What a difference the sun makes! Here’s the latest from my cruise around the garden. On the patio, the onions have exploded! They are so tightly packed we’ll have to cut them out of the planter…or maybe we’ll just dump them on the ground and pull them apart. Obviously, they were planted too close together! I shouldn’t have to buy onions the rest of the summer!
The next round of radishes has sprouted. Last week I pulled them all out. Bert refilled the planter with fresh dirt so I could plant again.
The new lettuce seed has sprouted:
The small ‘Raindrop’ tomatoes are doing well…I’m hoping they start to turn red soon!
The pumpkins are reaching out and up!
Up in the garden on the hill, the lavender is finally turning purple and boy does it smell good when I brush my hand over the flowers!
The tomatoes are looking good…I’ll have a lot to work with in August!
The carrots have finally decided to grow!
The green and yellow beans are now flowering…the yellow beans seem to be about a week ahead of the green ones.
One of the zucchini plants is actually making zucchini!
And of course, the Echinacea is going nuts. Most seem to be pink, but in the far corner I can still see some of the other colors I planted.
It’s amazing what a little sunshine will do to get things growing. If you have comments or questions for me, please drop me an email at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
Last weekend was busy! We went to our daughter’s home outside Pittsburgh to attend our grandson’s high school graduation party. Quite a party! I think our daughter could start a business of party planning…if she should ever decide to leave Pharmacy! Haha! I managed to get some pictures before 70+ people showed up…and then I totally forgot to take any once I started visiting!
First of all, my grandson is still much taller than me! And he got his hair all shaved off! Quite a surprise! Since he’ll be here this fall at Penn State main campus, I’m looking forward to seeing him now and then.
The party decorations were wonderful…and yummy!
So many snapshots of him growing up!
We drove down and back in one day so we could be ready for their whole family to come visit us the next day! Ben and parents were to attend orientation meetings for new freshmen. Ben got to spend the night in the dorm and the parents (and sister!) slept at our house. The next day while Ben and parents were attending meetings, Anna and I had a chance to do some shopping and visit the greyhound kennel. My friend Toni let us check out a few dogs and give them some treats.
When the dust settled and everyone went home, I was able to check out the garden. The radishes were ready to pull! Yum!
And the Echinacea was looking good!
Busy weekend. I’m grateful we had a few dry days without rain! Enjoy!
I’ve spent the last year looking forward to the Art in the Orchard festival. This year it will be held July 10-12, 2025 in the big field next to Way’s Fruit Farm on Rt. 550, just past Stormstown, PA. This is the same weekend as the Central PA Festival of the Arts in State College and the People’s Choice Festival at the Grange Fairgrounds in Centre Hall. Busy weekend for all.
Last year was quite a learning experience for me. Being a vendor is so different than just visiting an arts festival. I discovered how complicated it was to set up a booth, display my stuff and interact with the public for several days. Thank goodness I was with my friend Toni, who had done this before. She had the tent, the tables and the know-how to set everything up. Here was my display last year:
This whole year, my focus was on building my inventory of bracelets to sell. With just two weeks to go, I’ve had to stop making bracelets and figure out how to display things. I also knew I needed new business cards, some kind of sign and my own table with a cover. I would be providing the 10×10 tent and we just ordered the side walls. Next, we need to figure out how to assemble it ourselves.
I’ve been trying to make own business cards, but it’s been hard to design what I want with a Word program and card template. (I sure do miss PageMaker!). My original idea was this:
I couldn’t get the “beads” to center properly and I wanted a line to be the “string” holding them together. I could not get the circles to travel together!
I finally went to the printer and ordered cards…and tried to explain my issues with the program. This is what I ended up with:
Not quite what I had in mind…but I had 200 printed. I’ll revise for next year!
Of course, the vinyl sign I ordered matches the new card:
So now it’s time to assemble my display. (First, Bert had to show me how to open up the folding table!) The cover obviously needs to be ironed!
