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My third acrylic piece of the summer is a bit of a departure from my usual styles. I felt like I was taking a bit of a risk, in a way, but I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out.
Since the last 'Blitz' chronicle both the squares and the cakes segments have been completed. Delectable scents kept wafting from the oven, but my husband and I have been very good with exercising our willpower - neither of us snuck so much as a single cookie from the trays or a single square from the pans.
My goal: 30 loaves of bread. 
We've also finished planting the back vegetable and berry garden for this season, and stocked up on our vegetable and flower seeds for next year. Raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, grapes and red currants range along one side of the fence. Tiny green baby grapes are starting to hang in clusters from the vine. Peas are almost ready to be picked, and beans are also making an appearance. Watermelon, cantaloupe, eggplant, tomato, pepper, cucumber, zucchini and corn are growing and biding their time. Meanwhile, the mint are overflowing their bed as usual, and the asparagus look like tall thin feathers in the wind. 
Okay, so I did say approximately one thousand cookies. Does nine hundred and twenty-nine count? That's about one hundred cookies for every month, and even my husband the 'cookie monster' thinks that that's a lot of cookies.
They didn't look so bad. Bright red or orange, they were small and glossy and harmless looking. Pretty, even.
Until our lilies began to look like Swiss cheese.
It didn't take long for us to figure out that these little insects were far from harmless. In fact, if we let them, they would decimate our entire lily population.
Uh oh. Now, I am not a bug squisher. I avoid spiders because I can't stand to be near them, let alone touch them - but things like ants, and harmless beetles and the like...I'll avoid stepping on them if I can. After all, they're just going on about their own business.
These red lily beetles, though, they need to be dealt with. At first, we went with the heavy-duty bug spray. But toxins and chemicals don't sit well with us, for a myriad of reasons. So my husband took matters into his own hands. He's become the official 'red-beetle squasher.' Whenever he's in the front, he'll take a moment to look for the little monsters. If he sees them, they get ground between his fingers.
It's worked quite well.
The other day, I was at the neighbor's. She pulled up a large weed in her front garden. Underneath was a whole colony of these invaders. They must have wintered under the roots.
Great.
I cross my arms and shake my head in disbelief and exasperation, but he doesn't care. He simply looks up at me as if to say 'what?'
Well the 'what' is that I have just spent time preparing his own special food, complete with fresh organic ingredients, and he won't eat it.
About a year ago, Keani's bloodwork showed elevated ALT levels in his liver. Needless to say, I went on a panic blitz. After all, my little man is only just over a year old. Our vet presented us with a couple of options - things like putting him on pills for the rest of his life which, besides being expensive, would make for an unpleasant start to the day each morning. Keani greatly dislikes being forced to do anything. Admittedly it is sometimes necessary.
Our neighbor, however, suggested we put him on an organic homemade diet. That way we could lower the amount of protein intake and make sure that only the best ingredients were going into his food, in the hopes that it would help his liver recuperate.
So that's what I've been doing. At first it was great. He loved it. Our other dog, Icewind, got to share in the bounty for a time, but Ice is one hundred pounds and eats six cups a day. So he gets his raw treats, but not the whole shebang.
Once that started happening, the 'grass is greener' syndrome set in. Suddenly Icewind's dry dog kibble started looking so much better. It is, admittedly, top grade stuff. But when Keani himself was being fed the same food, he was definitely not so enthusiastic.
Now, though, whatever is in Ice's bowl is better than whatever is in his own, and he will stretch as high as he can, hook his paws over the top of Icewind's food stand, push his neck forward and filch the kibble bits.
Now comes the exasperation part. Worried that Keani wasn't eating enough, I made him a couple of boiled eggs. He loves eggs. This is a fact. So I shelled them, broke them apart, put in a bit of 'healthy powder' (also homemade) and put them in front of him. Instant bliss!
Ten minutes later, he came into the family room where I was and cried.
I have to admit, I am a sucker for his crying. I know, I know. It's bad, and he's spoiled. He really is, and I freely admit it. I am not as ashamed as I thought I would be, either. I've stopped guilt tripping myself over it (I will put the whys and wherefores in another post.)
Anyways, I went into the kitchen. The egg was all gone, oh, yes, except for pieces of egg white. No matter how much I cajoled, he wouldn't touch them. So I put them in Ice's food dish.
That's right. Five minutes later, there Keani was, stretching as high as he would go, to pilfer pieces of egg white that he wouldn't touch when they were in his own bowl.
Aaargh!
Aaah, the weekend. Time to sit back, put my feet up, and relax. NOT.
The weekend does, however, afford me a bit of extra time to play with our food. This last Saturday evening I decided on the following:
The char siu ribs, for example...all that was needed was a jar of char siu (which can be found in most Chinese grocery stores) and a rack of ribs. Slather the sauce onto the ribs, throw them on the barbecue, and there you have it! Delicious.
The salad was likewise easy to make. Dice up half a cucumber, slice up some tomato into chunks, cut up some thin layers of purple onion (not too much!) and crumble in some feta cheese.
