Progress

The middle of summer is here and our night blooming cereus is ready to put on it's show.
When I was a child, this was an event at my grandmother's house.  She had a huge plant potted in a large galvanized washtub.  There were sometimes forty or fifty buds on the monster which was about 5 feet high.  My father's family would all come to visit and we stayed extra late to see the amazing flowering.

I don't have room for such a huge plant so I keep mine pruned back to window-sill size.  And I'm perfectly happy with just a few blooms on a summer night.  The picture was taken about 10 p.m. with a flash.  The blooms are about six inches across.

Mid summer is also zucchini time.  They are growing like weeds and get to the size of a caveman club before you know it.  We try to pick ours young and of medium size, but it's hard to keep up with them without harvesting daily.

I love squash dipped in batter and fried in butter.  I could eat a ton of it but have to use restraint.  This year I decided to try getting the same kind of flavor with a slightly less caloric recipe.   This is my version of zucchini pancakes.

1 medium zucchini, finely shredded and squeezed to remove most of the water
2 eggs
1 T. oil
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp. Italian herb blend
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup Bisquick (or flour with 1/4 tsp. baking powder)

Shred the zucchini either by hand or in the food processor.

Squeeze out as much water as possible.

Mix all ingredients together.  The batter should stick to the zucchini and mound up on a spoon.  If it seems too runny, add more Bisquick.  If it seems too stiff to spread out on the griddle, let it sit for about 5 minutes and it will start to loosen up.

 Drop heaping spoonfulls onto a griddle or frying pan sprayed with cooking oil.

Fry till golden grown on bottom, then flip and do the other side.
Dig in!
One batch makes about eight pancakes.

When the workers left on Friday the foundation walls were finished and they had filled the dirt back in against the foundation.

Yesterday they brought lumber to start the framing.  By the end of the day, we had WALLS!

Our contractor is a young Amish man.  The Amish have elevated this building thing to a science.
They started by putting in the floor joists and covering it with plywood.  Then to my amazement, they unloaded the wall pieces from a flatbed trailer.  The walls had all been constructed last week in their shop and all they had to do was lift them up, sit them in place and fasten them together.  And everything fit perfectly!

The first piece in place.

Zip's bedroom walls.

Continuing on.

Almost finished.

We are having the outside of the kitchen sided and re-roofed at the same time so it all looks like it fits together.  You can see how badly the outside kitchen walls need to be re-done.

Being a person who is afraid of heights, the way these men walk around on the tops of the walls just amazes me.

The roof trusses on the flatbed truck.

Today they put the trusses in place and applied the plywood and black roofing paper.
The interior wall studs are done.  A few windows are in.
Things are moving along really well.  It's looking like a house.

I didn't take pictures today because it was so blasted hot that I didn't even want to go out in the late afternoon.  But hopefully will get some tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by.