Breakfast Anyone?

Monday was a "spare" day for Dirt. He had been able to finish his lawn care duty on Sunday along with a few other things so that left him with the morning to bottle up his wine that sits along the wall in my kitchen in carboys. Carboys are big, my house is small. I look forward to bottling day but then when the carboys and their pretty colored fluids are gone I'm kind of sad. Kinda.


One can't possibly bottle up the wine without a taste so early Monday morning found us sipping away at Dirt's O' Eight Raspberry wine for breakfast and then his O' Eight Apple for brunch.
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Both are very promising. I won't boar you with all the fancy wine talk, okay I really don't know how to "wine talk" even after all my good lessons from Jim, but I think I have a better understanding of it all and a larger capacity for anticipating what the finished product will be. And I am just sure that Dirt's raspberry, and his apple, that he bottled yesterday will be excellent.

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Oh but look, what is that in one of the bottles Dirt was about to clean? And sterilize!

EEK! Its a mouse! Okay calm down it is a thoroughly saturated and deceased mouse. Proof once again that moscato wine can kill. You gotta ask yourself, "how the heck did he get in there!"

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I suppose that this is telling about our life, we don't find a genie in a bottle, we find a moscatoed mouse in a bottle. At least we know the Ratters aren't hanging out in the wine celler, or that may be where those missing bottles went to and how the mouse was able to get in. Martin?...Janie?...

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I have requested and extra sterilizing step or two into the process,

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They said it was a Microbe and a Hotbed of Disease;
They steamed it in a vapor of a thousand-odd degrees;
They froze it in a freezer that was cold as Banished Hope
And washed it in permanganate with carbolated soap.
(swiped from one of my fav's, Strictly Germ Proof, by Arthur Guiterman)

The raspberries on my fence almost got ripped out one year, until Dirt made wine from them. The raspberries had found their destiny! Amazing how the wine making process brought out flavor that was undetectable in the fresh state. Or the alcohol content makes you not care.

Another fruit rescue was also part of Monday's breakfast.

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As a kid I used to sit on my front porch with a big stalk of rhubarb and a bowl of sugar and needed nothing more in my life.

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But lately I've been feeling rather frustrated with the lack of pretty red stalks from my rhubarb plant. I didn't want to have to wait to get rhubarb form my daughter who has nice big fat very red stalks. This was the third plant that I have put in here at the farm and still no red.

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The first was wiped out by renegade swine and the second I didn't bother to rescue from the tree crashing on it. Why would I, like the first one, the second one had never developed beautiful red stalks, just green with a few grains of red but it never "ripened" and then put up a load of flower stalks before I knew it. And now this third one was doing the exact same thing.

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So I went online early Monday morning to see if there was something I could do or was doing wrong, even though all the garden books and info I have read already said essentially if you can fall off of a log you can grow rhubarb.

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I came to a site that claimed there were quite a few varieties of rhubarb and many had different characteristics. Really?! I remember the name of the rhubarb I bought, I wonder what it says about it...

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It says that Victoria rhubarb is green stalked with pink speckles. Nooooo!!

So I made waffles to go under my strawberry rhubarb sauce, through some thick cream and vanilla simple syrup in the whip cream maker thingy and was catapulted into near ecstasy. My life is now complete.

Oh Dear Reader, I know how you love to go to nurseries and see all the beautiful plants. Please don't feel that I left you out of a wonderfully exciting trip this last Saturday, this is the scene just outside the doors at Lawyer's Nursery.

And this is what I bring home. Bare naked sticks. No soil, no leaves, no flowers. Dead looking sticks. Gathered up from big wood bins lined up unceremoniously inside a concrete bunker like cold storage.

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This years collection included very very prickly old fashioned roses. I forgot my gloves, big mistake when getting muddy naked sticks, even bigger when you are getting prickly muddy naked sticks out of big bins.

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I'm still squeezing prickles out of my hands and finger tips, makes typing painful, but your worth it. Have a great night Dear Reader and look in your wine bottles before drinking, mice can get in there you know.

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God bless and have a restful sleep. See you bright and early in the morning.