Author Archives: Eva

About Eva

Hi, I'm Eva. Thank you for stopping by. I live in Mendota, Virginia. If you like rural life in a country village, sharing decorating and DIY ideas, gardening, local and seasonal eating, food preservation, thrifting, and anything to do with honey, we have something in common.

Easy Strawberry Lavender Jam

Strawberry Lavender Jam Lid

If you’ve have not yet tried home canning, you are missing out. It’s both rewarding and satisfying to preserve food. I think many of us have an instinct to gather, prepare and store for winter.

Strawberries Talking

Yep–I do wanna jam with you! I made Strawberry-Lavender Jam over the weekend. The lavender added an extra dimension to the taste, and it was very easy to do. I followed the recipe on Ball Real Fruit Pectin (liquid) with the added ingredient of lavender. You need canning supplies and a basic knowledge of home canning to be successful with this recipe. The Ball Blue Book is the very best place to start. You can get all your home canning knowledge right there, and this would be a good first project.

Ingredients:

3 and 3/4 cups of crushed strawberries. I crushed them with a potato masher.

1/4 lemon juice

7 cups sugar

1 Tablespoon of culinary grade lavender

Prepare your waterbath canner, jars and lids. Prepare and measure the above ingredients. Combine crushed strawberries, lemon juice and sugar in an 8 quart saucepan. The depth of saucepan is necessary to keep the mixture from splattering and making a mess or making nasty red polka dots on your stirring arm. Ouch. I used the wrong size in the picture below, but on my next batch, I had corrected this mistake. Aren’t these pretty?

Srawberries

After you’ve got the crushed strawberries, lemon juice and sugar mixed, place the lavender in a tea infuser and drop it into your strawberry mix. If you don’t know what a tea infuser is, I’ve got one pictured below. I’ve been calling it a metal acorn all these years.

Tea Strainer Infuser

Bring your strawberry mixture with the lavender in the tea infuser to a rolling boil that cannot be stirred down over high heat. Stir frequently (like all the time).

Brew

Add the Ball RealFruit Liquid Pectin. Return to boil for one minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and skim foam, if necessary. (You may also put 1/2 teaspoon of butter or margarine to reduce foaming.) I recommend using a wooden spoon…I can’t prove this but it is so hot that I’m fearful a plastic spoon would melt.

Remove from heat, remove the tea infuser, and ladle hot jam into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe rims. Center lids on jars. Apply bands and adjust to fingertip tight.

Place filled jars in canner covered by 1 to 2 inches of water. Place lid on canner, and bring water to a gentle boil. Process ten minutes (some may have to adjust for altitude). Following ten minutes, turn heat off and let stand for five minutes.

Remove jars and cool. Check lids for seals after 24 hours. Mine sealed within five minutes. Each mix made about 14 of these 4 oz. jars of Strawberry Lavender Jam.

My Army

Once I observed my jams had sealed and set properly, I began thinking about what I wanted to do with them. Perhaps I should have thought of this first? There’s no way Mike and I will eat 40+ jars of Strawberry Lavender Jam….so I’ll use them as gifts, so I decided to make the jars a little fancier..

After a few minutes searching Pinterest for ideas, I went to the Avery.com website to see what was new, and I found round labels to fit my lids using Kraft paper. I ordered them from Amazon and this morning they arrived. While I’m supposed to be painting the bedroom, I’ve interrupted myself to make labels. Here’s the labels.

I followed the online design on Avery.com, selected Martha Stewart as my style (She is not my style but that was the name of the design –I think she’s an odd bird but in this case, I liked the embellishment) and within about 60 seconds, I had nine labels. Since they are adhesive, I then just stuck them on my jar lids. There is a pucker on the sides which I later learned I can rub out, but I’d already taken this picture. Sorry.

Strawberry Lavender Jam Lid

Don’t they look pretty all in a row?

Three Strawberry Lavender Jams

Tips:

Clean the tea infuser fairly quickly after you’ve used it. It’s metal, and there is so much sugar in this mix that it will set up and be very difficult to open. I had to open it while running cold water over it.

