Yardsauce and Butterfly Garden

I've been watching The Real Housewives of Cross Stitch, Priscilla and Chelsea on FlossTube (YouTube). They recently posted a tutorial to make "Yardsauce", a roasted tomato sauce that is easy to make and keeps great in the freezer for future meals.

Our tomatoes are starting to pile up so last night I made a batch of Yardsauce. Priscilla also has a blog post with the recipe. OMG, it is so easy to make and it makes the house smell SO GOOD!

Basically you throw all the ingredients in a pan (I lined it with aluminum foil for easy cleanup). You don't even need to peel the tomatoes - just dig out the stem part. Any kinds of tomatoes will do. Roast it on 425F for 45 min. to 1 hour until all the juices from the tomatoes are released. Did I mention how wonderful the house smelled whilst this was cooking? Let it cool, then puree in the blender or food processor and package for freezing. It's the easiest thing ever! It took about 5 minutes to prep, 5 min to blend after roasting and 5 min. to package.

The only modification to the recipe was to add some dried basil as I didn't have a whole lot of fresh, plus some fresh minced garlic and dried oregano. I have some oregano in the garden but was too lazy to go out to pick it and chop it.

I also threw in the few green tomatoes that had fallen off the plants - what the heck - why not? I got 4 containers (regular Bulk Barn sized) filled from this batch.

I the past, Skip and I have painstakingly skinned the tomatoes before processing them in the mill we have. It's very time-consuming and messy. This way of processing the tomatoes is SO MUCH EASIER! And it's all ready to use - already roasted and seasoned. There will be some spaghetti squash and spiral-cut zucchini in our future.

I released another monarch adult yesterday. That's 22 so far that I've released. There are 2 that will eclose today. I have 6 eggs that I retrieved from little milkweed shoots two days ago and two of them are going to hatch today.

It's been really fun to observe all the activity in the garden. Skip's giant (State Fair) zinnias are real attractors to butterflies and bees. This morning, a painted lady was nectaring for quite a while.

It wasn't until I was cropping this photo that I noticed the bee tucked inside.

The butterfly bush (buddleia) is also a big draw.

It's not a very tall plant but there are several branches full of blossoms which the insects really seem to like.

The bees really love the golden rod (pictured) and Joe Pye Weed.

Tomorrow Skip and I and a couple of friends are venturing to Garden Hill (north of Port Hope) for the annual monarch butterfly tagging and release event. We attended in 2014. It really inspired me to step up my annual monarch project and gave me lots of helpful ideas for raising them. This article appeared last year in the Northumberland News. There was a tribute to Ron Parrott who is pictured in my 2014 blog. He passed away about a month before last year's monarch release.

If you're interested, here's the info on tomorrow's event.

Maybe I'll see you there!