The Holiday is Over! Warning, a big post!

Okay, here goes!! My family back home is probably dreading this... like the family of a stand-up comedian must feel over the holidays, i.e. "oh, crap, is she going to write about this?", or "quick, hide her camera!" Nope! No blogging about dysfunctionalism, food poisoning, practical jokes or anything of the like! It was all good... this time....

The road trip is finally over! The trip up north wasn't too bad, we made it in 24 hours and managed to drive straight through. The trip back south to VA was awful, however, and took about 33 hours and all of those extra 9 hours were spent near the D.C. area in bumper to bumper holiday traffic on Sunday, yikes! I managed to get everything unpacked and put away, car vacuumed, and laundry done so now I can reflect with a bit of sanity.

We had a great week and were able to visit with family in some fashion every day we were there. The kids enjoyed every minute and were sad to see our visit come to an end. I didn't really get any decent photos of family since my flash indoors is no longer working and there is moisture in my camera still from the Nor'easter, but managed to get a few when we headed outdoors. (the poor quality of these tells me it is time to get a new camera!)

Every time I return home I am stunned by the beauty of where I grew up. I used to take it for granted, but seeing it through my husband's eyes (who did not grow up here) makes me realize it really does look like a movie set, or otherwise unreal! The town I grew up in is Red Wing, Minnesota. It is in Southeast MN on the Mississippi River. We are home to the Red Wing Shoe Factory, and those Red Wing Crocks people still oooh and ahhh over. It is a small town, but being within an hour of the Twin Cities of Mpls/Saint Paul we manage to have all the benefits of urban shopping, arts, music and education. Just thought I would share...

The view of my hometown from atop a river bluff. This is the Mississippi River: Red Wing, MN on the left, the state of Wisconsin on the right. Typical river town with alot of barge traffic and agricultural shipping going on - only nicer!

Another shot of town, river, grain elevators and bridge to WI

We have one of the last remaining boathouse communities. In the center of the picture are unique boathouses that rise and fall on timber poles with the water level or ice-in during winter. Also a great place for teenage parties, as I remember :)

Picture of limestone bluffs on a foggy day

This is Lake Pepin, the one of the widest points on the Mississippi River at over 2 miles. For all you Laura Ingalls Wilder fans - yes, this is the same Lake Pepin where the Little House in the Big Woods was!

Another shot of Lake Pepin in the afternoon from the Wisconsin side of the river.

This brings me to one of our outings on vacation. Loch has just started reading larger "chapter" books, so before our trip I got him a copy of "Little House in the Big Woods" to read since this was one of my favorite books as a child (for obvious reasons!). At halfway through the book we took the kids to see the actual Little House and birthplace of Laura Ingalls, which is only about 20 minutes away. The kids were stunned to see how "little" the house actually was! (And I admit I was stunned by how urban parents would never allow their children to read these books nowadays... really, if you haven't read them in the past 30 years, go back to them. They are full of loaded guns in the house, animal butchering, spankings, and politically incorrect lessons-learned... the good stuff!!)

Click to enlarge and read about the site.

Inside the "Little House in the Big Woods". About 150 sq feet, 3 rooms, loft, and great deep stone fireplace.

Sailor/Husband/Father with the boys outside the Little House

I felt a little guilty about taking the kids out of school for so long for our vacation but honestly I think they learned far more on vacation than they would have gotten at school that week! They got their fill and then some about history, dairy farming, even hunting - it happened to be opening weekend of deer season so they were inundated with Bambi on the tailgate of every passing truck! It turned out to be a great opportunity to explain to them the difference between hunting for food/ donating kills to food banks / population & disease control and flat out wastefulness, poaching, and general unsporting behavior.

Two months ago, my parents bought a home on the WI side of the river and live there now, so we did the Wisconsin thing and went to the local creamery and bought a ton of cheese curds made fresh that day. My son loves all things cow, so WI is a very appropriate place for Grandma to live in his eyes, he gets to enjoy local cheesecurds and see cows everytime we go ANYWHERE, lol! If you haven't had cheese curds before, go to the Ellsworth Creamery's website and order some NOW, they are heaven!

This large box of squeaky-fresh curds I bought is clearly not enough! Half were consumed on the ride home. I found out they ship, so we are golden! I intend to see how their cold packs fare by shipping some to my husband's aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf this spring. I will report back on their condition upon arrival, lol! I purchased a children's book on Wisconsin Dairying and will be sending that in to Loch's class along with a bag of cheese curds to try, although I am not sure if they will actually make it past his teacher: she's from Wisconsin, lol!

