This guy rocks...

This article says it all...I just had to share!

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20090626_The__MANGIA__GARDEN.html

Lazy Day in Pictures

My garden is in limbo right now...everything is growing, but not yet ripe for picking! I figured today would be a good day just to show pics of what's happening in the garden. The clouds finally cleared and got some decent (not great, as I am not a great photographer!) pics of the plants. It's hot here and humidity supposed to climb way up this weekend, so I am planning on some indoor activities, and possibly being able to put up some jalapenos from the garden by this weekend. I'm not much for heat and humidity, so I won't be out there any more than necessary! Enjoy...

Pinot Noir Bell Peppers

Purple Rain Eggplant

Tomato Beds with Eggplant in foreground

"Aerial Shot" of garden...from atop the kids' fort! Some of the beds were just reseeded with squash and edamame where the peas were ripped out.

The sometimes boring but always pretty marigolds.

Out of control Mammoth Dill in the Jalapeno bed

Purple Vitex that I am training into a tree...

Blackberries

(the resident boss mockingbird is watching me as I take this one, I know what he's thinking...)

"NO BERRIES FOR YOU!!"

The Butterfly/Bird Garden...although the first flush of blooms has disappeared, waiting for next group of plants to bloom

Miscellaneous free lily that came in a veggie shipment!

Crepe Myrtles are in full bloom now

Another shot of Crepe Myrtle tree

Five-Leaf Akebia vine...all the mockingbirds live here!

My new Fig Tree! Due to my uncertainty of how long we will be at this house, all fruit trees are now in containers so they can migrate with us.

Salvia

We have tons of butterflies with the new butterfly garden, hopefully I can get a better shot soon

And no garden post is complete without a shot of one of the Garden Dogs...here is one of my Aussies after "herding the hose"! This involves her chewing the nozzle open and then attacking the spray...yes, we are on our 3rd nozzle due to this game of hers. I guess if there's no chickens or sheep, water is the next best thing for a bored herding dog!

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!

Berry Picking & Birthday!

Saturday was the first day the blackberry fields opened, and we were out first thing in the morning, since the temps were to climb in the upper 90's with a heat index in the 100's! It only took us about 30 minutes to pick a bunch, and a few for the mouth while we picked! The rest of the hot day was spent inside in the A/C making berry-related goodies. I might add that it was only $10 for all those mouth watering berries the kids are holding...

Here's Finnegan "helping" to make the jam.

Here I am squishing berries...the kids thought this was hilarious.

Thanks to the kids playing with my camera, you get to see a picture of the happy homemaker with the finished jam! (Like the dumb headband?? Gotta keep the hair out the jam...)

Still, lots of berries left...so I made some blackberry lemonade. Kids thought this was awesome...probably because it wasn't watered down like I normally do to their store bought juice!

We also picked up some blueberries at a roadside stand on the way home, so I made blueberry muffins. This was the first time I had made them from scratch, and they were incredible. If you look up "To Die For Blueberry Muffins" on the web...that's the recipe I used, they even had a yummy crumb topping.

Finally, kids were off to bed and I thought that was a good occasion for a mommy drink - that's Blackberry Lemonade with a splash of vodka - YUM!

That brings us to today, which was pretty uneventful considering it's my birthday and Father's Day! We are minus the father, the kids are too young to really do anything for me for my birthday, and we don't live near family members, so I mowed the lawn and weeded the garden for my special day. Don't feel bad for me - I actually got ALL THE WEEDING DONE (for now) and my yard looks spectacular all freshly mowed and dog poop scooped...woohoo! The kids and I barbequed and ate dinner outside this evening and it felt so good to look at the backyard and garden and not be filled with the thoughts of drudgery! So it ended up being a great birthday after all! Tomorrow I still have plans for the garden, but for once all they are is to plant some of my flowers and sow some seeds, pleasurable stuff!! I will probably take some pics of my new container trees and what's blooming and update on that stuff for a change!

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...

Bad Mommy!

Let me first say to my husband if he is reading this while out on the High Seas, "I'm sorry" and "Thank you for busting your ass working here at home before you left!"...don't think I didn't notice and appreciate it!

My military spouse peeps out there I hope can identify with some of what I am going through right now, and if you can't, well, sorry I am about to bore you to tears with my complaining! Sailor/Farmer left Tuesday for several weeks again. I don't know what I was thinking by planting such a big garden and taking on so many projects! I don't know where I thought I would get the time for it. Once again, deployment is looming near and I seemed to have been in denial about it.

Now, looking at the calendar, I realize that he will be home a total of only about 6-8 weeks this summer/fall, mostly in 2 week spurts before he leaves for the real deployment in November. So now that I am faced with enough produce for a family of 50 (no kidding!), I am once again cursing myself for falling for the "denial stage" yet again. My husband had to work on our fence/gates all weekend just to finish them before he left, so the kids didn't get any "dad time" before he left. I even let a bad one slip, it went something like "if you want a home to come back to, you will finish these - TONIGHT"! Yeah, ooops... This is something he is quite used to in the weeks/months leading up to deployment, and then again at his return, and you would think that after all these years & deployments we would be able to deal with this better, but nope! In my defense, at the time I made my comment, he had just finished setting my potato cages on fire so I was a little tweaked already! (Yeah, he did it by accident, more on that fiasco in my next garden update!) Since he left on Tuesday, I have sunk to bad mommy levels not seen around here in awhile...the past 3 days dinner consisted of McDonald's, Pizza Rolls, and tonight - frozen pizza! I had every intention of cooking dinner this evening, but just finished mowing the lawn in heat & humidity and after cleaning up dog puke, Legos, and wet swimsuits from the floor, I am done! I even yelled at one of my kids today before he could get anything out past "Mommy....." Ugh!

See, all is not always perfect in the real world or in blog world! Too many times we only write about the good things, but my aim is to write about what it is like trying to live a "normal" life in a military world...and sometimes 'dem twos don't mix! I owe the inspiration to my "Honest Mommy" post to The Mrs. over at "Trying Our Best"...thanks, and I hope that now some of that is off my chest I can move on to other things, maybe like figuring out when the local Food Bank holds donation days for produce, LOL!