Random Plant Thing

Remeber the dracaena I chopped down because it got cold damaged? There's signs of life!


I was doing the daily misting and noticed these two new sprouts on the end of one of the stalks! Also...


Not the best picture, but you can tell that there is somethin' brewin' under that bark! I think we are due for another sprout! There's also this...


There was a small closed spike of leaves that survived the big chop because it was only partially damaged and I wanted to see if it would open up. Well all of a sudden one morning it looks like it exploded! I'm really happy one original leaf cluster survived!

That's all for now, I will be doing a big update soon because tonight I repotted and re-arranged some of the plants and the plant area is looking really snazzy!

P for Parrot Update #2

Here's last night's progress. There are a lot of unfinished crosses because sometimes I feel like doing the counting and stitching new areas and other times I like to do a bit more mindless stitching (like when watching TV) so if the areas are already mapped out I can just go back and finish the crosses then.

P for Parrot Update #1

I'm making the first one in the picture, "P is for Parrot". Here's what I have so far as of last night:

Makin' Mincemeat!

This year we are having two dinners, a traditional ukranian dinner on the Sunday before Christmas, for which I am making a mountain of perogies, and a traditional Southern dinner on Christmas day for which Craig is frying a whole turkey (expect pictures!) and for this dinner I have been charged with making an old fashioned, real, from scratch mincemeat pie. Not sure how that came about, seeing as I have only ever tasted mincemeat once or twice and have never made a pie beyond the "canned filling frozen crust" type. But I will try my best, the mincemeat lovers (Craig) are counting on me! The filling got made yesterday and of course I took pictures of the process.


Here are all the strange and wonderful things that go into the mincemeat, not including of course...





The meat! How many people out there knew there was real meat in mincemeat? Not me! We bought some beef and I cut it into rough pieces and browned it in a pan with a bit of water. Then I drained it and let it cool, and then chopped it up pretty fine. There was some extra when I was all done, Buster got that.


Buster is always around to help with the cooking.

Next came the fruit prep, which was the most time consuming part. The recipe required 4 cups of chopped apple and a large orange to be peeled and diced.



For those keeping track at home, that's a TON of apple chopping to do.

All of that gets put into a big pot with a bunch of strange and seemingly unrelated ingredients...

Raisins...


Sweet pickle juice and pineapple juice...


Spices, beef broth and molasses.

Everything got combined and looked like this:


Then got cooked down for about two hours into this:


Craig came home and tasted it and said it was great, I don't have much experience with mincemeat so if he was impressed I guess I did alright! Now just to pack it up and put it in the fridge until next week. According to The Internet, it gets better if it sits for a little while.

Quote of the Day

Me: "He flies through space, doin' whatever Nyan Cat does..."
Craig: "...makin' rainbows..."

Sick day.

I finally have a reader (hi Mom!)! Today's post isn't much, I didn't go in to work today because I woke up scratchy throated, blocked up, headachey and nauseated. After getting up and having a bit of breakfast I felt a bit better, I took Craig to do a few things and then to work, came home and slept for about 4 hours. I got up and felt a bit better but was fairly bored so I decided to do some gardeny stuff.


I re-arranged the corner by the table, one chair has been temporarily employed as a plant stand because the spider plant wasn't getting enough light where it was. These pictures were at the end of the day so he looks considerably more perky than this morning. We've also gotten the annual Christmas poinsettia, and someone looks a little different than last time. Which leads me to...


Dracaena has been beheaded! Unbeknownst to me the plant had gotten frozen on the truck on the way home and I was left to scratch my head as a normal looking plant suddenly got very dark and dropped all of it's leaves. After I discovered this I decided it was better off for me to chop off all the misshapen trunks and hope for new branches. I left one top on because this one has fresh new green growth coming out. We will see what happens here!


We also bought this "Frosty Fern", I know it's tacky but I love grocery store holiday plants with the garish foil and silly ornaments. This will be repotted in a normal pot after Christmas. There were also live Holly plants at the one Safeway we went to last grocery day, we ended up having to go to a different Safeway for what we needed so I left without buying it, thinking they would all have them. Nope! Hopefully the one we usually go to gets them in soon!


Everyone is looking nice and lush today!


My Pothos rehabilitation project is coming along nicely I think.


This dracaena also got one of it's ends chopped off. I'm not sure what happened to it but it got dark and soft so I just cut it off. Hopefully it branches!


And I will finish off with a picture of my favourite plant, china doll. It's gotten so big and pretty and I love it!

Well that's all for today, I'm off to make some Campbell's chicken noodle and cocoon myself on the couch.