I am so glad that we decided to really have a vegetable garden this year. There is nothing like freshly picked vegetables everyday, and it also has turned out to be very educational for me and for the children. I am learning about things like cabbage worms and finding organic ways to kill them. My children are learning all sorts of things.
We impulse bought a cucumber plant in June. I thought that it would grow upward on the small trellis I put out for it. Instead it took over half of the raised garden. The great thing about the cucumber is that it attracts all the bees. Everyday it has lots of beautiful little yellow flowers (that is another great thing about vegetable gardens), and everyday the kids and I go out and watch the bees pollinate the flowers. We have learned that there are female and male cucumber flowers.
We spotted this little female flower one morning as a bee landed on a neighboring male flower. The bee flew directly to this flower, and the girls and I got swept away in the delight of the moment. I realized that gardening is just preparing a good place for plants to grow, tending to them, pulling up weeds, and then nature takes care of the rest.
And while the eating of the vegetables is good for us, the learning about God’s creation and the way plants grow is even better. I am so thankful for the blessings of a stable home and a stable society in which we can enjoy growing delicious foods.
1. So, the reason that I did not write quick takes last week was that we have been extremely busy since the last time I wrote them. I finished my last ones talking about how we decided to repaint the exterior of our house. Minutes after I published it, M found rotten, disintegrating wood around four of our windows. The wood was under a metal cover that was put on when the windows were last replaced. We did some Google searches of rotten wood and stucco houses and saw some pretty awful scenarios. We were envisioning two whole sides of our house having rotten wood underneath the stucco, and then having to spend all of our money and more to fix the house. As it turns out, we found a really nice carpenter to come out assure us that it was just the wood around the windows that was bad, make a good offer to fix it that same week. So, we took him up on it, and while he did the work he told us that the stuff (I don’t know what it is called) behind our stucco is made of some indestructible material they used to make back in the day and even if water did get back to it, it would never rot out. And the day that we learned that the wood was not rotten beyond the windows, a rainbow appeared in the sky.
2. We went ahead with the painting, but first there was power-washing. Our awesome friends T and F own a power washer, which they lent to us in exchange for garden lettuce (well that is not exactly how it happened, but T sure likes our lettuce). Here are some post power washing photos (the paint was not this bad before:
Back of the house
South side of the house
Up close
3. We started painting Tuesday afternoon, doing the first coat on one side. Then we did all three other sides on Wednesday. M worked on the second coat and the windows yesterday. Tomorrow M, my sister S, and my brother-in-law are going to finish the second coat and the house will be repainted! Hooray!
The South side with one coat.
The back all finished up!
I did not realize how bad it looked until we did the painting. We have been getting comments from neighbors that we have not even met yet on how good it looks. So, of all the good things to come out of our repainting, besides maintaining our house, is that our neighbors really like the way it looks and our house will blend in really well with all of our snow.
4. Remember my best squash friend, good old mother blue hubbard?
I was inordinately excited two weeks ago to discover female flowers on my squash plant. And now we have three baby blue hubbards. I am so excited for grotesque looking squash to grow in my garden and to make delicious pies, breads, and soups.
Tiny squash!
This one is trying to get out of the yard.
The biggest so far. And my does my plant need some water….
5. In addition to painting this last week, I have been getting ready for our summer visit from the W’s (my sister M, her husband J, and their four lovely kids) and my sister S. It is a lot of work to get a whole house ready for guests with a broken toe (which still needs the funny shoe but not hurting anymore). We had a birthday cake for three year old B yesterday and went to the zoo today. Mostly, the kids are just happy to be with each other. And the weather it absolutely lovely outside in the shade. We are going to try for a sisters’ outing one of these evenings. Hooray!
6. I think I can handle home schooling this year, and I am determined to follow a schedule. People tell me again and again that I do not need to do much for kindergarten, but the thing is, my kids do better with a little structure in their lives. And I am pretty sure and hour of structured school time for a five year old will not ruin her experience of childhood. Not that anyone is saying that it is, but it seems that a lot of seasoned home schooling moms think that kindergarten should be really laid back. We are going to stick with simple science, math, and catechism, and solidify reading and printing. I think that this kindergarten year is largely for me to realize that I can do it. I can teach and help my children learn. It is very intimidating to take home schooling on, and I have been trying to get a mental handle on it for over five years.
7. Finally, I have to confess that I had writer’s block. The piece I wrote for Truth and Charity yesterday took a lot of mental energy and I think it was met with a lot of spiritual resistance. But I persevered, and if you did not get a chance to read it and you care about traditional prayer or charismatic prayer, I hope that you will.