Last year I used baskets to hold each size bracelet:
This year that won’t work…I have too many bracelets!
I also need to figure out how to hang the sign…it kept falling off! The regular bracelets are on the right, and they will the closest to the visitors passing by. We’ll see how long they stay neat and organized! They will be $10 each and come in three sizes: 7″, 7 1/2″ and 8″.
On the left side of the table will be my specialty bracelets. They will be more expensive ($20) and also come in three sizes. There aren’t as many bracelets… 15 different topics from “Ease Arthritis Symptoms” to “Headaches and Migraines” to “Supporting Weight Loss.” They have become very popular but they use several beads together and have a print out of what each stone contributes to the Intention.
On the back of my card, that is included with each bracelet, is this disclaimer:
When it says “Bracelet with Intention” it means when I make the bracelet I’m thinking about how it might help you, and the beads themselves hold meaning. It is not a medical device but it can help you focus your mind to help with the intention.
Finally, I’m trying to get better at taking some pictures that look a little more interesting. I’d like to make a booklet of the various specialty bracelets I’ve made. Luckily, when I first started learning about the stones themselves I collected a variety that I can now use in setting up some pictures. I’m not sure I need to have more stones. I’ll have to worry about this project after the festival!
Most of my bracelets are made with 6mm beads. I’m now getting more requests from guys (my grandson Ben, age 18, is often asking for a bracelet to help with a specific thing, like clarity and focus when he starts Penn State this fall.) So, I’ve started adding larger beads (8mm) to my supplies. Geez…it’s starting to add up! Not a cheap hobby, but so rewarding.
I did have a question from a friend…did I make necklaces? So far…no. But I thought I’d give it a try to see if my elastic was strong enough to handle a necklace of 6mm beads. I made a necklace of a repeating pattern of chakra stones and then made a matching bracelet:
It looked pretty, but was it comfortable?
It was more comfortable that I expected but I had to use over 75 beads…enough for 4 bracelets! Maybe if I had enough of the 4mm beads it would be worth it, but for now I think I’ll skip necklaces! If you’d like to see more of my bracelets, come find me at the Art in Orchard festival July 10-12, 2025! If you have questions or comments about this post, please just email me directly: maryjkisner@gmail.com.
Enough rain already!! We certainly have not had to water the garden for several weeks. Unfortunately, the plants also need sunshine! Bert has been keeping an eye on the plants and the focus has been more on fungicides and slugs. Today, the sun actually came out for a few minutes, so I put my old sneakers and slogged out to take some pictures. The grass is so tall my ankles were soaked in minutes!
I’ve pulled the first round of radishes and replanted. The first batch were yummy, but a few were a little spicy. The second planting is doing well.
I cut the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce a few days ago and we’re enjoying it in salads. The other lettuce is ready to eat. When I replant, I’ll stagger the plantings so it isn’t all ready at once!
The onions are crazy. We’re pulling them as we need them.
The small tomatoes…called Raindrops…are doing very well. They will be great in salads!
On my way up the hill to the other garden, I stopped to check out the pumpkins Bert planted by the wood pile. The fence seems to keep the rabbits away.
Up in the garden on the hill, the lavender stems are filling out.
The tomatoes are making flowers so there’s hope tomatoes will follow!
We can finally see the carrot tops! I was sure they had drowned!
Yay! We have bean plants!
Bert had to buy more zucchini seeds, but finally we have plants.
My beloved Echinacea have spread to fill up the space! Lots of potential flowers…and one daring to open all alone…for now!
I was outside for about 20 minutes…and then it rained AGAIN! And then the sun came out about an hour later…for a few minutes and it rained again. Geez!
If you have any comments or questions about our garden, please just email me. Every day I get about 100 spam comments in foreign languages. I don’t want to miss anything from a REAL person and I’d love to hear from you so use my email! maryjkisner@gmail.com
With more than 6 inches of rain over the last month, the garden is having a hard time getting started! We finally have a few days with some warm sunshine, so I expect everything will go crazy. Here are a few pictures to show you how things are doing today!