Don’t be tempted to double the recipe. Your jam may not set properly.

Beating Clematis Wilt the Mendota Way

I have never, ever had any luck with growing Clematis. My Clematis efforts have all resulted in wilt. I’ve tried different locations and different varieties. Same old wilt. About three years ago, I gave up. I dug the plant up and tossed it in the compost bin. It tried to come back, but I treated it like a weed and cut it off or tried to pull it up. Instead of Clematis, I focused my attention on this pink Mandevilla and the efforts were well worth it.

Florida Vine

But very near this Mandevilla, there was a Clematis vine that kept peeking out–and getting whacked off. I showed it no mercy. This spring, however, before I had an opportunity to beat it back, the Clematis vine was up taunting me.

Clematis Not Bloomed 2

The picture above shows a healthy vine, but I’ve seen that sort of thing before. Sorry…I’m not buying it. However, shortly thereafter….a little over a week ago…it finally bloomed here and there. Now, I knew the wilt was not far off.

Clematis

I posted on the Rivercliff Cottage Facebook page, and my sister, Pat, gave me very specific instructions on how to keep this thing from wilting. Per Pat’s advice, I don’t speak to it, look at it, water it, or pretend that I think it’s going to stay this way. I only mention that I’m planning on cutting it down when I walk by, but I do so in speaking with an Iris. You have to be very careful when dealing with Clematis. They will taunt you with their beauty and when you fall in love, they wilt. So…just for the record…I hate this plant. It helps that I have some Facebook friends that hate it with me….Lisa Griffith confirmed that she hated my Clematis, too. She was joined by Gayle Whitson who suggested I replace it with a satellite dish. Kay Elliott agreed it was hideous! I mentioned this all to the Iris with the Clematis lurking and listening nearby.

Thus far, this is working. Here’s the Clematis today…more blooms and still no wilt.

Clematis Sunday

Shew! That is one ugly plant.

Half Dead Plants At Lowe’s

I love Lowe’s. It is surely my True Love. Here’s some of the great great deals I’ve got from the Half Dead Plant Rack. Never pay retail!

These were purchased way back at the end of March. They had been bitten by frost and had brown and white spots on some of the leaves. The items in this pot were marked 50% off. I brought them home, potted them, and just watched the temperature at night. I had to move them in the garage once or twice, but I’m really enjoying them.

Pot of Flowers

I really wanted some salvia because the bees love it. I’d bought three one-gallon pots of salvia at Home Depot when it was 4/$12. I wanted more but didn’t get back in time, and I saw it was up to $5.98 yesterday. No way. Today I got some for $2. It was on the Half Dead Plant Rack for $3 but the manager said it looked so pitiful that he only charged me $2. I’m wondering..was it the plant looking sad or me? Who cares!

Salvia Ugly

I trimmed the dead leaves and broken stem off and replanted my $2 salvia in a “$10 hole” of dirt. It’ll do great, and it’s a perennial so I’ll see it again next year.

Salvia Planted

Earlier in the week I scooped up five Bachelor’s Buttons (Scabiosa) for $1 each. Nothing was wrong with the Bachelor’s Button plants except that the blooms had faded. They will come back. The yellow plant beside it had been $5.98 and I got it for $3–I felt only so/so on that purchase.

I wanted a few annuals and last week’s special was four six-packs for $5. I saw my brother-in-law and sister’s healthy plants, and I was green with envy. I went over to Lowe’s thinking I’d do the four six-packs for $5, too. However. the Vinca I wanted…well all of the six packs had one dead flower in them, but they were not on the Half Dead Plant Rack. I asked Lowe’s if they could discount the six pack since I wasn’t really getting six flowers. They did!! Yay! I got the ~~six-pack~~ five flowers for 50 cents. I almost skipped out of Lowe’s.

Vinca

Mike is getting embarassed to go to Lowe’s with me. Seriously.