This gorgeous lady is my niece, Nora! She is 9 months now, and full of personality and smiles. She will be spoiled, since she is the only little girl in an extended family of all gross-stinky-boy cousins :). We got to see her several times during our visit, but she's like a little cheese-curd, you can never have too much 'Nora'!

On a whole 'nuther level is my husband's fascination with "up-north" outdoorsy stuff. He absolutely loves everything about back home. In past years he became obsessed with wanting to kayak and canoe the Boundary Waters (and who wouldn't?), Muskie and Walleye fishing, hiking, and now.... HUNTING????? I guess it was only a matter of time. When faced with bumper to bumper opening weekend traffic all up I-94 in WI, every truck and trailer loaded to the gills with ATV's, gun racks, deer stands, and platforms for the carcasses, he about lost his mind. And I must admit, compared to our deer here in Virginia, the deer back home are huge. He did live for awhile in Alaska when he was young, so his appetite had been whetted at an early age! We'll see how long this lasts... (And there's the whole snow-machine thing, but he hasn't even thought about that one yet...!)

Upon seeing the sign at a local bar he quickly spoke and said

"Look, honey, there's stuff for you to do, too!"

Sailor/Hubby checking out ice fishing stuff at a local sporting goods store. What's next?

He was taken aback by the wide selection of "freeze your ass off" entertainment some of us Minnesotans take part in (as in the ice fishing shacks pictured above).

I had to tell him, "Really, it only sounds like a good time...."

Wow, I'm long winded today, but I missed you all! I was reading all of your blogs while on vacation but unable to comment on my iPhone without typing unintelligible things on that keyboard! We had one other event while we were back home, but that one will be a post in itself! Hope you all are getting your act together for the holidays, can't wait to see some decorating and winter pictures!

We're off!

My last post for awhile... we are leaving in about an hour to head home to MN! The kids are so excited. I just got done packing the car and it is looks like it is going to explode. 2 parents, 2 kids, 2 dogs, luggage, hats & mittens, a big ol' roaster oven, extra car seat we are bringing to my brother, a keg and case of bottled homebrew, and a partridge in a pear tree. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and are able to share it with family. I know we are very thankful this year to be able to be home for the holiday, it's something we used to take for granted until the military became our life! Time to get this circus on the road...

Home for the Holidays!

I am very excited! Sailor/Farmer/Husband's leave got approved and we are officially leaving Friday very early to head home to Minnesota for Thanksgiving! The kids are so excited and have already started packing as much unnecessary crap as they can fit into their little backpacks. I was hesitant to tell them for awhile since it was possible that hubby would be sent out somewhere, but the carrier left without him yesterday for a week, so I know that our plans won't be changed "courtesy of the Navy" now. (Knock on wood!) The trip is so long, but it always seems to go by more quickly near the holidays. We will leave at about 3-4 am and usually try to power through 1000 miles the first day from Virginia Beach to Janesville, WI - then that makes for a nice 2nd day of the trip. Wake up a little later, breakfast, then only 4-5 hours 'til home. I really love MN in the summertime, but the good thing about going this time of year is that we won't have bikes, kayak, etc on top of the car, makes for an easier ride! My mom is having a ton of family for dinner, so we should get to see just about everyone in the family. My dad's blues band has a tradition of playing a local bar the night before Thanksgiving so no doubt my mom will get "stuck" with the grandkids and dogs while we get some much needed time out and will get to really enjoy a night on the town with a trusted babysitter! It doesn't get any more trustworthy than your own mom, does it?!

As far as our storm goes, we have been cleaning up the past couple of days. We fared much better than some in our area. Our fence came down, lost some 2x4's off of our pergola and the kids' playset, and just general disarray and light flooding of the yard. The veggie beds seem to be fine (raised!) and believe it or not, I still have blooms on my azaleas, though the trees were stripped clean of their leaves, can't quite figure that one out. We have a massive container ship that actually washed ashore near us, they are trying to figure out how to tow it back to sea. We also lost ALOT of sand dunes near the ocean, and a couple of ocean fishing piers.

I designed some labels for the first time for our homebrew since we will be bringing plenty of that home to share at Thanksgiving. I can't seem to get a decent picture of the labels, so I'll spell it out...

on left: (named after our deceased rescue Bernese Mountain Dog!)

