With homemade whipped cream. 

I'm thinking it would be so so good with dark chocolate icing.    Or cream cheese icing.   Or just with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.   

Cantaloupe Lime Mint Jam

I mentioned a few days ago that we had a nice crop of Sweet Passion melons and on the off chance that we couldn't eat through them fast enough I thought they'd make a nice jam. 

I was so right!

I made a jam that I tried last year - a recipe that I heard about from my lovely friend, Janiel. I researched it online and then came up with my own version.   It might sound a bit weird, but it's really good!   Even my melon haters liked it - K1 said it tasted a lot like apricot.    It looks like apricot, too.   Sunshine in a jar. 

I started making it and forgot that it was a pectin recipe, so I added the sugar to the melon puree right away.   You can't do that when you make jam with pectin.   You have to add the pectin to the juice and boil it, and then add the sugar. 

OOPS!   Not to panic!    If you ever add the sugar too soon, just get out a little saucepan and put a cup of cool water in it.   Put the pectin in the water and stir the clumps out [with a whisk, if you like.]   Then boil the pectin and water at a hard boil for 1 minute.   Pour the pectin into the first pot - with the juice/fruit and sugar mix.   Boil it all again, hard for 1 minute.    Continue as usual with your jam.   Easy fix.

These directions are for making it the right way.

Cantaloupe Lime Mint Jam

• 2 medium cantaloupe [5-6 cups, pureed]
• 3 T Ball pectin [1 pkg]
• 4 cups sugar
• juice from 1 key lime
• 3 sprigs of mint - about 3 inches long

Take the seeds out of the melon and scoop out the flesh into a blender.    Puree the melon.    Put the melon in a pot and sprinkle the pectin.   Turn on the heat and stir until you get a hard boil.  Boil 1 minute.   Add sugar, stir until dissolved, then add the lime juice and mint sprigs.    Return to hard boil.   Boil 1 minute.   Remove the mint sprigs.   Pour jam into jars.   Process 10 minutes for pints and jelly jars.    Makes 3.5 pints.

Black Raspberry Jam - Full Sugar Recipe

I love my black raspberries.  They are wild ones.  We pick them in the heat of the summer, risking life and limb, clambering about on the hillsides at the edges of the woods.   The canes are whippy and full of thorns, but the berries are worth it.  The fruit ripens slowly, so we pick every two or three days beginning in June for about 5 weeks until the last ones are harvested. 

By then, the blackberries are full on and it's tempting to just toss them all together in the freezer, but I don't.   We keep the raspberries separate.   K1 and I love raspberry jam, so I took all of the raspberries out of the freezer and made jam with the whole lot.  It's one of the easiest jams to make and the final product is jewel-like and tastes of hot summer days and sweet rain.  

Black Raspberry Jam

• 8-10 cups raspberries, crushed [leave the seeds in]
• 3 T Ball pectin [1 pkg]
• 7 cups sugar

Put the berries in a large pot.  Sprinkle the pectin on the berries and juice, turn on the heat and stir, stir, stir until it boils.   Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar.   Return to boil.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Pour into jars.   Process 10 minutes for pints and jelly jars.    Makes 5.5 pints.

Note:  This jam looks just like a lot of other jams.   Leaving the seeds in will help you identify which is the black raspberry and which isn't.     I make true jelly [no seeds] with the blackberries, regular jam with the black raspberries [with seeds], and jam with the blueberries [tiny seeds].   Remember to label them as soon as the lids are on so you won't confuse them with something else later.

For a low sugar version of Black Raspberry Jam as easy as this one, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Big Blue

Yeah, OK.   It's not blue.

It is big.  Big and scary.

Meet my 22 quart Mirro pressure canner.   It's a miracle. 

It's been sitting on my dining room floor for months.    Waiting for me to have the courage to figure out how to use it.  I have wanted one for ages and then inherited this one from someone who was moving.   [Thank you!!]   I got a new gasket and jiggler for it.  Now I just have to figure out how to can with it.

I've done boiling water bath [BWB] canning before.     I've done steamer canning before.

I've never done pressure canning before.   Rumor has it that they can explode.

We're not thrilled about that.

But the thing is that if I learn how to use this, we can actually can chicken stock safely.    This is a big deal.   If we have an extended power outage and our freezer goes, we'll lose all of the food that we can't bottle safely, namely Meat.

It would be good if I could put up meat.  So, I'm motivated to learn how to use this.    Maybe this week....

Or next week....

Ironweed

This is vernonia altissima. The common name is Tall Ironweed - and it's called ironweed for a reason.   The stalks are tough and the roots tougher.    It's almost impossible to pull out even in wet boggy ground. 

