Flying Bulbs

2 days and over 18,000 bulbs - and they're all gone.  Every last one was picked up by a resident of one of the hamlets of our town to be lovingly planted in their gardens, alongside the roads and in front of churches, synagogues, schools and bus stops.

Well, probably lovingly at first - and then they'll just start tossing them in the ground.  18,000 is a heck of a lot of bulbs!

Honestly I really didn't think that we would be able to get enough people to take the bulbs and agree to plant them.  They did, though.  I think it has a great deal to do with my DH's gift of gab.  He talked up the planting project from one end of town to the other - and people were really enthusiastic about it.

Now comes the waiting for Spring and hoping that they all bloom their little hearts out!  It's going to be gorgeous.  You gotta love flowers.

The Great Bulb Giveaway

Today my DH and I were bulb sitting.  It was the Great Bulb Giveaway - what all of that money we raised this past summer with the garden tours goes for.  We gave away chionodoxa - glory of the snow.  Little blue flowers that pop up in Spring with the forsythia, making our front yard look like a salute to the University of Michigan Wolverines.

 We had 2 type of daffodils.  The people voted and everyone wanted yellow this year - so I picked these teeny little Baby Moon Narcissi.  So cute!

And then the taller Quail Narcissi.  Very traditional looking, I think.

I had the most fun picking out the tulips, though.  These are Menton tulips.   The catalog said they are the very last tulips to bloom, so even if winter lasts forever (and the farmers are saying that it's going to), the tulips will still bloom.  I love the old rose color on the outside and the apricot inside.

Then, just to mix it up a bit, Menton Exotics.  More apricot, but still blending nicely with the old rose ones.  They should look great together.

Finally, for the War Memorial, I found these lovely Red Impression tulips.  They look like they're a real pure red.  Fitting for the memorial and their red, white and blue theme.

All of the bulbs (and the pictures here) were from Van Engelen Wholesale Dutch Flower Bulbs.  The Garden Club always buys from them - great prices, great product.

I have to say it was too much fun to spend a few thousand dollars on flower bulbs - I love shopping!  But it was even more fun to see all of the smiles on people's faces when they came to get some free bulbs to plant in their gardens.  I was really pleasantly surprised that so many folks came and got bulbs to plant on the roads, by churches, at school bus stops and other public places.  It was exactly what we had hoped would happen.

It's nice when things work out like that.  Especially when it involves flowers.

Walking the Dog

I get how people who don't have time to walk their dogs in the middle of the day, or who aren't physically capable of walking their dogs, or for some other legitimate reason just can't walk their dogs.

But.

Every time I see a dog walker in the city, I just want to rush home and take my pup for a really long walk and then play her favorite games with her for a really long time.

She deserves quality time with me - or is it that I deserve quality time with her?

Either way - I love my pup!

Midnight Muffin Madness V

Round 5 of Midnight Muffin Madness and we're over halfway home!  This week it's Banana Nut Crunch Muffins.  Moist banana nut muffins with a crunchy banana streusel topping.  My DH was making excuses to stay home today to keep them all to himself, but wisdom prevailed and he took the muffins and headed off.

Okay, I might have suggested that there was absolutely no way he was going to eat all of those muffins by himself after I stayed up until the wee hours of the night making them and he had best get to gettin' them out the door and into Other People's tummies before I took them and handed them out on the train.

Anyway... on to the muffins!

The wet:  4 large bananas very ripe, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup melted butter (cooled), 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract and 1/2 cup buttermilk.  Plus for the topping:  4 Tablespoons brown sugar, 2 Tablespoons butter.

The dry:  3 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon netmug, 1 cup chopped walnuts.  Plus for the topping:  4 Tablespoons flour, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 cup crushed banana chips.

Measure out your dry ingredients and whisk them together.  Make sure to coat all of the chopped bits of walnut with the flour mixture so they float in the batter.

Mash up 3 of the 4 bananas.  I use a potato masher for this.  I was thinking that I would use a fork - like with guacamole, but I wanted the banana pieces to be a little more substantial than a fork would give me.  I chopped up the 4th banana into 1/4-inch pieces for an extra banana boost in the bite.  Yum!

Lightly beat the eggs.  My girlfriend always asks what this means, so...  Just beat them until they are broken up and mixed a bit.  They'll still have streaks of white in them and they won't be frothy.

Add the vanilla.  I used clear vanilla even though the recipe has brown sugar in it so I could have used the brown vanilla.  But I used the clear anyway.