Pickett's

Recycled Dog Extra Pale Ale

woof - woof

renew - reuse

ADOPT!

on right:

Ludwig Family Homestead

Hophead

Double IPA

dry hopped suburban farm homebrew

We also mini-kegged a batch of Belgian Farmhouse Ale. This is the first time we have kegged so I am anxious to find out if "it took"! Guess we'll know soon enough! Good thing Leine's is plentiful back home to keep everyone happy if it turns out that it didn't carbonate well :)

I hope to post again before we leave but I will be trying to post as well from home if my mom will let me hijack her Mac for awhile.

"The Sea Was Angry That Day, My Friend....!"

Couldn't resist a little Seinfeld quote there! Well, there is definitely no gardening going on here. Maybe no garden left, either! Our Nor'easter hit yesterday morning at about 7 a.m. and is expected to continue for 60 hours. Bad enough that our Governor declared a state of emergency here. Normally when we get Nor'easters, they are here and gone within 24 hours. This is supposed to be on par with Hurricane Isabel a few years back, which the flooding after the storm was incredibly bad, and there are still people here that haven't recovered fully from that.

The weather forecast states sustained winds 50-60 knots, gusting higher. The waves on the ocean are at 17-20 feet, and on the Chesapeake Bay seas at 10-12 feet. For my "up north" friends, imagine 10-12 foot swells on Lake Superior. The real problem this creates in our area is the wind pushing the water inward through the Bay into the tributaries, flooding our entire area. We won't be out of the woods for several tide cycles after the storm passes on Friday night.

This photo is horrible because I got water in my camera, but it shows the offshore winds typical of a Nor'easter:

We live in a very interesting area water-wise, as we are surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Chesapeake Bay, the large Elizabeth, James, and York Rivers, and the Great Dismal Swamp and Back Bay. Collectively, our 7 cities area is referred to as "Tidewater". We are basically an island, and have several bridge/tunnels that connect us to "mainland" which is really just another peninsula! The trouble arises when, during floods and hurricanes, the first roads to close are the bridge tunnels due to wind restrictions, which effectively seals us off and creates traffic nightmares. But the other side to all this of course is the beauty of the place when the weather is cooperating! And all this water is also the reason we are home to the largest Naval Base in the world.

I hope posting this map will work. It shows pretty well how affected by tidal flooding we are. Below is a topographical map I found on the National Wildlife Foundation's website. It represents pretty well the amount of water affected by tides in our area (all of it!). Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make an arrow point to my house on the photo, but I live at the northern triangular point of "Back Bay" on the right of the map. The thin strand you see on the far right is a sandbar/barrier island near us that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the mainland.

I would say that in my experience, Nor'easters cause more damage than hurricanes in our area. I think this is due to the fact that we get far more of them, and they tend to be stronger and last longer. Most hurricanes blow ashore at Cape Hatteras, just south of us in NC, and thus become weakened by landfall by the time they get here. But of course, not always the case!

We are lucky that even though we live extremely close to Rudee Inlet, our house is on relatively higher ground. Historically, our street may flood and it is possible that we may not be able to get out of our street, but the house usually does well.

Here are some photos/videos of how it is affecting us personally:

The River Birch tree is only a year old, I hope she put good roots down this year!

Lastly, I will end with a pic from my best friend's yard across town. She woke up this morning to a huge pine tree down, roots and all! Not sure if you are able to enlarge it, but it narrowly missed the house, didn't hit any cars, and her azaleas in front of the house are okay! Amazing luck, but a big cleanup job ahead for them. I am sure my husband will make sure he is on the cleanup crew... they started homebrewing as well... you know, any excuse will do for husbands, lol!

I hope you have enjoyed my weather/topography blog... now I must take a shower and make some coffee while I still have power! School is closed today, so it should be interesting entertaining the kids stuck indoors all day!

Anatomy of a Dinner...

My kids won't eat vegetables, and when I say that I really mean it! I think Finnegan has tried corn on the cob and peas, but that's like 3 times in the last year. Lochlann has never willingly tried anything. He's almost 7! I have tried bribing, taking things away from him & loss of privileges, I have tried the "one for each year of age" thing, I have tried letting him go hungry, and the times I got so frustrated I crammed them in his mouth, he threw up! But still, I haven't given up! Tonight I am going to take you on a tour of a typical dinner in our house, and you can join in my frustration and maybe give me some tips for anything that worked for you???

