Big Melon

I wish I could claim this huge cantaloupe as my own, but it didn't come from my garden. 

Alycia's parents have a friend out in the country who's a retired farmer and grows corn, pumpkins, and some of the biggest cantaloupe I've ever seen. 

It's larger than the bowl of peppers and Japanese eggplant that we picked the day before.   

I couldn't come up with anything in the kitchen that was of standard enough size to be able to compare this monster melon to.  The best thing that I came up with was this egg carton, which seemed more than capable to demonstrate how large this gargantua-melon really is.  

Big melon, circumference larger than my large knife.  It was quite tasty too, even though it wasn't organic.  If I buy fruits and veggies I prefer to purchase organic, but if it's free?  Well, I can't be too choosy. 

It's that time of year when things are coming in fast and furious.  We processed a bunch of tomatoes to turn into pasta sauce. Along with our giant melon, peppers, and eggplant we have a shopping bag full of fresh picked corn and sack of apples. The corn and apples were courtesy of Alycia's parents, they're phenomenal providers of produce. 

Family Visit

We've been busy preparing for the upcoming school year here at the Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes homestead.  Back-to-school prep and harvesting the late summer bounty in the garden was work enough, then we had family come for a week to visit!  My sister, brother-in-law and my two awesome nephews, 2 and a half, and 8 months, all visited last week.  It was great to see them and we had a blast, but I'm still recovering.

Our awesome little nephew Jacob will be the focal point of many of these pictures since he's pretty cute and all.  Plus you want to see a little kid trying on cowboy hats and hugging people, not me.   

We took every opportunity to tire out the little tyke, including having him run up the dyke wall.  For the record, no they didn't roll back down the hill.  Cookies surely would have been tossed. 

We picked corn near Cavalier, North Dakota.

Alycia and Jacob posed in front of the aquarium at the local Cabela's store, always a must see for folks from out of town.  

And Alycia got to spend some quality time with awesome little(r) nephew James.  It was a very good, but tiring, week. For childless folks like Alycia and I, it was quite an assignment keeping up with two vigorous youngsters.

500th Blog Post

This is our 500th blog post. In my noble quest to come up with something memorable, worthy of a 500th post, I struggled for a week and came up with...nothing.  My usual writing technique that involves drinking several cups of black coffee (Raven's Brew - Dead Man's Reach) and waiting for the magic to happen just didn't pan out this time.  Each passing day brought more angst as every idea seemed less and less worthy of such a milestone post. 

We've got the typical litany of excuses too.  School is right around the corner and Alycia and I are making all the requisite preparations whilst battling the back-to-work-blahs (I know, I know, we've had the whole summer off while you've had to work, so I know exactly where I can go shove it).  Family is coming today for an extended visit, so we're preparing the house and grounds for a busy 3 year old and searching for activities that will tire out a busy tot and entertain out of town guests.  All the while the garden keeps producing and we try to keep up with canning and freezing and pickling and weeding. 

Now for a self indulgent look back at our humble origins. To be honest, I never thought back in 2008 that I'd write this much or for this long.  I look back on my first post with a feeling that borders on mild embarrassment.  Heck I'd barely figured out how to post pictures at that point.  In fact the digital camera that I received as a present that year is still in use as the official Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes camera.  The camera, like me, has definitely seen better days.

The "Gluten Free Girlfriend" who initially requested blog anonymity (thus the original eponymous moniker) has not only become a writing contributor to our blog but has also received a long overdue promotion to Gluten Free Wife.  I have pictures to prove it, see below.  She was a humble grad student when we first met and now she's about to go up for tenure. 

It may sound cliched to say that we've come a long way, but we have, literally and figuratively.  North Dakota is one of the last places I ever thought I'd move, but we've made a lovely home here.  There's happy dogs scampering about, thunderstorms, homemade jam, lots of chuckling, snow days, and an overwhelming feeling of contentment.  Fun stories are even more fun when you have people to share them with, so thanks for being part of Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes, reading and being part of the fun.

