TALK ABOUT LAZY

I’ve not accomplished terribly much this past week but here goes:

I was completely out of canned ground beef, so I processed a batch. This time though, I threw in some onion when I cooked the meat. I’ve not done that before and am interested to find out if it improves the end-product.

Shelf-stable meat adds another layer of usability and security to your food supply. It sure is nice to be able to take a jar of ready-to-use hamburger out of the cupboard and just dump it in your casserole, tacos, spaghetti, or other ground beef recipe. It is definitely a time saver. Also, you don’t have to worry about losing your entire meat supply if the electricity goes down. In fact, just a few days after I canned this batch the electricity was out for 8 hours. I didn’t lose anything in my fridge or freezer, but I could have if the outage had lasted much longer.

I only have a few jars of chicken and only one of pork in the cupboard, so I seriously need to get busy and build up my meat supply.

I enjoyed myself getting a little planting done this weekend.

Saturday, I went to my local garden center and purchased some yarrow, lemon grass, marigolds, and lavender. Since it was Mother’s Day weekend, they threw in a free geranium, too! I was extra happy about the yarrow as I had searched everywhere for it the past couple of years with no luck.

Every one of these plants was chosen for their bug repelling properties. Last year’s plantings were so effective that I am continuing with them.

Yarrow contains compounds that emit a scent that repels mosquitos. Yarrow also attracts dragonflies, which are mosquito predators. If you soak yarrow leaves and flowers in vodka for two to six weeks and then strain it, you will have made a natural insect repellant. Yarrow has several medicinal benefits, too.

Lavender is known to keep away moths, mosquitoes, and flies. There are other inside pests it is effective against, too.

Bugs such as cabbageworms, corn earworms, Japanese beetles, and mosquitoes are known to avoid areas where geraniums are planted.  Now, one plant is really not going to make much of a difference but it’s pretty and it was free, so I planted it.

Lemongrass repels mosquitos, flies, ants, ticks, fleas and gnats while marigolds repel flies, mosquitos, aphids, wasps, Japanese beetles, and snakes (though I doubt 4 little marigolds will chase off a snake!). I made one pot for the front garden and a second pot to put out by the chicken coop.

Bug repellant plants that came back from last year include my rosemary (mosquitos, flies), lemon balm (mosquitos, flies), peppermint (mosquitos, flea beetles, ants, squash bugs).

In addition to the geranium, I was able to plant another spot of color, just for the joy of it.

These snapdragons were volunteers that came back from last year! Last year’s snapdragons must have dropped some seeds on the ground that germinated. So, I just pulled them out of the ground and planted them in the same pot as last year. Hopefully they will survive that upheaval.

It’s going to be a rainy week, so I won’t even need to water the garden. On the other hand, the rainy weather is a motivation killer for me so this might be another unproductive week!