This week in the garden

Our first cucumber!  Oh, and don't mind that ghost in the garden.  She is quite tame.  We have two cucumber plants that Tristan brought home from preschool at the end of the year.  They really were an afterthought.  I didn't have a place to plant them and Matt's mom suggested planting them at the edge of the garden and letting them trail down the side.  That has worked perfectly.  They are happy trailing along the ground and we are happy eating them.

And the squash is plentiful.  Although not from our garden, we were overwhelmed blessed this week with squash from two of our neighbors gardens.  What to do with almost a dozen squash and two kids who don't like it?  Blanch and freeze, that's what!  The kids each took turns washing, even cutting (very supervised) with a sharp knife, I did the blanching, then they gave the squash an ice bath and packed it away in freezer bags.  Abigail worked on her penmanship by marking and dating the bags.  Tristan worked on counting and fine motor skills by counting the bags for each batch and actually getting the cut up slippery squash into the bags.

So far this year we are stocked up on strawberry freezer jam, blueberries, and squash.  It is getting pretty full in there...I think some of the dead animals need to go...

peace

Taking flight

Warning :  This post is image heavy!!  

The following picture montage is the emergence of one of the butterflies from its chrysalis.  If you look carefully, you can see the butterfly pull itself out of the chrysalis and the wings actually expand as its blood-like fluid pumps into its wings for the first time.  This butterfly was the only one we happened to see emerge and I was awestruck.

This week in the garden

Lettuce!

 

We harvested our first crop of lettuce this past weekend (only about a quarter of what is growing) and it was so delicious.  We had a fantastic salad all from our garden of lettuce, peas, and green beans.  And yes, the kids ate it too.  With ranch dressing.  But still they ate it.

I could become seriously addicted to gardening (in a really good way, I swear!). 

Also, not related to our garden but connected in my mind because it is growing outside, I saw the Blue Bead Lilly's, whose flower picture I posted in the spring, fruit which is blue, surprise, surprise.  Next day?  Gone.  These woods sure are full of busy little critters.

peace

ps pictures of the butterflies' progress coming soon (and I promise they are good!).

Big night

Last night the kids slept in a tent for the first time.  At the end of August we are camping in Acadia National Park for a week and seeing that this is the first time the kids will be camping, we decided we needed a few test runs. 

They did great.  Just the two of them slept in the tent together because it was our tent before we had children and is too small for 4, tight for 3.  And well, neither of us were all that excited about squeezing in there.  Matt and the dog slept on the porch to be close by.

The kids got ready for bed in the house, we read stories together in the tent, tucked them in, and then did chores while they fell asleep.  I was expecting giggling and horsing around and/or some "mom, I am scared" but there was none of that.  Tristan fell asleep almost immediately, Abigail took a bit longer but with no problems.  I think it helps that they share a room and sleep next to each other every night.  There was no novelty in snuggling next to each other. 

I loved watching Tristan's eyes as we were reading stories and it was getting darker outside.  He just kept looking from side to side like he wasn't quite expecting the darkness.  We kept the rain fly off until after they fell asleep so they could see the stars.  Matt had also lit the tikki torches on the back porch and put on the uplight in the yard so they could see the familiar surroundings even though it was dark.

There was a 2 am wet bed that we had to clean up and then I (lucky me!) spent the rest of the night in the tent with them but they went right back to sleep.  It is 7:23 am and they are still sleeping!  That doesn't always happen even when they sleep in their own bed.

First test?  Success!

peace

This week in the garden

The beans and peas are plentiful and often.  Abigail and I love eating them fresh from the garden.  I made the trellis for the peas from hemp and birch branches.  I love the sloping angles of it, reminds me of a house roof.  But for next year, I will need to remember to make it taller.  Who knew the peas were going to grow almost five feet high?  (Well, not me obviously!).  Since I didn't have enough pea seeds for the length of both sides of the trellis, I planted lettuce which will be ready for its first cut this week.  With all the hot weather we have had, the shade of the peas has been really helpful.  In Matt's weeding earnest he pulled up the spinach and pepper plants, so I have a few bare spots to plant some more beans.  In his defense, the kids and I started the pepper plants from seed in April and they were probably never going to produce peppers before fall so I am glad for the room.  And the spinach will do better in the cool fall anyway.  Tonight for dinner we had beans and peas from the garden, locally grown tomatoes and garlic, and basil from our herb garden.

