While investigating the sounds of the visiting toms asserting their dominance this morning, another noise caught my attention.
A deep, continuous buzzing noise.
This is the linden tree, looking slightly paler than usual. That is because the upper branches are blooming, and there are so many flowers, you can see them more than the leaves. Pollinators love linden blossoms and, even from the ground, I could see constant movement of little black dots of insects. I tried to take some video, hoping to capture the sound, but there was too much wind. The digital zoom didn’t do well in capturing the insects, though when I uploaded it and tried watching it on the big screen, I realized I’d caught at least 2, maybe 3, hummingbirds!
Lower down, there are almost no blossoms at all. If we wanted to harvest the flowers, we would probably need a step ladder taller than what we’ve got and, frankly, it wouldn’t be safe to do it.
Ah, well.
Since I’m supposed to stay off my feet to let my toe heal (I’m not very good at that!), my daughters did the rest of the rounds for me. They found me a little present.
Our first ripe raspberries! :-D
They’d eaten some and brought some for me. The few raspberry bushes we have, have not grown well this year even though I did try to keep them watered as much as I could. Being shaded by an apple and a chokecherry tree isn’t helping either; they should be getting a lot more sun to produce well. I don’t expect to be getting more than a small handful at a time.
Today, my husband finally had his appointment in at the heart clinic in the city. It was in the afternoon, but they say to come in 45 minutes early. We figured out when we would have to leave to make it with plenty of time, then left a half hour earlier than that, for time to pick up gas along the way.
It was a very good thing we did!
Not long after we left the town we fueled up in, we drove right into a downpour.
While doing my significantly more limited rounds this morning, I had to pause and get a photo of the ground by the feeding station. With the rain we’ve finally been having, things have really greened up again, and started to grow.
Including bird seed and deer feed!
This picture if of the area on the far side of the bird feeder, from the window – where we put the bulk of the deer feed in the winter. There is a smaller area on the side closer to the house that also has a patch like this.
The only thing I recognize in there is oats! We haven’t bought mixed bird seed, sticking to the black oil seed, since fall and we tried several different types, so I have no idea what all might be growing here. It’s going to get mowed, anyhow, but it’s neat to see!
While switching out the memory card on the trail cam, I got a picture of one of the asparagus growing wild by the fence.
None of the asparagus by the house is showing signs of berries, which makes these the only female plants around. This makes me extra curious about how they ended up growing here. It’s still possible that the seeds were spread by birds, but there are no other female asparagus plants nearby that could have been the source. The nearest garden to us is my brother’s, about a quarter mile away, and as far as I know they don’t have any.
I’m looking forward to when they turn that beautiful bright red again. :-)
This morning was more relaxed for me, thanks to my family taking care of critter feeding. Before heading out to take my mother to her doctor’s appointment, I just had to switch out the memory card on the trail cam, then do some of my usual walk-about.
While walking in the outer yard, past where the grass is overgrown between trees, I noticed a large area of the grass trampled down. Some creature or creatures had surely been tumbling about in there!
As a paused to look, there was an explosion of cats and kittens from under one of the trees!
Since we brought bitty little Dave into the house as a permanent addition, the other inside cats were not too sure what to make of this strange new presence!
Mama cat and DahBoy were mostly perplexed. Fenrir, on the other hand, was not a happy camper! She would hiss at him and sometimes even bat at him. Yet, she couldn’t seem to stay away from him, either, following him around all over the place, frequently.
He, on the other hand, was quite used to having large numbers of cats and kittens show up, so a few strange new cats wasn’t much of a big deal for him. He would sometimes run up to the other cats, much to their dismay, and had no problem pushing his way into their food bowls.
It’s been a week since he’s joined our household, at it seems we have reached a turning point.
Fenrir has gone from hissing at him, to at least accepting his nearby presence.
While working on my last post, my friend mentioned the weather conditions, so I paused to take a look.
29C, but feeling like 38C (that’s 84F and 100F, for you folks in the US), with 61% humidity!
No wonder going outside feels like walking into a wall of moist heat. That’s exactly what we’re doing!
