I Wish It Was Spring!

Not because I'm wishing the winter away (although some snow would be nice), but because

I WANT TO WEAR THESE!

How groovy are these fabulous gardening shoes that Aileen sent me for Christmas?  They're lightweight, waterproof, have really good treads, and they fit beautifully.  I can't wait to put them to good use.  I don't think dashing out to the compost bin in the rain, which I did today, really counts.

Speaking of Christmas, Daniel has been good enough to share some Cherry Ripes with me from the stash of outrageous goodies that Frog sent.  Yay!

We invited our friend Chris over and we had olive and artichoke pies, ham, green beans, tartiflette (a fabulously sinful potato dish, the recipe for which is here), and then Daniel made ginger creme brulee for dessert.  Oh, and here's the recipe for the pies.  I'm sure I don't really need to mention that they're both from taste.com.

To top things off (as if that wasn't enough), we visited our friends Shannon and Henry for more dessert on Christmas night.  Shannon had made a chocolate and walnut pie similar to a pecan pie that was to die for.  Needless to say, much exercising has been going on since then!

We had a lovely, relaxing day, as did the furry folk.  Although, to be honest, they rarely do anything else these days.

Oh, and we had the best Christmas tree ever.  We didn't get it until the Thursday before, so all the trees were on sale to the point that we got ours in exchange for a donation to charity. Double bonus, in my opinion.

Pretty cool, huh?  It takes up lots of our admittedly tiny living room, and almost reaches the ceiling!

Hope you and yours all had a lovely Chirstmas, too.  I'm off work this week... trying, and almost succeeding, to do some productive things around the house.

Cheers!

Sad But True

So since I'm having trouble moving photos from the camera to the computer (I suspect dead batteries), I thought I'd share this little Sad But True tale with you.

Daniel went to the store to get the bits and pieces we needed for Christmas, which included some fresh green beans.  Can't have ham without green beans!  He was sorting through them when a woman approached him to ask him how he was going to cook them.  Read that again if you need to double-check, but yes, she wanted to know how he was going to cook the beans!  She then went on to say she'd never had a fresh green bean because... wait for it... SHE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO COOK THEM!!!!  Seriously.  How sad is that?

Even worse, it reminded me of a time I had a similar experience at the green bean stand.  And when I explained to this particular person that, apart from steaming or stir-frying them, I also eat them raw in salads, you would have thought I had just killed and eaten her firstborn child.

Sad.  Very sad.  But unfortunately very true.

Recipe Update

I have some recipes to share with you all, but before I do, I want to crab about this here blog-thing. 

I spent AGES writing a post about the holiday Daniel and I took in northern Idaho at the beginning of October.  I waxed lyrical, wrote witty photo captions, and selected some lovely photos to share. I previewed it to make sure everything was okay, hit the "publish" button, and then watched as most of it failed to publish... AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGH! 

Not only that, but I couldn't retrieve it.  There simply are not enough swear words....

It is probably out there in the ether somewhere at the moment feeling very lonely and scared, so if you see my post, could you please send it home?  Thanks.

In the meantime....

Here it is, The Best Turkey Recipe Ever.  There's a radio show over here called Splendid Table, and the recipe hails from their website.

I'm always a little nervous about cooking the Thanksgiving turkey.  I don't often roast things, and Thanksgiving is my favourite American holiday so I really don't want to stuff it up. I'm not sure this recipe is completely stuff-up proof, but I did manage to navigate it successfully and roast a bird that I was very, very pleased with.  I will warn you, though, it's time-consuming; so make sure you have plenty of said time before you commit yourself.

A few things I discovered: 

• The recipe itself is a little scattered, but it's not difficult to work out what is intended.  It's also fun to read, which is a nice change from all those terribly serious recipes out there.

• I had a 17-pound turkey, and the seasoning mix was a little more than I thought was really necessary.  It definitely seasoned the meat, though!

• Don't skip the gravy, but make sure you have a decent sized shallow tray to roast in.  Mine was a little small, and it took forever to reduce the stock down to the point where it became gravy.  The gravy itself doesn't need thickening; it's very, very rich and a little goes a long way, unless you're Daniel.

• When the recipe calls for lots of lemon, it means it.  I think that made all the difference to the seasoning.