Linking up with Jen! Head on over to find more Quick Takes!
2,673 Miles, 40 hours, 3 children ages five and under, five stops, one wedding, two audiobooks…
Also, we were blessed with what my grandfather calls an “uneventful trip.” For those of you outside the family this translates into “no car trouble.” It was a lot of fun. We got to see all living grandparents and great-grandparents, lots of cousins and aunts and uncles on the maternal sides of M’s and my families. And F managed to scream half the time we were in a large crowd unless she was in her booster seat or stroller or in my arms (and she screamed about 1/3 of the time she was in my arms). Otherwise everything was awesome.
We were fed so well and so much, M and I were talking seriously about just eating salad for a couple of weeks. In reality that means, less fatty, carby foods, lots of salad, but other food as well. 🙂
We came home to crazy growth in the garden.
Before:
Now:
Lettuce anyone?
We have to eat massive salads every meal in order to eat all of this lettuce. I wonder how long it will stay good. I have just been harvesting leaves, but I am thinking maybe I should just pull up the whole head. And my spinach started seeding, but still tastes okay… should we still eat it? I am not joking, when I offer lettuce to anyone who wants to come by for some. 🙂
Alright, that’s it for now. I will be back soon. 🙂
I am sure you are all just dying to know what we are growing in our garden and how it is coming along. To relieve you of your desires I took some pictures and will explain.
Here we have the new garden box. At the very top you see six red cabbage plants going to town making huge leaves, but no head yet. In the middle where it looks like nothing is growing are baby carrot and broccoli seedlings that I just planted two weeks ago. I know it was late, but I had not decided what to plant there yet. Hopefully, they will be ready to harvest by September. There is also three cucumber plants in a tomato cage, because that is how I decided to trellis them. At the bottom of the photo are my various lettuces and spinach. The spinach was mostly eaten by bugs, but the lettuce is thriving. We are going to be eating that a lot this week.
In this photo to the far left you see sugar snap pea plants climbing upward. There is no sign of actual peas, yet. I think I may have planted the seeds too late to get the fruit. In front of the trellises is a tiny blueberry bush, impulse bought by my husband. Then to the right of the bush we have oregano, two basil plants, parsley, and with the stakes are four sweet pepper plants. You can also see our cherry tomato plant.
From left to right in the tomato cages are a grape and yellow pear tomato plant, four roma tomato plants, and at the far right is a blue hubbard squash plant. You might remember my blue hubbard adventure from two autumns ago. That is the garden so far! We are hoping for an abundant harvest starting in August, and hopefully some peas before it gets too hot!
1. It was 97% humidity here when we woke up this morning. It was like breathing water. I am not sure how the weather manages to do that without us all being in a cloud. M said it felt like he had spiderwebs all over his skin. Things dried up as it warmed up, but at least it wasn’t that humid and 90 out like a certain city is all summer long. Tomorrow is the first day of summer…woohoo! It is time to soak in summer while we can, and get a good dose of heat and humidity before the six months of dry and cold.
2. I took G(5) and L(3) for haircuts today, and the stylists could not get over how cute L was. I mean all the kids are really cute, but L just has that extra cute personality that get to you and then you can’t stand how cute she is. It must be something like the charm that the Flyte family has in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. You simply cannot resist it. Her teenage swimming instructor kept on shooting me “your daughter is so cute” glances at the pool this morning. We are lucky that no one has thought she was so cute that they had to eat her up, you know.
3. M has decided that it is really important to make sure that our children do not fit into society at all, even when they grow up. The thing is, I never really felt like I fit into mainstream society, nor do I think I ever could. When I venture places like the hair salon, I can manage small talk about kids, but, nope, I am not really normal. When the stylist asked L about what she wanted her hair cut to be like L responded,
“I want to grow my hair all the way down to my feet!” The stylist smiled and replied, “Oh, like the girl in Tangled.” L gave her a blank stare. I chimed in, “How about like Rapunzel. Do you want hair like hers?” L then smiled and said, “Yeah! Like her! We read about her in a book!” Yep, we are a little different, aren’t we?
4. M has been doing a little a lot more child watching since his break began, and F (19 months) is getting pretty used to him working while watching her. He came up from his study just before dinner the other night, and she had been whining at my feet in the kitchen. When he offered to help, I asked if he could watch F. He asked her what she wanted to do, and she led him down the stairs and into his study. She pointed at his chair and demanded, “Sit down!” Then she pointed at his books on his desks and said, “Do that!”
5. We are starting to get a harvest from our garden this week! I made our first pesto pasta of the season, and am so glad that I planted two basil plants this year. It is nice to be able to make pesto this early in the summer without using the whole plant! We also have been harvesting our lettuces. I read on some random website that you can do a later summer planting and Fall harvest of lettuce. Is this true for Minnesota?
