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!

Finnegan "sans tonsils"!

Update!

Finn showing off his "power-bracelet"

Feeling groovy at 5:30 a.m.!

There goes my baby off to the O.R.

Waking up from anesthesia... not feeling so groovy now

This afternoon he's coming around and eating frozen yogurt, although the poor guy is HUNGRY!

I'm now getting relieved for a few hours and am headed out to get him the obligatory balloon and gift! Poor guy has to spend the night this time, ugh! Daddy got roped into that one, lol... I don't do hospital sleeping :)

Preschool & Broccoli!

Yay! My son had his first day of preschool Monday. For the first time in almost 7 years, I now have precisely 2 hours and 15 minutes of time to myself. I don't even know how to act! We have been trying all summer to get into the state funded pre-K to no avail. The only thing we have here is a pre-K that gives priority to children who have history in their family of incarceration, drug use, absentee parents, etc. I guess a deployed parent doesn't count as an absentee parent, lol! Anyway, we got lucky and the elementary school here is trying an experimental program called 'Reverse Mainstreaming' where they integrate into the special-ed Pre-K a few 'normally' developing (for lack of a better word) kids to help mentor the Special-Ed students. We basically were on pins and needles all summer waiting to hear, and found out Finn made the cut! I am so excited for him, with his brother in school he is really enjoying his new classmates and being all "grown-up", lol! Here he is not wanting to smile for the camera on his first day!

Yesterday I was able to get my onion bed all planted. I even had time to put in pansies separating the onion varieties! I am hoping it will help brighten the dreary winter garden this year. Below is the onion bed:

Below is the lettuce & spinach bed looking all tidy. I love the well behaved veggies of Fall. Compared to Summer veggies, they are like the honors class!

The next few photos are the containers the kids helped "design" and plant. I wanted some extra portable color for our big Harvest Party coming up. They did a good job for the most part, but I intervened on the pansy planting, they were a little too delicate for young boys to handle.

I just can't figure out what to do with these beauties:

These are Celosia we started from seed. The stems finally broke from the weight of the blooms, even though the blooms are still stunning and seem to last a long time. Believe it or not, there are only 2 blooms in the bucket! Some are over a foot in diameter. I call them "heads" since they remind me of broccoli. I have about 15 more that the stems are breaking on and I need to cut them too. Anyone know how to dry them? I was thinking I should hang them upside down? It would be nice if I could keep the color until our party on the 24th and put them on the table. I will definitely grow these seeds again next year, only put them in the back of my flower beds where I can tie the stems to the fence, they got about 4-5 ft tall!

This next pic is a little late but it is of my harvest last Sunday. We picked 1.01 lbs of Edamame, which we promply steamed and snacked on that evening with a glass of Homebrew! Will plant huge amounts of this next year. Also I picked 1.02 lbs of beans of the new fall crop going. Notice how spectacularly slim they are... lol... during the summer half of my beans get picked too late since I am so busy and it's hot out! Plenty of time in the fall to gather shirtfulls of beans while walking around. I also cut the rest of the Pesto Perpetuo Basil (my favorite) since the temps are dipping down and it will die off soon. I just pull the leaves and throw them in the food processor with some olive oil and then shape in a log and freeze. I can pull some off whenever I need basil for sauces or a spread on garlic bread. I highly recommend this variety, it has awesome flavor and stunning foliage - it's variegated! I have people ask me what it is, then I tell them to smell it!

And finally....BROCCOLI! I am excited because I have only tried it once, and it got storm damage last time so I never got to see any heads. Although it is shotgun-hole ridden, there they are, little heads growing! I hope I get to enjoy some before the worms annihilate it!

Here is one of the dangers of Master Gardener Certification. Ugh, I hate houseplants, but every class it seems I get sent home with some miscellaneous cutting or something that needs rooting or replanting. This can't go on, lol... the only place I have southern light in the house is the boys' bedroom and I don't think they would appreciate the jungle of half-grown junk! Nope, not a big fan of indoor foliage... I think it's probably because the 4 of us and 2 Aussies are already sharing our 1100 sq ft (not even!)... no room for this nonsense!

Tomorrow morning I need to take Finnegan to the Children's Hospital for a tonsillectomy at 5:30 am so I better get my act together tonight and start packing my other child's lunch, etc. See, I am trusting Sailor/Husband/Farmer to get him off to school on time and with all the proper gear, lol! I will have plenty of time to surf blogs on the iPhone tomorrow at the hospital, maybe I will figure out how to post from it!

Fall Days...

Have I said how much I love Fall? No more disgustingly humid days with 100+ heat indexes, mosquitoes are fewer and the garden chores can be done at a slower pace and be enjoyed - the well behaved fall veggies are a stark contrast to the hyperactive summer tomatoes and such! Every day I can't wait to get into the garden now and work, but find it difficult to watch my $$ since it's easy to go overboard planting new things now that I have time to spot all the bare patches in the perennial garden!

