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!

Making hay while the sun shines!

Last Thursday hubby's boat pulled in and we have been busy ever since! Our weather has been fantastic, so we were able to get so much accomplished this past weekend and it looks to be a productive week ahead since he is on leave and will be home all week.

Finnegan waiting for Daddy to get off the ship (his boat is the USS Truman in the background) so we can go home and enjoy the weather!

(Nice trash in the pic, huh?!)

We had a nice surprise waiting for him when we got him back: a set of 5 gal kegs, CO2 system, and the makings of his homemade kegerator! He has been wanting to build one of these for awhile, and I must admit it makes homebrew bottling day go by much quicker than sanitizing, filling and capping all those little individual bottles! It keeps indefinitely in the keg, so I don't have to worry about using it up quickly, which was one of my concerns. Even though we love brewing beer, we aren't the kind of drinkers that drink every evening, so it was a must that it wouldn't go bad! It is awesome for entertaining, though!

Here he is taking the top of and dismantling a perfectly good fridge

These are the components: recycled 5 gal Cornelius soda kegs, co2 bottle, regulator

This was me figuring out how the CO2 works before he got home - don't know what I would have done without that laptop and the homebrewing websites!

It all fits in the fridge!

By Friday evening we had a 2-Draft tower keg!

He finished it just in time for our Homebrewing/Homesteading Skills demonstration on Saturday night. We hosted a Disaster Prep group for an evening of Homebrewing "how-to" and it was a great time! We met some really great people, and shared our love of a skill that is important to "social survival" as I call it. A diverse group that includes everyone from die-hard survivalists to people like us who simply want to live as self sufficiently as possible and whose future plans include homesteading on their own piece of land. Everyone in the group brings a bit of knowledge and skill about different areas which made for an evening of lively conversation and a good time meeting new friends. We definitely hope to see more of the group!

Here is the finished batch of Double IPA from the Homebrew Skills evening. It will be fermenting and dry-hopping for the next couple of weeks and then we will keg it and store it for another few weeks until it is aged and ready to enjoy!

We did manage to find time (I don't know how!) for the kids to dye some Easter Eggs. I forgot how smelly this project is, yuck!

Most of my seedlings are hardened off now and will be going into the garden today! Below are all of them, in their various stages. The perennials, herbs and flowers are growing slowly but steadily, but the top row of tomatoes is ready to be in their new homes. I am going to go ahead and plant them today, fingers crossed! I do have a backup, however, there is another generation of tomatoes and peppers that are about 3 weeks younger than these, so if they get stunted I can replace them, but I am hoping for success. Daytime temps here are in the 80's, and nighttime temps in the 57-62 range. They did well overnight on their rack outside, so I can only assume being planted permanently will actually be gentler on their roots and better for keeping even temps.

Close up of 1st generation of tomatoes. Brandywine, True Black Brandywine, Paul Robeson, Vorlon, Yellow Pear and the Hand-me-down unidentified Polish are the Heirlooms, and the hybrids include an Orange Wellington and 4th of July Hybrid. I had bad germination on my Red Zebra, so Baker Creek Co. offered to replace them and those will be going in with the next generation of seedlings that I am raising for the Master Gardener Plant Sale in May. Kudos to Baker Creek customer service, I am very pleased!

Off to enjoy another day of very warm (hot even, 88 forecast!) temps and working in the yard. We have been given yet another date for hubby to leave for his 8 month deployment, and it gives us roughly one month left at home, so we get as much done as possible before then! He also got my much anticipated hammock up, so I will try and get some pics of that today as well as what the garden is looking like in general! Now, if I could just find some time to actually lay in the hammock...

Children...

I would just love to know what Loch's kindergarten teacher thinks of our family...here's a great moment caught on tape! Loch came home with a picture he drew in class of the homebrewing process, so I had him explain the drawing to me on video to capture the moment for daddy. He drew in great detail the primary & secondary fermenters, spigot, hops, capping, etc! While I am mortified, my husband is probably busy showing the clip to everyone on board his ship and beaming with pride in his son's detailed tutorial...

And this evening, I was able to put a child to work retrieving some creamer that was all the way at the back of the shelf - take a good long look, it's not often I can refer to a 4 year old as helpful!

That's all for tonight, I intended to take some pics of the garden, but it was a bit overcast this afternoon so it will have to wait for tomorrow. And yay!- more severe t-storm crawlers on the tv right now, for like the 7th day in a row! My plants need SUN, not more rain and hail!