• It doesn't have stuffing, but I'm sure you could add that yourself and adjust the cooking time accordingly.

I can safely say that it was the most tender, juiciest turkey I've ever had.  Daniel and Chris, both of whom have had more Thanksgivings than me, said it was the best turkey they'd ever had. Yay!  And it wasn't even a fancy turkey, just one from the supermarket.

Now I know it's hot over there, and stew is probably the last thing on your mind, but I also wanted to share this recipe with you from our friends at Taste.com: Catalan Beef Stew

Chocolate and orange in a stew; who'da thunk it? Apart from the Catalans, of course.

It is absolutely delicious, and this is from someone who thought she didn't really fancy stew all that much.  Pop it into your mental  filing system and drag it out the next time you get a yen for some stew.  You won't regret it.

So Here's the Flippin' Fountain

At last!  A moment or two to show you some photos.  I don't know how life got so busy, but it did.  Probably that last burst of energy before winter settles in. 

As you will see, what we built is more of a water feature than a fountain, but it's still pretty fantastic, I reckon.

When last I wrote, we had built a circle of stones to place the actual pieces in, and Daniel had installed an electrical outlet for the pump.  Remember that?  It was a while ago.

Here's what happened next:

We lined the circle of stones with weed cloth, because...

...we decided to fill the circle with small gravel with the idea that it would make the base easier to level.  But before we got to the gravel, we (by which I mean Daniel), piled in some dirt.  It's certainly cheaper than all gravel - I just stole some from other parts of the garden. Here's an action shot of the Man himself:

Then came the gravel:

Then came the base, and the first of many excursions into the wonderful world of leveling.  Did you know that leveling comes with a swear word or three?  I do now....

We went with larger pebbles for inside the fountain base. 

And then the pump went in...

...followed by an upside down pot with some strategic holes in it to allow the vertical pipe part of the pump to be placed properly.  This involved more leveling.  And quite possibly a swear word; I really can't remember.

Then came the actual fountain part - which is really just a very large pot - followed by, surprise, surprise, a little more leveling.

Strangely enough you need water for a water feature, so out came the trusty garden hose.

And then came the moment we (and the birds and squirrels, as it turns out) had been waiting for...

Electricity!

A few minutes of holding our breath...

And the water feature arrived!

I hope you aren't too underwhelmed after waiting so long to see it.

It still needs some plants around it, and possibly a sculpture if I can come up with an idea for one.  Those two things will have to wait until spring now, because winter is getting close.

It makes a lovely sound, and we've had the chance to enjoy it in the evenings.  The squirrels and birds adore it; I saw a couple of little feathered folk bathing in the basin this morning.

We're going to have to drain it pretty soon, but I'm thrilled to know it will be there in the spring.

So Where's The Flippin' Fountain?

Weeeeelll.... the best laid plans and all that....

For those of you who don't know, I got the bits and pieces to build a fountain for my birthday this year.  Yay!  The plan was to build it over the long weekend that just happened to be after my birthday.

I had been to the store where we ended up buying the pots before my birthday so I had time to think about it all, and let my subconscious ruminate a little.  We popped down to the store and picked out all the pieces (my subconscious had apparently not been ruminating at all - it took a while), only to find out that the guy who does all the prep work for turning the pots into fountains had taken a three-day weekend, too.  The cheek!  I mean, really, didn't he KNOW what our plans were? ;)

I do believe it was Wednesday when Daniel picked everything up; the pots have the right size holes, they've been plugged where they're supposed to be plugged, and we have a fountain kit.  Daniel also got good instructions on how to assemble everything so it will work properly.

Only problem was, Daniel had a solo backpacking trip planned for the following Thursday - Sunday (yesterday).  We are talking about some rather monumental pots that there is no way I can lift by myself, so the fountain plans got put on hold again.  He actually came home on Saturday, but we didn't get anything done yesterday because...

Daniel had to go to New York this week for work.  He left way too early this morning.

Soooo... you might be wondering if we'll get to it this weekend?  Unlikely.  We have a wedding on Saturday, then Sunday we're going to Sun Valley to see Colin Hay (yes, THAT Colin Hay from Men at Work.  He's a solo artist these days, and his stuff is light years better than any of the rubbish he did with that band).  All things being equal, we'll get it done during the week next week.  I hope so, because the following weekend we're going camping. And the weekend after that we're off to Priest Lake in northern Idaho for a week's holiday (I am SO looking forward to that), then we're off to Salt Lake city for a couple of days to see The Foo Fighters, and we have to plan the hot air balloon trip we bought for 60% off the asking price (it was too good of a bargain to resist)....

I think we may have overscheduled ourselves a wee bit....

Having said all that, we have made some progress.  We went out to the desert to collect some lava rocks to make a base, and Daniel ran some wiring for a power outlet.  I had wanted a solar pump, but everything I read and everything everyone told me, led me to believe they're not much chop.  Unfortunate, but for the moment we'll be relying on mains power.  I don't plan on running it all the time, so it shouldn't be too big of a deal.  In fact, at this stage I'm thinking we'll drain it for the winter, although we can get a heater for it so it doesn't freeze.  We'll see.

So.  Here's where the fountain is going:

And here are the rocks we're making a base for it from:

In case you're wondering, we didn't ravage the desert for the rocks.  We took them from the (dirt) road verges where they'd been kicked up during the road-making process.  And we didn't touch any rocks that were near a critter hole.

I dug out most of the Lily-of-the-Valley, but I still have plenty left.  In fact, they could do with some thinning and dividing:

As I mentioned, Daniel put together a power outlet.  Apparently the crawl space is an arachnaphobe's worst nightmare.  Methinks I will have to have words with the furry folks about that:

After that, we started piling rocks.  Daniel had the bright idea to make a template of the fountain base so we could make sure it was going to be big enough (he told me he remembered me putting down templates when we re-did our kitchen in Illinois... smart me, and smart him for remembering; I was wandering around with a tape measure and getting all confused!):

I've added a few more rocks since this last photo was taken, but you'll have to wait now:

I bought some weed barrier cloth today with the plan of filling the circle with dirt this evening.  The cloth will stop dirt from leaking out and destabilising the fountain base; at least, that's the hope.  But it looks like it's going to storm, so I guess I'll be doing that another night.  Good thing I don't get too freaked out when plans don't go according to plan!

Cheese, Please

Yesterday, Judy (a co-worker) and I went to a cheese making class in a town called Nampa, which is about 20 miles away.  I'd always thought it might be interesting to learn how to make cheese, so when Judy invited me, I happily tagged along.

The class was held in the cheese maker, Debra's, kitchen.  She and her family also operate a store selling beer, wine, and cheese making supplies from their home. 

We made two types of cheese, Apple Cider Vinegar Cheese and Queso Fresco (pronounced 'kayso freskco').  The vinegar cheese was really simple.  The Queso Fresco was also quite simple, but a bit more fiddly and I'm not sure I can describe properly how to do it.  It's a Mexican style of fresh cheese, and actually, that's what its name translates to in English.  They're both soft cheeses, which is probably why they're so straightforward.  I'll give you the vinegar cheese recipe, and then explain what we did.

Ingredients:
1/2 - 1 gallon pasteurized whole milk (I'll let you do the conversion)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

Instructions:
Heat milk to 185 degrees F. Add vinegar and mix thoroughly. Turn off heat.

Cover and let sit for 15 minutes.  You are looking for a clear separation of curds and whey.  If the milk has not set, add a little more vinegar until it does set.

Pour the curds into a colander lined with butter muslin. Drain until desired consistency.

Remove curds from butter muslin.  Add salt and herbs to taste if desired.

It's now ready to eat, or you can keep it refrigerated for 1-2 weeks.

Here are the things I learned about this ridiculously easy cheese, along with some basic cheese making principles:

1.  1/2 gallon of milk makes a decent amount of cheese, although the quantities we got varied from person to person.  If you want to make lots, use a whole gallon (you use the same amount of vinegar).  We used plain old supermarket milk.  I think with the more complicated cheeses - cheddar and such - you'd want to get your hands on raw milk if you can.  Apparently ultra-pastuerised (not sure if you have that - it's mostly used on organic milk here), will not work.  They heat the milk to the point where all the little greeblies that actually make the cheese are killed off.  Oh the humanity!

2. Raise the milk temperature slowly so it doesn't scorch.  We made ours in double boilers, which is the way to go with this one. Most recipes will specify whether or not to use a double boiler.  If the milk does scorch, make sure you don't scrape the bottom of the pan while you're stirring it.  And if you get a skin, just remove it.  The temperature is really important, so if you go over, let it cool back down before you add the vinegar.

3. Use a slotted spoon to pour the vinegar into the milk.  Pour the vinegar over the spoon and move the spoon around the pan as you pour to help distribute the vinegar evenly.

3. Use a slotted spoon to stir, and stir slowly.  Hold the spoon vertically and work from side to side, rather than holding the spoon flat.  Can't remember why, but this one was important. Stir until the colour from the vinegar has been fully incorporated; you'll see the curds start to separate almost immediately.

4. The whey should be that clear yellowy/green colour I'm sure you're all familiar with, not milky.

5.  Butter muslin turns out to be a fairly fine muslin. Dampen it before you use it.  Oh, and if you've washed it in detergent, boil it for a bit with some bicarb to make sure all the soap residue is gone. You don't want it to be so fine the whey can't drain through, but not so coarse that the curds drain along with the whey.  Apparently old linen pillowcases work well.

5.  We spooned the curds into the colander and then poured the whey in, rather than dumping it all at once.  That can change the consistency.  You can use the whey to make ricotta... who knew?

6.  We lifted and turned the curds using the muslin, to make sure all the whey was gone.  Some people let theirs drain for quite a while to make a drier cheese, while some went with a softer consistency.  It's  a personal choice.  The cheese doesn't taste like much of anything at this stage, except for maybe a hint of vinegar (which not everyone could taste).

7.  We split our cheese into two batches to make two different flavours, and this is where we added salt to taste.  I over-salted mine, but it's still pretty tasty. I used black pepper, onion flakes and chillie flakes in one, and an Italian herb mix in the other. The important thing is that you absolutely must use non-iodised salt.  And this applies to all cheese making.  The iodine will ruin your cheese.

8.  If you're going to eat the cheese straight away, you can mix whatever fresh herbs and spices you'd like into it (tarragon, lemon zest and pepper comes to mind).  Otherwise, you need to use dried.  The fresh stuff will make the cheese go all gluey and unpleasant after a while.  Judy put honey in hers (along with a little salt), which I thought was a good idea.  You could serve it on crackers with fresh strawberries and nuts, or something.  It's pretty much like a dip in consistency.

And there you have it, a really simple cheese!

The Queso Fresco was more complicated.  We used rennet and something called mesophilic starter to get the curds to form. It had to go through a few cooking processes, and we had to cut the curds (they formed a mass that looked like silken tofu) to release the whey.  

Interestingly enough, even though we were all using the same milk from the same store, we had very different results.  Some people's curds set just fine, while others' did not.  This is fairly common, and leads me to believe that with cheese, as with all other cooking, learning how to rescue a disaster is an important skill!

We got to sample a couple of cheeses that Debra had made.  One was Monterey Jack, which is a mild, firm, inoffensive kind of cheese.  It was awful!  It tasted like it had fermented somehow, and was very bitter.  It was a good example of how cheese can go wrong, though.

We also got to sample some Cotswald cheese, which is a much firmer cheese.  It was about four months old, I think, and I thought it was absolutely delicious.

I'm now pondering whether or not I want to take the Farmhouse Cheddar class.  It's more expensive, and will require me to invest some dollars in cheese presses and the like.  I'm not sure I want to do that, at this stage.  It was interesting, and I learned a lot, but I'm not convinced I want to get that carried away with it.  We'll see; at the very least, I have learned some new skills, and got to spend some time with some interesting people.

In A Pickle... And Loving It!

As most of you probably know by now, I have been busy pickling cherries.  The season here is short, but sweet... and affordable!  I was flipping through one of my canning books looking for things to do with sweet cherries (as opposed to tart, or pie, cherries which are used for jams and jellies) and came across a recipe for pickled cherries.

That begged a question; how does one go about taking the stones out of cherries?  Well, I suppose you could go to the store and pay $8 (and up) for some sort of purpose-built tool that you're only going to use once in a while, or you could do what I did and talk to Daniel.  Then what happens is Daniel takes a bit of a stroll around the interwebs and comes up with a plan (of course he did; if ever you need a plan, talk to Daniel).

