Vegetarian Pole Beans and Corn recipe

Our garden is doing well!  Today I harvested a heaping handful of pole beans and cooked them up with onions and sweet corn.  Came out very tasty and went nicely as a side dish alongside flounder and salmon fillets and garlic bread.

















Vegetarian Pole Beans and Corn
Big handful of pole beans (ours are Kentucky Wonder)
1 ear of sweet corn, uncooked
1/2 onion, chopped
1/4 banana pepper, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp chili powder (or to taste)
pinch of sugar

Heat butter and oil in heavy pot.  Add onions and banana pepper, cook until onions are clear; stir in salt, black pepper and chili powder.
Wash and snap beans into bite-size pieces, removing strings.  Add to pot and stir constantly until beans turn bright green.  Pour enough hot water into pot to cover beans; cook on high until tender, about 20-25 minutes.
Cut kernels from corn cob and add to pot.  Sprinkle in sugar. Cook another 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add water as needed.  Taste for salt/pepper.

Fauna Friday

Bird babies!!
In the middle of the Clinch River, on the island near the weir dam, there is a Great Blue Heron nest we've been watching for a while.  Three babies are in it and boy are they getting big.

The standing one was giving its wings quite a workout, won't be long and it'll be airborne!

Here is a youtube video of the babies.

I tried and tried to upload the video to blogspot, then tried to embed the video here from my youtube account.... nothing is working!! Anybody else on blogspot having this issue?  I wasted so much time trying to make it happen  :-(

Fauna Friday - The Return of Mothra

I found a big, beautiful moth on our garage door just before we went camping, and coincidentally while we were in the campground there was another one perched outside the bathrooms all day.

He was so soft and fuzzy, it was very tempting to reach out and touch but I managed to contain myself.
Didn't want to hurt or scare him!

My Googling efforts indicated he is a Polyphemus Moth.

If only he'd fully opened his wings, I would have been treated to a couple of very stunning eye-like dots on the lower portions.
Oh well, maybe another time.
It was still very enchanting to be able to examine him so closely and he hardly moved at all.  I wonder if he had just emerged, or if he was drying off after the drizzle we'd had in the night......

A tour of the veggie garden

It's nearing the end of June and our veggie garden is coming along nicely.  The weather this year is far better than last year, which was incredibly hot and dry; now we are extremely damp so I'm not having to water near as much.  Most of the crop was started from seed except the cherry tomato plant and half the cucumber vines, which were store-bought in small pots.

I didn't get everything in the ground as fast as I would have liked, some things (like the pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes and watermelons) stayed in the seed starter pots longer than they should so they're just getting started in-ground.  I still have some empty spaces left over, maybe I'll add some lettuce and onions and more broccoli.

The corn is doing VERY well this year. Last season we didn't even get a full ear, it was way too hot/dry for a decent crop. The sweet corn is in-ground, the Indian corn is super-thriving in a 5-gallon bucket on the patio.

Tiny cherry tomatoes of the Sweet 100 variety.

Baby 'burpless' cucumber, about the length of your little finger.

Larger 'burpless' cucumber coming along nicely.
Thanks for checking in! 

Fauna Friday

Since gardening season is ramping up, today's Fauna Friday features a couple little caterpillars from last year's garden.
Here we have the Saddleback Caterpillar, which I found lurking on my Toad Lily plant.  It's a beauty, but apparently the poisonous sting is quite painful.

Next, introducing the Cabbage Looper.  This little bastard and his buddies nibbled their way through my Roma tomatoes.

Look at what they did to the Romas!  And that's just a few of the tomatoes they ruined.
*kicks tiny green asses*

Fauna Friday

Today's feature is Shamsie again!  She's so cute hanging out in the window, she likes to sit there for a few minutes and see what's up outside - there's construction going on across the street so she's curious about the hammering and whatnot.

A piece of paper will often keep her busy for a while and stop her from chewing up things she shouldn't mess with.  Here's a video of her fiddling around on the window sill.

The Pollen Report

We've been having a lot of rain lately, a LOT, which is good because it helps take down some of the pollen.
Some of that pollen has been piling up against Norris Dam, where the water level is way up and they were spilling the damn last week to reduce it (at one point I heard it was already 5 feet over the level they like to keep it during Summer).  They will have to spill again this week as we are currently having inches more rain. 

So here I sit, on a cold and rainy Sunday, stuck in the house and sniffle-snorting-coughing with mucus drip running down my throat and upsetting my stomach.  The charming side of Spring! Oh well, at least everything is looking really green and pretty.