Raspberry Currant and Blueberry Currant Jam

It's been a busy stretch here at the Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes homestead.  We made Homemade Strawberry Jam last week and completed the jamming triumvirate this week by making Raspberry Currant jam and Blueberry Currant jam.

Alycia visited a friend a couple of times who has extensive raspberry bushes in their yard and picked about 6 quarts of berries each visit.  We froze some of the berries and used our trusty Raspberry Currant Jam recipe to make the rest into jam.

But before we made our jam we had to harvest our currants.  We "currantly" (in case you were wondering, yes you should be laughing now) have four, two red and two black, currant bushes producing berries with another two that should be online next year.  The red currants taste better, but the black currants have more pectin and in order to balance them out to get the right flavor/pectin relationship I usually go 50/50 red and black currants.

Here's one of our red currant bushes, loaded with berries.  It took Alycia and I less than an hour to harvest all the berries from both bushes. 

Alycia harvesting berries.  I picked them too, just pausing to snap this picture.  Between the strawberries, raspberries, and currants Alycia was quite the busy little berry picker this summer.  I'd like to think she's getting pretty good at it. 

Here's the some of the proceeds of our currant harvesting.  Enough for several batches of jam.  Luckily we had lovely jam making weather, unseasonably cool and breezy, so it wasn't such a terrible chore for me to labor over a hot stove for hours.

We have about 50 jars (mostly half-pint - and they couldn't all fit in the picture) of  various jams occupying the pantry.  Knowing that we have a years worth of delicious homemade jam makes me pretty dang happy.  Our next posting at Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes is a pretty special one, our 500th. 

New Reader Welcome - Caley's Kitchen Garden

Our long standing policy here at Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes is to personally welcome all of our new readers/subscribers.  Remember these are only people that publicly follow (this deliberately does not reward those who are too ashamed to admit they read this blog) and are listed as part of "My Awesome Readers" on the left hand side of the blog. Click on the "Join this site" button to add yourself.

With that we welcome Caley from Caley's Kitchen Garden.  Her site is described as "where humor meets potatoes" and I'd kindly agree with that assessment.  Caley's blog is a mix of great information with honest gardening stories, recipes, growing tips, and entertaining anecdotes.  It's also refreshingly honest - one of those few garden blogs that actually admits to the occasional gardening failure.

Even though we do our best to keep track of all our new friends, please let me know if I made a mistake and missed you in our personal welcome parade!

Marshall County (Minnesota) Fair

This past weekend Alycia and visited the Marshall County Fair in Warren, Minnesota, about 45 minutes Northwest of us. Along with the Pembina County Fair and the Grand Forks Fair, this completed the fair trifecta for the summer. The Marshall County Fair was outstanding, the fairgrounds and buildings were all well tended and obviously cared for, and there were some great food stands and exhibits.  We'll certainly be going back in future years. 

We immediately started off on the right foot when we'd barely gotten out of our car and saw these three strolling on over.  They were some manner of fair ambassadors and before Alycia could even ask the lady she said "sure you can pet her, she loves people". 

Midnight (this was the tiny ponies' name) didn't seem to pay any mind to Alycia, at least until the lady slipped Alycia a tiny pony cookie to give to Midnight.  Suddenly Midnight wanted to be friends.  I think Midnight and Tito would get along pretty well. Where's the picture of me and Midnight?  Sadly there isn't one.  Even though you don't run across tiny ponies every day, Alycia never asked if I wanted a picture with Midnight.  Sad face...

The livestock barn had a big pen of baby chicks and it was a "help yourself to pet the baby chicks" kind of thing, so Alycia picked one up.

This is about the cutest picture I could dream up.  Alycia in her red sunglasses holding a baby chick.  

There were baby ducks too, they were super cute as well.  Their feet looked too big for their slender little bodies.

There was a horse washing station (not automated/mechanized).  Sadly we had no dirty horses to wash and couldn't participate, but they did let us watch, which made me feel like a weirdo, so we moved along.