He rummaged around in the shed and found a guttering nail, which is rather long and made of aluminium.  He cut off the pointy bit, and drilled a wee hole in the end.  Then he got a beer bottle (an empty one), and my cherry pitting operation was ready to go.  All I had to do was pop a cherry on top of the beer bottle, and press down.  The stones went right into the beer bottle, which I thought was pretty cool:

I was surprised at how quickly it went.  Although not all of the cherries were perfectly pitted like this one:

I soon wound up with a big bowl of cherries, ready to be pickled:

The pickling mixture included vinegar, a little bit of sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice berries.  I forgot to add the fresh ginger the recipe called for, but I just popped that into the jars when I was ready to process them.

Of course I picked an atrociously hot day to do this in an uninsulated house that has no air conditioning, but oh well.  I sweated gently (okay, copiously) as the brew bubbled away and I brought my canner to the boil:

I thought the cherries looked quite lovely boiling away:

I spooned them into (sterilised - which meant the oven was on, too) jars, added the lids and rings, and into the canner they went for their allotted time.  As I recall, I went outside at this point so I could cool down a bit.

And here's the finished product:

They are absolutely delicious; I'm only sorry that cherries don't get cheap enough for you all to justify pickling them for yourselves (I'd bring some over, but the Australian Quarantine Service won't let me).  Aileen suggested them as an accompaniment for cheese and just about any meat you might like to mention.  I agree!  I also think, having eaten more than my fair share of them, that they would go well with a good quality vanilla icecream.

And as a bonus to all the sweat and grime (it took me nearly a week to get the stains out from under my fingernails), they took second place in the category of pickled fruit at this year's Western Idaho State Fair. 

It's The Bee's Knees!

As a gardener, I am somewhat fond (some might say overly fond) of bees.  I love the work they do on my behalf, I love the sound they make on hot summer afternoons, and I also happen to think they're quite attractive.

I am especially fond of bumble bees.  When we lived in Illinois, I often got to see the classic bumble bees (big and fuzzy with black and yellow stripes) as they bumbled around the garden.  I hadn't seen a bumble bee at all in Idaho, and assumed that there aren't any out here.

As it happens, I was looking for the wrong thing.  I read an article about the fact that the Western Bumble Bee went extinct without anyone really noticing.  This got me thinking, and paying much closer attention to the bees that are around our place (there are lots, thank goodness).

I noticed a new bee one day that seemed to have a red stripe on it.  I looked closer, and I saw it was very fuzzy (sure sign of a bumble bee if ever there was one).

I got all excited, ran and grabbed the camera (they're tricky little buggers to take a photo of), and then did some research to see if I could identify it.  I believe we are being visited by Bombus melanopygus... commonly known as the russett-butted bumble bee.

Here's the little guy in all its glory:

It's not very big - about 1 1/2 centimetres - but I'm thrilled to have it (and its friends) about the place.

How Does My Garden Grow?

Well, we're at about the mid-summer stage here, and I can tell you it's been an odd one.   You may have read about the heatwave that has been hitting much of the country, but it didn't arrive here in the Northwest. We're about a month behind where we usually are at this time of year, and our cool, wet spring led to some issues with the fruit crops in our region. 

For my garden, that meant not much in the way of apricots (hurray!); I've managed to make four and seven-eighths jars of of my (ahem) award-winning apricot and orange conserve, as opposed to the potentially endless amount I could make in a normal year.  The squirrels and birds did get a feed since most of the fruit was at the top of the tree where I can't get to it.  In fact, I relied on windfalls to make the conserve.

I am still picking lettuce - this is almost unheard of at the end of July.  And I have only just gotten my broccoli.

Here are a few photos to get you up to date (let me know if you want more, Lynette!):

This is my Coreposis with unidentified butterfly....

And here's my vegie patch.  I currently have pickling cucumbers, regular cucumbers, four kinds of chillies, four kinds of tomatoes, ground cherries, tomatillos, beans, rhubarb, and asparagus.  It sounds a lot more impressive than it is, trust me!

My tomatoes are really struggling.  It simply hasn't been hot enough (although it feels like it today - it's 8pm and it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit).  They have an ugly affliction called leaf curl.  It apparently doesn't affect production, but they just don't look right.  I feel quite sorry for them:

Here's what the front garden is up to.  Those tall things are asters... they weren't supposed to grow quite that tall...



