Home for the Holidays!

I am very excited! Sailor/Farmer/Husband's leave got approved and we are officially leaving Friday very early to head home to Minnesota for Thanksgiving! The kids are so excited and have already started packing as much unnecessary crap as they can fit into their little backpacks. I was hesitant to tell them for awhile since it was possible that hubby would be sent out somewhere, but the carrier left without him yesterday for a week, so I know that our plans won't be changed "courtesy of the Navy" now. (Knock on wood!) The trip is so long, but it always seems to go by more quickly near the holidays. We will leave at about 3-4 am and usually try to power through 1000 miles the first day from Virginia Beach to Janesville, WI - then that makes for a nice 2nd day of the trip. Wake up a little later, breakfast, then only 4-5 hours 'til home. I really love MN in the summertime, but the good thing about going this time of year is that we won't have bikes, kayak, etc on top of the car, makes for an easier ride! My mom is having a ton of family for dinner, so we should get to see just about everyone in the family. My dad's blues band has a tradition of playing a local bar the night before Thanksgiving so no doubt my mom will get "stuck" with the grandkids and dogs while we get some much needed time out and will get to really enjoy a night on the town with a trusted babysitter! It doesn't get any more trustworthy than your own mom, does it?!

As far as our storm goes, we have been cleaning up the past couple of days. We fared much better than some in our area. Our fence came down, lost some 2x4's off of our pergola and the kids' playset, and just general disarray and light flooding of the yard. The veggie beds seem to be fine (raised!) and believe it or not, I still have blooms on my azaleas, though the trees were stripped clean of their leaves, can't quite figure that one out. We have a massive container ship that actually washed ashore near us, they are trying to figure out how to tow it back to sea. We also lost ALOT of sand dunes near the ocean, and a couple of ocean fishing piers.

I designed some labels for the first time for our homebrew since we will be bringing plenty of that home to share at Thanksgiving. I can't seem to get a decent picture of the labels, so I'll spell it out...

on left: (named after our deceased rescue Bernese Mountain Dog!)

Pickett's

Recycled Dog Extra Pale Ale

woof - woof

renew - reuse

ADOPT!

on right:

Ludwig Family Homestead

Hophead

Double IPA

dry hopped suburban farm homebrew

We also mini-kegged a batch of Belgian Farmhouse Ale. This is the first time we have kegged so I am anxious to find out if "it took"! Guess we'll know soon enough! Good thing Leine's is plentiful back home to keep everyone happy if it turns out that it didn't carbonate well :)

I hope to post again before we leave but I will be trying to post as well from home if my mom will let me hijack her Mac for awhile.

"The Sea Was Angry That Day, My Friend....!"

Couldn't resist a little Seinfeld quote there! Well, there is definitely no gardening going on here. Maybe no garden left, either! Our Nor'easter hit yesterday morning at about 7 a.m. and is expected to continue for 60 hours. Bad enough that our Governor declared a state of emergency here. Normally when we get Nor'easters, they are here and gone within 24 hours. This is supposed to be on par with Hurricane Isabel a few years back, which the flooding after the storm was incredibly bad, and there are still people here that haven't recovered fully from that.

The weather forecast states sustained winds 50-60 knots, gusting higher. The waves on the ocean are at 17-20 feet, and on the Chesapeake Bay seas at 10-12 feet. For my "up north" friends, imagine 10-12 foot swells on Lake Superior. The real problem this creates in our area is the wind pushing the water inward through the Bay into the tributaries, flooding our entire area. We won't be out of the woods for several tide cycles after the storm passes on Friday night.

This photo is horrible because I got water in my camera, but it shows the offshore winds typical of a Nor'easter:

We live in a very interesting area water-wise, as we are surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Chesapeake Bay, the large Elizabeth, James, and York Rivers, and the Great Dismal Swamp and Back Bay. Collectively, our 7 cities area is referred to as "Tidewater". We are basically an island, and have several bridge/tunnels that connect us to "mainland" which is really just another peninsula! The trouble arises when, during floods and hurricanes, the first roads to close are the bridge tunnels due to wind restrictions, which effectively seals us off and creates traffic nightmares. But the other side to all this of course is the beauty of the place when the weather is cooperating! And all this water is also the reason we are home to the largest Naval Base in the world.

I hope posting this map will work. It shows pretty well how affected by tidal flooding we are. Below is a topographical map I found on the National Wildlife Foundation's website. It represents pretty well the amount of water affected by tides in our area (all of it!). Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make an arrow point to my house on the photo, but I live at the northern triangular point of "Back Bay" on the right of the map. The thin strand you see on the far right is a sandbar/barrier island near us that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the mainland.

I would say that in my experience, Nor'easters cause more damage than hurricanes in our area. I think this is due to the fact that we get far more of them, and they tend to be stronger and last longer. Most hurricanes blow ashore at Cape Hatteras, just south of us in NC, and thus become weakened by landfall by the time they get here. But of course, not always the case!

We are lucky that even though we live extremely close to Rudee Inlet, our house is on relatively higher ground. Historically, our street may flood and it is possible that we may not be able to get out of our street, but the house usually does well.

Here are some photos/videos of how it is affecting us personally:

The River Birch tree is only a year old, I hope she put good roots down this year!

Lastly, I will end with a pic from my best friend's yard across town. She woke up this morning to a huge pine tree down, roots and all! Not sure if you are able to enlarge it, but it narrowly missed the house, didn't hit any cars, and her azaleas in front of the house are okay! Amazing luck, but a big cleanup job ahead for them. I am sure my husband will make sure he is on the cleanup crew... they started homebrewing as well... you know, any excuse will do for husbands, lol!

I hope you have enjoyed my weather/topography blog... now I must take a shower and make some coffee while I still have power! School is closed today, so it should be interesting entertaining the kids stuck indoors all day!

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 :) !!