Today

And here we are to Wednesday. I am hopefully done with my recaps for the last couple of days. The garden is looking good. I think the zucchinis are done for the year. The plant kind of just died off. We have broccoli out there that is ready to be picked. I'm very excited about this:

savoy cabbage

I'm going to have to dig up Tim's grandmother's recipe for cabbage rolls, because it is the best recipe ever. I can't wait to use this cabbage!

Tim is very excited with his chili peppers. They are starting to turn red. I'm not sure what he's going to do with all of them. I'll probably snag a couple for making dal with but the rest are his babies.

nice hot pepper

We are still having a ton of tomatoes ripen. I just called Nancy to tell her to go pick some from the back gardens. They are ready and are going to start dropping. We still have a bunch that we need to use. I guess this weekend will be another canning weekend. Mom D brought me over some of her cucumbers and I'm going to get some dill pickles made, and we can make more tomato sauce.

monster sized tomatoes

The lettuce seeds that we planted on Saturday were up yesterday. All three types have sprouted and I'll let them get a little bit bigger before I thin them out. I guess they are really loving the cool August we are having.

row of Escarole

I know I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again. I think these are one of my favorite flowers and I hope that I've been able to save some of the seeds so that I can plant next year.

Gazanias...love them!

Tim and I just walked through the back gardens and were discussing the work we needed to do back there and guess what we found? Not only did we find two butternut squash, but we also found an acorn squash. I guess we got them both. They were free plants given to us at a nursery because they were just going to throw them out. They have taken over one of the beds completely back there but I'm excited to actually see squash on the vines now. I had my doubts.

Well, I think I'm caught up for this week. It's been busy but fun. Time to get back into a routine.

Oh, and Brian....I'm glad your tomato stopped growing sideways. You seriously crack me up...not necessarily when you call at 10 pm..but...you crack me up.

And Amy...don't pay attention to Tim. =)

I hope everyone has a great day!

Tuesday

*doing a Tuesday wrap-up on Wed.

Tuesday ended up being a great day. I had my doubts because when we got up it was dark and stormy looking out. Grandma was still here and we wanted to do something fun but it didn't look like the weather was going to cooperate. We decided to run to JoAnn Fabrics so that we could look around. I've been itching to sew again and have played with the idea of making my own dress to wear to my father-in-laws wedding in October. I picked out a pattern and some material. I got it for a steal at 5 bucks a yard. I'm going to make it and if it turns looking decent I'll wear it, if not, I have plenty of time to figure something else out.

a cute dress I hope

After the fabric store we came home and had a quick lunch. It was still pretty yucky looking out but the kids were bugging to do something with grandma before she went home. I had heard on the news yesterday that there was a fair north of here that was going on for, get this, the 151st year. That means the first year this fair was run was in 1857 (and yes, I used a calculator). It was about 50 minutes north of here. So, even though it was dark out we took a gamble and went for it. We headed for the Harford County Fair. I am so glad we did. By the time we got there (around 1 pm) the sun was out full force and it was feeling like a cool fall day. It was only 68 degrees and it was breezy and it felt great. I'm not normally a fair/carnival kind of person. Never really went to them as a kid. I always have concerns about fair rides and the safety of them and well, I don't like being around a lot of people. Some might call me anti social. The fair was really busy considering it was a Tuesday. It made me shudder to think what it will be like on the weekend.

Once we got in the kids immediately were drawn to the rides. I bought a few tickets and we scoped out the safest (least amount to fall) rides. They hit the carousel first.

Aidan approves of the carousel.

After the carousel we were able to talk them into walking around a little bit before we hit any more rides. We wandered in to where they had all the animals. We saw goats, sheep, cows, and pigs.

I don't think Aidan liked the smells.

The kids were losing their patience while Grandma and I were walking around looking at the crafts and things. Parts of it were kind of set up like a flea market. The kids each got Patchy a big rawhide bone and they each got to dunk a little boy by throwing a ball at a target. The food smells were starting to get to the wee ones and I had to get them food.

While we were walking around we stumbled on a bee/honey shack. There were gentlemen there talking about how to keep a hive and I picked up a catalog of bee keeping supplies, which I lost somewhere in my travels later. It was really neat though.

lots of bees in a hive

At this point the boys were losing their patience and wanted to get back to the rides. So, we headed back to let them do a couple more rides. First they went on the alligator roller coaster. They loved this ride and rode it twice, once in the front and then once in the back.