6. I have been working through a couple of things parenting-wise this week. The first is how to deal with screaming children who want to argue whenever I say ‘no.’ I am learning to be more firm in my ‘no’ and not debate out the issue. I really do not want to be having arguments with a five year old about things she has no authority over. The second is gently encouraging less daytime nursing with F. She often asks when she is just hungry or thirsty. I have been offering foods and then informing her of when the next time she will nurse (which is usually naptime or bedtime).
7. And there was something I was going to write that I even told M yesterday about, and neither of us can remember. So, if we remember I will update this… if not… here is a really quick take. Take it or leave it…
Linking up to Seven Quick Takes Friday hosted this week by Kathryn.
1. When most people write their Seven Quick Takes, they include in the title a few details of what they discuss. I think that I like it a little better this way. It is like opening a present. You know you are getting to read something interesting and fun, but you don’t know what it is until you click the link, right? I was really bummed that I did not get to writing these last week, especially after so many of my dear friends and readers expressed how much they like to read them, but I literally had no time to sit down and even write very quick takes. So, I hope by starting to write them on Thursday, I can get them up for everyone by Friday. 🙂
2. Last Friday we had M’s 400 level (how do you write that out?) philosophy students over for a dinner of my mom’s spinach lasagna made with the sauce that I had cooked to perfection. The students consisted of one woman who hopes to be a cloistered Carmelite nun after college, two lay philosophy students, and eight seminarians finishing out college seminary. It was a very pleasant dinner, and G and L managed to find two willing seminarians to play with them out in the backyard for most of the evening. They told us at the end of the night how much they had enjoyed playing with the girls, which is great. They left us with enough lasagna for another dinner for us, but managed to eat all of the salad, which cracks me up, because I know a few teenage male cousins who will not touch salad.
3. On last Thursday I spent the evening baking 235 cookies:
Here we only have 229, since a few had to be sampled. Don’t ask who ate 2… 😉
I bake these for M’s last day of classes every year, mostly to have a reputation of generosity towards his students and to be known for my cookies. His medieval philosophy class knew of these particular cookies as the “Anselmian” cookies, that is those-cookies-of-which-no-greater-can-be-thought. They were a hit in the classes, and I managed to get the rest of them eaten by the seniors who came over on Friday. Please pray for M’s sanity this next week as he grades 114 papers…
4. Remember the four baby bunnies I told about in our garden a few weeks ago? Well, there is now a sole baby bunny and her (G and L insist on calling the baby a she) mother living under our shed. The mother has always lived there. I do wonder what happened to the other three, especially since two took off the moment we discovered the garden. I bet the survival rate of baby bunnies in the wild is not that high. We re-rabbit proofed our garden and since then have only seen the bunnies in our yard. The girls and I have daily viewings of little Cottontail from the breakfast nook windows:
“Now my dear,” said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, “You may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Dr. Spencer’s garden:
Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. Spencer.”
(Actually, the only rabbit I ever cooked was flambéd.)
5. The girls have been pretty crazy about dandelions, and I have mixed feelings about our whole backyard turning into a dandelion field with absolutely no grass. I can’t imagine that that is very pleasant for little feet to play on. I am digging up the few out of our front yard, but we are leaving the back for now. On a recent walk, they found a jackpot of dandelions in a neighbor’s yard and now we have this on our table:
Only a mom would allow this many on her kitchen table…
6. This morning, while the children were waiting for me to get my act together (I was doing things like vacuuming…) to read to them about flowers (our “unit study” preschool science), they, of their own initiative, built there very first blanket and kitchen chair fort.
For some reason it makes me really happy to see them doing things kids do. F is not really happy about it since she cannot seem to squeeze her toddler belly past the chairs. I am leaving it up for them during quiet time.
7. Another thing I finally did this morning was get out the summer clothes for F. The poor kid has been stuck in long sleeves during this nice warm week (which also means she did not get sunburned like her sisters did…woops). As I went through them I became extremely nostalgic for toddler G; I think I will always associate the 18 month girl clothes with G’s toddler hood.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Have a great Memorial Day weekend, whatever you choose to grill… 🙂
1. First of all, thank you all for your prayers during our time of loss of our tiny baby. It was hard for me to share what was going on; it almost seemed easier to keep it private. But since I asked for prayers, I have felt an abundance of grace helping us through this time. I am even finding myself quite happy and hopeful a lot of the time, and remembering our loss is less painful.