Feeling Very Blue

I have hated the color of our bedroom since the day I came home and saw it was painted. Our bedroom had been a seafoam/teal green, and I was wanting something softer but had not made a decision. Mike got tired of seeing paint chips all over the walls and one thing led to another, and I ended up with a bedroom that looks like cold coffee. You’ve not seen many pictures of this bedroom on this blog. I hate it.

I’m going blue. I’m going to paint the bedroom the top blue blob in the picture below. It’s Sherwin Williams Aqua Sphere. This picture makes it look a little lighter than it is. It has more gray in it.

UGLY Paint

Here’s the paint chip.

aqua sphere

We’ve budgeted for this some time ago. I’m not going to do too much. It’s going to be painted, I’m purchasing a new lamp and a new rug. I have lots of bedding that works with this. I’ve slipcovered a chair white which will also go in here. The only thing that’s not done is the hardwood floor redo, but we’re waiting a year for that because of our dog. Lucky will most likely be at the Rainbow Bridge next year, and it makes more sense to do it then.

Speaking of blue, I went out to work with our blueberries a bit this morning. We have six blueberry plants in three raised beds. Three are newly purchased in 2014, and three were replanted after they lanquished in bad soil conditions for three years. The raised beds have rich compost with a healthy mix of peat moss for the acidity the plants need. The tricky part is that they also must be watered often at this stage.

These are two of the new plants. The one on the left is blending in with the grass.

Blueberry 1 and 2

I’m the water girl…water…water…water. Every day I’m feeding sugar water to the bees then watering the blueberries and other plants. Here’s the old blueberries, and I’m really pleased to see new leaf growth. There’s a few berries trying to show up, too.

Blueberry 5 and 6

Following taking these pictures, I mixed in the acidifier and some granulite matter that holds water. This mixture is in the drip line around the plant and down in the soil about two inches.

Acidifier

Finally, look at what is in my garden. A clematis isn’t that special, but my clematis always get the wilt. I still don’t think this one will be here next week. Bet she’ll start to wither.

Clematis

This plant has been here for years, but I gave up on it and each year, I’ve tried to dig it up. It’s very determined, and I’ll be really excited if it continues to flower and not wilt. The soil is completely different than it was when this plant first went in the ground. Since them, there has been several inches of compost added annually.

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage. So much mystery in these posts!! Will that clematis wilt? Will the blueberries live? Will she really get the paint on those walls?

Hope you have a great weekend.

George Hendricks’ Wooden Box

There will be a wedding in June at the Farm on Barnrock Road (Helene Holbrook’s Mendota farm). It is going to be so special. It’s Delaney’s special day, but it’s an event that many of us have an interest in. There’s been a huge clean up around the farm recently. Discoveries were made.

What on earth shipped in this box from Interstate Hardware and Supply? Someone suggested dynamite. It’s not crazy…there is a pond on the property, and there is so much rock everywhere. I’m sharing the picture below. If anyone knows what might have been in this box shipped to G. W. Hendricks in Mendota many years ago, please let me know. I just realized I failed to take a picture of the opposite side. It says Interstate Hardware and Supply.

Hardware Hendricks

It says “hardware”, but I wonder what was so important it had its own crate? What a cool find. There were actually two crates.

Hendricks 2

In a nod to the history of this place, these boxes will be on display during the wedding. This wedding has created so much fun and activity. There is chalkboarding, mowing, planning and preserving. The Spring House will be where the drinks will be served. Cool, isn’t it? On the interior, there’s a trough that was used to keep things chilled in the old days. It’s been bleached clean and the old trough will be full of ice keeping things chilled for the wedding party. This Spring House is back at work! Amy Statzer will be bartending and making sure everything is in order in the Spring House.

Spring House

Ahh…I can’t wait. It’s going to be so pretty. Pinterest who?

Walking Down Swinging Bridge Road 2014

Lately I’ve been thinking about the hidden gems in my life. I’m walking today on the road in front of my house looking for things I normally fail to notice. Cars are just too fast.

I started at Jeff and Missy’s barn. Right away I see things I’ve been missing. This barn was built a long time ago as it’s got the stacked stone foundation. See the wreaths? They are barbed wire, and I love the “hoop” on the side. Basketball in Mendota!