Connor looks scared on this ride...but he loved it.

The second time they rode the butt of the alligator.


They did a little fishing. Each of them won a stuffed animal that I know is going to end up in pieces all over the house once Patchy gets to them.


Fried Oreos, really? Ugh.

Monday

*doing a Monday wrap up on Wed

A butterfly on the butterfly bush next door. I think I'm going to have to get a butterfly bush to go with the Bee Balm bush I want.

Wow, this is going to be hard to remember back to Monday. I don't even know if there is anything I really have to say except thank you to my mother in law for coming over and watching the boys so Tim and I could have a date night. It was much needed and very much appreciated.

I'm in a "challenge" this month (the quit now challenge) and I had said I would quit eating out. So I fought with myself about whether or not we would go out, but it came down to this: it was our anniversary a couple of weeks ago and it's not often that we have a babysitter...so we took advantage of the situation. We were good though. We walked to the downtown area and shared a pizza and then went to go see Batman The Dark Knight. It was a good movie. It was kind of dark and disturbing and I'm really sad to see Heath Ledger play his last role in a really sadistic manner, but it was a good flick. I hadn't wanted to see it, but I knew Tim did so we went. It was a win win for all involved too because grandma took the kiddies to go bumper boating and go carting. They had so much fun and were raving about it even still today.

Oh, and I also have to rave about Ed's smoked pulled pork. It was delish. Thanks mom for bringing over the yummy food. And thank you for bringing over all the plants. Once I get them placed, I'll post pics of them. This is starting to make less sense as I go along because I'm really tired right now. I should get off of here before I screw something up.

Seventeen pounds.

Pounds that I lost? I wish. Tumor removed from butt? Nope. Potatoes picked out of withering patch? Ding ding. Yesterday morning I was out with Patchy and I thought, "hey, why don't you stick your hands down in there and see if there is anything. We had checked a while back and came up with these pathetic looking potatoes. But not yesterday. I pulled a plant out of the ground and loosened up the soil and three beautiful potatoes were laying there for me. I ran inside and showed Tim and then called Nancy. See? I was excited! After a fast breakfast, Tim and I went out and pulled up the entire patch of potatoes out by the tomatoes. The patch went from this:

scraggly potato plants

To this:

17 pounds of potato perfection

To this:

three rows of three different kinds of lettuce with Mylie watching over them

Needless to say we were very excited. We still have one more potato patch to pull, but we are going to wait a little bit. I am trying to figure out what to do with them all. I split them in half and gave half to Nancy and the other half I have in a brown bag ready to put into a dark cool spot so they will last longer. I left all the dirt on them because I've read that they last longer that way instead of washing the dirt off of them.

It was such a nice morning yesterday morning that we hit one of the gardens and went to town on the clean up. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of the veggie patches. It was the patio garden. I've been debating with myself and Tim about the mystery plant. I'm pretty sure it is a pumpkin plant. And while it's huge and taking over the patio and covered with blossoms, there is no sign of any fruit growing on it at all.

taking over patio

bountiful beautiful blossoms (with icky bug)

Tim thinks it came from a pumpkin that was genetically modified to not reproduce. Sad. So after a lot of thinking about it, we pulled it out. It was choking out some of the flowers we had planted earlier and was just crawling with those striped beetles. Tim chopped the hell out of it and threw it into our compost.

patio reclaimed

Once that was out of there, I went to town on weeding out the flower bed. I still need to work on the brick patio but it looks much better already. While I was weeding I freaked out when I touched this and didn't even know it was there until I looked again.

praying mantis

This thing is huge. It was just hanging there pretending to be a leaf of the plant and my hand touched it as I was pulling weeds around it. It gives me the shivers even now as I'm writing it. Next to it, I didn't photo it, was a hanging carcass of another one. She sucked the life out of it apparently. It was pretty gross, but the kids were fascinated. *shudder*

So while I'm pleased about the potato patch production and the clean up of the patio garden, I still have the garden beds to deal with.

the mess that is our garden

I'm not even sure where to start. It looks like we have a bunch of tomatoes to harvest again. The cabbage is growing into beautiful heads. There are a couple of kohlrabi left to be picked. There is a zucchini growing bigger. There are a couple of cukes hanging out and then the squash. Here's my problem with the squash bed. It too has a mystery plant in the bed. It looks like the pumpkin plant that we took out of the patio and it's running over the top of the other squash. I need to get in there and clear it out but it's going to be difficult telling which plant it which. They are all covered with blossoms. Then there is the mess of the brick pathways. They are inundated with grass and weeds. It's going to be an all day adventure I fear. Maybe what I'll do is enlist Tim to come out and help for a couple of hours this morning while it's still cool out. It's supposed to be warmer today than it has been for the month of August. Our high today is 81. Not too bad.

