A Second Look--August 8, 2012

A sunflower, that sprouted from birdseed, bloomed this week. Sunflowers certainly are spectacular flowers and this one is no exception. You'll notice that I included more than one picture of it because it makes me smile when I see it. Also, our lone peach continued to ripen. I picked it today after I found a small bite out of the back of it. I hope that I get to have a bite also.

Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

Volunteer sunflower

Praying mantis nymph and ants on sunflower

Our lone peach is ripening.

Male house finch

Celosia

Look, more crisscrossing spirals for Ward.

I can't get enough of this sunflower.

Queen Anne's Lace Followup--A Year Later

or Not What Was Expected

Last year during one of my second looks, I was very excited because I found a Queen Anne's Lace with a black dot in the middle. It was the first one I had seen, and I learned that legend said that the dot represented a drop of Queen Anne's blood from a prick she got while making lace. I thought I had found something interesting and unusual, but for my friend, it was old hat. She said that all of the flowers she had seen had black dots. She didn't know that they came any other way.

The difference in our experiences made me curious, so I did an informal research project . There was no clear conclusion for the different blooms except from a Virginia Tech weed identification site. It said that during the second year of blooming (they are biennials),  the flower develops the spot. To test this, last year I counted the dotted and non-dotted flowers in my yard, and this year I counted them again.

What did I find? Last year I found 11 flowers with spots and 29 without. This year I found 5 with spots and 24 without. This is not what was expected. It was the exact opposite. I should have seen more black spots this year if they do indeed develop them during their second year of blooming.
 
I have a sense that there are certain varieties that have the spots and certain varieties that don't. It seems that the places where I saw the flowers with the spots this year are the same locations they were last year. But I'm not sure.That's a followup I'll have to do-after I get done with my egg cooking experiments.

The proportions here should have been reversed if the black dot appears during the second year of blooming.

I Spy White

Can You Find:

1. The ice chest that carried drinks to the crab feast

2. Seeds from a pretty but annoying flower

3. White meat from a roasted chicken

4. Our new dehumidifier

5. The book that helps me figure out visitors to our feeder

6. The sticks that go to work with both Ward and me most days

7. The brick that used to be part of my grandmother's chimney

8. The plate given to me by the church when I was a baby

9. The eggs that went into French toast and brownies

10. An old time calculator

11. An orchid that is amazingly still living and blooming

12. Our dishwasher with many settings, but only one that we use

Thankful Sunday--August 5, 2012

I am thankful for my parents who are celebrating 62 years of marriage today.

My parents 60 years ago with my sister

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions-August 3, 2012

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money.

Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning.

This Week's Food Waste

One of the buns that didn't go bad

 A couple things went bad on us this week--a tomato and some buns. I think both of these were victims of being on the counter for too long. One day, they were good and the next day they were growing mold. Oh well, better luck next week, I hope.

This Week's True Food Confessions

If we're really going to have true confessions, here they go. 

First the negative: We bit off more than we can chew with this project. (Pun intended.) We still don't like to cook and now we're making a big mess to clean up while we're doing it. We haven't coordinated our shopping to go with our menus and we're looking for excuses to eat out. Yesterday, it was that Theo was sick and didn't feel like what we had planned. I think the bottom line for our discontent is that we are trying to do it all-or-nothing. We are not allowing ourselves flexibility.

Next the positive: Now that I've gotten that off my chest, here is how the week actually went. We finished up our zucchini week  with Zucchini Continental. We also had roast chicken, spinach lasagna, shepherd's pie, pulled beef sandwiches, and hamburgers on the grill. We finished the week out with Subway sandwiches and several drive through lunches. Despite my complaining, it was really a pretty good week. The Subway sandwiches in the middle of the week helped. Also, we are getting better at cleaning up as we go, so the kitchen does not look like explosion went off after we're done cooking. We are ready to give it another go next week.