I just finished week 3 of Master Gardener training, and am loving it! It is nice to meet so many people who share a love of growing things, whatever their specialty is. I come home after every class ready to tackle some forgotten project I had going, lol!

I spent the whole afternoon in the yard today cleaning out "my shed" (hubby has his own!) and was inspired to actually sow some seeds in flats. It seems like yesterday when I was so tired of tomato and other seedlings all over the place, how soon we forget the pain and only remember the pleasure. Good thing, or no one would ever do it! Here a few pics shot this evening:

Mums again!

Montauk Daisies are blooming now - love these since they bloom from now until past Thanksgiving. Mine were planted 4 years ago when my young Crepe Myrtle trees weren't shading anything yet, but I am sure you can see they are suffering in the shade now. They will be dug up and moved into a sunny location. They are normally about 3-4 ft wide, and 2 feet tall!

Flats of pansies I got yesterday for a STEAL! They were $5 per flat on a clearance cart at a big box store since they needed deadheading .... what, lol??? Needless to say, I bought 3 flats!

The peas are up!

My second crop of Edamame will be harvested tomorrow, and be steamed, salted and eaten with a glass of homebrew by tomorrow night! I think I mentioned before, you need an acre of these to have any to freeze for winter - I was lucky to get 2 crops in this year, but will start earlier, and plant 10 times the amount I did this year.

Every time I walk out the back door, I am now greeted by this guy!

You never know when you may see ghosts of gardeners that have passed before us!

The Haunted Garden is coming along nicely, unfortunately now I am afraid we may scare all the little kids at our party! I am a sucker for campy horror flicks (can you tell I grew up in the 80's?) and can't seem to stop myself! Next hubby and I are going to put a 'dead guy' in our canoe and splatter him with blood with a butcher knife sticking out of him... yeah, we might have to dismantle that one before little kids get here, lol. Too bad we don't live on a lake, I have already dreamed up a classic summer camp theme with floating bodies tied to the dock and overturned canoes and blood spatter on the dock... that one will have to wait until we get our cabin 'up north'! Mama Pea, we will be in your neck of the woods then, so you will be expected at the party! So how about the rest of you? Do you go all out for Halloween or do you lock the doors and turn the lights out and pretend you're not home? :)

Blood Spatter in the Garden?

I have been taking a "burn & blister holiday" since the canning fiasco, but I will make up for it now with a bombardment of pictures! Yesterday was a good day cleaning up the yard and stringing up a trellis for peas. I love fall days when the new garden is immature and doesn't require much work, and the weather is conducive to just hanging out there and enjoying it! We took the kids to "Safety Day" at the local Farmer's Market and got the obligatory fire truck picture:

I also took a photo walk around the yard, and here are the current happenings:

I recieved a bunch of bare twig volunteer Rose of Sharon last spring that I figured would never grow, but here they are on the right, and developing quite a hedge at just 5 months old!! Not to bad for FREE!!

Marigolds perking along as strong as ever!

Last year's potted mums were planted and are coming into bloom

Perfect example of Mother Nature at work... literally over 100 cherry tomatoes sprouting up in my bed of peas, complete with a still red tomato attached! Remind me again why we baby those seed flats so much in the winter, lol??

My first year actually planting my containers on the deck for fall, usually my guests are greeted with assorted dead stuff by Thanksgiving!

Don't get me started on this.... I grew gourds all over my fence so when I have my kids' Harvest Party they are able to pick out and harvest their own gourds to paint - neighborhood kids have been stealing them off the fence and carting them off at the rate of 5-10 per day. This is all I have left. I caught the little ba*%ar#s yesterday and told them they were for a party and now there weren't enough for us to invite the whole neighborhood... that seemed to have stopped them, lol! What is it about the 9-12 age range? Even the nicest ones seem to transform into hoodlums overnight. No offense to any of you with kids that fall into that range, and I know... my time is coming in just a few short years!

The kids have been begging for me to get started on our Halloween decorating, so this morning we dug out all the stuff from the attic (thank goodness I am OCD, since this was an easy task with all my labeled orange containers, lol) and the kids proceeded to run all over the house with spiders, rats, and anything else creepy they could get their hands on. Thankfully, I snatched the spider web stuff before they could get that crap all over the place! So fifteen minutes later, my organized box was strewn all over the house and the dogs are barking at the fog machine and rubber rats, total chaos! I told the kids it was too early to decorate, but they pointed out to me that it was already Christmas at the stores lol, so I gave in to their demands. I must admit that the older the kids get, the more into Halloween I get! There was a time when all I liked was a simple 'Harvest Display', consisting of straw bales, a scarecrow, leaves, fall wreaths, pumpkins, mums and the like, and I could leave it up all the way until Thanksgiving! Now that the boys are getting old enough to enjoy a good scary display, I am going all out, and I admit that it is pretty fun - my challenge is to be old-school scary, and not give in to the tacky inflatables and all that junk even though the kids seem to love that stuff. I am keeping the front yard 'Harvesty', but am going to do a Haunted Garden this year for our 2nd Annual Harvest Party, a fun social for grownups but with enough activities to keep the kids out of our hair for the evening! The kids get to do Pumpkin Painting, play camping in tents we set up with buckets of cheap flashlights, treasure hunt, etc but it is just a guise to enable the grownups to imbibe in our own creepy punch bowl and yummy apps and get some much needed adult time!