The 4-H club had an extensive snack shop set up as a fundraiser, and it seemed downright rude not to contribute, so I had some home baked pie.  Peach cream (outstanding) and Apple (very tasty) with a hot cup of coffee.

Here's the requisite shot of Alycia next to a tractor.  Note that this tractor doesn't have wheels, it has big tracks.  It was cool. 

The fair grounds were adjacent to the Settlers Village and had a large collection of old buildings and museum stuff.  We perused through on the way out and checked out some cool old items.  This was Alma Lutheran Church built in 1893.  I took this photo just for my big sister who doesn't see too many churches named after her. 

Homemade Strawberry Jam

It's been a strange couple of years here for strawberries.  Typically in late Spring/early Summer there are a multitude of advertisements for U-Pick strawberry places in the local section of the newspaper.  Last year we dutifully checked the paper every day and by mid-July realized "I don't think there are going to be any strawberries to pick this year", and there really weren't.  So last year, we had to GASP! go without homemade strawberry jam for an entire year. 

Being without homemade strawberry jam for a year was sad, but we did have our awesome raspberry currant jam to help fill the void.  This year we decided to not only look in the paper, but also be a bit more proactive (this was a new sensation for me) and search out U-Pick places.  After some telephoning around last weekend, Alycia embarked on a strawberry picking journey of great importance. 

Strawberry fields, not quite forever, but close.  The hooded and cloaked figure in the distance is Alycia's Mom, who met Alycia at the fields and picked berries of her own. 

Only $8 bucks for this bucket of berries. 

Alycia picked all these berries.  Many met their fate in the jamming pot, others were consigned to death by freezing. 

It started to rain just as Alycia was leaving, which was really good timing.  There's an old Icelandic saying "a soggy berry picker is a sad berry picker". 

Your intrepid blogger and jam maker topping berries and preparing the jam ingredients. We made 16 jars (mostly 1/2 pint) of delicious strawberry jam. Winters in North Dakota are pretty long, and anything that helps you get through it, like delicious strawberry jam, really helps. I'll post the jam recipe and pictures of the finished product in another post. 

Bee Balm (Monarda) - Finally!!!

I planted a couple of different bee balms three years ago.  I didn't plant them the first year until mid summer, so I wasn't really expecting anything from them that first year other than pushing out a few leaves and surviving the winter.  They happily obliged.

Last year I anxiously awaited the proliferation of iridescent blooms that I expect from bee balm.  And I got....nothing.  All they did last year was grow to a height of 12-18 inches, their growth seeming to stagnate  by mid-summer.  Summer ended and I hung my head in shame at what I perceived to be yet another gardening mishap/failure/miscalculation/bad idea.  But this year I've got blooms, modest blooms, but blooms none the less.

 Bee Balm (Monarda)* - Coral Reef

Bee Balm (Monarda)* - Purple Rooster

* Please note that all plant identifications are a "I'm pretty sure that's what this is" and may not stand up to the scientific rigor of the blogosphere.

These aren't really all that impressive, I've seen much more incredible looking bee balm specimens.  But considering I've been waiting 2 plus years for this, I'm quite proud of this modest showing.  And next year should be even better.

I'm sharing my pictures with Tootsie for Fertilizer Friday - you should check out her amazing blog.  Along with her blog, there are some great gardening blogs every Friday, chock full of pictures of great blooming things. 

Dispute Over Vomit Cleanup Spurs Hammer Attack at Fair

Some breaking local news for you. Here's the article from the Grand Forks Herald.

FARGO – A carnival worker arrested last week for hitting a fellow employee at the Red River Valley Fair in the head with a hammer allegedly did so after the victim insisted he clean up a pile of vomit left on a ride by a fair-goer.

Richard “Old Man Richard” Wareham, 49, of Houston, Texas, was charged last week in Cass County District Court with one count of aggravated assault, a C felony.

According to court documents filed in the case, Cass County Deputy Jeff Arth was dispatched at 9:47 p.m. July 9 to a report of an assault with a hammer at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds in West Fargo.