Add the rest of the wet ingredients - sugar, brown sugar, egg, vanilla, bananas - and then pour in the buttermilk.

Then pour in the cooled melted butter and mix it up.  The butter will start to re-solidify because the buttermilk is cold.  That's why you want the butter to be cooled - and also so you're not pouring hot butter into beaten eggs.  You don't want scrambled eggs in your muffins.  (Unless you do, then feel free.  I guess.)

Take a minute now to get your topping together.  Measure out the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter into a bowl.  Then crush the banana chips.  I just used the bottom of a measuring cup to crush them up.  They should be a little chunky, but not too much.  Maybe about 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch pieces.  Toss that in with the rest of the topping ingredients and mash together with a fork until it's a sand-like-esque consistency.  Well, as sand like as it can get considering there are chunks of banana chips in it.

Add the mixed wet ingredients to the whisked dry ingredients and give it a quick stir.  This muffin batter it more on the stew consistency side.  It's a bit loose.  This made me want to stir it extra in order to really make sure everything was well incorporated.  But don't!  Over-stirring leads to hockey pucks.  Trust me on this.

Scoop a healthy amount into the lined muffin tin - until it's about 1/4-inch from the top of the tin.  Don't worry if you see little bits of flour here and there - it will all work out when it bakes.

Sprinkle the topping around the outside edge of the muffin.  Enough will fall into the middle of the muffin to coat it without there being too much on the middle of the muffin to keep it from rising.

Bake at 350-degrees for 25-30 minutes.  In my over it took 27 minutes for them to come out a golden brown banana goodness.

Place them on a cooling rack and let them cool for as long as you can keep your DH and your pup away from them.

And there you have it!  Midnight Muffin Madness V - Banana Nut Crunch Muffins.

Stop

Of course since I was in a hurry tonight the train was"indefinitely" delayed.  That means over an hour in Metro North speak.

So, of course when I went to leave the parking lot to go home, the gates came down and I had to wait for the train that was behind my train to pull into the station, let all of the people off, let the conductors walk through the train to make sure all of the people got off and then slowly pull out of the station and into the yard before the signal gates went up again.

Of course.

Naturally, I utilized this time to make best use of it.  I took several photos of the gates - only 1 of which came out even half decent.  I cleaned out my purse.  Made a few phone calls.  And finally just sat and stared at the train.

Yup.  Good use of time...

I blame myself, of course.  If I hadn't been in a hurry to get home, none of this would have happened.  Trains can sense when you need to be on time.

1st Blog-a-versary

A year ago - for some bizarre reason known only to the me from a year ago - I decided to start writing this blog.

I was driving past Farmer Sophie's place and the cows were out grazing - it really summed up the reason that my DH and I moved here from the city.  So bucolic.  So pastural.  So calming.

My sisters (hi sis! hi sis!) and brother (hi bro!) got a chance to see where I'm living and what's up.  My friends got a chance to see what in the world would be worth commuting so far every day.  When my friend L- got into her accident, she got to keep up with the outside world as she healed.

My mother, though, doesn't have a computer.  Well, she has a computer, but she isn't a big online computer kind of person.

So to celebrate my 1st year of blogging, I'm podcasting all of my posts and recording them onto a DVD  with the photos and pictures and sending them to her for Christmas.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate a year with you than to share it with her.

So - happy 1st blog-a-versary!  Here's to another year of gardening, baking, chainsaws, haiku, diesel engine maintenance, knitting, puppies, charities, DH, friends, flowers, commuting, sheep in the country, sheep in the city and all other kinds of things!

In Hot Water

Today my DH and I went to get a new hot water heater for our bucolic manor.  Why?  No, not because we like to go shopping for hot water heaters, but good guess.  It was because our hot water heater caught on fire.

Not to worry, it was a little fire - we're fine, the pup is fine, the house is fine.  But the hot water heater is toast.

But here's the thing I don't get.  If it's a WATER heater, why didn't it put out its' own fire?  It has the tools to do the job.

Anyway.

So we brought home our new heater and got a few little surprises.

Surprise #1 - Even though the box was sealed and looked okay, the water heater was dinged and dented all over the place with little gouges on the bottom.  And we got this from Sears, mind you.

Surprise #2 - Even though we checked the specifications, the water heater is about a foot taller than our old one so we have to redo the pipes.  The height listed for this model online is not the height of this model.

And the biggest surprise of all?

Surprise #3 - My DH said - go ahead and go to work.  "I'll take care of it, honey."

Isn't he the sweetest!?

Sometimes you just have to love him.