March

Ok, first, it SNOWED last weekend! We were driving on the 101 through Studio City, and the rain turned into big slushy drops of snow. It even stuck around for a little while - long enough to gather on the tops of the cars and on the road.

It's been awhile since the last post, so there's catching up to do. Neil built me this awesome planter box for my herbs! It's raised and sitting on a bale of straw, which I read will last about 2-3 years, and allow the roots of the plants to grow down into the bale, which will also start to compost. It's sitting up close to the back door, by the kitchen.

One of the books Neil and I have been using for gardening reference is the Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew, given to us by a friend - it has a lot of great and practical methods for easily growing your own food. We love this book, so I was excited when I found there's an entire forum of really helpful and friendly people who garden using Mel's method. 

BUT... the kind and friendly forum people over there have started a seed exchange, which is a really cool thing but I now have more seeds than I know what to do with and Neil keeps asking me where we're going to put all these plants (especially the large rambling vining ones)!

I don't have an answer, but I did find out that our king-sized box spring had two trellises hiding inside of it!!! I'm pretty sure I can grow stuff up these!

My mom visited this week! She came on Wednesday morning, and stayed until Friday, and we decided to make some marmalade with grapefruit, lemons and oranges. My trees are really full of ripe fruit, and I can't seem to give it away fast enough. I need to make a trip to the food bank!

Back to canning... this was my first time, and I was nervous. It seemed overwhelming and complicated, and I read so many warnings about various things, it seemed dangerous too. But Carmen had let me use her new pressure canner, and my aunt Debbie sent me all her canning stuff, and I had been given some good advice from the SFG forum canning mentor, so I had no excuse to not try.

We prepped all the fruit... 

then boiled it down before adding more sugar than I thought was possible for such a small recipe!

Then we cooked that down until it looked like really grainy marmalade.

Then it had to sit for 18 hours. Leave it to us to choose a recipe that took two days!! 

So we looked at the garden, and all the spring flowers...

and found a salamander. 

The next day, we boiled all the jars and lids, and brought the marmalade back up to a boil...

before pouring it carefully into the jars. 

Then we just waited to hear them pop as they sealed, which they all did!

I'm looking forward to much more canning as my garden starts to produce this year, and my awesome family made it so easy by lending me their equipment :)  As I type this, Neil is on his computer looking up recipes for dehydrated foods because my Aunt Debbie also sent along her food dehydrator.

Once the marmalade was all done, my mom and I went to visit a really cool succulent nursery down the street, but it was closed. So we stood outside the fence and took goofy pictures!

We also went to a couple of thrift stores and found some treasures, then came home to work on making some cute little fairy dolls my mom had brought with her. 

When my mom and I get together alone, our maturity level plummets and our sense of humor goes right into the gutter, so it didn't take long for the cute little fairy dolls to become something else entirely. This is the only picture I can really post, as it's kind of vague, but things just went way downhill from here.

Friday morning we had breakfast with Carmen then my mom got on the road to go down to Huntington Beach with the rest of the fam. We had a great time, and I hope she visits again soon!

And today, Neil and I are off to join them at Disneyland for my sister Cali's 25th birthday!