I should probably find work as a landscaper now

I know it may not look like it, but a lot of hard
work went into that little bit.

For some reason I have decided to build a rock patio.

Maybe it's because my children are a bit older and can spend time outside without me constantly running after them to make sure they don't charge into the busy road in front of our house.  They can occupy themselves without me, though of course that doesn't stop them from asking for multiple cups of juice and milk and water and then the littlest one needs a bathroom break from all the juice and milk and water and the oldest one insists that I push him on the swing and the youngest wants me to hold her while I push the oldest on the swing.

Ahem.

Or maybe it's fact that it's gardening weather - it's finally warm enough to make things like 'walking out the back door' a little easier.  We've been cooped up all winter, which takes its toll on all of us outside people.  I've felt stagnant and unable to do anything to improve the yard while the weather was the way it was. 

Or maybe it's the story I'm writing for the newspaper on hardscapes that got me thinking that this was something to do.

We love child labor in this house.

Whatever the reason, I started work Sunday afternoon.

No plan.  No experience.  I just started digging.

We have an area to the left of our back steps that for as long as we've lived her has been overgrown with random grass-type plants.  There's a really pretty clematis and some columbines there, as well, but they seem to be overshadowed by the mess. 

We'd been talking about putting a rock patio there for awhile now.  And we have all the rocks that we've collected from around our yard and my parents' house.  So I thought: Why not?  Why not now? 

So I got a shovel and a wheelbarrow full of sandstone rocks and started work.  I've been digging down, trying to make it as level as possible, which is a bit difficult with these lumpy, awkward rocks.  It's not going to be a permanent fixture - just something to hold us over until we can afford to do it the right way. 

But it's kind of cool.  It's like a puzzle with really heavy pieces that don't fit together exactly, but are good enough.

Sebastian has been helping me, shoveling dirt and gathering rocks.  And the kid loves puzzles as much as I do so he's really enjoying putting the pieces together.


I'm sore from all the lifting and bending in places that I didn't know could be sore (the top of my butt?  REALLY?).  But it feels good.  I like the work and the accomplishment I can see progressing from just my own two, rough, scraped up hands.

I had plans to work on it again this morning but it rained just enough earlier to make it too muddy to work.

I don't claim that this will be the nicest rock patio anyone has ever seen.

But I can say that I built it.

Homemade Friday: Only the best food ever. Promise.

It's no secret that I love tomatoes, that I wait for July every year and the ability to walk outside and pick the first ripe one right off the vine. 

And I wait impatiently for that mostly because I want to make this salad.  It is super simple and fabulously delicious. 

Tomatoes, feta, a little olive oil and salt.  Basil if you've got it.

Perfect.

Homemade Friday: Corn! And Beans! And Salsa!

In hindsight I was ridiculously unprepared.

In the spring my dad planted a whole bunch of corn, enough for my sister’s family, my family, and my parents.  At least.

I wasn’t able to help much with the care of the corn so I guess I didn’t fully comprehend how much was there.  So when my dad said it was ready and we needed to come pick it, I went, but didn’t actually take anything to put the corn in.

The corn harvest coincided with Dad’s birthday so we had a nice lunch (corn!) before braving the heat and scratchy plants.  They’d invited Dad’s sisters to come, too.  It’s all about sharing the (corn!) wealth, really.

Dad drove his truck around back and we all picked buckets or bags full, then dumped them in the back of the truck until it was almost to the top of the bed.  (It’s a small truck, but still – lots of corn.)  

When it came time to take our share home I realized that unless I wanted it all rolling around in the back of the hatch I needed some grocery bags.  I filled up about 10 bags full, I think.  And a couple of bags of green beans, too.  Naturally.

Sunday night, when we got home and put the kids in bed, Chris and I did shuck a couple of bags but I didn’t want to mess with them that night.  I was beat.  We’d been swimming and were not in the mood for all that work.  So I left shucked corn in the bags for the next day.  And the next.  And the one after that, too.

I’m really not that excited about corn anymore. 

Any spare moment I had was spent shucking or cutting it off the cob or heating it up or cooling it down or bagging it.

And it just wouldn’t end.  (I am not my mother, who stayed up until after midnight two nights in a row to get all of theirs put up, then got up super-early in the morning to drive an hour to work.  Nope, not my mother.)

But finally it was finished.  Or so I thought.  Until I found a bag I’d missed in the bottom of our refrigerator drawer.  That one went to some of Chris’ family.   I’d already given up by that point.

But now we have about 15 quart bags of corn in the freezer, which is a nice feeling, and plenty for us for the coming year.  I’m thinking about corn chowder.  Lots and lots of corn chowder …

In addition to that I have some really bad zucchini and corn salsa that I spent HOURS cutting up vegetables for.  Well, I guess it’s not awful, but it tastes more like a relish than salsa, and I really don’t like relish.  I should have thought about that before I made 12 pints of the stuff.  Anybody want some?

