Salsa in Progress!

With a potential frost looming, we figured it was time to get canning.

 

The Garden Produces!

For a quick midsummer update, the garden is producing interesting and tasty things.

Elderflowers and elderberries (not ripe, but photogenic):

Somerset seedless grapes, turned into raisins for Christmas baking:

Painted serpent cucumber:

Luffa (actual fruits hidden in the vines):

Dilly Dilly!

One of three Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars feasting on our garden's self-seeding dill:

Small Green Visitors

A painted turtle made its way across the lawn, and occasionally got stuck in the garage:

Later, a white-lined sphinx caterpillar explored the driveway:

Easter Greetings!

We can always hope for a White Easter, and this year did not disappoint (except in quantity).

Also, our attempt at German Easter Sweet Bread was a photogenic and gastronomic success:

Bread in progress:

Planting Day

According to Gardening in the Dakotas, April 15th is planting day for beets, carrots, radishes, and onion sets.

We're going to be a few days behind this year.

A Snowy February

Snow rainbow!

Sunset!

Garden

A Winter Wonderland

After a mid-January frost, the weather station reported absolute calm:

A Sampling of Garden Produce

Melon, basil, sugar snap peas, strawberries, chives, banana peppers, red onions, and Chioggia beets!

We have also started harvesting a good crop of tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and eggplant with a number of ominously large pumpkins ripening beneath the leaves.

Not Quite Planting Season

According to Gardening in the Dakotas, April 15th is a possible planting date for onions, beets, carrots, kohlrabi, and peas.  That schedule didn't work out so well this year:

Luckily, our new trees haven't arrived, but some lilac buds were visible from above:

Easter Tuesday

Although we did not have a White Easter, we did have a White Easter Tuesday:

And The Mitchell Republic reminds us just how long Winter is:

With snow on the ground and a low pressure system over Canada, Mitchell reached a low of 5 early Wednesday morning.

Alexandria and Tyndall both hit 3 degrees Wednesday morning, breaking records set in 1920...

This winter season, since Oct. 1, Mitchell has received 39.3 inches of snow, which is about average.

Most "Most Livable Cities" Speak German

From Yahoo:

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's capital Vienna once again defended its position as the city offering the best quality of life in the world...

Europe has eight of the world's top 10 most pleasant cities: Germany and Switzerland each have three cities in the top 10, while New Zealand, Canada and Australia each have one.

That's seven out of ten in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Now, for the obligatory Vienna travel photos:

The First Day of Spring

The first day of Spring, March 20, 2018:

A few from two weeks earlier illustrate our love of snow drifts:

January, Compare and Contrast

A garden in California, January 17th:

A garden in South Dakota, January 21st:

Out for a walk in California, January 17th:

Out for a walk in South Dakota, January 17th:

Linzer Cookies!

From January 2, 2018, the 9th Day of Christmas!

Six Weeks Until Winter

Carrots!

The garden carrots, with a few giant radishes thrown in:

Jack Frost's First Visit of the Season

With temperatures in the high 20s last night, it is the end of the season for tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkins:

Sunflowers & Butterflies

This year's sunflowers were a great success and helped bring in the occasional cloud of butterflies.

A Basket of Plenty

From our first tomato and pepper harvest, with a few cucumbers thrown in as well:

And radish pods, the treat left over when you let radishes go to seed: