Category: Gardening

Hawks and Eagles

I’m not sure if it is because the winter has been particularly cold or the local lake is drained and the ecosystem is disrupted … but we’ve never had a problem with hawks and eagles until this year. For most of the year, the buzzards keep them away. But this month! We lost a duck to a hawk — I came around the corner and saw the thing eating a duck. A week or so later, two ducks were missing and big feathery spots were in the duck yard. We put a small radio tuned to a talk station out in the duck yard — which seems to have helped there, but we lost two chickens today. I think a rooster tried to rescue the hen and was taken out. So Anya spent the day making scarecrows for both the duck and chicken yard. I mounted old CDs around the fence.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Dark Cherries and Almond Flour

Anya made me birthday cookies! I wanted to save the recipe because they turned out really well.

 
Ingredients:
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup almond flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup maple syrup
  • 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup frozen dark cherries, roughly chopped
Instructions:
  1. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, almond flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
  3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the softened butter with the maple syrup until well mixed. The mixture will be looser than a typical creamed butter-sugar mixture due to the syrup.
  4. Mix in the Greek yogurt until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined. The dough will be a bit softer due to the syrup and yogurt.
  6. Gently fold in the chocolate chips and frozen dark cherries until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
  7. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie to allow for spreading.
  8. Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and the centers are set but still soft. If you made really big cookies, this may be more like 20 minutes!
  9. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Phlox

We have wild phlox that is purple and we have wild phlox that is white. But every now and again we get one that is white with purple stripes, and I love those. Anya dug this one up from the field and planted it in my bee garden last year, and it is huge this year. And still has the striped flowers that I love!