Preschool & Broccoli!

Yay! My son had his first day of preschool Monday. For the first time in almost 7 years, I now have precisely 2 hours and 15 minutes of time to myself. I don't even know how to act! We have been trying all summer to get into the state funded pre-K to no avail. The only thing we have here is a pre-K that gives priority to children who have history in their family of incarceration, drug use, absentee parents, etc. I guess a deployed parent doesn't count as an absentee parent, lol! Anyway, we got lucky and the elementary school here is trying an experimental program called 'Reverse Mainstreaming' where they integrate into the special-ed Pre-K a few 'normally' developing (for lack of a better word) kids to help mentor the Special-Ed students. We basically were on pins and needles all summer waiting to hear, and found out Finn made the cut! I am so excited for him, with his brother in school he is really enjoying his new classmates and being all "grown-up", lol! Here he is not wanting to smile for the camera on his first day!

Yesterday I was able to get my onion bed all planted. I even had time to put in pansies separating the onion varieties! I am hoping it will help brighten the dreary winter garden this year. Below is the onion bed:

Below is the lettuce & spinach bed looking all tidy. I love the well behaved veggies of Fall. Compared to Summer veggies, they are like the honors class!

The next few photos are the containers the kids helped "design" and plant. I wanted some extra portable color for our big Harvest Party coming up. They did a good job for the most part, but I intervened on the pansy planting, they were a little too delicate for young boys to handle.

I just can't figure out what to do with these beauties:

These are Celosia we started from seed. The stems finally broke from the weight of the blooms, even though the blooms are still stunning and seem to last a long time. Believe it or not, there are only 2 blooms in the bucket! Some are over a foot in diameter. I call them "heads" since they remind me of broccoli. I have about 15 more that the stems are breaking on and I need to cut them too. Anyone know how to dry them? I was thinking I should hang them upside down? It would be nice if I could keep the color until our party on the 24th and put them on the table. I will definitely grow these seeds again next year, only put them in the back of my flower beds where I can tie the stems to the fence, they got about 4-5 ft tall!

This next pic is a little late but it is of my harvest last Sunday. We picked 1.01 lbs of Edamame, which we promply steamed and snacked on that evening with a glass of Homebrew! Will plant huge amounts of this next year. Also I picked 1.02 lbs of beans of the new fall crop going. Notice how spectacularly slim they are... lol... during the summer half of my beans get picked too late since I am so busy and it's hot out! Plenty of time in the fall to gather shirtfulls of beans while walking around. I also cut the rest of the Pesto Perpetuo Basil (my favorite) since the temps are dipping down and it will die off soon. I just pull the leaves and throw them in the food processor with some olive oil and then shape in a log and freeze. I can pull some off whenever I need basil for sauces or a spread on garlic bread. I highly recommend this variety, it has awesome flavor and stunning foliage - it's variegated! I have people ask me what it is, then I tell them to smell it!

And finally....BROCCOLI! I am excited because I have only tried it once, and it got storm damage last time so I never got to see any heads. Although it is shotgun-hole ridden, there they are, little heads growing! I hope I get to enjoy some before the worms annihilate it!

Here is one of the dangers of Master Gardener Certification. Ugh, I hate houseplants, but every class it seems I get sent home with some miscellaneous cutting or something that needs rooting or replanting. This can't go on, lol... the only place I have southern light in the house is the boys' bedroom and I don't think they would appreciate the jungle of half-grown junk! Nope, not a big fan of indoor foliage... I think it's probably because the 4 of us and 2 Aussies are already sharing our 1100 sq ft (not even!)... no room for this nonsense!

Tomorrow morning I need to take Finnegan to the Children's Hospital for a tonsillectomy at 5:30 am so I better get my act together tonight and start packing my other child's lunch, etc. See, I am trusting Sailor/Husband/Farmer to get him off to school on time and with all the proper gear, lol! I will have plenty of time to surf blogs on the iPhone tomorrow at the hospital, maybe I will figure out how to post from it!