2. Today, in addition to being Easter Friday, is also the Feast of St. Mark, which happens to be M’s name day. To celebrate, since we are having dinner with our parish home school community, I had the girls make cards for M. I gave them a quick example of a lion drawing, and realized my poor drawing skills:
The girls did a fairly good imitation of mine:
L (3) drew a mouse-like lion, drew M, and traced capital letters.
G (5) did a lion, her father, lots of hearts, and her name, which is edited out… She also tried to write the date and gave up.
Drawing, check. Writing practice, check. Religion, check. Pre-school for the day, done.
3. When I picked out earrings today, G insisted on me wearing my lions. I think I last wore these to the zoo.
Earring selfie! (Sorry, M, I had to use that word; I know you hate it.)
I am pretty sure I got these from my awesome friend, C, in college, but I do not remember. I had a little thing about lions back before I knew M. Maybe it was a premonition? I am working up the gusto to wear them to evening Mass today. Maybe my veil will hide their ridiculousness.
4. I spent yesterday morning distracting myself by doing a little editing of my blog formatting. Do you see what I did? Any suggestions for other pages/tabs? I could collect things like recipes or posts in certain topics into other pages. Maybe I can delve into home organization next week, as opposed to virtual, while the weather is crummy and rainy. My intentions of organizing during the Winter months vanished with a busy schedule and visiting St. Louis a few times to see my dad.
5. Saturday, during our Easter preparations, M went out to the garden to plant a blueberry bush he bought on an impulse from Aldi. While digging, he found the den of Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter Rabbit. Flopsy and Peter got away immediately, but the other two sat cowering in corners of the garden until M placed them back in their den. The girls thought it was great fun and wanted to keep them, but everything we Googled recommended against it. F (17 months) could not get enough of them and stood by the garden fence saying, “Buh-ee! Buh-ee!” And when I made her bid them farewell her voice became mournful and sad, “Buh-ee… buh-ee…”
Cottontail scared and cold.
When we checked the den on Tuesday, they were gone. The thing is, we thought our garden was rabbit-proof, and now we find that a pregnant rabbit found a way in to give birth and has been returning twice a day to feed her babies. We might have to get the anti-rabbit spray after all to protect our garden from Peter and his cousin Benjamin.
6. If you are my friend on Facebook, you have already heard about F stealing L’s jelly beans. This toddler is quite into her candy. I was keeping the baskets on the table, and she was climbing right up, finding foil-wrapped candies, declaring them to be, “Choc!” and biting right through the foil with her sharp front teeth. She is a little obsessed with chocolate; I wonder where she gets that? I cannot reliably get her to eat foods besides scrambled eggs, meat, processed cheeses, and candy. I guess we have another picky one on our hands, which is too bad because she was really into fruit and vegetables back when they were her only foods. Well, M can get her to eat anything, so as long as he is at a meal, she eats.
7. Last of all, the gracious hostess of Seven Quick Takes, Jen is releasing her book Something Other Than Godnext week. It is about her conversion to Catholicism from atheism, and should be a good read. I was not cool enough to pre-order it, but I promise I will read it once I get a hold of a copy. 🙂
I do not really have anything in particular to say, but I just need to do some writing. I have had a few deep thoughts in the past 36 hours, and even started a few posts in my head, but they are now all missing. It is funny how the daily care of a home, children, and husband can do that to you. I am also thinking about the mail box, because I heard the mailman come while I was getting the kids down for quiet time. I would check it, but yesterday a very excited three year old decided to check the mail and found it empty. I am going to save it for her.
I need to work on dinner a little bit this afternoon, because I have worked out a system of having the older two do a workout video with me on Wednesday afternoons while F is still napping. It has been working well, but that means dinner will need some prepping soon. We are having a mushroom, feta, and spinach quiche. I am pretty excited about it. I will let you know if it turns out as amazing as it sounds. The same three year old go very excited about the prospect of pie for dinner, when I answered inquiries into dinner’s contents. And speaking of food, I have some really yummy leak and potato soup sitting in jars in the refrigerator. I am going to resist it. Maybe we will eat it with lunch tomorrow. It was last night’s dinner with grilled cheese. Alright, enough about food.
We really need to get more planning into our gardening this year, but there is still snow covering our garden, plus where we plan on building a garden box. I really have no idea when planting is supposed to happen in Minnesota. Someone once told me that county’s have a publication that recommends when to plan what. Does anyone in Minnesota know where I can get my hands on some guidelines? That would be really nice. I actually just want a lesson in gardening or a great book to get me through the first summer.