1. Go harvest something from the garden: for last night's dinner we harvested plenty of greens, some small still-kickin' bell peppers, and green beans (although most of the beans were forgotten and too large to eat!)

2. Cook a yummy dinner! We had some beef from our local farm supplier and green beans tossed in a pan with butter and garlic, and a salad. Take a close look, what's NOT to like? Well, if you were to ask my kids, everything on their plate is "yucky" except the steak. Yucky? This stuff was harvested an hour ago! I really don't believe I was quite this bad when I was their age. I even dressed up their tiny salads with a flower, lol! Look at mom & dad's plates heaped with salad... I was only asking them to eat a tiny bit!

Another lovely shot of the kids' yucky dinners. Go ahead and enlarge the photo to get the full yucky experience!

3. Place said dinners in front of hungry children with skeptical looks on their faces.

4. Revel in disbelief. Yes, there are still the 3 green beans we started with, and the yucky salad. Steak, Milk, and child are long gone. Finn's plate looks the same, minus the parsley. Minus the parsley??? He will eat plain parsley but not green beans in butter and garlic. Oh, I forgot to mention that I even bought them the "spray-on" salad dressing and called it a "salad gun" - they didn't fall for it.

So there you have it: my daily dinner frustration! Why do I have to have such picky kids? I think the parents who drive thru McDonald's every night should have the picky eaters by default, not the moms who grow food, lol!

And just look at all the "salad" below... it appears I will be Frustrated Mom for a good while longer!

Tonight I am admitting defeat. This is what I laid before them, and now I am walking out the door to go do some unnecessary shopping, by myself! Hmmmph, take that, kiddos! (Unfortunately they are overjoyed by their macaroni and cheese.) Whatever...

Mama's Gettin' a Hammock!

This weekend was a busy one! We had great weather, and a decent amount of energy to get alot of the fall chores done. Not often both of those come together at the same time. I managed to spend the entire weekend doing nothing but moving plants around. I found this summer that our sun/shade combination had changed enough over the last few years that many of my plants in the perennial garden were suffering due to lack of sunlight caused by the growth of some of our trees. In the process, I divided many of them and was able to fill in some empty spaces for free! Of course, none of it will be noticeable until spring & summer. Sailor/Farmer/Husband probably has trouble understanding me running around with dead ("excuse me, that's dormant", lol) cut down bushes and spearing spades through them, but all I can see is "free plants"!!

My husband's idea of a good time in the yard involves power tools and things that are questionable for the environment in general, but in his defense, usually things that need to be done in a brutal fashion. Some advance notice would be nice, though...

I am referring to Saturday morning, when I was sipping my morning coffee and leaving a comment on Mama Pea's blog. I was in mid-type when I heard the distinctive noise of a chainsaw... After stating on her comments that "ooooh, I better go, I hear a chainsaw...", I ran outside to this:

Yes, there goes my tree! Granted, this tree had some serious problems, including some decay & rot at the soil level on the trunk, but it was my shade tree for the gravel patio area! Here you can see it behind the kids. It's a purpleleaf Sand Cherry, or some call it a purpleleaf Plum. Either way, it is really pretty and the blooms in the spring are knockouts. It had seen better days though. A hurricane messed it up pretty badly about 4 years ago, and it never recovered and has been going downhill since. But still, some notice would have been nice, as I never really got a decent picture of it while it lived!

Tree is behind the kids with the purple leaves

My Purple Leaf Sand Cherry in Spring

Which brings me to the hammock! I have always wanted a hammock. I wasn't sold on putting a tree back in that area, since planting it among the roots would be painstaking, and I would also have unwanted shade on some of my raised beds. So the kids and I re-routed our little "fake dry riverbed" and reused some slate I had stored from our old huge aquarium and created a little patio area where the tree trunk was. We have a small shade sail that we never got around to putting up so we will use that here. Picture a triangular shade sail suspended above this area and a hammock that will straddle diagonally the dry riverbed and slate walkway to it. I am also going to finish the herb garden here, with some extra thyme, sage, and Salvia for color. I already have lavender and rosemary on the left and right. Of course, I will probably never get to actually lay in the hammock and read since I have too many garden chores and little heathens to chase around and a husband on deployment, but I am hoping that just looking at it might have the same relaxing effect!

New Hammock-Patio area

Lastly, our Chief Bottle Washers helping us sanitize and bottle a batch of homebrew Saturday night! We like to call it "Life Skills class"!

I was not abducted by aliens!

