What does a gardener do when it's 108º all weekend?

1. Well I don't garden, that's for sure! I will never again complain about 1 day of hot temps... this has been going on for over a month! I've been setting my alarm for zero-dark-thirty to go outside and water. It's very eerie seeing the birds out and about in the dark and strangely absent during the day. I guess they have it figured out too. Last night it was still 92º at 11 p.m.!

2. I had the kids shuck the corn we got at the farm stand, that took all of 10 minutes... what's next? After finishing up their stellar work, I froze the corn from 2 doz ears.

While we are on that subject, it came to my attention at a BBQ last week that there are some that don't know the "bundt cake pan" corn cutting trick! After you have blanched your ears, jam the pointy end in the center hole of the bundt cake pan, then cut. The corn stands firm and your corn slides right into the cake pan. No mess, holds about a doz ears worth before you have to bag it! If you already knew this one, pass it on to someone else, I hate seeing someone struggle with sliding ears LOL!

Check out the kids' work below: anyone want corn with built-in floss? :)

3. Go grocery shopping and contemplate the waste in consumer packaging. I store stuff in those clear bins in the background so all this waste hits the floor immediately upon unpacking. This was a small trip, you should see my floor after my "every 6 weeks" trip! Hey, I didn't promise any of this stuff would be interesting!

4. Decide to do "Fall Cleaning" early this year to enable me to have it all done so I can be outside enjoying the cooler weather come fall. Result: house is messier than when I started due to all the closets being dumped out to "organize".

5. Listen to kids practice piano and vioin (eeek!). Repeatedly.

6. Clean my desk. Set up sewing machine in a permanent place so that I will be motivated to learn to sew. Uh-huh.

7. Scowl at sewing machine hourly, this will never happen.

8. Let kids watch way too much TV

9. Vow to let the kids go to the outdoor pool at the Y, but when we get there they close it due to "heat lightning", this happened both nights - kids were not happy!

10. Let myself watch cheesy horror movies and knit. That's one thing you may not know about me, I am a die hard fan of the campiest horror flicks you can find!

11. We froze the grapes from the garden, yep - that was interesting too.

These sure made a yummy snack on a hot day

12. Brought recycled cleaned empty beer bottles to a wonderful family I just met that is just learning to homebrew. We have so many extras it was nice to reclaim some space, and nice for their new owners too since they have already been de-labeled and sanitized! What's the matter, doesn't every mom's car look like this? You should hear it when we turn, clinking bottles in the back... very redneck-awesome LOL!

13. Made a batch of vanilla ice cream with easy box brownies to get the kids to eat their beans. Hint: don't actually tell them the name of bean variety you are serving or you get whines of "I don't wanna eat dragon's tongues, I want beans WITHOUT tongues in them"...

14. Contemplate ripping out the whole garden so I don't have to worry about the work anymore but a.) that would require hard work in itself and 2.)lol, it's too hot to garden and do hard work!

15. Surf the internet and see that eHow has an article on how to make a redneck flower garden. Find myself entertaining the idea for awhile...

16. Fantasize about the future where the kids are grown and hubby and I have a little cabin on a lake far north of here, where all we need is a pot of cherry tomatoes on the deck, and maybe some lettuce. (yeah right... and spinach, and potatoes, and berries, and broccoli, and a greenhouse to grow peppers and melons, and...)!

17. Make a batch of Blackberry Lemonade with our frozen berry juice!

18. I did get my fall stuff ordered, all except my garlic and onions. I have plenty of shallots to replant again , but I never seem to have the garlic left over. That is a big accomplishment, since usually I am battling the garden with a set of canning tongs and too busy to plan a proper fall garden. Instead, it looks like the fall garden will be better than summer this year.

19. Put the kids to bed, and have my own glass of Blackberry Lemonade with a little something extra, and dream of all I will accomplish tomorrow (hopefully)! We are supposed to get a huge cooldown to 89º so I am hoping it will feel Arctic to me!

Not much in the way of harvests, just a couple of tomatoes and some random overgrown cucumbers that I threw over the fence. I don't think my plants are too pleased with the weather situation either. Not very interesting, but it is what it is! I feel like I'm doing a January blog post!

So hubby, did you feel like you were right here with us? Don't worry, you aren't missing much right now except a cranky wife!

