A few things from my neck of the woods.
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| We found these handmade pliers when we were sorting things in Ward's shop. No one has any idea where they came from or exactly what they were used for. Curiously, the closest thing I could come up with after a Google search was an ancient German torture device that was used to remove finger or toenails from someone. It looks remarkably similar in the picture, but I don't think we have a rare find worth $3000. |
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| This was a new weed for us this year that popped up all over our yard. While it looked familiar, I couldn't quite place it until a saw a peanut shell with it. Apparently last fall, squirrels planted peanuts all over our yard. |
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| After I figured out what they were, I left one plant just to see if we could get peanuts. I pulled up this plant recently and didn't find any, just the shell from the original seed. Peanuts take a long, warm growing season and it is difficult to grow them here. However, I might take a chance on them next year. We grew them successfully when we lived in New Orleans. |
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| This is a harvest from a couple of days ago. More tomatoes should be harvested today. I had also intended to pull the zucchini, but it has shown new life, so I will give it a while longer. We roasted the carrots and beets and Theo made a spicy bean dish with the tomatoes. The basil is waiting to be made into pesto. I seemed to have misplaced the nuts I need to make it. :) |
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| This is a trombetta squash grown by a friend. It was about 3 feet long originally. We had already had one meal from it before I took the picture. Trombetta squash has white flesh that turns to orange as it matures and tastes more like a winter squash then. This one had a mild butternut squash flavor. I thought about growing some next year, but they vine wildly and require a lot of room. |
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| I love the look of the purple berries of the callicarpa (beautyberry) shrub. I had seen them before and was always struck by their beauty. A friend offered me some volunteer plants she had in her yard last spring. I planted two of them and shared two more with Miss Landers and Aunt Martha. Also, birds and wildlife are supposed to like the berries. |
Until next time...
What a great harvest!
ReplyDeleteYour photos are always so beautiful, and fingers crossed the you stumbled onto some Greek antiquity!
The stuff we're harvesting now at the end of the season is not so pretty with plenty of bad places. However, there's still a lot of good eating to be done.
DeleteWe're not sure what we're going to do with the pliers. My son wisely said that since no one can remember them and we don't know what they are used for, we should give them away. That would be the smart thing, but I think I'll hold onto them a little longer as we ponder their origins.
I'm confused. Were the pliers in a box that got moved with you to your new-to-you house transported from your last home? Or were they left by the previous owners of your current house? I'm not sure about giving them away unless you found a museum that could identify the pliers and wanted them for their collection so everyone could enjoy their uniqueness. If you think they may have belonged to the previous owners, it would make sense to me to try to contact them and see if they wanted the pliers.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that peanuts grew that far north, and I would never have been able to identify the plant. It would be a fun experiment to try to grow one.
I'm not sure I've seen the callicarpa plant before. It's so pretty!
The pliers were in a box that got moved from the last house. Best guess is that they came in a box of other random tools that Theo or Ward may have purchased, but neither one of them remembers them. I'm not sure what we're going to do with them, but I want to do more research to find out more about them and where the best place for them would be.
DeletePeanuts are hard to grow here, but it can be done. Researching the details is on my list for winter reading.
I'd keep those pliers until I found out more about them! A collector of vintage tools might be interested in acquiring them!
ReplyDeleteGreat harvest! Enjoyed seeing what you picked and also what the squirrels planted! Ha, ha, you have squirrels who into self-sufficiency and are trying to grow their own food! :)
The beauty berries are very pretty!
Speaking of vintage tools, Ward has several vintage planes he has collected. He is slowly learning to get rid of things so I'm not encouraging him to keep the pliers. I, on the other hand, am interested in keeping them - at least for now.
DeleteThe neighbor has been putting peanuts out for squirrels the whole time we've lived here. I'm not sure why that's what they decided to bury last year. We'll see if more pop up next spring.
Oh gosh that is what those pliers look like. Reminds me of the handmaids tale 😩
ReplyDeleteThey are not very well made. Maybe they are the poor man's torture device. :(
DeleteI hope you find out what those pliers are. Wouldn't that be something especially with Halloween upcoming, if you found they were instruments of torture! That would be very cool to grow peanuts.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't even thought about the Halloween tie in with the pliers. That brings some interesting ideas to mind. :)
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