Tag: #Gardening

Sunday Post: Hard Work Pays Off #SmokyMountains

BonnieReadsAndWrites36 Comments

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted at the @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news and a post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See the rules here.

I’m continuing with the new diet plan and I’ve lost 7 pounds so far, and I’ll weigh in again tomorrow. There’s a long way to go, but it’s a step in the right direction. The garden we planted recently is starting to grow and we’ve got some squash blossoms already and a few flowers on the tomatoes. It’s great to see efforts being rewarded.

Happy Father’s Day to my husband Doug, the rock of our family. I mentioned he had been painting his car, and it’s finished. I’m really proud of him.

I was in Blowing Rock, NC on the Blue Ridge Parkway the other day, and here are some pictures from an overlook. I’m blessed to live in such a beautiful area.

LAST WEEK ON THE BLOG

Things were a bit quieter on the blog this past week as I was busily finishing up reviews for the August edition of Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society. I will share the covers of some of the books I reviewed soon. I can’t post the reviews until after the magazine is published.

Monday I reviewed The Lives of Diamond Bessie by Jody Hadlock.

Wednesday I posted an excerpt of Bonds by Marie Ann Cope.

Self-Published Saturday I posted a review of Death at Dusbar College by Laura DiNovis Berry.

NEXT WEEK ON THE BLOG

Monday I will share the covers of the books I’ve been reviewing for the Historical Novel Society the past few months.

Wednesday I will review A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong

On Friday I will review The Hurricanes of Weakerville by Chris Rylander

On Self-Published Saturday I plan to review Downfall by Caleb Ward.

BOOKS I RECEIVED THIS WEEK:

A DRESS OF VIOLET TAFFETA by Tessa Arlen from Random House for an Austenprose blog tour.

Have a great week everyone!

Sunday Post – Life is a Garden

BonnieReadsAndWrites43 Comments

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted at the @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See the rules here.

MY WEEK

It was a busy work week, but I’ve started reading several books for the August edition of Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society.

I also have been repotting my tomato seedlings. I started them in little pods under a grow light and I’m putting them in larger peat cups before they go into the ground at the end of May. The next step is to start placing them outside in partial shade so they can get used to being outside full time. My husband has the garden all tilled up and ready to go. I love the gardening cycle. Spring is for planting, Summer is for tending, Fall is for harvesting and canning, and in Winter we enjoy the fruits of our labor. I know it’s not as cut and dried as that, but it is a consistency that can be relied on. I have actually missed my tomato garden, so it will be nice to see it again! I’m also planting peppers and onions. I will be canning salsa from ingredients I grew myself.

LAST WEEK ON THE BLOG

Monday I reviewed A Brilliant Night of Stars and Ice, a retelling of the sinking of the Titanic from the point of view of the Captain of the Carpathia, who led a rescue of many survivors.

On Monday I also reviewed The Salt Fields by Stacy D. Flood. This is a powerful book about a man who boards a train so he can leave the South behind. It is so well written that I had to include two quotes from the book itself in order to do it justice.

On Tuesday I reviewed the audiobook of The Wedding Season by Katy Birchall. This is a tale about a jilted bride that is both sad and laugh-out-loud funny. I have previously reviewed The Secret Bridesmaid by Birchall, and I love her writing style.

I also attempted Top Ten Tuesday and even though I got the directions wrong, I still enjoyed it.

Work and reading kept me busy until Saturday, and then I posted a review of The Coronation by Justin Newland for Self-Published Saturday.

NEXT WEEK ON THE BLOG

Today, besides the Sunday Post, I will be reviewing Freedom or Death, Book 4 of Adria Carmichael’s Juche Series, a coming-of-age dystopian saga set in a North Korean concentration camp.

Monday I will be reviewing The Adoption by Jenna Kernan as part of a blog tour for Bookouture. I had posted last week I would be reviewing it on Friday, but I had the date wrong. So look for it on Monday.

On Wednesday, I will review The Commandant’s Daughter, by Catherine Hokin. This is book one of the Hanni Winter series. I reviewed this book for the May edition of Historical Novels Review.

On Thursday, I will be posting a review of The Girl from Lamaha Steet, which is author Sharon Maas’s memoir about her childhood in Guyana and time spent in an English boarding school.

For Self-Published Saturday, I’ll be reviewing A Class Coveted by Susie Murphy.

THIS WEEK’S READING

I’m finishing up The Girl from Lamaha Street and starting A Class Coveted, mentioned above.

I will also be reading The Pilot’s Girl by Catherine Hokin, which is the sequel to The Commandant’s Daughter mentioned above. I will be reviewing The Pilot’s Girl for the August edition of Historical Novels Review.

Tomatoes and Memories

BonnieReadsAndWrites15 Comments

Photo by Doug DeMoss

(Story about my Mom and gardening begins in the second paragraph.) Believe it or not, this week wasn’t all about books! The tomatoes in my garden are coming in fast and heavy, and I did a lot of canning this week. I haven’t posted about canning much, but I do enjoy water bath and pressure canning when I get a chance. This week I had to take time off work to keep up with these tomatoes, and on two different days I put up about 20 quarts, 5 pints of tomatoes, and five half-pints of green tomato jam (lemony and delicious, I promise). I still have more tomatoes to can, so I’m thinking about spicy ketchup or tomato chutney of some kind. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

I have been canning off and on for years, but there is a story behind these tomatoes that make them mean so much to me. My mom was an avid and gifted gardener. She grew up in the mountains of North Carolina in the 1930s/40s with eleven brothers and sisters, and a Dad who was a farmer and logger. She helped out in the house, and and she also helped her Mom can the garden bounty in a washtub out in the yard over an open fire, as they did not yet have electricity. Mom moved to Cincinnati when she married my Dad and we lived in a poorer suburb, but she always had a magnificent garden. My whole life growing up we had garden vegetables in the summer and home-canned vegetables in the winter. I never thought much about it, but we were eating well, despite being a family of 10 in a three-bedroom house..

When my Dad retired, he and my Mom moved back to those North Carolina mountains and she had a garden for the 20 years they were able to stay there. She always had home-canned green beans, tomatoes, and sauerkraut, as well as other vegetables and fruits, and she was happy to give them to her kids. Consequently I still was able to eat home-canned vegetables more than most. When health problems became too much for them, they moved back to Cincinnati so my sister could help them. My Mom immediately started a garden and kept it up, even when her health began to deteriorate. My Dad had dementia and heart problems, and passed in 2019.

When my Mom died suddenly in March 2020, she left behind tomato seedlings she had already started. My brother gathered them and split them up between the siblings. I planted my share of those seedlings, and they didn’t do very well at all. However, I got enough tomatoes to get seeds for this year. This year my husband and I planted the seeds, and the plants have thrived! We call them Granny Tomatoes, because my mom always went by Granny to her many kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. We put in about 20 Granny plants and about 10 Romas, and the bounty has been plentiful, with many more still on the vines. So these tomatoes to me are more than just a garden treat. They are a legacy, one of which I am very proud.

Photo by Doug DeMoss

All of the tomato photos were taken by my husband in our tomato garden, as was the one I put on the main page of this blog.

The first two photos are my Mom (Dorothy Jenkins Zinser) at 16. The original version is on the left and a colorized version is in the middle. On the right is my Mom at almost 88, making sauerkraut in October 2019. She went to Heaven five months later.