Junque Yard - My Daily "Salads"

I call them salads. I don't know what else to call them. They don't have lettuce or spinach or any leafy greens, though, so I don't know if they count as salads.

I'm gonna officially call them my Junque Salads, because the ingredients change with whatever I have floating around in my fridge, along with whatever I harvest from my garden.

Cucumbers are a must. I will be picking my first from the garden this week. I have my eye on two very sweet looking cukes that are just starting to plump up.

Banana peppers are a usual staple. I've been harvesting them for a week or so now. I hate hot and mild ones, and both are yummy.

My purple bell pepper plant is going gang busters! I can't believe I've got colored peppers already this summer.

I bought a bag of scapes from the farmer's market two weeks ago, and I'm still using them. OMG the best of both onions and garlic, in a little green tube. NOMMINESS!

Carrots are a must, and I always try to have some in the house. The carrots I planted a couple of weekends ago haven't started making an appearance yet, but when they do, their thinnings will make for yummy greens in my salads.

Green beans, broccoli, onions, kohlrabi....whatever else is hanging around gets chopped and thrown into the mix.

Dressing is simple, a little apple cider vinegar, a little olive oil, and a lot of spices. I'm partial to a little bit of salt, pepper, oregano, and Mrs. Dash.

You might ask, "Why no leafy veggies?" To which I answer, because this is what I take to work, silly person.  And I don't want to eat wilted veggies for lunch!

And you might say, "So why don't you leave off the dressing and mix it when you go to eat it at lunch time?"

And I'll reply, "Don't bore me with petty details, you whippersnapper!

The honest answer is that I get bored of leafy veggie salads quickly. This way, I can make it a day or two ahead of time, and have a few meals out of it. The dressing acts as a marinade, and all the veggie's and spices' have blended flavors.  I just throw a couple of slices of turkey or chicken breast on the top, and I'm ready to go to work with little to no effort in the morning.

It's all good.

Junque Yard: Things. They are a'Blooming!

'Maters! They are a'comin'

Tiger Lillies and the season's first Black-eyed Susans.

Day Lillies

Tiger Lily - close up

First Cukes of the season. Thanks to my neighbor, who gave me the starts

Banana Peppers...my favorite

Purple Bell Peppers, ready for picking.

One more tiger lily, because I love them...

More Junque Yard...garden stuffs

I was playing with instagram today, and here's some photos I took:

this is Muffett, sunning herself.

Rainbow Swiss Chard and baby Spinach. Yum!

Strawberries are coming!!

this is a rogue iris. I didn't plant it, but it popped up this year.  My mom thinks a squirrel planted it for me.  Surprise!

My Columbine is blooming like mad. However, all the flowers point down, and look like death flowers.  Does anyone know if this is normal for them? it's the 2nd year the flowers are doing this.  But when you lift them up, they are actually very pretty with little yellow centers.

Junque Yard - BUNNIES!

  What a weird week here at the mini-micro-ranch.  We have finally had more sun, and less rain, and so we have started removing the straw mulch and weeding the raised bed gardens. DaHubster has done the lion's share of that as he's home in the afternoons.  One day last week, he and our dog were outside weeding, when the dog started sniffing very interestedly at a patch of garden that hadn't had the mulch removed yet.  He noticed that she would sniff at the pile of straw, and then noticed the straw would bounce and move. Not sure what he'd find, he gently removed some of the straw on the top to find a rabbit nest, or warren, with baby bunnies inside all peering up at him.

He put our dog in the house, and recovered the warren. She would chase them if they ran, and think they were would great chew toys.  He showed me when I got home from work. They were so cute! We couldn't figure out how many there were in there, and we toyed with the idea of chasing them out of the gard (the mom had picked the smack dab-in-the-middle of our long bed for her babies).  

The next day, he was out there weeding again, and noticed a bad smell, he was worried that they had been caught and eaten, so he looked inside the nest. there was movement, but at least one of them had definitely passed away.  We wondered if he should remove the dead one, but we ultimately decided to leave them alone, and hope that the mother would come and remove the live ones or the dead one herself.

The day after, we checked the next again, and it was completely empty, so we figured they had found other accommodations.

Then we started seeing the babies around the yard. They would pop up here and there.  They apparently were of the age to leave the nest, but they were so small! I managed to take a couple of pics of them when we found them hiding in the grass or something. I think at one point we counted 3 of them.

One night I was out late, and I heard something large out in the yard, and I had a feeling that it was something that was hungry for baby bunny. The next morning, we found what was left.

That day we have fun with the remaining  bunnies.  We didn't hassle them, but they were friendly enough to come close to use. I will admit that I petted one on it's widdle head.

Slowly over the week, though we have seen them less and less. I fear one got shut into a neighbors garage. We haven't seen them for a few days now. I'm hoping they are hiding in the tall grass, growing bigger. They were so cute.