Horses won't eat it.   Cows won't eat it.  That's why we have such beautiful fields full of it - the animals eat around it, limiting the competition, then it blooms and each cluster has dozens of blooms and each bloom has dozens of seeds.    It self sows readily and pretty soon there are fields full.

Personally, I think it's gorgeous.    You can't beat that color and it lasts for weeks and weeks. 

It's hard to photograph in fields because the colors go brown, but I'll keep trying and post here if I get a good one.

Heirloom Tomatoes

It was a big year for me in the garden.   I planted a bunch of stuff from seed.

I'm not very good at seeds.   I plant them too early in little pots and then they take off and then they dry out and then they flop and then they don't do so well after that.    It makes me nuts.


For years, I bought tomatoes, eggplant, fennel, etc. in pots.    It worked fine, but we've been very limited as to the available varieties.   A few hybrid tomatoes and peppers and whatever single variety of eggplant, fennel and leeks they have - if any.

Sioux on the vine

 I wanted more variety.   And then I discovered Baker Creek and one trip through their catalog had me wondering if I ought to try seeds again.    I started slowly last year.   Then this year I thought I'd try tomatoes - and it worked!    I grew beautiful tomatoes!


[To be completely honest, I bought one plant of Early Girl just in case all my seedlings died.  She, of course, took right off and bore first.] 

Bonny Best

I tried these varieties:

• Bonny Best
• Hazelfield
• Sioux
• Red Zebra
• Riesentraub

The Bonny Best is at the end of a row, away from the sprinkler.   It's a smaller plant, and I wonder if it just didn't get the water the other plants got and that's why it's smaller.   The fruit is round and regular, but not huge. 

Hazelfield

Hazelfield is a great producer.   Very large plants, very large fruit.  Some is irregularly shaped - like the one in the  top left of the photo [right].   They take their time ripening, but the yield is worth it.  

Sioux tomatoes

Sioux is also a very heavy bearer.  The fruit is also large and sometimes irregular.    These ripened about a week before the Hazelfield. 






Red Zebra was my effort to try a type of tomato that wasn't red.    I'm just not into the yellow and lighter tomatoes.    My kids talked me into these.  

Green tomatoes - Red Zebra

The fruit are smallish, but by golly,  they're adorable.   The stripes show up even when they're green so you'll be able to tell which plant this is as soon as it sets fruit. 

Red Zebra Tomatoes

The biggest surprise for me is that this is a delicious tomato!    It's got a dry pink flesh that will be perfect for sauces.   I loved it.  

I'm especially pleased with this tomato because I have never been able to grow romas.   These are even better!

I'm hoping for a bumper crop of these.   I've got big plans to oven roast these with some olive oil and garlic.   Then pop them in jars to freeze for the winter.    Mmmmmm.




Now that I know I can grow things from seed, I'm sold on heirloom tomatoes.    Now I just need to learn how to save seed so I can grow them again next year.  

Eupatorium - Part 1

We have several different kinds of Eupatorium that are native around here.   I'll be showing you all of them as they bloom this fall.

The first is eupatorium coeruleum - Blue Mist Flower.

They vary in color from this pink-purple to a more blue-purple.   It's a short plant - 18 inches if it's happy.   They love roadsides and fields.   They show up everywhere.    I love it as a filler in my garden beds.  It's not fussy and it's very pretty this time of year when little else is blooming.    The foliage is nice during the early seasons and it really shines in August.   Perfect with the zinnias and the rudbeckias.

Melon - Sweet Passion

They're starting to get ripe!    This is what they looked like last week.....

And this is what they look like when we open them...

These are an heirloom melon that I grew from seed I got at Baker Creek.   I highly recommend these!   They're delicious - very sweet, just like the name says.   They're not too big [about a 6" diameter], so if you get a bumper crop, you'll be able to eat them all.  

Pick them when they turn tan and when the stem starts to detach from the fruit.  

I'll be doing these again next year.

Pink Zinnia

Zinnias are my favorite annuals.  It's easy to grow them from seed.  They're not pretentious.  They're tough.   They're a little unpredictable.   They don't whine.

Photo: K1

The curled petals at the center of this flower just melt my heart.

I heart zinnias. 

What are your favorite garden annuals?

Pickled long beans

We've had fun eating the Chinese red long beans.   Normally, red vegetables turn green when you cook them, so we were really surprised when they turned black in our first stir fry.   

So, of course, I wondered what would happen if we pickled them.  

Here they are made into Dilly Beans.    [Recipe in the Ball Blue Book.]    I love that they stayed red.   

I just found a recipe for szechwan pickled beans.   I think I'll try those with the next batch.

