(RECIPE BELOW) One tedious gardening task is thinning. Not only is it tedious, but also a little heart wrenching to pull healthy little plants out of the ground that you worked so hard to grow. When planting very tiny seeds, it is hard to space them out properly, so the method of planting way too many and then thinning them out is standard practice. When dealing with root vegetables like carrots, beets, turnips, you need to give them the underground space to develop. Refer to [...]

I bought a bucket of strawberries at our Farmer’s Market at work yesterday. In addition to a snack and freezing some for later, I made this strawberry mint martini! Muddle berries with fresh mint, shake with ice, garnish with a sprig of mint & a strawberry – YUM!

Muddle half a mini cucumber and shake with ice and 2 shots of your finest chilled vodka. Strain into cocktail glass. The new taste of summer!

I had the chance enjoy a forest full of wildflowers just steps from my office… I took a lovely walk through our Scotts Miracle-Gro Campus Arboretum yesterday and found hundreds of Red Trillium getting ready to bloom. There are also an abundance of Virginia Bluebells, Troutlilly, and very interesting looking flowers on ones called Dutchman’s Breeches. There are many other’s I photographed I can not identify, especially the fungi. It’s a great time to see those early spring wildflowers. Our trail is marked, and there [...]

This is what sunset looks like streaming thru a pomegranate gin sling. Mixology in the Keys, day 1

Bacon infused vodka, cucumber simple syrup, muddled with grape tomatoes. Shaken with ice, strain, and garnish with grape tomato & pea sprouts

Why am I making bacon at 8:30pm on Christmas Eve? Why, to make bacon infused vodka of course! And, why would I want to make bacon infused vodka? To make BLT Martini’s of course!

Three years ago, my office mates and I had a little fun creating a video holiday card. It’s so silly, but we laughed the whole day long.

I made a “Gleaner’s Pot” for lunch today. It was just a skillet dish with all the miscellaneous veggies I rescued from my much neglected garden, diced all up for a colorful hash. It was a quick stir fry in my cast iron skillet with some of the bacon fat I kept from last week’s local bacon treat! Here’s what I tossed in; Red Bell Pepper, Green Bell Pepper, Baby Fairy Tale Eggplants, White Onion, TIny Blue Potatoes, Red Carrots, Orange Carrots, Campari Tomato, Yellow [...]

So excited to be heading to my FIRST Garden Writer’s Symposium this weekend. So many people to meet, so many things to learn, so much fun to have! Look out Dallas, here we come. I added a page with a Calendar of all the events, sessions and fun I could find. I hope to see you there.