I had a bit of a difficult time planning this week’s menu and I’m not sure why. I really should have this post ready each week by Sunday evening, just waiting for Monday. Here we are though, another plan completed. As always, check out orgjunkie.com for many more links.

This week is a bit of a pantry/freezer challenge.

Monday: grilled hot dogs
Tuesday: spaghetti with homemade marinara sauce from the freezer
Wednesday: tortilla pizzas with the above sauce
Thursday: (night shift) butternut squash ravioli from the freezer and the above sauce
Friday: (night shift) Moroccan-Spiced Tomato Chicken with Almonds, brown rice, edamame
Saturday: Apple Mustard Rosemary Chicken with asparagus and Italian potatoes*
Sunday: grilled pork chops with dill potatoes**

*I cut up several potatoes into approximately one-inch cubes, place them in a lidded casserole dish on an appropriate size, and coat them in whatever oil-based salad dressing I have on hand. I then microwave them until they are roughly 3/4 cooked before putting them in the oven. If I don’t have anything else in the oven, I cook them completely in the microwave instead.

**Cut potatoes in half lengthwise and then slice to desired thickness. Microwave in a lidded casserole dish just until done. Place in a tinfoil pie plate or pan and drop in butter. I don’t know how much I use; I put in several 1/4-teaspoon-sized dollops around the pan. Sprinkle generously with salt, pepper, dried dill weed, and poppy seeds. Cover with foil and BBQ alongside the meat, checking every so often and moving to the top rack when necessary.

Another Sunday, another Quotable Sunday hosted by Toni. Head on over and read up on some great fun, though-provoking, and inspirational quotes. On this, the first day of several with a forecast of rain (and as I head to the couch for a nap before night shift), I offer up a few rain-related quotes for your reading pleasure.

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.
     — Frank Howard Clark

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.
     — Saint Basil

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps for gladness.
     — Anonymous

The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.
     — Hugh Latimer

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
     — John Updike

I am, and have always been, a mosquito magnet. And a blackfly magnet. And a magnet for any other biting bug or fly. Throughout bug season, I am never without several bites somewhere on my body. Something like this or this is not an uncommon site on my arms or legs but it’s usually a little more tame than that and is "merely" a huge white welt (often bigger than in that photo I found via google) within five minutes of the bite and then "fades" down to a raised red spot the size of a pencil eraser with a bit of a crusted spot in the centre. Mmmmm! Yummy! I’m a pretty girl in the summer.

I got such a bite the other morning. I could just tell that I had been bitten as the area (my forehead) was itchy. As the minutes went by, I could feel the welt starting to raise. By the time I came inside, the welt had gone down quite a bit but the itching was awful.

Look at the sun damage!!

 As I was looking at it in the mirror, I thought I remembered reading somewhere that vinegar takes away the itch. I grabbed the bottle of apple cider vinegar from the shower (I go through periods of using baking soda to wash my hair followed by a vinegar rinse), put it on a cosmetic pad, and wiped it on. Instant relief! I was amazed, partly because I wasn’t sure if I was making up the vinegar tip and partly because it was such an instant absence of itch. It hasn’t itched since. I tried it last night on a bite I found on my leg and it didn’t have quite the same effect but that bite was at least a day or more old; maybe that had something to do with it?

Try it. If it works, great, and if it doesn’t, what have you lost besides a minute of your time and a few drops of vinegar. We Are THAT Family has plenty of links to other Works For Me tips.

Tomorrow is the last day of school for B and as with many things in my life, I have procrastinated on an end-of-year teacher gift. I had many ideas but nothing that I ever started on. I could’ve run out and bought something but I couldn’t think of anything to get; I wanted something meaningful that wouldn’t get lost in the slew of other gifts. I opted for a simple card with a heartfelt handwritten note thanking B’s teacher for the past year. B wrote his teacher’s name at the top (I love watching him write!) and his name at the bottom, drawing a box in the middle of the card with a heart inside the box. He wanted to write a message too and instructed me to write "I love that you were being my special teacher," and "We made you some jam." My note went on the left-hand leaf of the card and I guess it passed the test because after he asked me to read what I had written, he said, "That was nice."