Melon - Prescott Fond Blanc

Prescott Fond Blanc melons are pretty interesting looking.  It's not your typical netted muskmelon.  These are sectioned and warty.    Don't be put off.   They're pretty good and they're very easy to grow.   Of the six different types of melons I tried this year, these set fruit first and ripened first.

These got about 8 inches in diameter. 

Overnight, they will turn yellow.   The stem will start to separate from the melon and you'll know they're ready to harvest.

They have a classic melon flavor, but they're not very sweet.   If you like the less sweet varieties, I highly recommend these.   If you're looking for an easy melon to grow to make jam, these would be great because you'll be adding extra sugar.

Like all melons, Prescott Fond Blanc require a lot of good soil.   I have extremely well drained soil that we amend generously with manure.    The plants are very bug resistant.    They did fine in the heat as long as I watered during the dry spells [at least every three days].

Eggplants

This year I grew Japanese pickling eggplant from seed.    The plants are large, healthy and productive.   They're still attractive to the flea beetle that persists in making mosaics out of the leaves, but other than that, they're in good shape.  [Note:   Watch for blister beetles!   They'll eat you to nothing pretty quick!]

That's deer fence in front of them to keep the ducks out.  The dog keeps the deer out. 

The fruit of these plants is long, tender and delicious.   The eggplant in the photo below are Japanese pickling eggplant from these very plants.

Plant eggplant on the southernmost side of your garden - they crave the heat and other plants won't block the sun - it matters.    I planted mine on the south side with the tomatoes behind them.   Worked perfectly!

Update:   I've noticed that once the weather cooled down a bit, these have set a lot more flowers.  I'm hopeful to get another nice harvest before frost.  

Pickles

I've been playing with pickles.  I'll tell you all about it when the flavors have melded and we've tried them. 

At least they're pretty.

Summer Towels

One of the time honored traditions of living in the country is the ability to hang your wet stuff out to dry without worrying about the homeowners association throwing a fit and issuing a citation.

Our houses are generally smaller out here.  We don't have the room inside our houses to hide every bit of evidence of our daily living - like vegetable gardens, wet laundry, piles of mulch, all the kids' toys, the occasional dead mower or herd of dead cars.   Sometimes, folks let it all hang out.  We're not always thrilled, but we do believe in minding our own business and letting them mind theirs.

In Michigan this summer, some poor woman was being threatened with jail for building raised garden beds in her front yard and planting vegetables.   It's not just against the homeowners association rules, it's against the law.  Let me make this clear:   In Oak Park, Michigan, it is illegal to plant vegetables in your front yard because....it's unsightly.  Growing your own food is considered unsightly. 

Suffice it to say that out here we feel differently.   We know where our food comes from and like to have it convenient to the house.   We save energy by drying our laundry outside in the free fresh air.  We keep that old mower for parts.  It's better to recycle parts from it than to dump it and buy new.  When the easy parts are all stripped, we'll sell the carcass for a few bucks to old John Smith down the way and he'll finish stripping the good parts out of it and then sell the rest of it to the scrap metal place for food money - the man is destitute, but not a beggar.

No one around here is going to be harassed for showing evidence of what it takes to live life.

We hang our towels to dry on the front porch railing.    We have giant piles of sand and gravel and mulch visible all the time.   You can see our vegetables from the street.  

Our neighbor had 9 trucks parked on the other side of his barn next to the road to use for parts.  

Another neighbor has two spare mobile homes parked on his place that he uses for parts - and a chicken coop.  

Another neighbor has a permanent yard sale set up. 

Another neighbor has assorted large machinery parked by the road.   His goats climb on it and sleep under it.  

Another neighbor collects old bikes and hand plows and uses them to decorate his chain link fence.  

Another neighbor's place is in a constant state of construction, with piles of lumber and shingles and debris everywhere - for the last 10 years.  

None of that matters to us.   We figure it's none of our business.

Some of our neighbors even have homes that look like they came right out of Country Living magazine.   But we don't hold it against them.   We figure that's none of our business, too.

Red Chinese Long Beans

The long beans are ready!    And they are really, really long.
They measured in at around 20" long.

These beans grow on vines that must be allowed to climb so we built a trellis for them.   The beans are on one side and the cukes on the other.   Everybody's happy.

The long beans shoot out little branches that end with a pair of flowers.   Red long beans have purple flowers.

Once that pair of flowers sets fruit, another set of flowers blooms off the end.   In the pic here, you can see the first pair of baby beans and the second set of flowers on this branch. 

Very symmetrical.

More baby beans and flowers.  You can see the right hand set getting longer and redder.

Almost ready to pick.   These were just over a foot long.

That's my lemon squash below them.

Finally ready.    The green beans in front look sort of inadequate in comparison, don't they.

Melons

I grew a bunch of new kinds of melons this year.    Here is how they are progressing...