With all this crazy hot weather this summer (loving it, not complaining.  I wait through 4 1/2 months of solid snow for this!), the blueberry bushes have all ripend at the same time and overwhelmed us!  We bribed enticed 4 of our students that work for the summer to come help us pick the bushes clean with a reward of blueberry pie.  There were 5-6 of us working for about 3 1/2 hours to get it all done.  In the end we picked about 12 quarts with lots more in people's bellies.  We had a great dinner with every single person contributing to cooking the meal in some way and 2 pies with ice cream for dessert.  I have never had so many people cooking in my house at the same time.  It was a wonderful experience.  There is just something so unifying about preparing food with people.  It was about the best way I could think of to spend a Sunday afternoon.

peace

A new (temporary) pet

Friends of ours have been raising monarch butterfly caterpillars, some of them from eggs, and have entrusted them to us while they leave on vacation.  I know that keeping monarchs through its metamorphosis stages is common for many families but we just haven't yet.  And it really is so exciting!  When we picked up the critters yesterday, two were already in the chrysalis stage and 3 were very hungry caterpillars.

This morning when we woke up 2 had formed a silken mat and were hanging in the famous J shape.  According to my internet sources, the caterpillar should hang for about a day. Then it will shed its skin for the 5th and last time and a green chrysalis will be underneath.  I am just as excited as the kids to watch this all unfold (literally!) before our eyes.

In this picture you can see the caterpillar on the right in the J shape and the last very hungry caterpillar still eating milkweed on the left.
  

See those golden flecks on the chrysalis?  They look like the gold paint you see in museums or fancy churches.  I think the two on the bottom will be the butterflies eye.  Just a guess from looking at pictures of the chrysalis right before the butterfly emerges.  Updates of the progress to follow...

peace

We're jammin', we're jammin', jammin'

(Bob Marley fans will get the title reference - I hope!)

8:45 pm Tuesday night, after putting the kids to be a little late (it was swimming lessons night), I walked out to the kitchen, rolled up my sleeves and took a deep breath.  There were 20 lbs of strawberries in my refrigerator waiting to be jammed.  The kids had helped me prep the jars that afternoon (aka loading the dishwasher) and I had washed all the rings and lids.  I prefer to make freezer jam.  I love the fresh fruit taste, it is less work and I can use the lids year after year since the jars don't need to seal like in canning.
Matt came into my madness around 10 pm after paying some bills and was planning to go to bed.  Oh, the plans we make and how they come undone!  When he saw my progress (snail-like), he took pity on me and joined the effort.  The strawberry season was early this year due to a hot spell in May.  Therefore the time in June which is usually mid-season was the end this year.  We got to the farm on the very last day of picking, this past Sunday.  The wife said we were "ambitious" when I mentioned that we wanted to pick 20 lbs.  It was hot as, well you know, the kids got cranky, had to go the bathroom (a lot!) and went to the van after about 30 minutes.  So Matt and I were left on our own to search and wade through rows of mushy, end-of-the-season strawberries to find the edible ones and fill our containers!
 You know, it takes a long time to fill a quart container when the almost all the berries are small, a looong time.  But after 2 hours and a bad sunburn, we had picked our 20 lbs exactly (the farmer wife was very impressed, I am sure).  So, back to the kitchen - there I was an hour and 15 minutes into jamming washing, stemming, mashing, stirring, pectin-ing, and filling by myself and I only had 3 pints full.  I told you it was snail-like.  Picking tiny, end-of-the-season berries takes a long time remember?  Well, stemming, cutting off the mushy parts of tiny end-of-the-season berries takes even longer.  Really.  Which is when my handsome prince on his white stallion appeared and stemmed to my rescue!  (Accurate description, honey?)  After a few foul ups (not adding enough sweetener or pectin - it was late, my brain was done), Matt singing silly (sometimes obscene) songs and me asking him to quit it, and laughing up a storm listening to the hilarious comedy portion of this pod cast (First Contact) I had listened to before Matt came to my rescue, the jammin' was all done by 1am.  Whew!
Strawberries we love you but next year, we are picking early!

peace