The other day I picked a bunch of rhubarb from the garden and today I turned that into Blueberry-Rhubarb jam along with making some Carrot Cake jam. I’ve tasted both and nothing beats homemade jam! A jar of the carrot jam will be accompanying the card to school tomorrow with B. Lastly, a pot of applesauce has rounded out the day for me. I’ve just finished putting that into jars. The day yielded seven jars of each type of jam and six pint jars of applesauce. I love how it all looks on my cold storage (more like just cool storage) shelves!

This Menu Plan Monday is going to be short and quick on my way down for a nap. I’m working another night shift tonight and then four more starting on Thursday. As always, you know you can head over to orgjunkie.com for many more menu ideas.

• Monday: Lentil Chili (night shift - frozen leftovers)
• Tuesday: BBQ pork chops
• Wednesday: pasta casserole
• Thursday: pork chop, brown rice, edamame (night shift - frozen leftovers)
• Friday: Butternut Squash and Tomato soup (night shift - homemade, frozen leftovers)
• Saturday: pasta casserole (night shift - leftovers)
• Sunday: turkey meatballs in sweet and sour sauce (night shift - frozen leftovers)

The sun is shining in a brilliant blue sky here today and, knowing I had to nap this afternoon for night shift, I took advantage of the weather this morning and topped up my potato bed. This is my first year planting potatoes here and I created a semi-raised bed framed on all sides and sunk into the ground to house the plants. I mentioned before (here and here) about the bed and how I wasn’t sure how it  would do but it seems to be quite happy. It sits in shade for the morning, getting dappled sunlight around noon and early afternoon and then receives a bit more sun mid and late afternoon into early evening. I have three plants that are really taking off, poking up within a day or so through each new layer of growing mix that I put down (I’m using this method). Today I noticed four new sprouts with tiny leaves and was loathe to cover them but I’m optimistic now that all of the potatoes planted will send up shoots that find their way to the surface and become healthy, happy plants. I had previously been worried that only the three thriving plants were going to grow as they were the only ones I could see. If I gently dug down into the dirt I was able to find sprouts from other potatoes but nothing that looked promising. Now I just have to sit and wait.

The rhubarb patch is also thriving. This spring I moved it from a full sun location just inside the fence by the driveway and placed it at the back of the yard, also against the fence, in a location that, like the potato bed, only starts receiving sun partway through the day. I moved the frame that had been around the patch in its original location and took it to the new spot. I also took some of the soil but filled in most of the new patch (which I dug deeper and sunk the frame into the ground a little) with the same mix as my raised gardens and the potato bed, equal parts of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost/manure. My rhubarb bed was happy last year but this year he is ecstatic. I think I have a batch of blueberry-rhubarb jam calling my name and begging to be made. Strawberry-rhubarb would be wonderful but I have a bag of frozen blueberries as well as two containers of fresh. (That’s a jar of blueberry-rhubarb jam in the middle of the trio in my header.)

For all the thriving being done by my potatoes and rhubarb, however, my beans are not faring so well. There are a few plants in the garden that are going to need some attention (from me, not the bugs who are already paying attention to them) and some re-planting, but the beans are what I noticed today.

I have two rows of 10 plants, I think, and it’s only the 5x2 block closest to the side of the bed that seems to be affected. So far. I noticed a dead ladybug-looking insect on the dirt right between the two plants shown above. Is he the culprit? He was a darker red, almost brown, with dark orange spots that looked more like o’s (they weren’t solid circles). When I google, it’s highly likely that he’s some type of bean beetle. Maybe I’ll have to move one of my borage plants closer to the beans and also a rosemary, since those are supposed to help. And marigolds can’t hurt either. I also have something that is lopping off my bok choy leaves at dirt level (a cut worm?) and just leaving them laying there. And something is eating a hole out of my watermelon leaves, leaving just a rim all the way around. Gardening is such a frustrating learning experience.

It’s Sunday and therefore Quotable Sunday over at Toni’s blog. Today’s quotes are garden-related because it’s only fitting.

