This and That - January 31, 2023 @goldenoakfarm

Amaryllis: 2nd flowering bud and the new one is growing well

On Tuesday my helper friend got here about 9:30AM. The choice was cutting down tall dead stuff in the Fence gardens, or staying inside to do house plants. But I had 2 squash that had started to go bad and just didn’t have the wherewithal to stand and cut them up.

So after a discussion, we decided to make a butternut squash risotto in the pressure cooker. He thought it wouldn’t take much time and then he’d go outside. Well, it took a good deal longer than he thought.

The actual cooking was 7 minutes, but the prep, etc took some time.

I had recently found the handbooks for various appliances and got out the one for the pressure cooker (we had to figure out the symbols on the top) and it had a recipe in it.

So, with Parmesan on top, I had it for lunch. We’d used chicken stock in place of vegetable stock, so it was a hearty lunch.

While it was cooking, he started cleaning off the dead and damaged leaves that had accumulated on the house plants since last spring. This table looks so much better now.

The rosemary had more dried leaves on it so he stripped them off and cut away the dead branches.

Then he worked on the 3 clivias, and now the windowseat looks much nicer.

I sat and cleaned the rosemary leaves, then vacuum sealed them in a jar to store.

He left at noon and I was pretty worn out. I ended up sleeping for a couple hours and this was the view when I woke up around 4PM.

When I went to the barn to do chores at 5PM, the sun was setting and there was a lovely pink glow in the southwest.

The arctic front came in on Tuesday night. I pulled the shades and got the stoves going. It’s going to get much worse over the weekend. We are finally getting a real winter.

On Wednesday no one will be here. I don’t know what I will get done, have to see how I am doing. I hope to be able to work on bills and budget as it will be February 1. How did that happen???