GBBD, GTTC, ironies, birdseed ornaments, Scamp update

Happy Garden Blogger's Bloom Day! Though I'm sure many of us are in the autumn perennial clean-up phase, there are still colorful blooms all around the world. Visit May Dreams Gardens on the 15th of each month to check it out. While you're here, check out the rose below. A pretty little yellow rose that seeks out the sun coming from unfortunately the direction of my neighbors' house. As you can see from the weeds on the neighbor's fence, they are not big garden aficionados. Still, the plants I care for end up greeting them as they walk out of their side door and meet the world each morning. ho hum...

In other ironies, I thought the sight of big old mushrooms growing next to the bottle of fungicide was pretty humorous.


And still more ironies... This is our typical farmers market booty. Pear cider, lemon bar with brownie hiding underneath, the sausages that the Amish family grills up, apple walnut turnover, lemon drop cookie. Not a single vegetable in sight.


I'm still harvesting these beautiful peppers (and wondering what to do with them). For those who have been enjoying the Garden to Table Challenge, I must officially put the meme into dormancy for at least the season, perhaps indefinitely. I'm going into my annual anti-cooking kick, in preparation for making Thanksgiving dinner.


Though it looked like cooking, what we're doing below is following Garden Gate magazine's recipe for birdseed ornaments.


We doubled the recipe, but the original recipe below makes six ornaments. You'll need 3/4 cup white or wheat flour, 3 cups bird seed mix, 1/2 cup dried cranberries, 1/2 cup raw peanuts, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 ounce unflavored gelatin, 3 tablespoons light corn syrup. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Microwave the water until boiling in a glass measuring cup, then dump the gelatin in and stir until dissolved. Stir in the corn syrup and pour the liquids over the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Spoon the "dough" into a muffin tin. While the mix is still moist, poke a hold with the back of a wooden spoon for hanging. Allow the mix to harden for at least three hours before dumping the cakes out of the pan. Allow to dry overnight and add a ribbon or raffia for hanging.

We used a mini-muffin pan to do some extras and strung them in a chain to hang below.


This was the dregs that we made into a ball. Poked a hole through the middle with a chopstick.

These heart shaped ones were pressed into a cookie cutter.


Finally, precious Scamp below. You can see the area of his back that was shaved in order to do the surgery. They also shaved the back of his head where they also did something - not sure what. He's about...3.5 weeks post-surgery now and still slipping and sliding on the floors a little bit, but pretty sure-footed on carpet and grass. We've even been going for very short walks in the past few days and he's mostly out of the crate except for while we're out of the house. His bowel and bladder control came back about...2.5 weeks post surgery. It's pretty fricking miraculous. The last thing I'll mention about this whole ordeal is how interesting the reactions of people have been. A few posts back, I typed out the whole saga, and if you read it, you know it was a huge dilemma whether we should do the surgery or not. I have had someone say, "Wow, you have taught your kids a wonderful lesson about life". And the following day, when I conveyed the ordeal to a co-worker, she said, "Wow, my kids would have learned a quick lesson about life", an exact opposite lesson that the first person meant about life.

Here's Scamp - waiting patiently for food to drop. He's lost some weight since we've adopted him - a good thing since he was on the overweight side. Now that he's made great strides towards recovery from his surgery, we're back to getting to know each other.