It is supposed to snow tomorrow and Friday, so I think I am going to push back my outdoor Spring plans longer, and just do inside things. I have gotten pretty comfortable with our inside routine. Throwing outside into it all, just throws me off, especially for the non-walking 17 month old who wants to play. I am not going to let her scoot around the yard and ruin all of her pants. She will just have to learn to walk or stay inside and watch her big sisters play outside.
Our current garden (framed and fenced by previous house owner) of two pine trees (planted by previous owner), weeds, a basil plant, six tomato plants and a mean old creeping thistle with lots of shoots.
A few years ago I posted about my dream kitchen, and some of the things are realized (or not needed) in our current kitchen. (Hooray!) And not that we have a yard, I have been thinking about the type of food I would love to grow in it.
Here are some of the things we have in mind for our future garden:
1. A garden along the length of the back fence.
We would probably go all the way to the gate, though not the depth of the original garden. We are thinking of taking out the shed for more garden space.
2. Lots of vegetables: tomatoes, lettuces, spinach, peppers, summer squash, cabbages, and more!
3. Berry bushes: I am thinking raspberry and blueberry. We spent way more than I would have liked on fresh local berries at the farmer’s market yesterday, so why not grow our own.
4. Apple tree and/or peach tree: My parents had a peach tree in their first houses yard. I love peaches, and especially love home-canned peaches. If I have my own tree, then I would have lots and lot to can! M loves apples, so that is why apple would be good. 🙂
5. A grape vine: There seem to be a number of grape vines on peoples fences in the area. I would love this so that I could have grape leaves for making stuffed grape leaves without spending $7 on a jar of 50 leaves.
6. Learning the art of Japanese gardening with the two pine trees:
This photo is by Quinn Dombrowski posted to flickr.
We are thinking of keeping them small and gnarly. M once had a bonsai plant, but died. Maybe we would have better luck with a tree outdoors?
That is it so far. Any recommendations on books or websites that give really good advice/instructions on vegetable and fruit gardening? I am a total novice here, so I want something really informative.
1. We made it to end of July, and it is the weekend my sister and her family were supposed to visit. We delayed it because of the basement water damage, and we learned this week that the the damaged floor tiles that were under the carpet that was ripped up are asbestos tiles. Oh boy! This means we have to get those taken care of before repair work begins. Which means another week of work to get the whole job done. Thus, the whole summer is being taken up by a stupid leak in a pipe…
2. My sister and I spoke yesterday about their upcoming visit and decided no matter what state the basement is in we are going to make this basement happen. It just means that we will have six girls and four adults between three bedrooms. That is not so bad. We might even let the four girls who aged six, four, and two and a half share one room: a cousin sleepover! It will also give F a chance to practice sleeping in a pack n play before we visit St. Louis later in August.
3. M has been teaching a class this summer two nights a week from 5:30-9:30 pm. This means that I have to get the kids to bed alone. It has not been so bad except for that L (2.5) will not stay in her bed for about an hour after I tuck her in. Our bedtime routine consists of her coming out of her room about 30 seconds after each tuck in, and me trying not to lose it with her. When M is home he takes care of the older girls at bedtime, but he is also having the same problem. We have decided to give them about 15 minutes with a dim light and book at bedtime to give them time to settle down in their beds. It worked last night. I hope it continues to work and the time they get to read books is about as long as it takes to get F to fall asleep, so it might work great in terms of timing on the nights M is gone.
4. As I predicted last week, F (8 months) is on the move. The legless army crawl is her motion of choice. She needs her PT aunt and godmother to come and get her up on her knees. Remember my musings of last week about where she would end up once she could crawl? It is not at my feet as I cook. She is making her way to various rooms of the house. I caught her heading into my bedroom earlier.
5. I have gone back to making my own yogurt again, since I can make 8 cups of Greek yogurt for about $3 instead of spending .85 on 6 oz at Aldi. I have never made it plain before, usually flavoring it with vanilla, but I did this time. I am now addicted to a breakfast of Greek yogurt flavored with our homemade jam, and granola. The girls prefer their yogurt with Grape Nuts.
6. I really want to take the kids raspberry or blueberry picking this next week. I think they might be in season by now. I just need to find a good picking place. Anyone reading this in the Twin Cities who knows of a good place?
7. I have seen this vine growing in our yard for a few weeks now.
M saw it today when he was out playing with the kids and thought it might be a pumpkin vine. There was a smashed pumpkin in the yard after we closed on it (hidden under the snow when we first saw the house) and we can’t remember where it ended up to decompose. A quick image search of pumpkin vines showed me several like our vine, but also other varieties. Anyone know anything about pumpkins? Is this really a pumpkin vine? We might be able to tell once it takes over the yard. It would be pretty cook if we inadvertently grew a pumpkin plant. 🙂
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