Mushrooms, Onions and Bunnies. Oh My!

So remember the bit about mushrooms everywhere? Check these out.

I've been calling D. "Mr Mushroom" this week as he brought about a bushel of boletes to the house over the course of several days and spent hours poring over his mushroom books to try and decide if they are edible. He finally called a mycologist at the UNC Department of Biology who referred him to a local expert on boletus. D. hauled a cooler full of mushrooms to Owens' house and they sat around the kitchen table looking at books to determine species, chatting about stem qualities, spores and coloration. The upshot is we now have two trays of sliced boletes drying in the back of my car for Porcini and D. cooked up a skillet full that rendered a couple of cups to go into pasta for dinner and extras to the freezer.

Yesterday I braided these onions up for storage, this is only about a quarter of the onions that we grew. I'm thrilled, they are big and delicious and we have been eating them in everything. I hope they will store well into the winter.

I also put up 6 pints of dilly beans, my new favorite pickle as of last summer, hot peppers, garlic and fresh dill heads and seed make them extra tasty. They are crisp and the ultimate addition to tuna, egg or potato salad.

Took a couple of shots at the squirrels yesterday but missed, of course the minute we decided we might try and exterminate them they disappeared from view, though they're still marauding in the tomato patch. Given the fact that the kitchen counter is already covered with tomatoes I'm not sure why we care, but we do.

Now this little guy is one of a pair that are entirely too cute and the chicken wire that we added around the inside base of the veggie patch fence seems to be keeping them out of there for the time being so they live on. I admit we've been discussing how good they would be grilled if they are still hanging around this fall and a bit plumper.

Another day in the garden, backache to prove it

As I was working in the vegetable garden this morning I thought "you should tell your readers it's not all sweetness and light" My backs been aching and I'm overwhelmed most days by all the things I need to get done. All the same- I wouldn't trade any of it.

I stirred up a toad while I weeded and mulched around the Swiss chard I planted last fall, he hid between the rows and I tried not to scare him too much. We've got a little bunny living in the yard too, so far it's only eating clover and chickweed outside the veggie garden, I'm hopeful that the rabbit wire is really small enough that he can't squeeze through.

Call me anal retentive, but it really makes me happy to see the garden beds looking so tidy.

From front to back this is beets, carrots, red and toscano kale, tatsoi, cilantro, radishes, lettuce and peas at the back, you can see some onions on the left and the shed with all our rain buckets in the background.


Wish it would rain, its getting dry again. I stepped my peppers and eggplants up from small to larger pots today, will set them out in a couple of weeks. Next week I'm going to plant tomatoes, yippee, only about 10 weeks now till the first red ripe one.