Whew, it's been awhile! I will start by showing you the kids' costumes for Halloween! I am happy they chose to be "scary" and not some random cartoon character this year!

Loch recovered from the Swine Flu quickly and I managed to keep everyone else in the house healthy throughout the ordeal! Although my hands permanently smell like the bleach solution I had resorted to carrying on a holster of sorts, lol.

Our Harvest Party was a screaming success, with over 17 kids and their parents in attendance. It was a great time, and a good mix of people. I had invited my online garden club, some kids from the boys' classes at school, neighbors, and personal friends. I was nervous about mixing all those strangers, but every one seemed to enjoy conversing and meeting new people, and they kids stayed so busy we hardly noticed them, except for the noise! They had plenty to do, painting pumpkins and gourds, lining up for Sailor/Farmer/Husband and his friend to give "tattoos", roasting marshmallows, and creating general mayhem. The adults were able to be involved in "grownup talk" so much so that I commented to my husband that he should fire up a real tattoo gun just to see how long it would take the parents to notice the whirring sound coming from the deck, lol. But that's the sick sense of humor that I have, luckily it is shared by a least a couple of my friends. I sadly did not get any photos that turned out well from the party, and I really regret not taking photos of the aftermath on Sunday morning cleanup. There were forks and spoons in the bushes, plastic cockroaches that started the evening embedded in ice cubes were later floating in a bowl of punch, pieces of childrens costumes strewn all over the yard, wet potato chips to clean up (we got a thunderstorm that night too!) and just quite a wonderful mess in general!

I had a couple of harvest pictures the past week or so, nothing spectacular. Below are the 3, yes, that's 3 carrots I pulled. I might add that these are the only 3, lol! I had every intention of doing the paper mat carrot thingie so eloquently explained by Annie's Granny... but alas, lazy girl took over and I didn't do it and this is all I have to show for it:
I can still plant carrots here, so I WILL do the paper & glue thing next week. Really.... I WILL!

My lettuces are all going gangbusters now with all you want to pick every day. There is assorted mesclun, lettuces, oriental greens, Swiss Chard and spinach. Also a head of broccoli was harvested one day the past week. Worms everywhere, ugh! I think no more broccoli plantings for me - it's pretty hard to get a kid to eat it when there are worms crawling out of it!

Here's your weekly dose of garden humor! Oh, how pretty the forgotten broccoli plant is, look at all the pretty flowers, lol! Kind of takes the "Master" right outta the Master Gardener, huh? Hey, I've been busy studying about the plant, not taking care of it!!! Anyway, it's gone now... pretty cabbage moths and all, lol!

I did make a pretty good salad the other night - with the addition of some pansies I ALMOST got the kids to try it. Almost, but not quite... although they were thoroughly fascinated as my Sailor/Farmer/Husband and I ate them!

A random pic from class this week... potted weeds! Our "Weed Professor" (yes, that got a snicker from the class even though we are all "grownups" now) brought in about 50 different weeds for an identification class. It was kind of funny to see them all potted up in a cultivation status!

Here is Finnegan brewing up a batch of Homebrew the night of the Vikings/Packers game. Even though we are far away, we had to honor the day with a batch of Saint Paul/ Summit Ave Extra Pale Ale clone recipe. I actually designed some labels for our brews that should arrive any day now. I could print them at home but honestly the extra expense online is worth it when the cost of ink cartridges and pain in the butt factor is figured in.

Lastly, today was the day! Our class of Master Gardener trainees graduated this morning! I am now officially a Master Gardener Intern. I am really looking forward to getting involved in some neat projects in the future. I highly recommend this program for those of you whose states/extension services offer it. I learned so much, and the speakers that the Virginia Tech Univ/Extension Service people brought in were top-notch. I met so many wonderful people and enjoyed it so much, I was a little sad to see the classroom phase end. I know that I will get the chance to work with them in the future, so it's exciting as well and I look forward to it.

A funny note to end on: When I got home today from graduation, I brought home a clump of Maximillian Sunflower one of my classmates had divided to share (thanks Amy!). I walk in excited about graduating and at the same time holding basically a ball of mud - I tell my husband "look what I got!" You should have seen the look I got. (I could see he was thinking "should I let this slide?", "should I look excited?", "should I have her committed?"). Later, I show Lochlann my mud clump and told him it was a "Major Award" and he flatly said... "that class doesn't sound like too much fun to me". Whatever, I LOVE my mud clump and can't wait to sink it into the ground tomorrow!