Less than 2 hours later, I checked the conditions again. I got this screen capture just minutes ago.
The temperature is still going up! 30C (86F), feeling like 39C (102F).
The forecast over the next few days hasn’t changed (yet?). I’m driving my friend to the airport tomorrow, and we’re planning to go in early to play tourist a bit.
Somewhere with air conditioning.
We might be driving through thunderstorms!
Looks like I might be driving my mother through storms when I take her for a medical appointment in a few days, too.
At this point, a nice storm would be very welcome. More rain to cool things down and get that humidity out of the air, and into the ground!
Chances are, the storms are going to miss us again, but I’ll take the edge of a storm, too!
I had a birthday recently, and my awesome daughters treated me to Chinese food. We ordered a bunch of mostly protein dishes to pick up in town, while my older daughter cooked scallop noodles, coconut sticky rice and plain white rice at home to go with it.
On unpacking the order, we discovered they had thrown in a couple of free orders of white rice and chicken fried rice.
Which left us with a pot of plain white rice that ended up in the fridge, untouched.
Not a problem at all! I used it to make these crispy, pan fried patties. It’s a great way to use up leftover rice, though tasty enough to be worth making a bunch of rice, just for this!
Rice Patty Ingredients:
4 cups cooked, cold white rice
4 eggs
1 – 2 cups shredded cheese (I used medium cheddar and a fine grater)
seasonings to taste (I used bacon salt, freshly ground pepper, paprika and garlic granules)
oil and butter for frying
Tip: when your cooked rice is ready to go into the fridge for the night, put it into a large slide-lock freezer bag. You can then more easily break any lumps of chilled rice apart in the bag, before putting it into the mixing bowl.
Note: I used a fine hand grater, normally used to grate Parmesan, for the cheese, as a regular sized grate could make the patties fall apart more. If using a regular size grate, reduce the amount of cheese used. The cheese can be skipped, too, if you wish.
Sauce ingredients:
mayonnaise
sour cream
white wine vinegar
dried herbs and seasonings to taste (I used a Mrs. Dash mix, plus a bit of rosemary lemon salt and fresh ground pepper, but feel free to combine whatever herbs you like or have on hand!)
To make the rice patties
add your chilled rice into a medium bowl. Add seasonings to taste.
add eggs and mix well with your hands, breaking up any remaining clumps of rice.
add shredded cheese and mix in. Let rest for a minute or so (this is a good time to make the sauce). Note: if the rice mixture seems too loose to form patties, mix in a small amount of flour, then let rest again to allow the flour to absorb moisture.
prepare a deep frying pan by adding about half an inch of oil (any oil with a higher smoke point, such as canola, sunflower or peanut oil, will work) along with about a tablespoon of butter, at high heat. The butter adds flavour, but it also lowers the smoke point of the oil. It can be skipped, if you wish. Note: it is important that the oil is very hot before adding the patties, so that they will crisp up rather than absorbing the oil.
begin to form patties by taking about 1/4 cup of rice and pressing it into your hands to form a sticky ball. Flatten slightly, then set aside on a plate.
when the oil is very hot, gently add several patties into the pan (I could fit only 3 in my pan). Use a spatula to gently flatten the patties.
cook until the bottoms are crispy and golden. Gently turn the patties to cook the other side until also crisp and golden.
remove patties and drain on a paper towel. Keep warm as you continue cooking patties in batches. If it become necessary to add more oil and butter to the pan, make sure to give it time to get very hot before continuing cooking.
serve with sauce while hot. Garnish, if desired.
To make the sauce:
place equal parts mayonnaise and sour cream into a small bowl or measuring cup. I used about 2 – 3 Tbsp each.
add a splash of white wine vinegar and any dried herbs you wish.
mix well and set aside to let the flavours meld.
drizzle over crispy rice patties just before serving.
Making these is rather messy, and the rice mixture tends to want to fall apart until it starts to get crispy, but it is so worth it!
After all the storm warning and tornado watches, things weren’t too bad out here. The only real casualty was the one piece of maple that came down in the winds.
The Re-Farmer 