I’m a little sick of this weather

We had a huge hail storm the other night with ping pong to golf ball sized hail.

He is not amused

We had quite a bit of damage.  The insurance adjuster comes tomorrow to tell us exactly how bad it is.  I can tell you just from looking around that our siding is quite damaged on the south side of the house, my shed roof is destroyed, my pergola is pretty beat up.  What I’m most worried about is the roof.  I really hope it is not trashed.

So long shitty shed. It’s been crap knowing you.

To add insult to injury, it snowed all damn day yesterday.  One would think with it being the twelfth of April it would be warm by now, but noooo.  Take a look at next week.  I think I’m going to hurl.

I would really just like it to be 60 degrees for two days in a row.  Is that too much to ask?

 

 

It’s a mostly Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from some of us

The Bobcat Trail

The Meister is in second grade this year and I had successfully avoided Cub Scouts for two years.  You see, I had heard horror stories about the time commitment that scouts can become.  That’s just not me.  I am not nor do I want to be that mom running kids from one activity to the next.  Yes, I’m lazy, but I firmly believe being home with your family at the end of the day is much more important that being at soccer, ballet, swimming, karate, etc.  That and the organization as a whole leans way right and The Hubs and I lean far far far to the left.  I didn’t know if I could, with good conscious, support an organization like Boy Scouts.  With that said, The Meister asked if he could join scouts this year.  His best friend Michael had told him all about it.  He seemed so earnest.  I look at him and see my tiny baby, how could I say no?

How do you say no to your tiny baby, even when they are 7?

We went to our first pack meeting.  I sat in the back.  Silently observing…and judging.  Yep, these were normal people with normal kids.  I can do this.  Maybe.  I hope.  Meister of course was spazzing all over the gym with his friends.

The next week was the first den meeting.  Filled out the application to be a Cub Scout.  Really? An application to do what?  Play games and make fart noises with his friends?  Ok whatever.  I just kept repeating, he wants to do this, he wants to do this, he wants to do this.

Then, my dad took him to get his uniform.  This is what I came home to.  I melted.  I silently vowed to follow him all the way to his Eagle Scout if he was going to look this damn cute.

You want me to help him sell overly priced mediocre quality popcorn? Sure!  Want me to help him memorize things like the scout promise and motto? Done!  Want me to attend meetings and then help herd 7 year old boys around an open area all the while encouraging them to pick up trash and stop pretending to shoot each other.  I did it, but it took serious amounts of Diet Coke and popcorn to make me sane again.

I may have looked similar at the end of the night.

A whole month later, he is so into scouts.  Way into it.  He loves it.  He actually has a passion for something other than his DS.  I am so proud of him.  He just completed his first badge.  It was the Bobcat Trail.  It gets you ready to officially be a Wolf.

 

The face paint means something, but I forgot.   I promise, we’re into it!  Some more than others….

 

 

 

 

Kids ruin everything

If you have known me for any length of time then you know my motto: Kids ruin everything.  They do.  Think about it for a minute.  Remember when you were childless?  See?  I’m right aren’t I?  With that said though, I love our kids.  I love them to pieces and I’d let them ruin my life over and over again just to have them with me.

Who would wear cowboy hats with me?  Certainly not The Hubs.  He abhors cowboys.  I used to be married to one.  Ironic eh?

Who would sleep like this?  I die a little inside each time I see this.  How effing precious?

Who would look so adorable and so gross at the same time?

Who would let me endanger my face while taking this awesome picture?

These two that’s who.  I love the crap out of them and want to squeeze them.  A lot.

 

 

 

We’ve been busy

Over Labor Day weekend, The Hubs and my dad ripped out the deck because we are putting in a patio.  It took a long time and of course it was unseasonably hot.  I didn’t take their pictures while they were doing it because  laser beams would have shot out their eyes and melted me.

This is the aftermath.

The deck was a good foot off the ground and Max used to go under there and gnaw on his “acquisitions” shall we say.  Max of course found all of the good bits of dead mice and bugs while I was raking up the gravel/rocks/nails/bits of wood/plant debris/dead rodents.   It was so gross.  It seriously made me rethink having a dog.  I love him and all, but ewwwww.

And yes, our yard looks super trashy right now.  Everything that was up by the house has to be somewhere else for a while three weeks.  I’m sure the neighbors love us.

The pergola is going to stay.  Hopefully.  We’ll see what the concreters say.

The Hubs moved the rest of the river rock last night and it is now prepped for the concrete guys.  They might be here in a week.  We don’t know, because they haven’t committed to a date.  So it’s hurry up and wait.  The story of my life.

Terrarium

I made a terrarium today.  It came out exactly like the picture in my head!  I think the lack of wine while crafting added to the outcome.  Ha!

 
I had two small orchids hanging out on my kitchen windowsill all summer long.  I had one of them in a terrarium I made last year out of a goodwill find.  It was the cutest glass jar with lid.  I looked and looked for a picture of it with the lid on, but I guess I never took one.  This will have to do.

That orchid lived in there about a year, but I knew it needed a new home when I brought home this guy.

 

Being the cheap bastard that I am, I knew I wasn’t going to run out and buy a big glass jar with a lid.  Nooo.  I was going to wait until the cutest most perfect jar appeared at Goodwill.  It took a while, but I found it.  It used to be a drink dispenser, but I just turned the spigot to the back.  I’m clever like that.  Snort.

 
So I filled that bad boy up with some rocks, pea gravel, a little activated charcoal, orchid mix, then the orchids.  It looked a little bare in front so I ripped some moss off the ground from the front yard.  Again with the clever!  Sometimes I amaze myself.  I added a tiny ceramic pony for the cute factor.

 

I was quite pleased.  I plopped the lid on and put in on the kitchen counter.  Many hours later I came back to find this.

What the fire truck is going on in there?  What’s with all the lines?  So I get reaaaal close.  That’s when I discovered my leeetle friends.

I guess I’ll add snails to the list of pets in our house.  Now, what exactly do I feed them?

 

Seven year old boy humor

He saw the hippos and he giggled.  Then chortled.  Then had a gut busting laugh.  Then he begged me to take this picture.  Seven year old boy humor.  I totally get it because I laughed too!

 

Garden aerial and plans

My garden, like yours, is ever changing.  Here is a screenshot of Google Maps for my house.  This was taken sometime last fall.

 

When I moved into the house in 2008, there was minimal landscaping around the edge of the house and deck.  The shed was there, as well as the rocked in corner behind the shed.  That was it.  It was pretty plain.

What the Google maps picture doesn’t show you is how the yard slopes downhill to the northeast.  It’s a pain to mow.  I wanted to make that slope go away so I have slowly been adding gardens along the fence.  The plan is to have them creep up and in towards the middle of the yard.

I planted lilacs in the northeast corner in 2009.  In the picture above they are surrounded by framed out chicken wire to protect them from the bunnies.  Die bunnies DIE!  er excuse me… In 2010 I added half of the back fence bed.  I only had enough grass and leaves to do that much.  I hadn’t yet graduated to sneaking the neighbors yard waste bags into the trunk of my car in the dead of night.  I finished the other half of the back fence bed in 2011 and that brings us to the picture above.

This year we are adding a new bed along the north fence.  Want to see?

I was leaning out the bedroom window with my arms stretched up above my head so I could clear the pergola. Forgive the blurriness.

There is the brand new bed!  Well, the beginning of it anyway.  I have been layering grass clippings and compost.  The junk boards are just an outline, when it gets a little cooler we will outline the bed with brick.  Then it will match the rest of the yard.  This is a fairly slim bed compared the the back fence, but I will expand it over the years.  Right now I am thinking this will be a “tomato alley” of sorts for next summer.
Here is what I want the yard to look like.  Eventually.  Some day.  It’s a slow process, I’ll give you that.

In the August Garden

August, you are a welcome relief after the hottest and driest July on record.  The weather has been absolutely lovely.  I have had the windows open every night this week, the dog has been able to be out all day without fear of heatstroke, and I can walk barefoot to the mail box without causing intense pain because I’m too lazy to slip my sandals on.  I digress.  Back to the garden…
I ripped out the cucumbers early in the month.  Quite frankly I was sick of them.  I keep getting 2 or 3 in the CSA bag each week and I am the only one who eats them.  I think I am just not going to plant them anymore.  No cucumbers is sacrilege right?

The Tomatoes are still bonkers.  The three that I have carefully staked, pruned, watered regularly are pretty pathetic.  I know the heat, drought, etc. are most likely to blame.

I have to wonder how much they are affected by these things when I look at the Roughwood Golden Plum which I have totally neglected since day one.  It’s awesome.  I pull 6-8 tomatoes every day off of it.

The peppers are loving this weather of course.  I have made two batches of jalapeno jelly so far.  I have also roasted and frozen a handful of bell peppers and cubanelles.  Check out this red bell, it can’t decide if it’s half green or half red!

As much as I cuss the pumpkins, they sure are pretty!  Both plants have cross-pollinated with each other AND the butternut squash.  I’ve never planted all three at once before.  This was quite the experience.  I didn’t know cross-pollination was an issue.  Good thing I just don’t care if my pumpkins look odd.  They were mostly for the kids anyways.

I will leave you with my harvest from Sunday.  This is my first link up with Daphnes Dandelions and her Harvest Monday!

I’m a locavore!

I have been gardening for about 10 years and I love eating what I produce.  I have also been buying local produce for quite a while.  It’s really easy to do here when there is a corn stand on every corner all summer long.  What I didn’t realize is that I now fit into a rather trendy category, I’m a locavore.  Nothing has really changed for me, it just took me this long to realize it.  Derrr!
So, in celebration of adding another label to my title, I whipped up this dish.

The recipe is as follows:

Bacon fat saved from the local grass fed bacon from the farmer’s market-I can’t remember the farm.

1 bell pepper*

2 cubanelles*

1 onion*

1 clove garlic-farmers market find

handful of cherry tomatoes*

1 yellow roma tomato*

feta cheese from Flatwater Creamery

* I grew it

I melted the bacon fat in a cast iron skillet.  Then I sauteed the onion and garlic.  I diced up all of the peppers and threw those in.  I sauteed until everything was soft and starting to brown.  Then I chopped up the yellow tomato and threw that in.  I put the cherry tomatoes in last and let those get soft and squishy.  I had some leftover quinoa, so I put that in a bowl and spooned the veggies on top.  I topped it off with feta cheese.  It was delish!