See Virginia! warning -Lots of photos :)

Imagine a place where you could get fuel, grab some peanuts, pawn some tools and get Saved all at the same time...  (wish I was being facetious but there actually are places like that here!)

When you think of Virginia, what comes to mind?  I thought that since I had to leave the metro area yesterday to take the kids to camp, I'd take you along!  The things you probably thought of as cliche' are still valid and true here, and they start happening only 20 minutes out of town.  Yes, we have the Virginia Beach Resort Strip, all the Colonial "stuff", NASA, shipyards, and the largest Naval Base in the world - but all of the above put together is such a tiny part of extreme southeastern Virginia, the rest of the state is agriculture, the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains, the Appalachian Trail and the wonderful culture of the people that live there.  Here's a little mini-tour!

First we had to actually get out of the city - no small feat!  Actually it's not too bad leaving our house, that oncoming traffic is everyone headed TO the beach, we're leaving!  Fun fact:  we live off the very last exit on Interstate 64... the freeway just plain ends there at the Atlantic Ocean.  I never really thought about it until one of the kids asked!

Cotton Fields 

Peanut Fields

The town we went to for camp is known as the Peanut Capital of the World

there are peanuts at every stand, market, gas station, and store

Lots of places to buy your watermelons, collards & Confederate Flags... I wish I could say "just kidding", but I'm not :)

Of course, Virginia Hams...

Lots of ammo & guns & fishin'

  

If you ever wanted to know what many of the Virginia farms/plantation homes looked like, here you go.  Unfortunately, since the shutdown of the major peanut plant, pork packing facility, and paper mill out here many are falling into disrepair and becoming choked by Kudzu and the like, but there is no hiding their charm and there still are many that are very beautiful.

I noticed this while driving... I have no idea how a bobber got outside my windshield, but it seems like a good thing to have onboard supply-wise :)

Here we are turning into the drive that leads to camp!  It is right in the midst of plenty of agriculture, but it looks so different since this is on the edge of part of the Great Dismal Swamp, so it is lush and treed here with an abundance of water and canals.

The boys!

  

Does anyone remember my comic fascination with kids at camp that arrive with rolling suitcases bouncing down the dirt paths?  We saw a little girl that absolutely takes the cake on this one, look at the size of that thing!  It's a weekend camp!  Hubby deploys for 9 months with less crap than that LOL!  I bet her mom is at fault here :)

In contrast, "bad mom" here only lets my kid take this much...

Loch making his bunk and begging me to just leave already!

Finn's counselor looks like a giant around all these little shrimps!  

I checked with the mess hall before I left camp to see what was on the menu... wait for it.... Fried Chicken, Mashed Potatoes & Collard Greens!  

I sure will miss all the true cliche's about this area, we live in a special place.  Although I don't want to live here forever, I sure am lucky I got to experience it all for so many years.

Last night we enjoyed a kid free night at a friend's house.  Nothing special except a bonfire, drinks, and catching up with friends we hadn't seen in far too long - which made it very special after all!

This evening, we are headed to another garden party at someone's house, I just love to spy on other people's gardens, so much fun!  The weekend is going far too quickly, and I'll have more photos I'm sure of the kids when we go to pick them up tomorrow - I can't wait until "full-week camp" !

I will also admit that the whole drive home yesterday I felt an urge to load up on ammo and trade the Outback in on a lifted pickup truck, and holler a few "yeehaaaaawwww"s out the window :)

It wasn't supposed to be this way!

Yes, I'm talking about "my" weekend! I should have known better than to think that I could go see a movie, or any of the other things I had planned for myself! Here's how Friday went:

Kids were sooooo excited to go to camp, and I was too. Got them all packed, even left a half hour early so compensate for any Friday afternoon traffic! Didn't go as planned. We got stuck in traffic immediately on the on-ramp by an accident and it just spiraled downward from there. Our metro area is basically an island, you have to take a tunnel or bridge to get anywhere so you can imagine the bottlenecks that can happen even on a good day. Today traffic was completely stopped and we spent an hour inside the tunnel in 100 degree heat with all the traffic fumes in the tunnel. I am used to tunnels, but normally we speed through at about 45-55 mph, but let me tell you, being stuck in one is kind of creepy. It's underwater in the Chesapeake Bay and there was an oil tanker above us so I kept thinking about that, LOL! So anyways, we left at 3 pm and check-in for camp was between 5-6 pm. We got there at 6:18 pm!! That's almost 3 1/2 hours in the car to go about 95 miles! As soon as we pulled in, 2 college girls flagged us down and said "are you Loch & Finn?, we're glad you made it, we heard about the traffic!". It's amazing how short a distance away it can be to find small-town friendliness again. They took us to the kids' cabin, and although the other kids had already headed to the dining hall, one of their counselors was sitting on one of the bunks waiting for them! Typical, cute Virginia Tech student (remember being in summer camp, girls?!) doing his summer employment - someone should tell him to soak it up, 'cause the real world will start soon LOL! I pretty much dropped them and left, no time for the kids to show me around, they can do that when I pick them up. Loch has been before, but this is Finn's first time and I was a little worried about him since he is not as independent as Loch, but as I drove away he yelled "Bye Mommy! Luv you! See ya later!"... I guess he's okay!

Finally arriving at camp!

View outside the kids' cabin

Finn & Loch (in orange) walking with their counselor off to the dining hall

So I didn't get back home until 8:15 pm! By the time I fed the dogs and got settled, it was clearly too late to go see 'Eclipse' like I wanted to, so I settled for reading a book and watching a survival show on Discovery.... hmmmm, that's the same thing I would do if the kids were still here.