And, in spite of all that, I still had to do something with the remaining green beans.  I mean the ones that I didn’t let mold in the bag.  Because I was too busy putting up corn to worry about beans.  I blanched some and froze them in bags, only getting about 4 or 5 of those.  But the rest I made into 8 pints of dilly beans.  I haven’t opened any yet, but I think those will be good.

I hope. 

Because it sucks to work so long and hard on something and not like the outcome.

Stupid corn relish.

If you’re coming to this party please don’t look in my closets

The thing about throwing yourself a 30th birthday party is that you’re in charge of taking care of all the prep work.  

We stay so busy that we usually wait until we’re having people over to do the big jobs like cleaning the carpet and painting walls.  In some ways our house looks like we just moved in.  We still haven’t replaced the pictures that we took off the living room walls when we painted two-and-a-half months ago.  It’s just there always seems to be something more important to do, like feeding children or sleeping.  But of course, now that we’re having this big party everything has to be done.  

I have a history of this behavior.  The whole first year of Sebastian’s life I spent in a daze of trying to find my place as a mother.  And since we moved into our house right before he was born we didn’t get the things done on the house that we wanted to – like painting rooms and whatnot.  A month before Sebastian’s first birthday I decided that I wanted to paint this hideous room at the back of our house that was covered in wood paneling and a dated (as in ’80s) farm scene paneling.  We should have had ample opportunity to finish but that room was a time and paint suck of epic proportions.  Yes, I was still painting on portions of it the day before his party.  

So I’m trying to avoid that type of extreme situation.  I’ve been doing a little at a time, here and there after the kids go to bed or when they’re napping.  I’m not painting, but I am trying to organize and straighten and hang wall decorations. 

Last Friday we decided to take care of some big projects – cleaning the carpet and replanting the flower beds in front of the house.

We got a late start because we had to drop the kids off with their grandparents and then stopped for a quick bite to eat.  After that we had to go to the store to rent the carpet cleaner and buy the plants for the beds.

I’m just going to take a minute to complain about those stupid flower beds.  They’re too big and too shaded and I don’t have the know-how to make them into what I want them to be.  So it took me awhile to pick out what to buy, even though my choices were severely limited by the lighting situation.  It’s basically a hosta garden is what I’m saying.

So by the time we got home we still had to move everything off of the carpet and straighten up a little.  I didn’t get outside to the beds until 9 and I worked on that while Chris worked on the carpets.  Most of my landscaping was done in the dark and I had to move things a couple of times because I kept changing my mind.  I had to quit around 10:30 or 11 because I was getting light-headed.  It was still hot and I’m not used to that type of physical work.  

The next morning we got up early (after staying up late because we couldn’t wind down) and were at it again.  And just so you know the flower bed didn’t look the same in the morning light as it did in the moonlight.  Some plants had to be rearranged.  There was cussing involved.  But no tears at least.

So I’ll probably be up late every night this week trying to wash walls and weed gardens and stuff random bits of junk into closets.

I’m thinking that by the time the party is here I’ll probably be so exhausted that I fall asleep around 9:30. The guests won’t care as long as I have enough alcohol, right? 

Homemade Friday: Kale Chips*

I’ve never been one of those people who despised kale.  Some people don’t want to go anywhere near it, but I’ve always liked it. 

 Liked it.  

I don’t love it but it’s one of those things that I know I need to eat more of.  It’s packed full of all sorts of vitamins and makes me feel good when I eat it.  No, I don’t sense any warm, rainbow glow settling over my skin or anything, but I feel better mentally.  Does that make sense to anyone else?  I know I need to eat healthy things so I feel like I’m being a grown up, doing the right thing when I eat kale and whole grains and lentils and whatnot.

Maybe it’s just me?

Anyway, kale is really easy to grow so we seem to have a bunch of it in the garden.  I’ve only found one other way to have it that I like, which is a pasta dish with whole-wheat pasta, cannellini beans, kale and tomatoes.  I love it, but Chris just ate it, didn’t really enjoy it.  And it wasn’t Sebastian’s thing.

So I was looking for something else to make with kale that everyone would enjoy.  I’d heard about kale chips before and thought I’d finally give them a try. 

I used this recipe from smitten kitchen.  It’s ridiculously easy and cheap, especially since all I had to do was walk outside and break off some leaves from our garden.  You just cut up the leaves, removing the stem, toss them with some olive oil and salt and bake for about 15-20 minutes.  I didn’t really measure anything, just threw it all together.  Simple.

The kale totally balances out the chicken nuggets.