Here are my annuals for the year; two kinds of zinnias.  They were hard to grow in Illinois because the humidity would make them mouldy.  Totally not an issue here!

This is salvia and a type of coneflower I can't quite remember the name of at the moment.

I love what my sedum, grass, and lavender have conspired to do.  The bees and butterflies love it as much as I do!  This is part of the bed I built earlier this year, although these plants were in the ground last year.

And here's my piece de resistance, and one of the major reasons why I garden:



Attack of the Giant Marshmallows

Several weeks ago now (right before I got that stupid cold) it was Great American Backyard Camp Out Day.  It's not an official holiday, or anything; it's designed to get people away from their TVs and computers and, at the very least, outside into their backyards.

We thought this sounded like a good idea, and since we'd just gotten a new sleeping pad for our tent for when we go car camping, we went ahead and set up the tent.  The reason we got a new sleeping pad was because yours truly in particular is just not as comfortable as she used to be sleeping with a couple of centimetres of cushioning between her and the dirt.  I can do it, but if I don't have to (ie when we're car camping), then I'll avoid it.

Daniel came home with what is actually a mattress topper to put on top of a bed's existing mattress to help make it more comfy.  It has a layer of foam, and a layer of latex memory foam-type stuff.  It fitted the tent perfectly!  And it was totally deluxe.  Felt like I was sleeping on a little bit of cloud (or perhaps a marshmallow).  And actually, it was about as comfy as our indoor bed, which is saying something.  Now I'm plotting and scheming a way to build a permament outdoor bed for the summer!  I think it would be lovely to wake up under a shady tree every morning.

So anyhow.  Marshmallows.  Daniel picked up the food for dinner, and came home with a bag of the world's most ginormous marshmallows.

They look like this:

That's a double A battery... these marshmallows are monstrous!  They weigh somewhere around the 30 gram mark.  Each!

There is a camping tradition in the US called smores (as in, "can I have s'more, please").  It involves chocolate, something they call graham crackers, and, of course, marshmallows.

Now, traditionally you're supposed to use Hersheys chocolate.  Have you ever tasted that stuff?  It's grainy, and tastes like a spoonful of sugar that has no redeeming features. Bleccchhh! I really don't recommend it.  We opted (at least, I opted - I can't remember what chocolate Daniel chose) for Lindt dark chocolate and orange.  I guess you could call it a grownup smore, insofar as a smore can ever be grown up.

The next thing you do is toast the marshmallow.  You're supposed to do this over an open fire, but we didn't have one.  We did, however, have the Great Barbecue Behemoth handy:

It is traditional to blow out the flames on your marshmallow...

Then you assemble the smore and eat it...

As much as a I am a fan of sweet things in general, and chocolate in particular, I will warn you that these are quite rich (just in case you want to try them for yourselves).  Let me know if you want me to send you some giant marshmallows (just so you know, they only come in one flavour... sweet.)

Chickpeas Anyone?

I know it's winter in Australia, and I'm guessing salads aren't high on your list of priorities at the moment, but if you like chickpeas (I leeeerrrve chickpeas) I have a recipe to recommend: Chickpea Salad.

Of course it comes from taste.com.au, and of course it originated with Delicious... I seem to be stuck there! But here's the thing; it is an absolutely wonderful salad.  I've been making it for lunch - we have some of this salad, and an assortment of vegies - and it is, as they say, delicious and nutritious.

I don't tend to keep ghee on hand, so what I did was gently melt a little butter and strain off most of the solids.  To help keep it from burning when I cook the spices, I add a little oil to the mix.  I suppose you could use just oil, but then you wouldn't get that lovely, nutty, buttery flavour.

Greek-style yoghurt is a  relatively recent thing in our area (I swear, these people are seriously lacking in understanding what constitutes good food), and I have been fortunate enough to find a brand that I really like (it's super good with some honey, blackberries and blueberries).  Don't use the runny stuff, it just won't work right.

Final tip: I keep the chickpeas and the dressing separate, until I'm making lunches.  The yoghurt tends to separate, and this way I don't wind up with runny salad.

We're making a concerted effort to eat well and exercise at our house, and I'd say this salad is a step in the right direction.

Cheers!

Well That Didn't Go According To Plan...