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.
     — Hanna Rion

Weather means more when you have a garden.  There’s nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.
     — Marcelene Cox

How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.
     — Benjamin Disraeli

It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening.  You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not.
     — W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, Garden Rubbish, 1936

It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience.  It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn’t a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong?  Maybe nothing.
     — Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts, 1981

The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.
     — Author Unknown

It doesn’t matter how green the thumb is, as long as it has a green hue, right?

These blueberry bushes were purchased last spring and didn’t do very much over the summer. After wondering if they would survive the cold winter in zone 3b, I was thrilled to see that they’ve really taken off this year. There are two bushes in a large square planter and they wintered outside against the house. This spring they came back even fuller than last year, with lots of new shoots and tons of flowers. Never having grown blueberries before, the only thing I knew was that the plants need acidic soil in order to produce the berries (or so I’ve read). I think I mixed some peat moss into the soil at one point last year but a few weeks ago I decided to up the chances of the soil being (or becoming) more acidic so I watered it with a mixture of water and vinegar. I don’t know if the vinegar helped or if the soil was good on its own but this morning my mom told me there were berries on my bush. And indeed there are.

I can almost taste the ripe berries.

I’m fascinated by my blueberry bushes. (Can they be called "bushes" yet if they’re still smll plants?) I saw all the flowers and then saw them drop over the weeks and couldn’t figure out where the berries were supposed to develop. The pink-tinged part of the berry at the end is what held the flower; the berry develops above or behind where the flower did (as shown in this picture). In the next couple of weeks, I’ll have to cover the bushes with some sort of sheer fabric or netting. I’m not wanting to lose my small harvest to birds or chipmunks!

A certain wee boy is pretty excited about the berries too.

Today was a good day. Gorgeous weather-wise and a great day in general.

We started off by heading to the Humane Society to visit the dogs and pet the cats. B loved the cat room and was in heaven sitting on the floor and letting the cats brush past him, petting them, and delighting over them scratching their heads on his shoes. From there, we headed to the park.

B insisted on using the baby swings and swung for what seemed like hours. He also enjoyed being twisted up tight and let go.

There was a tire ladder

which he conquered.

I attempted it but couldn’t squeeze myself in and wasn’t up for crawling in through the very bottom.

We came back home and B enjoyed a run through the spinkler while it watered the gardens.

If this last picture isn’t the epitome of a childhood summer, I’m not sure what is.

Tomorrow will hold school for B and planting, gardening, and a doctor’s appointment for me. The weather is supposed to be mixed with sun, clouds, and possible rain/thunder showers but hopefully it will clear in time for B’s soccer game tomorrow. It’s his second this season and I missed his first because I had to work.

The difference in before and after is amazing! I was surprised, impressed, and excited to have conquered my fear of using a carpet cleaning machine.

Almost two years ago when I moved into this house, I replaced the raspberry sherbet carpet in the living room with a neutral beige-ish one, knowing it would be potentially difficult to keep clean even though we don’t wear our shoes in the house. The carpet actually held up a little better than I had expected but the traffic path from the kitchen was looking a little used. There were spots and splatters which I apparently didn’t do as good of a job cleaning as they happened as I had thought. Now? Now the whole carpet is like new both in look and feel; I love walking on it in my bare feet and feel like curling my toes into it (if the pile were longer).

A few weeks back I had been talking with a co-worker of mine and mentioned that I needed to clean the carpet before I replace it with laminate as my boyfriend is going to take it to replace his living room carpet provided mine fits in his space. She mentioned she had a Bissell cleaner (a Bissell Pro Heat), new in the box, and I was welcome to borrow it. Yesterday I picked it up and within a couple of hours my carpet was clean and beginning to dry.

Tightwad Tuesday for me this week is about saving money by a) cleaning my own carpet and b) borrowing (free!) a cleaner. It can’t get much cheaper than that. She even threw in a jug of the cleaning solution. I wish I had before and after pictures.

There are more frugal tips over at beingfrugal.net so scootch on over there and check them out.