And everyone loved it.  Even Sebastian.  Granted I didn’t say anything about what it really is. He’s awesome about eating vegetables and fruit but it’s hard to get him to try new things sometimes.  I just stuck with calling it ‘chips’.  It worked.  Once he tried it he kept on eating.  

I’m so dorky that I got a thrill out of seeing him eat it.  Couldn’t stop smiling.  So many times he eats peanut butter sandwiches and chicken nuggets that even though I try to make sure I balance that out with strawberries and cucumbers and tomatoes it’s nice to see him eating some variety, something that healthy.

Word to the wise, though, don’t eat them on a date or around anyone you're trying to impress.  They crisp up in the oven and are really crumbly and fall apart.  You will most definitely have little pieces stuck all in your teeth.

*I never liked the title 'Craft Friday' so I decided to change it.  This makes more sense for me since what I show you isn't always a 'craft'.  Or is it?

Anybody want to drop off a couple of gallons of strawberries on my front porch?

This was supposed to be a blog post about taking the kids to pick strawberries.  However, we didn’t get to go because right before we were supposed to start preparing to leave, a certain almost-3-year-old refused to clean up his cars that he’d thrown all over the floor.

One trip to time out, three trips to bed, a loss of TV privileges, countless threats and an hour and a half later the cars were picked up.

Someone needed that nap he didn’t get.

Someone’s Mama needed that nap she didn’t get.

And so we didn’t make it to pick strawberries, at least not yet.  But the season is rapidly coming to a close and if we don’t get there soon it’s just not going to happen.  

I really wanted to be more proactive this year about canning and preserving.  I like the idea of having stuff stored away for the winter.  And I was going to start with strawberries.  We go through strawberry jam so fast since Sebastian eats peanut butter and jelly almost every day.  (Is that bad for him?)  And instead of paying more money for the better quality stuff, I thought I’d just make a bunch of freezer jam. Or maybe preserves.

I’m not off to a good start.

I may have to give up.

First it took me forever to find a place to go around here.

Then my friend and I were going to go to Huber’s and get some wine to go with our strawberries, but I had a schedule conflict the only day she was available. 

So I finally found a place close by and the family was going to go last night.  I wanted someone to go with me since Adele’s not too fond of the heat and I wasn’t sure I could keep Sebastian from picking all the green berries or eating his weight in the ripe ones while also making sure the baby stayed out of the sun.  In other words, I needed Chris.  We planned on packing a picnic to eat in the car on the way there so we could make it back home by bedtime.

But that plan was foiled by a cranky Babash.

So.  No strawberries.  Though I still have hope for the wine.

I’m not so sure anything is going to grow in this flood

 

It's not nearly big enough.



My husband and I have had a garden, or at least a tomato plant or two and some herbs, as soon as we had space to do so.  It feels important to see our food take shape in front of us, to show our children that potatoes don’t just magically appear.  I want them to understand the work, time and love that go into putting food on their plate.  

Herb garden, complete with helpful wheelbarrow.

Plus gardening is in both of our bloods, I think.  My parents have always gone the super-home-garden route, growing pretty much anything you can think of to grow at one time or another and exhausting themselves (and their children who were punished by being sent to weed the garden) in the process.  They have, however, vowed to have a smaller garden this year, ‘small’ being a relative term.

My husband’s parents have taken a less grueling approach, having a more manageable raised bed garden.  This is probably why Chris doesn’t understand my need to attempt to grow everything I can.  

Potatoes

Once February hits I pour over seed catalogues like I used to pour over book catalogues in grade school (I’m a bit of a dork.)  I plan and scheme and try to work out how we can fit everything I want to plant in our small, shady backyard.  There’s just so much out there.  So many different varieties of potatoes, tomatoes of all colors, radishes that are big, black and round or small, long and white or just the usual cherry red.  And I want to grow them all.  I want to see them from seed to fruition.  I’m mesmorized by the differences between bush and pole beans, pickling or ‘burpless’ cucumbers, early carrots, late carrots, snap peas, watermelons that look like cantelopes inside, cantelopes that look like lemons.  It’s almost depressing to think of all that I could grow if I only had the space (and the time and energy and kids who were old enough to weed  the garden without stepping on and eating all the baby onions).

 So far we’ve planted red, yellow and white onions, purple-skinned potatoes and Yukon golds.  Just this past weekend, during a break in the downpours, we sloshed through the muddy patch to plant fingerling potatoes, although I’m worried they will have to be replanted since every time we dug a hole it filled with water, possibly leading to rot.  We’ve got lots of herbs planted, tomatoes started and just waiting for less soggy weather to be put in the ground, and a blueberry plant that we may actually get some fruit off of this year, and one that I thought we’d lost that sprouted leaves this spring.  And I’ve got all different types of peas and beans to plant, along with carrots and radishes. 

I can't wait until the first harvest.