The dogwood trees in the front yard are finally in bloom and the blossoms are turning from an off yellow/white to a brighter white.
On the patio, I’ve pulled the first batch of radishes and replanted with new seed.
The lettuces…Little Gem and Black Seeded Simpson…are ready to be thinned (and eaten!). Yum!
Bert has been thinning the onions and eating them! Here’s how big they are now:
The cherry tomato plants are doing well, with blossoms showing their color!
Up in the garden on the hill, the established plants like lavender and echinacea are doing well.
However, the seeds for carrots, beans and zucchini are barely coming up…just too much rain. I’ve had to add some bean seeds to the rows because the birds were picking them out of the ground as they tried to sprout.
So far, one tiny zucchini plant has made it out of the ground! Somehow, the weeds are doing very well!
One final group of seeds/plants I had not included before…Bert started pumpkin seeds a month or two ago and decided to plant them right beside the wood pile…no fence at all. I hope they get big quick so the rabbits don’t see it as their own salad bar!
Hopefully, with the sun finally coming out, the garden will do well. Enjoy!
If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
My adventure into making scones has persisted for several weeks. I had never eaten or baked a scone before April, 2025. I had read about them in many novels set in Ireland and Scotland. Many folks seemed to love them. However, with all the baking from scratch I’ve done, I had never even tried to make scones! Pretty embarrassing!
With the need to provide some products for the Ladies Auxiliary to the Fire Company bake sales, and various ads from the King Arthur Baking Company, I decided it was time to give it a try. I was sure the scone mixes would make the whole process fool proof! Haha!
I ordered 5 different flavors of scone mixes. The mixes just needed an egg, 1/2 cup of milk, 1/2 tsp. of salt and a stick of butter. That was the easy part. Then came mixing up a VERY stiff, sticky batter. My hand muscle strength is not very good, so I’m sure the batter did not get mixed well enough. Then I had to struggle to pack the sticky batter into the ceramic scone pan.
When I baked them, the scones raised up and made a solid mass above the dividers of the pan. I ended up having to add minutes to the baking time…up to 30 minutes…and the bottom of the scones still wasn’t done! Gee…maybe something was wonky with my oven!
(Bert got an oven thermometer and is working on “calibrating” the oven temperature today. We’ve had this oven for 20 years and never knew we could do that!)
By adding time, I was able to get the scones cooked enough to get them ready for the bake sale! It didn’t seem to matter…people loved them and we sold out two days in a row at the Yard Sale (about 70 individual scones) and again at the Memorial Day bake sale (another 70 scones). Holy cow! I think we’ve got a hit…but now that the sales are over until September, I need to figure out a better way to make them!
I had an extra Cherry Almond mix (my favorite) so today I assembled the ingredients.
The jar of “sparkling sugar” from King Arthur gave the tops a nice sparkle.
First, I cut up the butter and worked it into small pieces before adding the egg/milk mixture.
Then, I added the egg/milk mixture. Since the mixing process is tough with my hand strength (or lack thereof) I decided to mix the batter up in my stand mixer. I ended up adding a little more milk than it called for just to get it to mix.
The dough was still VERY sticky, but I dumped it out onto the floured table and gave it a few quick kneads.
Then I patted it into a thick circle…about 3/4″ thick.
I used a pizza cutter to cut the circle into 8 pieces and put them on a cookie sheet. I sprinkled them with the tiny bit of sparkling sugar I had left.
Note to self: Next time use two cookie sheets to give them room to spread out.
I still had to add a few minutes, but I could get them off the pan without breaking apart…much better compared to the ceramic pan.
They tasted delicious, but now that Bert has the oven calibrated, I hope it’s a little more consistent with time. I’ve also ordered silicone scone pans to try. Maybe when I get the baking part figured out, I’ll try making them from scratch! Stay tuned!