These are Sweet Passion.   So far they look like smaller versions of the typical American muskmelon, round and netted.   They'll be ripe in week or so.

These are Sakata's Sweet.   They're not getting very big - just a bit bigger than a softball and they're smooth instead of netted.

And these are Prescott Fond Blanc.    Baker Creek loves them, and as I am highly suggestible, I tried them.   They were the first to set fruit.    These are about 10" in diameter, sectioned and a bit warty.    I can't wait to try them.

I also planted Edisto, which is one of the best muskmelon varieties around, but it's taking its time and the fruit is still the size of a golf ball and hairy. 

Once these are all ripe, I"ll post more photos.

Visitors

K1 found these two little visitors to our strawberry bed.   As long as they stay on the outside, I don't mind.  

Margined Blister Beetle

The next guest on our list of garden enemies is the margined blister beetle.

We've had this pest in our flower gardens before.   For years, they regularly ate our clematis virginiana down to sticks.  We finally dug up the clematis and hadn't seen the bug in a couple of years.   Then this year it showed up on some tomatoes and eggplant - eating the leaves to nubs.    The next day I noticed that the potato greens had been devoured.    We found dozens of these bugs in the straw around the plants.   They lay their eggs in the soil, so we have to wait for them to come up to get them. 

Rumor has it that these guys eat grasshopper eggs - which is great, except they will eat a plant to nothing, too.   Big problem. 

An even bigger problem is the fact that their bodies produce a toxin so powerful it will kill a horse and blister human skin.   Some varieties of blister bug are more powerful than others.

Truth told, I squashed dozens of these bare handed before I knew what they were.   No blisters.   I double checked the photo ID and there's no doubt what they are.   Either Eric and I got really lucky, or these just aren't as toxic as some of the others.

Handle with gloves!   But get them off your plants. 

These beetles leave a characteristic poop trail - messy wet black droppings.  That's how you'll notice them.   Look behind the leaves for the bug.  Careful picking off of these guys seems to control them.    Though we picked dozens off the potatoes the first day, there were only a few the second day and I haven't seen any since.  We're fighting them on the tomatoes now - more hiding places.    

Just drop the beetles in a bowl of hot soapy water to kill them.

BSU Art Museum

I love university art museums.    They're always delightful surprises and the jewel of most campuses.  I love finding out what lucky purchases have been made over the years. 

We found the Ball State University art museum 7 minutes before it closed.   [Someone please tell me why these places close at 4:30 p.m.   I don't get it.] 

However, in those 7 minutes, we discovered a lovely collection of art nouveau and deco bronzes, an Alexander Calder, a fabulous little collection of Childe Hassam sketches and paintings, and several other little gems.  I wish I'd had time to take more pics.

Just inside the front door, above the foot of the stairs is a stained glass skylight.   A beautiful counterpoint to the walls that are covered with burnt orange tiles.  The orange edge of the window is the same color as the tile. 

It's impossible to get a good photo of the hallways because of all that shiny orange.

See what I mean?   This is at the top of the stairs near the entrance to the collection.  Everything goes orange - even the drywalled, white walls near the windows. 


Also, see those great deco railings?

More highlights:

I loved this big buddha!   Those are penny offerings at his feet.  Beautiful. 

And so peaceful. 

One of my favorite pieces was the centerpiece of the lower exibits.  It takes your breath away as you walk into the collection.   The photo Does Not do it justice.

This chandelier is made entirely of frosted plastic plastic bottles and bottle caps. It's hung under that huge skylight and the whole thing glows.

The thing is, it doesn't look At All like recycled garbage.  It is beautiful and the material enhances its beauty. 


It hangs above their collection of bronzes. You can see them below the chandelier.  I thought that the juxtaposition of lights and darks of the artwork, echoed in the architecture was very nice. 

Next time, we're going earlier so we can spend a few hours at this museum.

Onions

I planted onions this year.   I got a bag of tiny bulbs from somewhere for cheap and stuck them in the ground inside my coldframe in March and then had so many left over that I stuck them all around the edges of the bed where I had the coldframe.    


I figured the ones inside the warm would shoot right up, but exactly the opposite happened.

The ones inside the coldframe stayed tiny and the ones outside shot right up and are big. 

Big and beautiful.  

You can see them all around the edge of this bed here. 

The big white flower ball is a bloom on one of the happiest ones. 



Onions are alliums.   So are chives.   Alliums all have that typical flower ball on a spike for a bloom.  

Here's a close-up.  The blooms usually last for a long time.   I've let this one stay.    I'm hoping it will set seed and then next year I'll plant it.

Or maybe I'll sow it in the coldframe this fall, let the seedlings do their thing over the winter, then transplant the babies outside in March.