The Canteloupe has arrived!

Sure enough, this morning I smelled the blossom end just like some of you had suggested, and I could smell "melon"! I couldn't get it off the vine fast enough!

It weighed 4 lbs, 11 oz

(notes: It was direct sowed in a container on April 6th which makes exactly 104 days from sowing to harvest in an intensely humid and hot summer)

Not being a melon fan, I was hoping that the only reason I didn't like them was because I have only ever had store-bought. Not the case, unfortunately. This was cut still warm from the morning sun, juice running out and lovely scent... I still didn't like it! This may be because it is so sweet, I usually go for sour puckering type fruit, I actually like eating lemons and such! I put on my "yum face" and presented to eager children who have never tasted canteloupe:

They seemed to enjoy it, but they may have been being nice, since neither one finished their slice. Finn usually hoards fruit and won't let anyone else have "his" bowl of berries, so I cubed the rest and put it into separate "Loch" and "Finn" containers in the fridge. I'll keep checking to see who is actually eating it! I really wish hubby was here, I know he would eat it! Luckily, these will only come ripe sporadically so I won't be inundated with them, and they definitely won't go to waste considering that I can put them in a smoothie with other fruit and they will be consumed quickly that way!

I had to take all the grapes in today. I was mowing the lawn this morning and wondered "hey, where's my grapes?"... BIRDS! It's always a narrow window to be able to harvest them before mockingbirds and wasps eat them, and apparently I missed the window while I was busy being a mom all weekend, because half of them were already gone. I picked what was left and brought them in, good thing I like sour tastes, since they are not all quite ready yet! This is a big improvement, however... the past 2 years I didn't get any harvested before the birds got them.

Monday's Harvest: Tomatoes, Blackberries, Canteloupe, Cucumbers, and a total of 2.2 lbs of Grapes

I'm still holding out high hopes for the watermelon, I am told they aren't as sweet as the canteloupe so I am eager to try it... it's still not ready!

This is WAR!

Ok, so I fell of the organic wagon and broke out the Roundup. This bed is only a month old, several layers of cardboard, and 3-4 inches of mulch! Ugh, the nightmare that is Bermudagrass. As anyone that lives in the south can tell you, it's horrid stuff. I call it "bamboo grass", since it spreads by rhizomes underground and this chain-like crap above ground. The first pic is a closeup, the second pic is my border and how much of it I had to kill. At least I didn't use it near the veggies. And the worst part is that it will be back in just a week or so. Several treatments hopefully will do it. Expensive problem, though...will be trying a less expensive brand for the next round. I am on a self-imposed deadline of Thursday to be done weeding all of it, since today and tomorrow are only supposed to be in the 70's, which is incredible weather for this time of year to being doing hard chores.

On to better things...I pulled the shallots the other night! I am having to hang them inside since it is so humid most days outside I am afraid they might rot.

Here's Loch harvesting a carrot that he surely will not eat...

Loch & Finn posing with their harvest of carrots

I feel bad (kind of) that the first batch of homebrew that Sailor/Farmer/Husband made will not wait until he gets back for the first taste...I had to "test" it and make sure it was aging properly - it is :) !! It was absolutely fantastic and I wanted to open another tonight and "test it" again but I forgot to put one in the chiller, so I am settling for a glass of wine instead. Now we need to name it...

I am now officially the "crazy chick"... with bags all over my grape bunches! My son was watching me from his sandbox for a long while when I finally asked "What are you looking at, Loch?" (knowing the answer!), and he said "I'm not sure, Mom", followed by "are those lunch bags?", and finally "are you tired of packing sandwiches for my lunch?". Wow, I had been having a trying afternoon with the kids, but I could no longer contain my laughter at that point. Just when you think you can't take anymore headaches from kids, they come out with a gem and it makes you realize how awesome it is to be a parent.

