Dan took Molly and Sam on a camping trip into the Boundary Waters for the weekend on October 1st through the 3rd. They had a great time. No trip into the BWCA is complete without feeding the Whiskey Jacks (aka grey jays). The "little girls" and I stayed home this trip and had a blast doing our own thing. I took them to town for a day, complete with lunch at Sven-n-Ole's and ice cream at Sydney's. We snuggled in my bed watching movies, and reading stories. It really was a blast for all of us! It was also great to be back together again and share our stories with each other when the other half of our family got home. Family...what a word that is...
OK, the main point of this post was to share the great video Molly got of a whiskey jack eating out of her hand, but I never can seem to get the video's to upload. Grrr...
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Garden (or maybe I should say post garden) Update
Hi ladies! I'm finally getting around to a garden update. It's been a while partly because of business and partly because there hasn't been a whole lot happening in my garden for a while. We've had a few frosty nights, one pretty hard. Funny how some things really take a lickin' and keep on...tickin'? Well, growing, any way. I've been freezing swiss chard and picking beets, beet greens and spinach yet. That's it, I guess. We'd planted a green called broccoli raab earlier in the year, but we really didn't like it so it just grew while being ignored. It grew very well, and really I should have taken a picture of what it looks like now. It's quite tall, with beautiful yellow flowers that start out looking almost exactly like a tiny broccoli head, and it's completely unaffected by the cold weather. I've been cutting it and putting it in a vase.
This is the only squash I was able to grow this year. It made up for being an only child by growing huge!
Yesterday I took a peek into the bag of tomatoes and was surprised to see there was this whole bowl full that had ripened! They smell wonderful! Now I just have to decide what to make with them... :)
That one squash I grew made over 16 cups of squash. After using a big chunk for dinner and more for squash soup, I steamed and mashed about 13 cups to use like pumpkin. I'm sure it will make some great muffins.
I think that's going to be about it for this season as far as gardening goes... Except for seed catalogs and dreams of next spring!
This is the only squash I was able to grow this year. It made up for being an only child by growing huge!
Yesterday I took a peek into the bag of tomatoes and was surprised to see there was this whole bowl full that had ripened! They smell wonderful! Now I just have to decide what to make with them... :)
That one squash I grew made over 16 cups of squash. After using a big chunk for dinner and more for squash soup, I steamed and mashed about 13 cups to use like pumpkin. I'm sure it will make some great muffins.
I think that's going to be about it for this season as far as gardening goes... Except for seed catalogs and dreams of next spring!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Apples!
Our apple tree had the most prosperous season yet this year. I'm hoping the apple tree has matured, and this is what we can expect from now on, and not that summers like this past are needed to make fruit this nice.
This is the first time the apples have been nice enough to actually eat fresh. All the past seasons' apples have been made into apple butter. This was because the apples were so hard and tasteless that was the only thing I could think of making so as not to waste the apples. Finally this year they're actually slightly juicy and have some flavor. Yay!
They're also a lot bigger than they've ever been before.
So pretty!
Unfortunately, this is also the first year that we've had any bug trouble at all, or any pest problems. Something began eating away at them before they were ripe, and continued until we picked them. We don't know what it was, as we never saw anything in the tree. We also had the flies cause problems this year, so next year I'll have to get my uncles secret weapon. If you need a secret weapon to keep the flies from wreaking havoc with your apples, go to my June blog posts and find the untitled post that begins, "My uncle collects farmall tractors..." I would just put the link here, but it won't work for me today. Grrr...
This is the first time the apples have been nice enough to actually eat fresh. All the past seasons' apples have been made into apple butter. This was because the apples were so hard and tasteless that was the only thing I could think of making so as not to waste the apples. Finally this year they're actually slightly juicy and have some flavor. Yay!
They're also a lot bigger than they've ever been before.
So pretty!
Unfortunately, this is also the first year that we've had any bug trouble at all, or any pest problems. Something began eating away at them before they were ripe, and continued until we picked them. We don't know what it was, as we never saw anything in the tree. We also had the flies cause problems this year, so next year I'll have to get my uncles secret weapon. If you need a secret weapon to keep the flies from wreaking havoc with your apples, go to my June blog posts and find the untitled post that begins, "My uncle collects farmall tractors..." I would just put the link here, but it won't work for me today. Grrr...
Monday, September 6, 2010
Uff Da!
I have been so busy lately! I think it's a safe bet that I'll be posting less now that school has started. We started last Monday (Monday the 30th of August. I didn't get this published after I wrote it. Like I said, I'm having trouble getting any blogging done.), and it's been going well. We have a kindergartner, second grader, fifth grader and seventh grader. They're all becoming such wonderful little students. I'm so pleased with how well the first week (Two weeks now!) has gone, even though it was so full of activity. Here are our new first day of school pictures. I try to do this on the first day of school every year.
One of my husband's brothers and two of his friends spent last week in our neck of the woods. They planned to hike on the Superior Hiking Trail a full week. They arrived on a Saturday and we fed them a good supper. They got up and had an early breakfast before Dan drove them to the trail head on Sunday. They started near Trail Center on the Gunflint Trail, hiking the border rout trail to McFarland Lake by Wednesday A.M. At that point one of the men decided that this was all just a bit too much for him. They caught a ride to their car, which Dan had parked at a trail head on the Arrowhead Trail, and back to our house they came. So, I fed them lunch and let them shower up and wash clothes before they started out again on Thursday A.M., minus one. He stayed behind with our family. This time they started at a Superior Hiking Trail trail head on the Camp 20 Rd. They made it to the Pincushion Mt. parking area by Friday afternoon. I don't know about you, but I'd call that some hiking! I picked them up there and brought them home for another shower and supper, and we saw them off with full stomachs on Saturday after lunch. It was really fun to play hostess to all of them for the week. I think they all had a good time, and I know that our family did! On Saturday A.M. 2 of the men helped the kids with their wood splitting chores, and one of them helped Dan and I get a good start on our goat pen. Here's a quick photo of the new fence. It's almost done! :)
Okey dokey, no picture. I'll have to show you later bc blogger is being a pain in the tail right now.
One of my husband's brothers and two of his friends spent last week in our neck of the woods. They planned to hike on the Superior Hiking Trail a full week. They arrived on a Saturday and we fed them a good supper. They got up and had an early breakfast before Dan drove them to the trail head on Sunday. They started near Trail Center on the Gunflint Trail, hiking the border rout trail to McFarland Lake by Wednesday A.M. At that point one of the men decided that this was all just a bit too much for him. They caught a ride to their car, which Dan had parked at a trail head on the Arrowhead Trail, and back to our house they came. So, I fed them lunch and let them shower up and wash clothes before they started out again on Thursday A.M., minus one. He stayed behind with our family. This time they started at a Superior Hiking Trail trail head on the Camp 20 Rd. They made it to the Pincushion Mt. parking area by Friday afternoon. I don't know about you, but I'd call that some hiking! I picked them up there and brought them home for another shower and supper, and we saw them off with full stomachs on Saturday after lunch. It was really fun to play hostess to all of them for the week. I think they all had a good time, and I know that our family did! On Saturday A.M. 2 of the men helped the kids with their wood splitting chores, and one of them helped Dan and I get a good start on our goat pen. Here's a quick photo of the new fence. It's almost done! :)
Okey dokey, no picture. I'll have to show you later bc blogger is being a pain in the tail right now.
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