Remembering fun times...

A lot of my blog friends are thinking about the coming growing season.  It makes me itch to get out and dig in the soil.  Feel the ground in my hand...get my fingernails so dirty they don't look like they will ever come clean again.  Anyway, the talk of the coming growing season spurred me to look back at photos of the past.

I don't recall what kind of bell peppers these were...

I think the above was taken the same day....

This is from a couple years later.   I sure have missed having my own bell peppers to freeze the past couple or three years.  They are so handy to have to add to chili, or spaghetti sauce or whatever else you use them in.  Instead of making stuffed bell peppers, I slice up a couple bell peppers in the bottom of a casserole dish,  add my browned ground beef which I have also added onions too, cover with tomato juice and bake in 325º oven for about an hour and a half.  (I don't like to eat big chunks of cooked bell pepper, so I came up with doing this.)  Roger still gets the bell pepper, and I get the flavor...I used to add a bit of rice and cheese, but we like it simple the best. 

And this is one of those dishes that I love better the second time around.  If I have enough to have it the second time around.  Both girls loved it, and I served it to one of Roger's friends one time and he loved it.  I want it with mashed potatoes of course.

Though I love to add a few red bell peppers to things...I add red ones for the color.  But I want to add lots of green ones for the flavor.

One of my loves is salsa...

but above all else, I love home canned tomato juice.   It is like sunshine from a jar!  In the winter if I am sick with a cold, etc. there is nothing like it.  The stuff you buy in the store does not compare.

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The last time we had tomatoes was not good.  I had 16-20 plants and only ate one whole tomato...the flavor was not good and all the tomatoes were all messed up...you can see samples HERE.   It states that they did not all look like that.  The thing was, I would pick a pretty one and cut into it and it would have a mess inside...

The next year I bought a couple of the tomato plants they have in huge containers, thinking maybe I could at least have some to snack on, but they did not grow good either.  I messed around and did not try anything in 2016....and that August is when Roger had his stroke.  So I have not tried any since.  But I would love to try some this year...just to have a few to eat fresh from the garden.

Do you grow your own tomatoes and if so, how do you grow them, specially if not directly in the ground?

NOT what I am doing

Since I am not working on much right at the present time, I thought I would show a couple things my daughter is working on...

She has all the blocks above made and has them set aside while she experiments with a design she made.

This doesn't show as good as in person in ways.  She is going to do it in a different colorway.  Right now she is trying to make up her mind to finish this one before she starts the new colorway. 

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This is what I see lots of the time when I look down at my lap at night.  He thinks he owns me and that all I should be at his command.  He does bring a lot of joy.

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I have no plans for the next few days.  I should sit and make a list of what needs to be done.  I never was one for making lists, except in my head.  That doesn't work too well any more, so I should start writing a physical list that I can check off.

I have so much I need to take care of...besides all I want to do.   I am slower than Christmas and cannot get used to that.   Have you slowed down as you have gotten older?  My mom did not slow down at my age.  She could get down in the floor to do things and get back up with ease.   It is a real struggle for me to get up, and I cannot get on my knees on a hard surface for love nor money.  So always have a pad to go under them.

I hope your weekend is a good one. 

Look!

This is Sarah, along with Otto aka Otti when he was a young boy...in April of 2008.

And here he is as an old man...still loving...never grumpy...I wish I were like him.

And this is little Rosie...she thinks she is the boss and Otti just lets her.

These were not what I had planned to talk about, but for the life of me I can't remember what I had wanted to write about last night, and the night just slipped away and I thought I would do it today.  Well, it is almost tomorrow and I just can't recall.  So thought I would share these.

I may slow to visit tomorrow, but I will eventually get to it...hope you have a good rest of the week.