New pictures of good things!



Michael started making candied Kielbasa for 4th of July....
It was for the sauce that we used our own horseradish
(pictured in the post below!)



As he cuts Kielbasa, two beggars will slices onto the floor....

Savannah made sour cream cupcakes with
watermelon frosting...here they are, baking

The garden and berry bushes, early July

Every bird house on our property is filled with little chickadee families!

The new planters we got at auction



These are now planted with pink portulacas...

 

Some amazing clouds Michael saw at work...they're
streaked with rainbows!

I repainted the storm door...um, is it too loud?

Our Own Horseradish!

This weekend, Michael made horseradish from our own
2012 crop. Stay tuned for pics of how we'll use it first!

Rhubarb pie, apple trees, kite flying, fabric design!



It's rhubarb pie season!
Strawberry rhubarb (left) and rhubarb streusel (right)





Our front porch, with blooming roses not yet sampled by the deer.

  

 

Our new granny smith apple trees, locked in like
the gold at Fort Knox.





Our volunteer walnut trees, repotted for 'nursery' growth.



Michael getting our horned owl kite ready to fly.

Kite flying!

The kite actually flaps!

Michael checking out our cactus blossoms.
Believe it or not, all that cactus came from a potted plant
I had in my college dorm freshman year. Really. That's
like...18 years ago. Uh, wow.

Jasper Johns, napping. 



I've begun designing fabric, too.
Above is "Serpent Stars".
You can find more designs in my Spoonflower Shop.



Above is "Sea Stars", also available in my Etsy art
store: http://www.savannahschrollguz.etsy.com/

It's a New Season....

Thanks to the unseasonably warm temps this year,
May has become swarm season. Michael caught 2 so far.
Both came from the top bar hive we have in the garden.
The first clung to a t-shirt he uses to tear fabric strings
from. The second swarm clung to a blackberry bush limb.
Here Michael is situating one swarm in hive boxes. Later,
we transported them onto the hill with the rest of the ladies. 



Spring = time for general homestead upkeep, kids.
Early on a Saturday morning, I was out with
my electric sander, taking the cracked varnish
off the front door. Although it was after 9 a.m., Michael stuck his
head out the door and said, "Good Morning, Little Marvin"
since my Dad is notorious for running loud power tools
well before 8 a.m.. Oops.



And the interior door, rehung. Yep, it's Smurf blue.
We had intended it to be a little darker, like Delft pottery,
but we like it. It's happy and different than anything anyone
around here else has.



Our salvage house door has been turned into a new garden
gate. And not a moment too soon. The old one fell to pieces
and I had to bag it up for the trash....really, in pieces.



We've moved the beans this year. They are where the corn
used to be. Michael is stringing hemp twine so that the vines
have a natural medium, up which they can climb.

And the very first strawberries of the season!
We had them on cereal this morning.

Honey Logo...in progress....



Honey Logo, featuring Dziadek Thomas Guz, founder of the Guz farm.
Fun with Photoshop, kids!



It's Christmas Cookie Time....



Finished chocolate chili cookies!


And here is the first batch...the first successful batch, that is. At Thanksgiving, Mum gave me a Farmer's Almanac with a good-looking receipe for Chocolate Chili cookies in it. I tried it first with "coating chocolate" the first time. I didn't realize what impact this would have on the consistency of the cookie. Ah yes, it made lovely chocolate chili mess all over the cookie sheets simply because every time it was heated, it melted to a thin scrim of liquid. Michael had to help me scrape the baked stuff off the pan. This time, I used semi-sweet morsels and that made all the difference. No habaneros this time either. I put into the mortar and pestle only dried jalapenos. This was mixed with flour, baking powder, eggs, vanilla, espresso powder, the chocolate mix you see below, along with more semi sweet morsels and walnuts. Good stuff.

The batter!



Me in the walnut bag...




Semi-sweet chocolate chips with Smart
Balance in my newish double-boiler from
Westland Auction.



Bee Stings and Apple Harvests



I usually never write on the chalk board, but project my lecture notes
from pdf documents I post for students on my web site. I gave the
kids an activity one day and took a picture of my questions for my
own sanity (meaning: I didn't have to write them down...how cool is
the smart phone? Awesome, right?)



We've been busy bees lately. Pun not intended, I'm afraid. I've been pretty consumed by lecture prep and have also been grading papers until my eyes cross. With three sections with approximately 25 kids each, with an assignment in each class per week, the grading is an on-going event in the house. Michael's been putting the garden and the bees to bed. Here are some pics of the recent activity, kitchen and otherwise.....

Bun's putting out a dose of fall feeding for the top bar
in the garden. The fall syrup is composed of 2 parts
sugar to one part water--extra rich, to get the ladies
bulked up for the leaness that is winter.

What's this, you ask? Homemade apple butter, baby.
I had apples that we brought back from central PA, and
they were starting to be six kinds of sandy.
So, I sauced them.



What's the sweetner? Well, our own honey,
of course!



Some little boy didn't wear his bee suit when he went
to winterize the hives on the hill, and he got stung above his
eye. The poor thing swelled up so severely, he could not
open the lid. Within 48, however, Michael's eye was back
to normal. Scary stuff, though!