Arth interviewed the man hit with the hammer, Jesus Geronimo Avila, 39, who said he was working on a ride he doesn’t normally work on, alongside a man nicknamed “Old Man Richard.”

Avila told the deputy that he confronted Wareham about not wanting to help clean up some vomit on the ride. The ride isn’t identified in court records.

According to Avila, he was putting away a broom when Wareham came after him with the hammer, hitting him in the head with it five times and leaving four lacerations, authorities allege in reports filed with the complaint.

Avila was taken to Sanford Medical Center after the alleged assault.
Wareham was taken to the Cass County Jail. His bail was set at $10,000 cash.

His next court appearance is set for Aug. 7.

You can read the full article at the Grand Forks Herald.  

Awesome Nephew Pictures

My little nephew was on vacation with the family outside Yosemite National Park, California and I received some photos of his various exploits.  He is an active member of the FFA (Future Firefighters of America) and was testing some of the towns equipment.

It's crazy to think that he's not even three years old yet, what a large little dude. 

Fighting imaginary fires can make you hungry, nothing better than a cool ice cream cone to stifle that hunger.

Homemade Tomato Cages on Yahoo

My blogging series on building homemade tomato cages with concrete remesh has culminated in getting published on (now defunct website ) Full of Knowledge.

DIY Heavy Duty Tomato Cages.

In case you missed the series of posts about these tomato cages over the years, you can read the First Post, the Second Post, and the Third Post in chronological order.  These posts offer the full story along with details on how to make some of your own. Along with these posts, my Cost Benefit Analysis and Final Thoughts completes the series.

If you don't want to make your own tomato cages, that's OK.  If you have a few bucks to spend, you can get some pretty sweet tomato cages, like the tomato towers or these sturdy and long lasting ones from Gardener's Supply Company or on Amazon.  

Deaf Dog Checklist

It was a banner day for Shadowfax the puppy the other day, 

Play fetch in the back yard? Check
Splish-splash through the pool? Check
Visit from Grandma and Grandpa? Done
Tug-of-War time and playing with toys? Completed
Patrol the house and yard and bark at everything/everyone? Accomplished
Shoot a beam of sunlight out of my nose? Check

Actually she collapsed on the carpet after a full day of romping puppy fun and antics.  The last few rays of evening sunshine were coming through the window and I snapped this photo.  It makes it seem as though she can shoot a ray of sunlight from her nose, when in fact this is not one of her super powers.

The Muppet Show - The Cat Came Back

I was out in the garden the other day, spending several hours planting and weeding and digging.  It was early afternoon and already pretty hot and humid, I was soaked through with sweat.  Perhaps it was the first sign of heat exhaustion, or that my internal cranial temperature reached some unknown threshhold required to connect some long lost neurons.  Or maybe it was just a sign of how my brain works.  Anyways, the following song popped into my head.

I haven't heard or even thought of this song in 20? 25? years, but there it was clear as day playing in my brain-jukebox as I whistled along.  It's on days like this that I feel kind of bad for Alycia.  It's strange/weird/difficult enough for me to live in my own head, I wonder how she feels sometimes having to interact with me and my inherent craziness on a daily basis.

And I know that you'll probably just go looking around on You Tube for your other favorite Muppet Show skits, so you should start off on the right foot with the Mahna Mahna Song.

Pembina County Fair

Alycia and I loaded the fur-kids in the car and drove up to visit her parents in Cavalier, North Dakota for the Fourth of July.  After spending some time visiting with them and wandering around their garden with the dogs, we left the dogs with them and headed over to nearby Hamilton, North Dakota (Pop. 61) for the Pembina County Fair.  It was nearing 7 pm on a warm, breezy, picture perfect summer evening. 

The Pembina County Fair is the oldest county fair in North Dakota.  It's exactly what I thought county fairs were supposed to be.  I grew up in San Diego and went to the San Diego County Fair every few years.  It's a huge month-long exhibition that attracts over a million people during its run.  It was fun (and HOT), but short on animals and "fair stuff" and seemed more concerned with separating you from your money.  At the Pembina County Fair? 

