Choice Morsels

Today's Mama Kat prompt this weeks said,  "Did you Garden this year? Share  the fruits of your labor." It's been a terrible year for gardening. Far too wet.  Despite that, one Bell pepper in my veggie bed managed to survive and not just survive, it thrived. We were out of town for two weeks recently and when we came back---ta-da, it was loaded with green peppers!  Not a bit of labor went into it aside from planting it. That's the beauty of peppers. On Another Note... Today was the first Thursday of the month lunch out for my Yoga fitness class. Six of us went today, all of us between the ages of 50 and 75. Two of the ladies are retired nurses and I used to be a Air Force medic, so we started trading amusing medical stories, particularly about baby births. There's always funny stories about baby deliveries. Our Yoga instructor talked about her second child being a full-breech and that she elected to have him by Cesarean.  I to...

The squirrels litter my back yard below pine trees with cobbed pine cones they've burred down to the core, so I was walking around today picking those up. These cone cobs are often slightly curved with a few pine cone petals left on the very end, so they look a little like brown shrimp tails laying everywhere. Lots of pine cones the squirrels missed cobbing as well! I also cleaned up a few broken Pampas Grass fronds and pulled up the dead Zinnia's from the back bed. Today's Garden Pics are some of my veggie garden plantings for winter: First, my not-so-new 2-year old Bell Pepper: More of a Pepper "Tree" now.  It persists in making peppers and I've let it. Not terribly big peppers, but very thick-walled, which is something you want in peppers.  There's one on there now that will be in dinner tonight! This bed area faces South and gets full sun all year round--which is why this Pepper has thrived so long. Next: 3 Brand New Bell Peppers: ...

It's warm and somewhat muggy this week with a little rain. I was thinking I doing a little pick-up of limbs and pinecones after lunch. A frost last week killed the zinnia's, some of the vinca depending on where it was, most of the marigolds, though some struggle on, the salvia in a pot (not the one in the ground next to the house) and nearly all the basil.  The Thai Basil survived, which is interesting. I have a hosta up front, which gets Eastern sun, so it stays green all winter and is currently blooming. Go figure. Today's Pics of the Day are a few I took yesterday: Pretty purple and red Petunias: Next, pot bell peppers sporting fresh green leaves and new blooms! (Spraying with Epsom salt water helps!) This pot is outside the front door and gets southern sun all day, plus this location is somewhat sheltered from the cold winds. The back garden wall project as it now looks: I decided not to do a third row of blocks, but just two. That gave me...

It's mid-January and weather has been mild here for a couple weeks, which is making lots of stuff outside think it's time to bloom. The pine trees are flowering two weeks early, so everything is coated with yellow pollen! (That's where baby pine cones come from.) My Sea Holly is shooting up future flowering stems. My two Bell Pepper plants, which are in the strawberry bed right outside the front door, have wintered over and are sprouting all sorts of new growth and blooms! So a shot of the happy new growth on one of my pepper plants is today's Garden Pic of the Day: This will save me having to buy any new ones. I say: if it ain't broke, why fix it? I was out today doing a little pre-spring yard work, like adding a bag of soil to my north side Hosta bed while the Hosta's are dormant to raise the bed level a little. I was also weeding out excess Spider Plants from around behind the A/C unit and from under my Japanese Privets. Normally all the Spi...