Happy National Coffee Day

Did you know that today, September 29th, is National Coffee Day?  I had no idea since, well every day here is National Coffee Day.

Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt (that guy on Mt. Rushmore) drank up to a gallon of coffee each day?  I try to live up to that standard, but probably only reach a half gallon each day.  It's nice to have a goal to reach for and strive towards. 

Deaf Dog Dirt Day Spa

It may only be mid-September, but it's time to begin preparing the garden for winter.  Ahh yes.  I've learned that winter here in North Dakota is either in recent memory, or in the near future.  In these parts Old Man Winter is always lurking somewhere with a special surprise, a May snowstorm, a September hard freeze, you just never know.

Getting the garden ready for winter is always easier in small, manageable batches, so we approach our labor in small doses.  Alycia started the ball rolling and cut down some peonies and irises in the back yard the other day, leaving some patches of bare dirt. 

This is one of the patches of dirt left bare by removing the spent irises and peonies.  It may not look like much, but on a warm fall day, this is a fantastical magical place to Shaak Ti, a veritable Deaf Dog Day Spa.  She spent several hours outside today, basking in the sun and rolling in the warm bare dirt.  Then after a few hours of pleasant snoozing, Shaak Ti came inside, covered in dirt and filthy. 

This might not look like much, but she's really dirty.  Shaak Ti is white with gray and black spots.  After her time lolling in the dirt she was gray and brown, covered in a thorough coating of dirt and completely unashamed. 

Conscience clear, she continued napping indoors, upside down. 

New Plants in the Garden Update

It's been a bit since our last posting, yes that's my bad.  All my fault.  I won't even take up your time with my verbal self abuse.  How about we get back on the posting wagon with a follow up to an earlier post.

At the end of June we (and by "we" I mean "me", Alycia didn't do more than supervise) planted a bunch of New Plants in the Garden (that we ordered from BloomingBulb.com).  The Summer Sun Heliopsis, Caradonna Salvia, and Paprika Yarrow have all done fantastically and bloomed profusely despite only having a few months to establish.  The Zing Rose Maiden Pink Dianthus has done OK, most have lived and even partially bloomed.  

The Summer Sun Heliopsis blooming with some sunflowers and Salvia Coccinea - Lady In Red in the background.  

The Arizona Sun Gaillardia?  Not so good, I think only a few survived.  Perhaps they'll return in Spring, but if not they're still guaranteed and I can get get replacements sent. 

I promise that we'll have more stories in the near future.  The first hints of Fall are in the air here in North Dakota, we even had a Frost Warning last night, and there shall be tales of apple cider, deaf dogs in sweaters, raking leaves, and pumpkins from the garden. 

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!