The 4-H folks were out in force and well represented.  There were cows...

...pigs...

...and a handful of sheep.  This fair was big on animals and agriculture, and also held on the hallowed ground and in the sacred halls where Alycia displayed her award winning guinea pig, Mokey, back in the day.  That's right, while other kids were wrangling cows and horses, Alycia was taming one of the most fearsome beasts ever domesticated by humans - the guinea pig.  Alycia claimed that there was a gold plaque somewhere that commemorated her local dominance in showing guinea pigs, but no such plaque was to be found. 

Tito's Summer Plucking

Tito is proudly part Corgi and often demonstrates typical Corgi characteristics, herding, nipping, being generally OCD.  He also has the Corgi power to shed, in fact for a dog his size, Tito is a champion shedder.

In late Spring or early summer Alycia tries her best to help get some of the hair/fur off Tito.  Since he hates (I can't emphasize enough how much he hates it) being brushed, the best that Alycia can do is to pluck out as much of his thick undercoat as possible. 

Alycia plucks Tito as he looks particularly pathetic.  You can see the pile of fur or "mini-Tito" that is forming to his left.  Again, for a dog as small as he is, Tito sheds like a champ.

Avast ye mini-Tito, ye shall rise up and be powerful. 

New Plants in the Garden

A month back I got a fairly regular e-mail from one of the Internet sites I've purchased from in the past (Blooming Bulb) that advertised a huge growers overstock sale with significant savings.  I clicked on the link and well, you know how this story goes.  Before my better senses could take over I'd ordered 125 root divisions.  Granted they were only being sold in increments of 25 and they were quite cheap, but still.  This was yet another case of my gardening eyes being bigger than my gardening stomach. 

That's why it's been quiet on the blog here, I've been planting (and panting) like crazy the last week getting everything in the ground.  It shouldn't be long before we have a whole lot of cool new flowers around here.  So what did I add?  25 each of the following:

• Zing Rose Maiden Pink Dianthus
• Summer Sun Heliopsis
• Paprika Yarrow
• Arizona Sun Gaillardia
• Caradonna Salvia  

Maybe in another month or so I'll have some new flower pictures to post, so stay tuned.   

Awesome Nephew Pics

It's been a while since I posted pictures of my awesome little nephew.  Well today you get a special 2-for-1, Jacob and his little brother (awesome nephew #2) James. 

Deaf Dog Pool Opening

The official Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes pool opened over the weekend.

It was near 90 degrees and quite humid and Shadowfax had a grand time splashing around and cooling off in the pool.  She's trying to get her white lacrosse ball that has sunk to the bottom and is completely ignoring the awesome green GoughNuts Ball that's floating on the surface. 

She mostly likes to stand in the pool, splash around and sometimes lie down in the cool water.  This is the deepest body of water she's ever been in, so we're not really sure how strong of a swimmer she is.

Peonies, Daisies, Geraniums, and other Blooms

We've had a late bloom and a slow start to the growing season this year.  Combined with the early warm weather and very early Spring from last year, our year over year garden comparisons are striking. 

The peonies bloomed almost a full month later this year compared to last year.  Sadly we had some big thunderstorms the night before these photos were taken and the peonies have all fallen over.  Every year I vow to stake these up so the heavy buds and blossoms don't fall over, and every year I never get around to it.  Behold and witness my gardeners shame!

This entire row of peonies were planted by the previous owners.  I don't love (or know enough about) peonies to plant them on my own, but this display is quite stunning when everything is blooming.

We removed a huge stand of overgrown messy lilacs from this area last year and filled it almost entirely with plant divisions and extras from one of Alycia's friends at work (thanks Sarah!).  There are daisies, so-called "wild" geraniums, and irises that have filled in quite nicely. This mound is not quite complete, we're going to wait and see where there are holes and fill them with other perennials. 

The purple geraniums and purple irises contrast well with the white daisies.  We're fairly happy with how this area turned out considering that I have no formal garden training and all these plants were free.  My joy with how this turned out balances out the gardening shame for not staking the peonies and puts me back at even.  

