Lesson learned – in Houston, plant your broccoli really early! Apparently it starts to flower quickly if forced to mature at temperatures above 80F (thank you Aggie Horticulture Website), and it’s been just over 80 during the days for the past week or so in Houston.
Here’s what the broccoli looks like now:
Next year I’ll have to plant it when it’s actually still chilly outside!
I’m having so much fun checking the garden every other day or so to see how much it’s grown! Here are some new pictures!
My roma tomato plant has a small flower, which means that I should have a tomato soon!
And, in case you’re wondering, everything I learned from gardening came from my dad, whose garden seriously puts mine to shame!
With all the basil I’m growing, I’ve been looking for some good recipes so that I can use it – we can only eat so much pesto chicken and pasta!
I love hummus, and I have a wonderful new food processor, so I decided to try some pesto hummus. I started off with this recipe from allrecipes.com, but it seemed to be missing something. So, I decided to start modifying it, tasting it after every addition until I was happy with the outcome.
I ended up adding extra basil (probably about a cup total), a lot of extra olive oil (didn’t measure, but keep adding until you have a smooth consistency), two extra cloves of garlic, about 1/8 cup of pine nuts and shaved parmesan, and probably 1/2 tsp of salt and lemon juice.
Now that I’ve finally finished some belated Christmas knits, I can finally group them all into one post. I went a little crazy and knit a lot of gifts in the month before Christmas, but I’m really excited with everything that I was able to complete!
With so many beautiful shawl (or shawlette) patterns on Ravelry, I finally decided I could be the type of person who wore them. They’re also great for fingering weight yarn to mix things up from knitting a lot of socks – and they’re perfect for warm climates like Houston with freezing cold indoor areas.
The first shawl I knit was Traveling Woman – I’m just starting to wear it more, and I purchased a simple but beautiful shawl pin from RubyVegas Designs on Etsy to complete the look. I made it with the absolutely delicious Dream in Color Smooshy in Lipstick Lava. This is also one of the first projects that I properly blocked, and it made all the difference in the world!
In December, I was able to get my hands on a highly sought-after skein of Wollmeise from The Loopy Ewe. I’ve had my eye on the Citron pattern for a while, and I’ve seen so many beautiful Wollmeise Citrons that I knew it was the right pattern for the yarn. The rich green color, Petersilie (parsley in German) was perfect for a March St. Patrick’s Day project. I started it at the beginning of the month as part of a KAL with one of my favorite Ravelry groups, and I finished it after just a week! I lightly blocked it – just enough to even out the stitches and flatten the ruffle some without completely losing the rippled texture. I finally got some great pictures, with Jake’s help, including one modeled after the designer’s shot.
Posted in knitting
Tagged citron, dream in color, knitting, pictures, shawl, shawlette, smooshy, traveling woman, wollmeise
It’s been at least a week since all of my garden has been planted. I put the broccoli and lettuce in about 3 weeks ago, the broccoli is actually growing! This is what it looked like today:
I also planted the cucumber seeds about 2 weeks ago, and I discovered that I have seedlings! I was worried most about these, because I haven’t had good luck in the past growing herbs from seeds.
I can’t wait until I can actually eat something from the garden!