Today I got caught with another big harvest, and I hardly even touched the jalapeno bed, those are needing my attention, too. I am headed to a BBQ tonight (across another tunnel!) for my gardening & homesteading meetup group, so the rest of the day today was spent harvesting, making food, and driving again LOL!

Today's harvest was used for the potluck dish for the BBQ. It has a theme: "Catch It, Kill It, Grow It, Brew It"! Since I had so many tomatoes I am going to make Caprese Salad along with some Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread and bring along some of the Homebrew.

Caprese Salad with a Basil Vinegarette Dressing

Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread

Yikes, I made a lot!

This is the basil vinegarette

... and now it's time to leave again and go to the BBQ, it should be fun, plenty of new people to meet and good food to try, I just hope the traffic is okay. Unfortunately, this is a huge tourist area and while we are all trying to flee the area, crazy people mostly with Jersey plates thinking only of the beach are headed in to back up the freeways!

Hopefully, I will be back early enough tonight to finish my book! Then it's up early again to go pick up the kids tomorrow morning. They have a skit that they do and I want to make sure I'm there in time to see it! I know this camp is short, but I am just glad there is a sleepaway camp for such young kids, it's good for them! In a few years they will be old enough for a whole week, yay!

I have the feeling maybe I heaped my plate too full in the garden this year, it seems that I just can't find the time to "do nothing"!

Summer Camp

We picked up Lochlann from summer camp! He had a great time, as we knew he would! I promised him I would put the pictures up "TODAY, MOM!"...so here they are. None of it garden-related, by the way...but all our family lives at least 1000 miles from us, so the blog is the easiest way to communicate our events! Some of the pics Loch took while he was there, and the end-of-camp ceremony pics I took. Enjoy!

Loch's Bunkmate

Loch showing us one of the Animal Science class animals

This boy turned out to be Loch's first "camp-best-friend", and the little boy was teary eyed saying goodbye when I took this. All us parents were a little choked up by it too!

View outside the bunkhouse

Last Day Ceremonies

The lake

Counselors performing skits

The Council Ring/Campfire Area

Loch with the canoes

Entire 5-8 year old camp with their counselors

Yay! My kid is the only one not holding his certificate in front of his face, LOL!

Go 4-H Cloverbuds!! Can't wait until next year when both my kids can go!

How the U.S. Navy saved my shallots!

You know how some women hang on to their pre-pregnancy clothes even though they will never fit properly again? It's kind of like proof that we were indeed svelte and hip - "back in the day"! Well, this is also true with veterans. We can't seem to get rid of our uniforms and all accoutrement no matter how many times we stumble upon them over the years in the course of spring cleanings. I have been lugging around 2 seabags full of Navy uniforms ever since I got out over 10 years ago! Now it's like proof to my kids that I was somebody before them, lol! (For those of you who don't know, I was an OTA, Ocean Systems Technician - big word for someone who detects, classifies, and tracks foreign submarines). So on to the shallots - I live in VA, where no one has basements, so I am trying to figure out how to store my shallots so they won't rot. After much thought (I don't have pantyhose or old onion bags to reuse) I came across said seabags in the closet. When I opened the first one, there on top was my answer - Ditty Bags! No, that's not dirty bags, but ditty bags! They are intended for laundry or storing things, and even though I have never used them I seem to have copious amounts of them stored in with my uniforms. The perfect solution - they are made of mesh, and you can launder them for reuse! Who would have thought my Navy service would have come in handy for gardening, lol!?

Here's the shallots with the tops cut off ready for storage

...and here's a "Ditty Bag" with a new life storing shallots!

Yesterday's harvest brought a few cukes, Pinot Noir Bell Peppers, Purple Rain Eggplant, Red Popper Sweet Peppers, and a few blackberries the birds didn't get to.

Harvest Dinner: Chicken Kebabs with Grilled Eggplant, Peppers, Black Pearl Tomatoes and potatoes

On to new exciting stuff: I got a new scale, and it is a sexy one at that! Can a scale be sexy, you ask? Well, just look....! It is cordless, and has a temp probe that can be plugged into it! Even gardeners can get giddy over tech-y stuff! This scale is "all that - and a bag of shallots"! So much for gardening to save money...this was one of those "I have to have that" moments!

On a walkthrough of the garden yesterday, I snapped some pics of things growing now. This is the Hokkaido Heirloom Squash and Cucumber Bed. Growing like gangbusters over the past week!

Flowers on the Hokkaido Squash. Notice the inside of flowers are filled with bees doing their busy work!

I left a few of my grape bunches unbagged so I could monitor their ripeness...the first bunch has turned purple! You can see why I bagged the rest...birds!

In other news around the suburban homestead...we took Loch to camp yesterday! How awesome is 4-H in that they have sleepaway camp for kids as young as 5?!! Nervous, you ask? No Way! I can't wait until Finn is old enough to go with Loch next year. I'm not nervous even a little bit...I know how awesome camp is and he was excited to go. He is also my kid that has no separation issues either, he is "Mr. Independent". I just hope he takes some pictures with the camera we sent with him. Finnegan was feeling a bit lonely on his first night without his big brother, so Daddy set up the tent and we went camping in the living room since it was raining outside! We even set it up right next to the lake (aquarium)! Picture is kind of grainy since I snapped it with a kiddie camera.

Here's a few pics from Finn's sleep study at the Children's Hospital the other night. It looks worse than it was, lol! He said he was turned into "Spiderman"! We will get the apnea results later this month. I guess he and Daddy had a good time there watching a movie and feeling like a science experiment!