Artist

I am a bit of an artist. I dabble in ink on paper. Original prints.





One example below....

Check

baby check, baby 1 2 3

Anyone reading this?

Testing

Love these kids...

total mom post, but I really do love these boys

Metal Eater

Baker is very fond of writing stories. He can't actually write, but he tells me the story outloud and then I write as fast as I can to capture the story. He also illustrates his stories.

He likes to write stories that involve some type of recycling and also any "potty talk" he can slip in there.

Thus this story about the Metal Eating Dinsaur Monster:

Yeah, I know.

It's been a long time since I posted। No good excuse। Same old excuses। We are well into Fall right now, so the garden posts will be quiet for a while। We celebrated 2 birthdays around here last week. Jared and Arden. Arden is now 3 and Jared is 35 going on 15. We had a beautiful weekend to celebrate birthdays. The odd 60 degree days in November fell perfectly for us so we could have some outdoor parties. Wonderful to say the least. I didn't have to clean the house!

Keeping this short and sweet. Wanted to post some videos of the boys. First is a clip of both of them riding their UrbanX big wheels. Can't give a high enough rating on these bikes, the boys love them. Thank you to Grandpa Arnie and Grandma Di for buying one for each boy on their 3rd birthday. By next year Arden will grow into his, for now he is happy to keep up with Baker.
They Bike...



They also dance...

Busy Day.

There was a rumor that we would get a frost on Thursday of this coming week. So we made a good effort today to get as much harvested as possible. Of course now we have reason to believe that was just rumor, there won't be a freeze...but oh well...we got a lot done!

Jared and the boys helped.

The onions were done drying by the barn:

And a beautiful end to the day...Arden and Jafar passed out in bed.

Busy weekend! Tomatoes, berries, and flowers Oh My!

Tomatoes of all colors are ready in the garden. I am harvesting vast amounts each day. Here are some pictures from Friday's harvest:

We spent a good part of this morning at our friend Joan's house. She has a beautiful garden and lots of raspberries that she let us pick! Yum!
Thank you Joan!!

After picking and also enjoying a nice lunch at Joan's we headed to Rising Sun Farm to buy some eggs and maple syrup. If you haven't been to Rising Sun... you should. A local organic farm with a wonderful supply of all things grown right there.

Right next store to Rising Sun is the White Pine Apple Orchard. Another local organic treat. This is a farm you should absolutely visit. Organic apples are hard to find locally, and wow do these farmers earn their money. The owner of White Pine, Keith, is a gracious friendly man and full of knowledge. The apples can't be beat!
Keith's tractor-

When Arden was napping upstairs (a miracle in itself) I had time (another miracle) to do some work with my pressed flowers and leaves. Jared was kind enough to build me a huge press that will surely increase the number of dried items in the near future.

Here are some of the items I placed between laminate sheets. Now, what will I do with them????

On other things and growing too

Where I sleep.

I have opinions on where I sleep, shower, and in general relax. When traveling and selecting a hotel/motel I have minimum standards. Yes, I read the feedback online at every site I can find including TripAdvisor(the one I like most), yahoo, hotels.com, and in addition I rely on opinions from people I know who live in the area or have stayed at locations in the area. Sounds logical. I think perfectly logical?

Of course other people have differant standards. So, the less scientific part is where I take what they say and then apply to what I know I can tolerate and voila! I make a decision. Not a problem in any way. I decide where I will sleep, shower, and in general relax.

No issues with all of that- right?

WRONG.

Apparantly if you travel for business, leaving the comfort of your own home and family... in order to represent your company. In exchange for that you get...nothing. Well, you get behind in your everyday work, you get a larger daycare bill, and you get stress. But also...and here's the kicker. You get no say whatsoever in where you sleep, shower and in general relax.

Quick logical solution. Yes, look at me being all logical again.

Logical solution= I pay the differance in cost between the hotel they pick and the hotel I pick.

No one loses. All is good.

WRONG.

Everyone and their brother (no really) gets in involved and we will meet about it again on Monday.

Oh and if they agree to that logical solution you can add to the list of things I get for going on the trip- add lose more money so that you can stay in a place you are comfortable in.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

New topic.

Ragweed is kicking my ass this week. I have made a drowsy friend named Benadryl. Yes, I have tried all of the perscription stuff it does not work for me. These allergies are limiting my time in the garden which is sad since the days are numbered. Fall is in the air. 42degrees last night! That is too close to freezing for me. Doubt my tomatoes love it either. Most of them are still avoiding turning color. Here is a shot of yesterdays harvest:

Also spent some time yesterday freezing broccoli, cauliflower, and making basil pesto. And one final round of bread and butter pickles (yum, and thank you to Pearl for the recipe!).

Final picture of the day, had a fun night at our friend Nora/Brent/Blake/Paige's house last night. Kids played, hurt themselves, ate pizza, watched Spongebob, and were very loud. Grown-ups drank, ate pizza, and were very loud. A good night. These folks live out in the country and are surrounded by some beautiful land on which cow's graze. This particular cow and I had a staredown- in insured him I had no plans to eat or wear him and we came to an understanding so he posed for the picture:

Camp, Garden, Eat

August has been a busy month. Feeling the end of summer and the rag weed. Had a wonderful time at Pizza at the Farm with friend Pearl, Dave, and Joan.