Jeff's Barn 1

Another view of this pretty barn…

Jeff's Barn

This road looks lonesome but it’s far from it. I hear the river running, woodpeckers, crows, crickets, dogs and cows. The crows are the worst! It looks like I’m walking through a nice, restful salad instead of a bunch of screeching crows. My nickname was Crow in 7th grade. I wonder why? It must have been my shiny hair.

Swinging Bridge

There is another reason I’m walking with my camera. Something special is happening on Swinging Bridge Road. Marck and Margie Dean are working with the American Chestnut Foundation to restore the mighty chestnut. They are close…very close…to a blight-resistant American Chestnut.

The babies…the tiny seedlings…are here. Carefully protected…guarded…monitored…and in the case of Marck and Margie, the seedlings are also “loved”. They could not have found better caretakers.

Chestnt

This tree was the most important tree in the Southern Appalachians. It could be again. It sustained families and wildlife. In a world of global warming and uncertainty, I have a bit of hope when I look at the small seedings down the way on Swinging Bridge Road. I hope you feel the same way.

Patty does. She’s guarding them. She apologizes for the bad haircut. It’s a work in progress.

Patti

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.

Five-Gallon Bucket Tomatoes Year 2

Last year Mike and I were getting ready to plant tomatoes, and he said “why don’t we put them in these five-gallon buckets and keep them near the house?” And we did. I didn’t anticipate that so many people would be interested. Well over a thousand people viewed that post, and when I look at “key words” that lead people to RiverCliff Cottage, I see that there is still an interest.

We put out three more this year. Some with holes drilled in the bottom; some with holes drilled in the sides of the bucket. I love just stepping outside and grabbing a tomato. The only modification this year is that we used a garden soil that will retain moisture. I didn’t think this was necessary last year, because they love dry soil. However, not parched soil!

Tomatoes 1

Here’s all three looking nice and fresh early this morning in the shadows from the garage. I’ve already hung sheets on the line, too. Do you have a clothesline?

Tomatoes 2

I’m trying cucumbers now. The first year I grow cucumbers in a new place, I have less issue with cucumber beetles, so I thought by putting them in buckets, I can make this easier each year.

Cucumbers in Buckets

We’re getting ready to start a new project here at RiverCliff Cottage. I’m going to pick up two paint samples to brush on the bedroom walls to see which one looks best. I’ve had pink, green, yucky brown (current) and yellow in the bedroom but never blue. I’m ready for a change. This should take place in 48 hours, but with the way we do things, I’m betting two full weeks until we get this room finished.

Edible Plants In Mendota

I’ve had this grapecart for years. Like almost 20 years. WOW! It’s an antique.

Grape Cart R

Do you see the edible plant in it? Look close…

Flowers With Strawberry

Yum. It’s strawberry time at Mann’s Farm in Scott County, Virginia. Are strawberries in season where you are?

Strawberry 1

Here’s some more of what is growing here at RiverCliff Cottage…Blueberries in the new section of raised beds are coming along nicely. This is the first year for the ones in the picture. They are sleeping. Next year, they will be creeping, and finally, on the following year, they will begin leaping.

Blueberries 050414

Potatoes are up. Yukon Golds…

Potatoes 051414

We’re about sick of eating lettuce, but we’ll keep it up as long as it’s here.

Lettuce and Basil

And yesterday we planted three raised beds with these…

Mountaineer Half Runners

I keep returning to my apiary since last week I had the great fortune to catch a swarm of bees by doing nothing but setting a “nuc” trap beside the hive with a little lemongrass oil on a papertowel. Read about this big surprise here.

Nuc

Since then, I am wearing a path out there going to see if this will happen again. Over and over and I keep returning with my head hanging low. Apparently, this must be like lightening striking twice or winning the lottery twice. It ain’t gonna happen.

Searching for Some Green

Today I had my long-awaited appointment with Danette Mayfield who is making slipcovers for me. She is one hard lady to catch! However, I’m having a little more done than what I’d planned on, so I was thinking how I’d pay for it. Looking for some green!