Lots to do today. I need to go start a loaf of oatmeal bread for Ethan. Nancy is going to send him a care package and I said I would make him a loaf of the yummy bread that I make all the time. I can do that now and while it's rising, head out to do some weeding. I hope everyone has a great day!

Is it Friday yet?

No, it's not. It's farmer's market Thursday and I'm skipping it today. I'm sending Tim there with a list and directions to NOT pick up any Amish baking this week. He is supposed to call and report his finds when he's done.

I got out early this morning and did some harvesting. Yes, we have tomatoes. There are still more on the plants but I left them to ripen a little bit more. I also got another zuke and some peppers. I think there is one more zucchini on the bush.

today's harvest

I haven't taken any pics of the gardens lately because I'm embarrassed by all the weeds. I should take a picture and post it and maybe it will shame me into getting out there and weeding. I keep saying "next weekend" and then something else comes up. Tim is on call this weekend so that means we won't be going anywhere this weekend and I'm not planning on any canning...maybe this weekend?

It dawned on me today that I haven't posted any pictures of Martin lately. I know you are all curious as to whether or not he's alive or not. He's very much alive and happy.

Martin!

Purple undersides

I love how on some of his leaves they are purple. He's covered in pretty little delicate flowers. I wish I could say the bonsai was doing as well. I think I'm going to give up on bonsais for a while.

So, everyone knows that I'm the queen of procrastination. I should be out cutting grass and picking up after Patchy. *mental note...don't give Patchy any more stuffed animals that he can gut out and leave stuffing all over the house.* Have I done any of that? No. Not yet at least. I have been finishing up the "classroom". I think we are pretty much ready for the official start of school in a couple of weeks. Aidan and I have done a great job in sneaking some classes in early but it's about to get interesting here with keeping both of the boys focused and doing their work.

our little classroom

Patchy sneaking it to see if there is anything he can chew

Connor's books

Aidan's books

Our desk

Patchy taking a break

I'm so glad that we have a room dedicated to the classroom. I think it makes it so much easier. The boys know that when they are in that room, it's time for school. In the house we used to live in we did school in the dining room and while it worked, it wasn't as easy. We always had school books and projects all over the place and Connor was easily distracted by other things going on in the home. Now, we all sit in this bright cheery room. I have to thank my mom and dad for the desk for the boys too. They got them cubbies and the door to put down on top of the cubbies. I'm glad I got a picture of it now while it's all neat and organized. I can guarantee that it won't look like this a month from now. I know to not even put that on my goal list for school. It's an impossible dream. But, it works for us. Plus, I can close the door when we're not using it.

Well, time to go out and cut some grass. It's gorgeous outside. I'm amazed by the weather we've had so far in August. It's noon and it's 60 degrees out. For August? Are you kidding me?! I am so not complaining though. It's perfection for me. I have windows open and a nice breeze is blowing through.

I hope everyone else is having a nice day!

Off the gardening topic.

No garden posts today. I haven't been out in the gardens for a couple of days because I've been in bed with a stomach flu. Today is the first day that I'm back up and moving around. Thankfully, the kids didn't destroy my house. They actually did really well and took care of themselves with only a minor dispute here and there. So today it was back to the grind.

I skipped a couple of days of school with Aidan because 1. I was sick and 2. it's not officially school yet. We got back to it today. He took his first math test and aced it. He's doing first grade math work even though he's in kindergarten. He did his reading lesson and we had fun doing that. Then came science. The lesson in itself wasn't bad. It was talking about physical characteristics and how to identify them and how to make sure you are moving with caution so as to not hurt yourself or someone else. The end of the lesson he was to color a picture of three kids on a slide. This is where Aidan has his melt down. He had one last week with a lesson too. I fear my son is a perfectionist. Last week he was learning to write the letter B. I showed him how to do it first. I drew it for him and had him trace it with his fingers and then I told him to write one just like mine. He took it too literally and because his B didn't look exactly like my B did, he started crying and it took me five minutes to calm him down. I tried explaining to him that of course my B was going to look different from his B because I have been writing much much much longer than he has. That didn't help him. He finally calmed down, but I could tell that it still bothered him.