Over the last 5 months I’ve had the opportunity to consider my health in depth. I’m 78 this year and this was the year I thought I was certainly old enough maybe I didn’t need to do mammograms anymore. I’ve never had a negative screening, so of course I wouldn’t live long enough for anything to be a problem! Haha! Never say never! Of course, my yearly check up was my wake up call.
January and February was spent with multiple mammograms to study a suspicious spot on the Xrays. In March, I had a “lumpectomy.” Surgery was successful and recovery was not too bad (just don’t ask Bert about all my complaints!). In April, I started on an estrogen-blocking pill (that will continue for the next 5 years). No side effects from the pill so far. Now in May, I just completed 7 radiation treatments. I guess I’m good to go on living! The details of all this are not necessary for me to describe, but I thought some of you might like to know what’s been happening over the last 5 months. No one really needs to know all the nitty-gritty…just know that the little round stickers they use to protect all those permanent ink marks they made on my body to line up for radiation were the most painful part of the radiation treatment! Must be the old, thin skin in a sensitive area that was the problem! Now that they have been removed, I can start healing!
Much of the last 5 months has been “hurry up and wait.” While I was waiting, I tried to stay busy and if you’ve been following along you’ve seen my activities with various projects. Making/baking things has filled my time around all the appointments. Many of you have blessed me with flowers, cards and sweet calls. Thank you so much! Just as radiation treatments started, I got a mystery box in the mail from my niece…my very own Emotional Support Sunflower! Really made me laugh!
Along the way I had flower surprises from many friends…even a pop-up card of flowers that looked almost like the real thing! My thanks go out to all of you that were thinking of me. I discovered a lot of my friends have gone through similar health issues, so if you are a woman…or have a mother, wife, sisters or daughters in your life, I encourage all of them to continue routine screening for health issues!
Here are some of the lovely flowers I’ve enjoyed these last few months. Thanks to all!
The garden is all planted. Yay! I’ll try to show you the pictures in the same general order each time so you can compare from one post to the next.
First, the planters on the patio are arranged like this:
Radishes:
Two kinds of lettuce:
…and the onions:
You can see the fenced garden beds just off the patio and garden on the hill from here. Here’s a close-up of the garden on the hill:
OK…back to the fenced beds just off the patio. The asparagus crowns we transplanted in the far bed are growing…we won’t cut them until next year, but it will probably do best in another year.
In the front bed, we planted our small tomatoes, called Raindrops. If they are as prolific as our cherry tomatoes last year, the neighbors may find bags of tomatoes on their front porches! We’re leaving the right bay of this bed empty for now. We might plant some flowers just for color!
The garden up on the hill looks good so far. My job this morning was to plant the last three sections with carrots, beans and zucchini.
The lavender is turning green. The rainwater tank is almost full and the rain barrels will top it off this weekend.
Bert planted the tomatoes yesterday! Proof…Bert does most of the heavy lifting in the garden.
The 6 plants on the right are the SuperSauce tomatoes from Burpee. The 6 plants on the left are called “Bodacious” and they are big and meaty!
The next section is planted with carrots. We have found the YaYa variety does well for us. Nothing to see yet!
The next section has green and yellow beans…yellow on the right.
And in the last section, 4 hills of zucchini. I know, we must be nuts to plant so much but last year we put a few plants in the beds where the asparagus is now. They just didn’t do well…and I spent all that energy last year anticipating a bumper crop so I was ready with many recipes to try. This year I’m really ready!
And, finally, my beloved Echinacea bed! I hope the bees are happy this year! I can hardly wait for the color!
So, that’s our garden this year. Each year we modify the choices of seeds, depending on how well it worked out the year before. Some things that we use only a little, like garlic…we buy from the local farmer’s markets. Other produce that I need a whole lot all at one time…I buy from the local Amish market because they usually have a lot at one time…like cucumbers when I make relish.