I could go on and on about the garden chores this week, but if I don't quit now, I will not have any relax time catching up on the DVR tonight! By the way...any of you seen the new A & E show Obsessed? For a type A, anxiety ridden, OCD person such as myself, gotta say I love it!! Kind of fun to watch what might happen to me if I let myself slip over the edge :)

June Gardening

So now that hubby is gone, I can shake myself off and start again! Thanks to all your kind words and a "me night" last night, today was a better day. Last night I vegged out in front of the TV, painted my toenails, gave myself the "gardeners manicure" (short cut, dig out dirt, sugar scrub, cornhuskers lotion, lol!), had a glass of wine and enjoyed the quiet after the kids went to bed. Today I didn't do much outside since it was hot as hell and humid, but I got my kitchen organized, which I had been putting off since it has been nice out up until now. The past week and last weekend were very busy, however, and we got alot done although much of it was overdue chores and general cleanup. I ripped out the peas the other day and am so in love with the empty clean raised bed that I haven't put my edamame in there yet! This weekend I will do that.

One beautiful not-overgrown raised bed in the foreground...Enjoy while you can!

Shallots are like a toaster when they are done! I will pull them this evening...

Here's a pic of the purple grapes which due to the birds, I am sure that I will not get to see turn purple...

And, as promised...the torched Rose Finn Fingerling Potatoes... oh, yes - this was an "accident"! Sailor/Husband thought he would help me weed by using his flame thrower around the cages FILLED WITH STRAW!!!!! I may have to send him to some kind of basic training for gardeners, right after he finishes fire safety class...! I will let them be and have camera in hand when I try and harvest. Who knew you could grow BAKED Potatoes??? This is one of those things that definitely was not funny when it happened, but thinking about his face when I saw what he had done makes me chuckle now - he was a'scared of me that night.

Here's the gates hubby finally finished. Yay! There's another set just like it on the other side of the house. He built a big overhang so I can grow hops or some other vine up and over it. Kinda reminds me of "Southfork"! Ooops, there I go showing my age again...

And here is the border I finally finished along the fenceline. I planted some evergreen Clematis that should provide complete coverage/privacy by next year. This time I was smart and used landscape fabric instead of just cardboard. The BermudaGrass here is awful and will grow through almost anything.

So now I am going to get those kids in bed. I am going to go out to the garden armed with a glass of wine and bug spray and pull those shallots...

OCD Friday

Lettin' my obsessive/Type A freak-flag fly today!  It seems that whenever my husband is due home from the ship I always get in the mood to organize things just prior.  I am not quite sure why, since I will spend the first day pointing all my accomplishments out to him because he will not notice them otherwise, he is just happy to be in a bed that isn't directly under the catapult of the flight deck and have clean laundry.  Apparently he supports my OCD personality, because last year for Mother's Day I got...a labelmaker!  Yes, folks, not a day at the spa but at least a step up from a broom, lol!  Actually it turned out to be the perfect gift especially since I started canning last year.  Today I finally got around to making my "freezer inventory".  This has been on my mind ever since I started freezing our garden produce, but became an absolute necessity since we picked up our beef share last week.  I have a small deep freeze we purchased last year and it is now packed to the lid!  Now instead of unpacking all the contents every day to see what I can drum up for dinner, I just "shop" by looking at my list posted on my fridge.  I can update it when it becomes a mess and print out a new one!  I just cross off what I take and use it also to make my grocery list.  Pretty simple really, but one of those things I kept putting off.  

And another adventure I couldn't miss... the grand opening of the new "Trader Joe's" here in Virginia Beach.  We were here at opening time, mostly because I knew there would be alot of giveaways and it's right down the street from our house.  We got a couple of free reusable shopping bags and some cookies, then stocked up on "Two Buck Chuck" Shiraz and beat feet outta there.  Before today, the nearest one was about an hour away near one of our airports, so I would visit in conjunction with my mom or husband flying in or out!  So the freak flags were flying here too...check out the mob scene:

The first of the radishes were picked yesterday.  Now if I could just learn to like them...

Here are some miscellaneous things going on around "the Estate"...

Baby bunches of grapes, aren't they cute?

Finally!  The potatoes are doing something!

The new Colonnade apple trees are actually growing!

Clematis is enjoying our weather right now

Remember licking the beaters when you were a kid?  That's one good thing about getting old, we get the BOWL now!!!

That's probably it for weekend posts here.  Sailor/Farmer comes home very soon so I will be busy working and doing things that he won't notice, and will most likely spend Mother's Day mowing the lawn :)

Have a good weekend y'all, and Happy Mother's Day!

Almost forgot...anyone have any experience with "The Food Saver"?  Would love to hear your reviews/experiences before I purchase anything!