This past weekend was a long weekend for us (Memorial Day).  Daniel and I had tacked an extra day onto it with the hope, initially, of going to see The Foo Fighters at a big festival in Oregon with some friends.  That didn't quite go according to plan - the tickets were sold out before we could get our hands on them.

We thought we'd go camping in Oregon instead.  Four days in the spectacular Blue Mountains of Oregon would be (almost) just as good, we figured.  But then it started raining, and raining, and... raining (and yes, the farmers are as pissed off about the wet weather here as you are pissed off about the dry in Australia).  We didn't really fancy spending four days in a tent in the rain, so that didn't quite go according to plan, either.

Are you sensing a theme here?  Because I have some more for you...

On Sunday, even though it was, you guessed it, RAINING, we thought we'd go for a bit of a Sunday Drive.  We drove down through Rocky Canyon, along Robie Creek Road, up Clear Creek Road, and over to a road or two the names of which I can't quite remember.  These were all dirt roads; one of the lovely things about Boise is that 20 minutes of driving will get you out of town and into the bush. 

There were houses here and there for a while, but we eventually left them behind for scenery.  Lots and lots of lovely scenery. There were spring flowers (including wild larkspur), lovely little creeks everywhere, mountains, canyons, and not another soul to be seen. It was turning out to be quite a lovely drive, and it even stopped raining.

Then we rounded a corner and came across a snow bank.  Not too uncommon at the elevation we were at, especially given that it's been a very cool spring.  It was a pretty big snow bank, but there were some tyre tracks through it.

We paused for a bit, wondered whether we should attempt to drive through it or not, and then decided it was worth a shot.  We were in the Toyota, which has four wheel drive, so what the hell; if we got stuck we should be able to chuck it in four wheel and drive out, right?

Well... not exactly.  We got about three quarters of the way through the snow and got stuck.  Horribly stuck.  And the problem with the kind of stuck we got was that we couldn't get any traction with the four wheel drive.  Not even a little bit.  The Toyota tried and tried for us, but to no avail.

Bugger.  That didn't quite go according to plan.

Now as a general rule, people in Idaho who go out driving in the bush carry stuff with them.  Useful stuff like, oh, a shovel, a torch, blankets, matches, food; you know, your basic survival-type stuff.  It can get pretty remote, pretty quickly (probably why I like it so much). We know this, but apparently we thought these rules don't apply to Sunday Driving, because we were minus most of this stuff.  Especially the shovel, which we could have, oh, say, dug the Toyota out with.

Instead, we (by which I mostly mean Daniel) spent a few hours trying to dig the car out with Daniel's homemade bike rack thingy, which was in the vehicle.  Did I happen to mention it started raining again?  So we made our valiant attempt to dig ourselves out in the RAIN. And sleet.  And I think it might have snowed a little bit, too.

We had a winch thingy (they call them come-alongs here), but we had nothing to hook it to.  Daniel tried to anchor it in the dirt, but it was too soft.  I suppose we could have dug a trench for it... IF WE HAD A SHOVEL!

We had a mobile phone with us, but we weren't getting any reception.  It was starting to get dark. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that we were going to have to spend the night on the snow bank. 

Hmmm.

We had wet clothes, cold bodies, water, a large peppermint patty, a packet of chewing gum and some (very old, very stale) crystallised ginger.

Fortunately, we also had a blanket, a map (this comes in handy later) and a reasonable amount of petrol in the Toyota.

We turned on the car, amped up the heat, and dried out our clothes as best we could.  Did I happen to mention it stopped raining about the time we gave up on our recovery efforts?  Of course it did.

We had a pretty good idea where we were, and actually we weren't that far from Boise, just on the other side of the foothills (you'd know them as mountains) that surround the city.  We realised that there should be a mobile phone tower not too far away from us so Daniel, brave soul that he is, decided to venture forth and see if he could get some sort of reception further up the track.

It was almost dark when he headed out.  I waited with the car, and kept my fingers crossed.  I realised that there are cougars in them there mountains, so when Daniel didn't immediately come back I started thinking all sorts of terrible things about great big cats with great big fangs and big silent feet. Yikes!

He made it back just fine (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be writing in such an almost cheery manner) with the good news that he had gotten phone reception and had called some friends who we knew would be able to haul us out of our predicament.  Only problem was, they didn't answer the phone... so that didn't go according to plan.

