A Beautiful Sunny Day!

What a treat!  We had a perfect weather day today.  Both Papa Pea and I were able to putter around outside getting lots of good things done.

I did take a bit of a rest (plunked on my posterior) for a couple of hours prepping chives for the freezer.

If you've read my blog for a while, you know I'm a big fan of freezing chives to use in my cooking all through the winter months.  I usually do this task first thing in the spring when my chives first grow tall enough to harvest.  Hrumpf, didn't get it done first thing this spring.  (Probably because the chives were still under a couple feet of snow!)

Anywho, I knew that I couldn't put this little task off much longer or Jack Frost would take care of it for me, and I would spend the winter . . . chiveless.

But my procrastination may have caused me to make a good discovery.  The chives I harvested today were much more pungent than those harvested early on in the season.  Matter of fact, there were a couple of times during the processing when my eyes started watering just as they do sometimes when slicing onions.  But this is a good thing!  That means that not only will my chives add color to selected dishes this winter, but they will also add more flavor.  Who knew the potency of chives is different at different times during the season?  (Not moi obviously.)

Call me Clumsy Carp (anybody remember that character from the old comic strip B.C.?) as I somehow managed to dump two containers of the chives during the processing.  After that, I put the lids on the containers immediately after filling them.

I've been checking our Painted Mountain Corn to see when the ears would be big enough, but not totally matured, to eat as sweet corn.

Today these were the only two ears I could find in the whole darn corn patch that were big enough to harvest.

I've posted about this corn we grow previously.  When mature it looks much like Indian Corn (above picture from two years ago) and can be ground for a super-nutritious flour or fed to livestock.  When the ears are immature, as were the two I picked today, they can be eaten as sweet corn.

So how did these two sample ears taste?  Very, very good!  Of course, not as sweet as the hybrid corn bred and grown as the sweet corn many of us are used to, but I'm assuming the taste of ours today was much like the sweet corn our grandparents grew in their gardens.

I have to admit it does look particularly strange to see a "black" cob after one is done eating!

Here's hoping for another sunny day tomorrow.  Along with still more to harvest, I'm into tearing out old vines and plants.  Deconstructing the garden is just as much work as planting it is . . . but not nearly as satisfying!