Upside Down Dog

No, not a yoga pose, our dog Shaak Ti.

Shaak Ti spends more time upside down than any other dog I've ever met.  And not just when she's sleeping, oftentimes she'll be awake, just hanging out, upside down. 

That's our little girl. The deaf, blue-eyed, upside down dog. 

Just Married

It's been a little quiet here on Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes over the last week.   But we have a good excuse. Perhaps the best excuse.  You see Alycia and I got married.

The wedding was in Yosemite National Park in California at the historic Ahwahnee Hotel.  It was a small crowd of 40 people, and we beheld the natural beauty of Yosemite in late Spring and basked in the delicious food, refreshing beverages, and splendor of our family and friends. 

Alycia looked amazing in her dress and I couldn't have been a happier camper or prouder groom.  Our photographer Patrick Pike spent almost the whole day with us and the shots we saw on the digital display of his camera looked fantastic, I can only imagine how great the actual photos will look.  And Patrick, if you're reading, this isn't a passive-aggressive "OMG where are my photos already?!?!?", I just thought we'd give you a shout out on this world famous blog.  Seriously, this is like six figures of free advertising.

And to all my regular readers, sorry for the superfluous and flowery language.  At least I didn't describe anything as "magical" (even though it kinda was). Your regularly programmed cynical and sarcastic author will be back shortly in the next post later this week...

Homemade Tomato Cages - Cost Benefit Analysis and Final Thoughts

It's the third year of using our Homemade Tomato Cages and with that experience under my belt, I thought it might be useful to perform a final cost benefit analysis to determine if it was worth it to go through the trouble of making these Homemade Tomato Cages.  There are also a few pros and cons of these tomato cages that I'll pass along in case you're interested in replicating these for your garden. 

In case you missed the previous posts about these tomato cages over the years, you can read the First Post, the Second Post, and the Third Post in chronological order.  These posts offer the full story along with details on how to make some of your own. 

So was it worth it to build these myself versus buying them?  Right off the bat my knee jerk reaction is yes since there just aren't commercially available tomato cages that are this big and this sturdy.  But how much did each tomato cage cost?  Well I purchased the following materials:

5' x 50' Reinforcing Mesh, 10 Gauge -        $29.99
10" End Cutting Pliers (to cut wire mesh) - $19.99
Spool of Wire for securing cages -                 $3.49

New Pages on the Blog

A few months ago we added some additional pages to the world famous Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes blog.  These started out as the garden variety "About Us" types of things, but quickly and predictably took on a life of their own.  You now have a lot more back story of the three pooches here at the homestead, and we'll add more later.

So please take some time, if you haven't already, and read the background story, pictures, and blog entries about the three furry critters that make our lives so dang entertaining.

The Tale (or Tail) of Tito

The Saga of Shaak Ti

The Story of Shadowfax

A Guilty Dog

Wanna see what a guilty dog looks like?

Shadowfax the puppy had a dilly of a time digging up the clematis vine that I had just planted, her toes were caked with dirt.  At least she looked appropriately guilty. 

Being bad can make you tired, tired as a sleepy dog. A pink-tummied, spotted, sleepy dog.

Homemade Vanilla Extract Follow Up

It was over a year ago that I wrote about Making Homemade Vanilla Extract.  That post detailed how to make the vanilla extract, but I never got around to mentioning how it turned out.  Well, it turned out great.  We've been using it for six months or so and I can't tell the difference between the homemade and the store-bought, except that the homemade stuff is 1/10th the price.

This is what it looked like after about six months.  Since we have two bottles this size, we took one bottle, ran the contents through a coffee filter (to get the vanilla bits out) and left the second bottle in the dark pantry to keep infusing its vanilla-esque goodness.

A few months later, it was even darker and more chock full of vanilla flavor.  Since it's pretty much just alcohol with vanilla beans in it, it will stay good for quite a while.  This is a good thing since it might take us another year to get to this bottle.