The chives were the first herbs to make a reappearance in the garden this year. The cracker dip was the first time I've used them this season. As a lover of chives, I was quite excited about that. This dip pared very nicely with the Parmesan and rosemary flavored Triscuit crackers.
As for the baby potatoes, all they needed was a wash, and then I threw them into a bowl (about 1lb.) In a small bowl I combined garlic salt (to taste), garlic powder, dried oregano, black pepper (to taste) and about a quarter cup of olive oil. I mixed them all up, poured it onto the potatoes, and then used a spoon to roll the potatoes around so that they would each get an even coating. Then I stuck them into a baking dish and into the oven at 400 degrees. Baked them for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Ah, the joy of having dogs. They love unconditionally, they are quick to forgive. They stare at you with sad, limpid eyes when they sense that you're upset, and give enthusiastic, snuffling kisses. They cuddle, they play, they chew, they track mud all over the floor and then look up at you, trying to be convincing that they are innocent of any wrongdoing.
They also have no respect for garden boundaries, sometimes picking plants to 'do their business' over. Branches are perfectly acceptable chew toys in their opinion, whether the branches are smooth or have tiny thorns that can become embedded in their mouths. Plants and roots can become partners in a 'tug-o-war' contest.
At least, that's how it is with our dogs.
We have two - a 100 lb ivory, woolly-coated Hungarian Kuvasz, and a 14 lb sable and black-masked Tibetan Spaniel. The Kuvasz likes to use plants as a potty, and the Spaniel likes to chew and play tug-o-war.
Originally, we put up a white wire fence, thinking that it would be a deterrent. Icewind (the Kuvasz) greatly dislikes bumping into things like baby gates, etc...
We also enclosed our fruit bushes with a wooden support covered by a string mesh (although this was partially to keep the birds out, too.)
It took a couple of years, but eventually Ice learned that he could simply jump over the wire fence. And it only took him one season to barrel right through the mesh. Keani, not being able to clear the top of the wire, simply went through it, and lost no time in following his big brother through the gaping holes in the string net.
Well, this was a problem for many reasons. One, I didn't put all this work into growing my vegetables only to have them torn, trampled, or ripped. Two, we'd actually like our plants to be healthy, and not suffer burn from over-fertilization (which is what dog urine does), and three, our fruits include grapes, which can be poisonous to dogs, and raspberries, the canes of which are covered in the aforementioned tiny prickles.
Our solution? To build a second fence about five feet away from the main one, thereby enclosing the garden completely.
At first, my husband wanted to build a chain-linked one, but eventually we went with a simpler (and more 'natural' looking, I think) green wire that is tall enough to keep Icewind out. Using a sledgehammer, my husband drove nine spikes at intervals into the yard. The spikes were about a food and a half long, while the stuff underneath the grass is clay and rock, so you can imagine how much effort that took.
Afterward, he fitted rectangular posts into the holders at the tops of the spikes. The green wire came in a roll of 50'. This we stretched as taut as we could before using a staple gun to hold it in place on the posts. My husband also drove two metal pipes into the ground and hung a latch-gate between them.
Finally, a 'baby' proof garden!
The worst thing about gardening (to us, anyway) is definitely the weeds. Versatile, adaptable, insidious and stubborn, they are a nightmare to be contended with on a daily and yearly basis.
So this spring, at the beginning of April, we rolled up our sleeves, slathered on the suntan lotion (I did, anyway,) bent our backs and set to work cleaning out the garden beds. We spared no mercy. With a large, pointed shovel we dug into the soil, pushed the shovel deeper with the ball of our foot, and tore the weeds up by the roots. My husband, especially, was ruthless, going after the tendrils and the tips, trying to make sure that the entire plant would be eradicated once and for all.
We went a step further this year. Tired of expending all this energy and having to re-do it constantly throughout the growing season (and we have a large garden - the entire perimeter of our backyard, two additional plots by the house, two front flower beds and a small 'around-the-tree' plot) we invested in what I call a 'carpet' (although it's possible that that is in fact the actual term) Well, we invested in two.
One is thick and light gray. It's porous, to allow water to go through. The other is lighter and black. In both cases, slits, or holes, are cut into the carpet to allow the desired plants to poke through. The idea is that weeds will have a harder time self-propagating, and, hopefully, growing, since there is obviously much less sun underneath.
Although the light gray one has a lifetime guarantee, I must admit that I like the black much more. It's lighter, so it's easier to work with. Plus, being black, it more closely resembles the 'color' of soil. I can only hope that when the plants get larger, they will cover up the gray nicely, because the alternative looks extremely bizarre in my mind's eye.
It wasn't a good beginning. The gray carpet, being so thick, broke some of my cool-weather seedlings when it got blown around by the wind. I wasn't incredibly thrilled by that. However, we have resolved the problem by weighing it (and the black one) with rocks.
Did I mention that weeds are insidious? Of course, they manage to spawn their seeds even with the carpet in place but, hopefully, it will be much less than it otherwise would have been.
I will let you know as the season progresses.
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