Even though sailor/husband/farmer had to work this afternoon, he went out in the rain this morning to create headstones, signs, etc out of scrap lumber for the kids & I to paint today. I know he was tired and has to work all night tonight, but the kids will remember their dad doing some fun stuff for them! Too often I think what they remember most is either him being gone or getting ready to leave - the Navy doesn't always jive with creating family traditions, but we try to do it anyways! Here are the day's projects:

Headstones courtesy of hubby and his stash of scrap lumber

Miscellaneous crosses in the garden - this area will become a haunted garden over the next few weeks. It works perfectly since it's in the back yard so neighborhood hoodlums can't destroy our fun!

Painting underway: signs for the food table

Signs for the yard

Gravestones maybe only the adults will get :)

Sign for the adult beverage area...

I highly recommend blood spatter as a stress reliever! I did this tonight and was having so much fun that my kids were whining and telling me it wasn't my turn anymore. I couldn't seem to give up the brush... even some neighbors came over to my driveway to see what all the arm throwing and giddiness was all about... try it, you'll see! More on the Haunted Garden as it develops...

Get it together, Girl!

When I look back on my day today, I shudder to think what a stranger would make of me. Just when I was getting decent at juggling gardening along with my parenting skills, school (mine) gets thrown in the mix! The whole day I went from activity to activity absent-mindedly, jittery, accident prone... to an onlooker I must have seemed like an addict or maybe someone who had consumed 30 or so lattes back to back!

It started well enough, got up, got both kids and myself ready to go by 7:15. On the way out the door I realize I have the perfect crew to get rid of my excess veggies... a-ha!... the Master Gardener class students! So I head back and pile eggplant and peppers in a shallow box and head to school. Upon arrival, I attempt to juggle the box along with my coffee and bag, of course spilling stuff in the stairwell. When I plunk the box down to "oooh's" & "ahhhh's" I feel somewhat better, but at the same time think to myself "don't these people garden?" lol!!

(Veggies pawned off on my classmates!)

Afterwards I pick up my youngest and head home to deal with yet more peppers...

13.5 lbs of them!!!

(these are destined for the freezer, I gave up after slicing 6 lbs!)

Yikes, where do they all come from??? Anyway, my husband gets home at about 2:30 pm and agrees to take care of the kids, bath, dinner, etc, so I set about getting to work canning jalapenos. About halfway through gloved mama slicing peppers, he gets a call that he has to go back to work. Now I am trying to handle pepper oils and boil water and sterilize jars on the back deck (propane burner this time!) all while my kids are tearing through the house demanding dinner. I am trying to hurry since I have already been at it for 2 hours at this point, and promply try to pull jars out of boiling water using an inappropriate utensil and spill boiling water all over my hand and arm and toe! Ten minutes later I spill vinegar on my dog. The event culminated in my removing canned peppers to a flat cutting board, walking through the house with them when 2 of them started to slide... instead of letting it crash to the floor, I grab one with my hand and the other is wedged between my elbow and side of torso. Yeah, serious burns all over my body... someone please remind me that this is supposed to be fun and rewarding! I looked like a poster child for an anti-home canning campaign. Del Monte or Libby would love me to show why their products are "superior"! I am starting to wonder myself: I mean, hey, we can get a vat of pickled jalapenos at S@m's Club for like 5 bucks!!! One would never know I actually have experience at this endeavor...

(pepper rings this time, too lazy to scorch and peel them all)

(the end result: pickled & whole frozen jalapenos... I gave up slicing after an hour!)

Well, at least I can say canning season went "out with a bang"! And it's a good thing I don't drink martinis while canning... can you imagine? Or maybe I should start....! Well, one can of Solarcaine later, I can now reflect on my day. I think I will remember this one for awhile. Maybe next year I will actually get everyone out of the house on canning days. I cannot wait to get these kids in bed.... 15 more minutes!

Yesterday, I actually got my whole garden fall-planted except for my onions, garlic & shallots. I am sure I will write about that tomorrow, that is, if my fingers haven't blistered and fallen off! :)

Detoxing from seafood...

I call this the Minnesota detox from taking part in the consumption of over 5 lbs of shrimp and mass amounts of fish over the weekend:

Grassfed Steak w/Fingerlings from the garden! (although my hubby's steak turned out a nicer pink than the one I cut open)

BEEF: It's What's For Dinner!