For the first time I tried to take a selfie up in the garden. My phone case with a cover makes it hard to handle with one hand. However, here’s proof that I actually planted some seeds in the garden today, although I’ll credit Bert with doing all the heavy lifting! Enjoy!
It seems awfully early in the spring to be talking about planting the garden. We’ve had hard frosts and even snow in May so we’re careful to protect the tender plants for a few more weeks. However, the grass is very green and Bert has had to cut it twice already! After the forsythia blooms, the next color I notice is the blooms on the Redbud trees. They are such a pretty pink but they don’t last long…just trying to get a decent picture is hard. But they do make me smile!
Here’s a close up of the flowers:
The Japanese Dogwood trees in the front yard are budding out. I’m looking forward to when this whole row of trees is in bloom!
Of course, the huge batch of onions in planters by the patio are doing well. They look crowded, but we’ll eat them as we thin them.
We saw our first hummingbird so we quickly bought our favorite begonia plants. The red flowers match the feeders and help attract the birds.
Kathy and Ben came to visit last weekend and brought us a bunch of asparagus roots from their property. The roots had spears that looked ready to eat…but we’ll leave them alone this year and give the roots time to get established. Since they are pretty vigorous roots, we may be able to get a meal or two out of them next year.
Bert set up the rain barrels last week and they are now full! It takes about 1/4″ of rain on the roof of the shop to fill the barrels. See the set up at https://marykisner.com/setting-up-the-rain-barrels/
Here is the big barrel up by the garden. If we plan it right, we can use rainwater all summer to water the garden. You can read about how Bert pumps the water from the rain barrels up to the large tank at https://marykisner.com/pumping-the-rain-barrels/
Our tomato plants are doing well under grow lights in the shop. Each day that isn’t too windy Bert sets the plants outside to harden them up. If it’s hot and sunny, he puts them in the shade by the shop so they don’t get sunburned.
Amazingly, Bert has been babying a tiny oak tree that sprouted from an acorn from the tree in our yard. That tree was also sprouted from an acorn that came from the Kisner hunting camp, so he’s pretty protective of the plant!
Up in the garden, I finally see the new growth in the row of lavender plants. I should have a nice crop of lavender to dry this year.
Here’s a close up of the new growth:
And of course, the Echinacea bed is going to town with new growth. The flowers really make me smile and make the bees happy!
So, that’s what’s happening on the first of May, 2025. Next week I hope to plant lettuce and radishes in the raised planters on the patio. In the meantime, we’ll be careful to protect the tomato plants…in the past, due to a late freeze in May, we’ve had to totally replace all the tomato plants because we planted too early. Live and learn! Mother Nature has an agenda of her own!
I should know better! When a recipe says, “20-minute Homemade Bread” I should be careful. It’s never 20 minutes! That’s the bake time. And of course, the picture looks nothing like what I produced. I’m always looking for new easy bread recipes…however, the lovely picture of a loaf of bread and the 20-minute headline seemed too good to be true.
Here’s the recipe that I found on Facebook:
I was able to mix it up by hand and made a round loaf like it suggested. It tasted OK but because it did not have yeast, it really was just a huge baking powder biscuit! It fell apart like a biscuit and did not rise very much.
I think the rest of the loaf will be crumbled and dispersed for the birds! I don’t plan to make that bread again!
I still wanted to make a single loaf of bread. So today I pulled out my recipe for English Muffin Toasting Bread. I wrote about it in November, 2023. It is not a complicated recipe and does not require kneading. It’s more of a batter bread with yeast. If you compare bake time…this bread takes 22-27 minutes. It tastes so much better!
Here is the recipe:
The instructions above are pretty clear. If you’d like the step-by-step pictures, please see my post…https://marykisner.com/making-english-muffin-toasting-bread/
This loaf turned out great and really tastes good!
I think I’ll stand by my tried-and-true recipes that I know taste good and aren’t too complicated. It’s a waste of ingredients and a waste of my time to experiment. (However…I’m always a sucker for words like “simple” and “quick.”) I’ll try to resist!