The garden continues to produce, but the tomatoes are slow to ready. Put up a fair amount of pickles, dill and bread/butter around 18 quarts.

And of course a camping trip with our friends Mary, Dan, Lily and Sam. We headed to Merrick State Park- which should be named Poison Ivy State Park.


A good August. Wish it wouldn't end. School starts for Thing 1 next week already!

Can't stop...

Starting the fall planting- carrots, cabbage, arugula, spinah, turnip, radish, lettuce, chard.
Well actually planning to start the fall planting. So far I planted carrots in the cold frame....and we have a lead on a hoop house for the rest. Just need to plan the space and figure out how we will regulate temps during the winter months.

We enjoyed a hot and mosquito filled night in the garden....here are pictures to prove we were out there..but it was beautiful none the less.

Castor

Another good night in the garden.

I LOVE the garden.

Things are going very well in the garden!

stuff and things

Highlights:
got a new bike
zuccini
and hot weather upon us= tomatoes soon...I hope.

dance party usa in our family room

Kitten doing her thing...

Huck Finn?

My name is blue sky...

Are you still reading? anyone - anyone? I wouldn't blame you if you deserted me....this is my way of boring the riff raff so only my true readers are left. Yep, you bet.

Where are you Katy?

I have been busy with work, not at all my favorite task.
However have taken some time during the off hours to have fun. On Tuesday night we went to Pizza at the Farm in Stockholm with our friends Joan and Dale. Incredible. All around perfect. We drove there in a beautiful Midwestern summer storm. Passing through the same system 3 times during the drive we experienced heavy rain, small hale, beautiful views of storm clouds. Of course I forgot my camera. When we arrived the storms hadn't arrived there yet so we parked and went up to order our pizza's. We ordered pizza's number 149, 150 and 151 and the wait would be an hour. Time to tour this beautiful organic farm where we say seemingly unending rows of basil, chard, kale, onions, tomatoes, squash, and more. A site to see as the colors were made even more vivid by the light of the pending storm arrival. There were old steer as docile as can be, greenhouse, hoop houses, people people people of all kinds. We set up camp in one of the hoop houses with our table straddling a line of basil.
The pizza's were ready on time, and they were delicious. We had a 1)Mediterranean version with calamata olives, local cheese, etc. 2)a chipotle pepper and tomato pizza 3) a garden pizza with fresh everything. All of the crust is made with wheat they farm, harvest and mill. They cook their pizza in an outdoor brick oven.


Without further ado, pictures of a few of my favorite things recently (my boys, my garden, baby birds, chalk drawings). Click on the image to view in a new window larger....not sure how well the collages are viewed otherwise.

Pictures speak a thousand words?

Collards, Chard, and Kale oh my!

Good amounts of rain. Really hot weather. The garden is happy.
No issues to report...knock on wood.

Made my last harvest of radishes, turnips, spinach, lettuce and arugula until I plant again in the fall. I have a lead on a green house we may be able to attach to the barn....so I am hopeful for a fun fall/winter and early spring of planting in the coming months.

The broccoli has sent out some yummy shoots that don't even make it into the house...as the boys gobble them up before then. I can see some cute little cauliflower bunches growing within their leaves also...can't wait for that. Lesson for next year...plant at least twice as much broccoli so I can preserve some.

A LOT of greens have been ready each day. In a picture below you can see my harvest from Tuesday night....this amount has roughly repeated itself every two days for that last 2 weeks. Success on the greens. I have had enough to enjoy eating right away, give some away to my sister, and even managed to freeze a few baggies full to enjoy this winter.

Beets...I am worried about those. They look beautiful but I am not detecting any bulbs yet....should I be thinning?

Tomatoes...some plants have flowers already. I can't wait too see what we end up with this year. No signs of blight yet!! Yipee!!! I think I may have successfully avoided that. I think mulching with straw has been great.

Some pictures:


A full view of the garden-

Tuesday's harvest

The boys having fun in the "fort

Sunday's harvest

Green

It's all green here. No, I didn't win the lottery. The yard, the garden...green and happy.

On the other hand all my kids seem to do is bother eachother all day long. Morning to night. Why can't you just get along?!!?!? They do love to be outside, so most of our time is spent outdoors playing in the yard. Lately the big hit has been the sandbox. Arden digs holes, throws dirt around and generally makes a mess. Baker has taken to creating sandcastles that include a co-op with a food storage basement, a place for the "bad guys", a place to store arrows, and several hidden doors. Kids love sand.

The garden is producing radishes, turnips, arugula, leaf lettuce, chard, spinach, sage, red russian kale, and collard greens all ready to eat! Next will be broccoli I believe. The garlic has sent up scapes and we have enjoyed those in our dinner the last few days.
All of the seeds I planted are moving right along including sunflowers, basil, delicata, zuccini, cucumber, bunching onions, cantalope!

As promised some more pictures!



Bear keep digging and prefers to spend most of his time in this hole he created:

Arden showing off his "digger" that can actually hold a whole dinosaur.

Baker displays his sand castle handy-work.

and dirty little boy feet-- yep, it's summer!