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!

Fall Garden Today

Okay, I will have a "real post" up later this evening or at the latest in the a.m. but for now this will have to do to prove I am still alive and well! I have, however, been reading all of your posts daily and look forward to my 15 minutes with coffee and blogger friends before my kids wake up every morning!

Here is a fall pictorial tour of our little suburban farm taken this afternoon:

Lettuce Beds (several types of mesclun, lettuces, spinach, oriental greens, Swiss Chard)

Garlic, Shallot & Onion Bed

I actually got ambitious this day and interplanted pansies to give a little color and separate the types. I hope the pansies fill out soon and look a little better!

Leek Bed with Swiss Chard and pansies

The Marigolds are looking fantastic right now, I need to remember to plant these everywhere next year - I like them better than mums!

Are cosmos supposed to get this big? LOL they don't seem to be giving up any time soon, either, and they are in the shade for half the day. I shudder to think of all the reseeding that went on over the summer & fall... can you say INVASIVE?! I will find out next summer!

That's all for now. I even already loaded up pics for my next post, but since it is a "real post" I will have to find time later this evening to sit down after the kids go to bed and actually write some words to go along with the pics. Right now, however, I have two boys wound up after a day at school screaming about being "starving" and wanting to go ride bikes. It's hard to get used to it getting dark so early and having to get so much done right after school. The upside is that they go to bed earlier!!

I am working on it now...

Hope you all haven't written me off! I have been very busy lately but that has slacked off a bit now. I just returned from a walk-thru of the garden with camera in hand and am going to upload pics and write a new post (finally)! As soon as I return from picking up Finn from preschool, that is, lol! This evening, I promise I will have a new post up! Thanks to all my blogger friends who haven't ditched me :) !!

Well, at least he'll be immune after this...!

Swine Flu is my new houseguest! I was hoping to write a post on our rockin' fun Halloween Party, but my priorities have changed this afternoon. Sucks when all you get in your candy bag is H1N1 germs.

Lately, every time the phone rings during the school day I fear it is the school nurse. Up until today, it was usually my best friend on the other end to my relief! Today at 12:30 it rang and it was indeed the school clinic. I raced over there and he looked awful. We went straight to the Dr.'s office where he popped positive on their H1N1 test. By then he was shivering terribly and kept kind of "falling out" where he would just lay down wherever he was, temp of 103. Luckily, he qualified for the Tamiflu and she also prescribed some for my younger son who is not showing symptoms yet, although it's probably a matter of time since they share a room! So now poor Loch is eating his dinner in his room, where he is quarantined. Finnegan will be bunking with us at long as he is healthy. Trying to keep the two apart is nerve-wracking to say the least!

If there is an upside to all this, Loch will be immune to it this year now! We have been waiting for vaccines to arrive for sometime now in our area but it isn't happening. I heard on the news all the local pharmacies were running out of Tamiflu, but our pharmacist told us we got 2 prescriptions out of the last bottle they had, lucky for us, but maybe not for the others we saw arriving with masks on as we were leaving. I tucked it into my purse and hurried out, almost afraid I was going to be mugged for it! I will say that Tamiflu appears to be like a magic elixir, as Loch's symptoms are getting better with every hour.

Incubation is 48 hours, so no doubt that one of the 17 (no kidding, 17!) kids at our party was shedding the virus germs. Now we are on pins and needles to see how many were infected. This is especially upsetting to me since I hosted the party, and went as far as to write reminders on the mirrors of the bathroom about handwashing, put out Purell everywhere, but I guess when it comes to kids, what more can you do? I had a feeling about having a party this time of year... and apparently it's just a matter of time before we all get it! I almost think I should let Finn back into his room so he can catch it and get it over with, but I realize this illness is really nothing to play around with.

Hoping you all are getting vaccines delivered to your area soon! Time to go tend to the sick...

Twilight, Anyone?

Wow, I am really bad about blogging lately! You all have been on my mind, and I have been reading your blogs religiously, but I am ashamed to admit... I have been consumed with reading the 'Twilight' Saga! (you can let out a big collective groan now!) Up until 2 weeks ago, I was one of the people that made fun of adults reading teen literature! I was discussing with my neighbor and friend how much I miss getting lost in a good book and the subject of the 'Twilight Series' came up and the fact that she just finished them. Well, she's my age so I made fun of her but at the same time told her that I just couldn't find time lately to get to the library and stock up on some good fall reading. She then told me that I should give the saga a try, to which I responded that I didn't think I would like them, and I really prefer long reads that will take me more than an hour. "Hang on" she replied, and ran into her house and came back with a beautiful set of 4 thick hardcovers! Needless to say, I didn't realize teen literature had expanded to include more than a hundred pages, lol, and eagerly dove in! I have been reading since then whenever I get more than 5 minutes of a chance, and am now into the 4th and last book. I must admit, vampires are pretty cool guilty pleasure reads, and a little more gripping than my Master Gardener manual, although that's pretty gripping stuff too sometimes! So go ahead, let the comments roll on that one!

My Celosia is looking quite "Vampire-ish" and I hope it lasts until my party Saturday evening!

Other than reading and shuttling kids around, I have been busy doing general cleanup and the occasional bean picking. The bell peppers are now finished, and the beans are on their 3rd "pick" and looking good. We had our 1st light frost last night, it got down to 39 degrees, but up to 70 for the high and supposed to be 80 tomorrow! I am just so glad to see the sun after the last 5 days of gray, cold and rain. I know many of you were dealing with the same nor'easters that moved through my area so I won't complain too much.

I planted some garlic last week that was from last year's box of sets and it sprouted yesterday! I was pretty worried since they have been sitting in a cardboard box for the past year on my desk, but they popped their heads up during the cold rainy spell. They were the only residents of my garden that appreciated the dreary weather.

This is the last of the Bell Peppers, 3.5 lbs

Today's harvest of pole beans, 3.15 lbs was added to last week's pick of 2.14 lbs.

This should say something about my children's eating habits - I have a family of 4 yet these are my "serving size" bags! Pretty much just my husband & I and a few extras just in case the kids decide to surprise me one day. I have exhausted every possible means of bribing them, taking things away, point systems with rewards, even force feeding at one particularly awful "bad Mommy" moment! Any other ideas?

How very cool is THIS GUY?!! This photo was from my Master Gardener class last week on Entomology. Yes, he is as big as he looks compared to the other insects! Not a very focused picture though, took it with the iphone. I need to start bringing a real camera to school I think!

I never imagined I would have a second flush of toddlers in the Black Swallowtail Daycare! I was looking at my fennel the other day and there were at least 20 on there ranging in age from the 1st instar stage all the way to full-on caterpillar action! I have recently found a bunch more on the dill in my raised bed garden, but since that is the last of their food reserves out there I am leaving them to it, there is gobs of dill so they should leave all my other stuff alone.

The next few days will be spent doing fun stuff in anticipation of our Harvest Party Saturday. You know, the usual... flinging blood on tablecloths, stabbing scarecrows with knives, calculating how much booze needs to go into the bloody punch bowl... good times! I hope to get some pics when when we do our "trial run" Friday night, just in case The Ghostess with the Mostess has a little too much punch and forgets to take pics during the party, lol!