It was on the riverbank…but not exactly what Danette is looking for in return for her labor….

The Nursery

It was over in Steve McCroskey’s field…. this is pretty and John Deere should be paying for this picture, but they haven’t called…and I didn’t take the picture anyway…my friend Helene took this. In fact, she took the one above it and below it, too!

First Hay

I might make a little green on some honey later this year, but that’s later. They sure are sweet. That’s me. Bee mama…talking to her little mean pets. Mike looking on thinking he’s married to a crazy person.

Mama and her bees

But I did end up with a little green finally today thanks to my pals Oscar Harris and Dale Jett…they ran into a musician friend who needed a place to stay for the weekend and remembered the guesthouse at RiverCliff Cottage. BINGO! Slipcovers are paid for!! Thanks guys!!

Dale,_Teresa_&_Oscar_Picture

Back in Business and Why Do I Live Here?

We are back in the honeybee business. My brother-in-law, Gerald, was discouraged coming into the early spring, because he was down to one hive. I had two hives but one was very weak. I so wanted to keep going…I’m always optimistic…but I knew without his help, I could not do it. Mike has many good qualities but he is afraid of bees. He likes them because I love them.

So you can imagine how happy Gerald and I are as we come into May, we now have six hives. We’re talkin’ honey..talking next year…watching our bees settle in. Our two hives remain strong, and our weak hive has been requeened. We have three new hives from catching swarms. God seems to be smiling down on our efforts and encouraging us.

Welcome Hive Number 6! It’s two deep-hive bodies, and that’s sugar water with Honey Bee Healthy for a little extra help for their housewarming. Our babies are buzzing!

Three Hives R

And now for the second part of my post. Why Do I Live Here? This question was asked recently.

I shared something with some visiting friends about a recent event that bothered me. I was at Cheddars on Exit 7 in Bristol and someone at the table near us requested a different waitress before being served because the waitress working that area was Black. The swap was made. It turned my stomach. I didn’t realize people felt that way in 2014. The waitress was matter of fact about it and said it happened occasionally. Does Cheddars need the business so bad that they accept this from customers? I probably won’t go back. They will have to have their racists customers keep them in business; not me. My friends were appalled and asked “why do you live here?” It caught me offguard. I didn’t answer them as I should have.

First, I think most people are like me–not like those who were seated at the table near us. There is some bad everywhere. When I was in Alpharetta working, I stepped out from the hotel one evening to go to Bahama Breeze to have dinner. I was alone and within spitting distance of the restaurant. It was dusky, but not dark. The hotel employees insisted I call them to come pick me up when I was through, and they stood outside and watched me walk across the parking lot to get there. Really. Maybe they were making a big deal about nothing to make me feel welcome and secure at their hotel. I’m not sure.

Perhaps it’s that way here, too, and I’m just naive. I do know that if I drive into Mendota, which is 18 miles from a grocery store, and my car breaks down, I’m more likely to have help from someone or a fair idea of whose door I’m knocking on. We’re not perfect, but I prefer to live here. I’m still trying to think of the right answer to my friends’ question so that I don’t sound like I’m condemming another lifestyle above my own, but I don’t want anyone to think I do not prefer to live where I live. I like to visit an IKEA but it’s not important to live near IKEA! Ha ha! The reason I started this blog was to answer that question. I’m not sure that I’m doing a very good job of it. I want to share the sweetness of my rural lifestyle.

So much for seriousness. Here’s some simpler reasons….my friendship garden. Plants that folks around here have just given me “starts” from. Friendships are more likely to be forever here–not until the moving truck takes us to our next assignment. These are Katie Harris’ irises that probably started in her father’s garden. Each spring they remind me of that family. Katie, her sister, Lisa, and I were sisters growing up. We all live here now. By choice.

Irs by Katie R

And there’s another special garden friend from someone I love. It’s from my True Love (Lowe’s). Got most of these off the half dead plant rack a few weeks ago. Look at them now! They are surely not half dead plant flowers anymore!

Half Dead Plant Flowers