Fast forward to the coloring today. Now those of you who know Aidan knows he considers himself the "artisit" in the family. He has always been very crafty and interested in painting and making things. I really thought he would have no problems with coloring and his art this year. I was wrong. After his lesson, when he found out he was to color the picture, his demeanor changed. He kind of slumped over and started to act depressed. I asked him what was wrong. He said it was going to be too hard. I said it's just a picture. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just do your best coloring that you can do. Tears start. He says he can't do it. I color one of the shirts on one of the kids in the picture and I go out of the lines and make it look a little sloppy and show him that I don't always get it right either. Well, what should have been a five minute project turned into 30 minutes of crying. It got to the point where I asked him why he was crying. And it went from the fact that it didn't look perfect to he was worried about the crayons breaking to the point that if all the crayons broke, we wouldn't have room to store them all. Oy vey. I finally got him calmed down and called break time. I'm not really sure what to do. He's so smart and is so eager to learn. I really thought that Aidan would be a cake walk in comparison to Connor for school. I hope that I can break Aidan of his perfectionism. I just want him to do his best job and not freak out if it's not "perfect". I suppose I'm going to have to go do some research and see if I can find anything to help him out. I want this year to be fun for all of us. That is my number one goal for the upcoming school year. Which, btw, I need to get my schooling goals down here pretty soon as the official start date is creeping ever closer. If anyone has any ideas on how to help Aidan, please share!

I'm going to try and get out into the gardens later today and I'm hoping Tim will cut grass for me tonight. Hint, hint! I hope everyone else has a fabulous day!

What do you do with all of these?

Tomatoes harvested last week.

Well, Tim made some more pasta sauce. He blanched all of them and peeled them, this time remembering to cut the stem out first. Then he asked "how can we take the seeds out?" and I remembered this (scroll down to thingamajig). Nancy had dropped this off a while back and I'm glad I remembered it. The kids have been waiting to mash something in it and they went to town. It made it so much easier to remove the seeds and pulp. It got a little messy but they had a blast.

Smashing Tomatoes (not to be confused with Smashing Pumpkins)

I was shocked at how much sauce we got out of those tomatoes. And the compost pot filled up quickly. Which btw, our compost is half full already. And you can see how it's turning into black gold at the bottom. Our gardens will be very happy next year!

Once the tomatoes were all sauced, Tim went to making his magic. He used everything out of the garden except the garlic. Which got me to thinking that I would like to try and grow garlic next year. He used zucchini, green peppers, garlic, basil and oregano. He ran the veggies through the blender so that Aidan wouldn't realize they were in there. Last time he added Parmesan cheese but this time we didn't. I wanted to can them and wasn't sure about the cheese. When we reheat a jar, we can add the cheese at that point, or not. He let the big pot of sauce reduce down until it got all thick and yummy looking and then I canned 6 pints of sauce. I processed it for 35 minutes in the water bath. At least I hope it was 35 minutes. I thought I had set the time, but apparently I didn't. But, I was outside talking to Debbie and Nancy for a good bit and I also got a bunch of lines done of knitting. They all sealed up almost immediately after taking them out of the water.

sgetti sauce!

While Tim was cutting stems and blanching and peeling tomatoes, I tackled a project in my notebook. It was brought on by the fact that I saw mouse poo in our pantry...and after digging around I found a dead mouse. Ugh. I didn't see what the little guy had been eating. Probably the dog food and Patchy's cookies. I moved them up to higher shelves and completely tore everything out of the pantry and reorganized it. I realized when it was done, that we don't have nearly the stuff in there that I thought we did. Time to start restocking the cupboards. Of course, that would explain why our grocery bills went from almost 200 dollars a week to 95 dollars. We were just eating out of the cupboards and the garden. I'll start restocking beans and stuff again this week.

clean cupboard...a little bare, but that will be remedied.

So, after a weekend of a lot of rain and a lot of canning, we are starting the week with more rain and cool weather. I have to go make a loaf of bread and work on some laundry. I'm hoping to get out into the gardens and do some weeding if it dries out a bit and I need to get some grass cut. I suppose I should get off the computer and go get started on one of these projects. Have a great day!