Oh well.  We shared the peppermint patty, choked down some ginger, and tried to get some sleep under the blanket that had fortunately been left in the car.

It was uncomfortable, and it was COLD, but surprisingly enough, there was some sleep to be had.  We woke up a few times and ran the car heater to warm up, and made it through to dawn, at which point Daniel headed back out to call our friends for help.

They answered!  Hurray!  We later found out that it was purely by accident that Maiera noticed Jason's phone was ringing (it was on vibrate), but they agreed to come and save us.  Daniel was able to explain fairly clearly where we were thanks to the map we had with us and our educated guess as to our whereabouts.

As it happened, we were actually planning to spend the day with them and their children, but our original plans did not involve them rescuing us.  So... that didn't go according to plan, either.

Anyway, we waited for our heroes.  Daniel decided to walk down the road to meet them and make sure they didn't miss us, while I decided to take some photos. We didn't think to bring a shovel, but of course we had a camera with us.  Sheesh!  What a pair of idiots.

While I was waiting and taking photos, a young guy on a BICYCLE came by.  It was so funny, it was almost surreal. I mean, we were way out in an unpopulated area. He just happened to be riding the same route that we had driven.  He must have been fabulously fit.  He was very concerned, mentioned that he'd seen Daniel, offered me all his food (I said no), offered to call someone (I explained help was on its way), and then pedalled on his merry way.  Nice guy; I hope he gets a laugh out of his encounter with us.

When Jason and Maiera arrived, along with Jess and Ethan, they not only had a tow chain, they had FOOD! and COFFEE!  Bless them, bless them, bless them.

It took all of 20 seconds to get us pulled off the snow bank, and then we made our way home.  In the sunshine.

Kind of lends new meaning to the term "car camping", I guess.

Here are some of the photos I took.  I'm afraid I don't have any of the car being unstuck - I was too busy drinking coffee and being grateful.

Our Sunday Drive didn't go at all according to plan, did it?  I have come to the conclusion that sometimes the only worthwhile thing to do with a plan is abandon it and see what happens next.

A (Not So Lazy) Sunday Afternoon

In fact, it was a very busy one for me.  I built a new garden bed!

I had been wanting to extend one bed for a while, and since I'd bought some plants the other weekend, I decided I might as well get on with it.

First, I got to with my tiller - once I got it started, that is.  I was trying to be diligent and take good care of it, but I got a bit carried away with the amount of oil I put in it.  After many, many attempted starts, some minor swear words, and cleaning up a whole lot of excess oil, it blew smoke everywhere and then settled down to the task at hand.

And a new bed is born!  There was a lot of grass to be raked out of it, but that all ended up in the compost bin.  No doubt there will be bits of grass that I missed poking up for months to come. So far, so good.

Next, I dumped some rocks in there:

The rocks were recycled from a footpath that we used to have running from the back door to the back of the yard (we now have a bit of a cow path of smooshed lawn), and some that we stole borrowed from the desert south of here.  It's all lava rock.  It's not technically a rock garden, because it doesn't have tons of rocks in great big piles everywhere, and it isn't very tall, so I'm going to call it my Desert Rock Bed.

The plants I bought are all drought tolerant, and quite a few of them are Idaho natives, or native to the region.  People here are slowly starting to catch on to the idea of native gardens.  Yay!  This bed is in full sun and doesn't get much of the flood irrigation during irrigation season, so it made perfect sense to go native, as it were.

Some digging, more raking, a few more rocks, a little bit of compost and a lot of water to get them started, and I was done!  There's even a footpath in there so I can get to all parts of the bed as needed.

Apologies for the quality of the photos; the sun was quite harsh and I'm discovering that taking decent photos of a garden bed (as opposed to a single plant) is really quite difficult.  That, and my arms were a little wobbly from all the rock lifting! 

The plants had all perked up by this morning.  I can't wait until they start to grow and fill the space in.

Here's the list of what I planted if you're interested (sorry, I don't have the botanical names):
Showy Fleabane
Dwarf Culinary Sage
Mountain Blue Grass
Partridge Feathers
Kinnick-Kinnick
Coreposis (I transplanted that from elsewhere in the garden)

If you want to learn more about them, here's the nursery I bought them from: Draggin' Wing Farm

I'm feeling a bit sore and sorry for myself today, but it was totally worth it!