Our very own beach!

V and I were at one of the local home centers late in the week and we stumbled across the end of summer clearance pile. We've finally got a use for our sand covered riding arena. OUR VERY OWN BEACH! For half price we got a 15' diameter above ground pool. Yeah, I know, it's late in the season to be filling a pool with 3000 gallons of water. But we haven't had much of a summer. And it was in the low 90s today. Perfect weather for a trip to the beach and we decided we deserved an afternoon off.

Filling the top ring with air.

A view of the beach.

V and I under the umbrella

Frolicking children.

The pool will eventually be about 4 feet deep but we were in it as it filled. I also took time to take a walk over the hills to look for wildflowers.

Great Lobelia (I think)

Thistles- even though they're prickly, they're still beautiful.

Swamp milkweed

The Spotted Touch-me-Not (jewelweed) is also blooming but the flowers are so delicate it was too windy to get a good shot. We've also got wild bergamot (bee balm), white shakeroot and LOTS of others. It's going to be fun to figure them all out.

A dismal harvest

I went out and pulled onions this morning. I planted 100 each of white, yellow and red varieties. This is what I ended up with:

A pathetic showing.

Most of the red ones rotted in the ground- I'm thinking a combination of the weeds, the amount of rain and the fact that I probably didn't get to them soon enough. I only have about 20 to show of the 100 I planted. Of course, we have eaten a few along the way but still....

The yellow ones did a bit better and the white ones even better still. But there are very few that are of a decent size.

But here are a few other photos of the day.

Blue Vervain

Surprise!

I've heard these variously called surprise lilies or naked ladies. But by any name they're beautiful. There are several clumps by the North fence by the driveway. Quite lovely.

And now- I've got to go work on our end of the year surprise for the kids. More pics to follow.

She has a room...

Well, almost....

V peeks at J15 through a gap in the wall.

It's not much but it's a place for a bed.

And it has a door of a sort.

J15 has walls! With drywall on at least part of them. It is enough for her at the moment. She set up her bed and is excited to sleep in her own bed in her new room, even with incomplete walls.

And with her room completed, my canning/food storage room has also taken shape as has most of what will be the spare bedroom/sewing room. Things are moving along.

I'm hoping to spend some time in the garden tomorrow morning before it gets too hot and then J15 wants to go back to school shopping. I'm a bit torn. This is our 'tax holiday' weekend. There is no sales tax on clothing or shoes either today or tomorrow. And while that means a savings, I'm not so sure I want to brave the crowds. But I desperately need new sandals (mine have lasted several years and are now on their way OUT- and my favorite flip flops broke last night!!!) and J15 needs new jeans and shoes for school. Her supply of hand-me-downs has dwindles or fallen apart and she only has 2 decent pair of jeans to start the year. I really should take time to check out how many pants the boys have that still fit (they had the audacity to GROW over the summer!) but maybe they can wait.

My new range rocks!

I did my first canning on my new range tonight. The 'power burner' rocks. 15,000 BTU of heat in one burner is fabulous! And having 6 burners was also great, the big one for the canner, one for the product, one for lids, one for extra water, and still room to spare. YES!

Pickled beets.

I have one jar where I separated out the pale beets, the ones that are almost yellow with pink rings. I forget the exact name but they're beautiful. This was the last of my beets and now I wish I had canned some more while we had them. Oh well, I've got 4 pints ready to go.

In other news, we had 22 realtors walk through our old house yesterday. And of all that, only 3 negative comments. One person evidently thought we need to trim our shrubs some more and two complained that the CFL lights in the kitchen and basement take too long to warm up. I guess that's true, but it's something that we had gotten used to- that the kitchen was dim for about 90 seconds after you turn on the lights. Oh well, we're NOT going to trim the shrubs but the lightbulbs were a quick fix that V took care of this morning. Evidently all the other realtors thought that the house was great and that we're asking a fair price for it. What a relief. There was another showing yesterday and another is scheduled for Friday that we know of. But, no offers yet, But then, it's early days yet. The house has only been on the market for a week and having 5 showings in that short a time is pretty good in today's economy. And those are only the ones we know of. With the lock box on the house, any area realtor can stop in and show it at a moment's notice since we're not living there.

It ends up that I don't have to work this weekend, but next. My co-worker who was scheduled to work next weekend had child care issues and asked to swap. Since I don't have anything pressing going on it didn't bother me. Maybe now I can sleep in a little on Saturday to try to recover from last weekend.

It's supposed to be hot this weekend- finally into the 90's for the year- but I really want to spend some quality time in the garden. I noticed this evening that I will have green beans to pick tomorrow night and hopefully I'll have a few more tomatoes. I also really need to pull my onions since they've all fallen over. They really didn't get very big this year- who knows, it definitely wasn't due to lack of rain.

Ah, the thwack of another jar sealing...music to my ears.

My budding chef

I was unpacking some of my cookbooks last night and I12 was excited to once again have his cookbooks. He has said for several years that he wants to be a chef when he grows up, and he is getting to be good enough at cooking- even at 12- that it could be a possibility.

What did he make? Here's some photos. (Please excuse the disastrous mess you can see in the background. We haven't figured out the recycling system here yet and things are stacked everywhere.)

First:

A trip to the garden for supplies.

He (with help) harvested eggplant, tomatoes, onions, a pepper and some basil. Any ideas yet?

Chopping tomatoes

Stirring a chunky tomato sauce with onions, garlic, green pepper and basil.

Ok, I'll admit, I supervised and used the mandoline slicer for the rest of the veggies (to save his fingers but more my sanity!)

And now the finished product:

Ratatouille ala Ian

Most ratatouille is more chunky like a stew but he wanted to make it like they made in the movie of the same name (which is a great movie, by the way). It was fabulous!!! We melted a little cheese on the top at the last minute and served it over pasta! What a great vegetarian meal for the week and except for the yellow squash from my Mom, the cheese and the pasta, it was all grown in our garden.

Here's what he did.

Coarsely chop 2-3 cups tomatoes (we had about 2- all we had ripe but would have liked a few more).

Put tomatoes in a sauce pan with one chopped small onion, half a green bell pepper, also chopped, salt, pepper and about 1 tablespoon shredded fresh basil. Bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes until the tomatoes soften.

Spoon half of tomato sauce into bottom of pan. Place alternating layers of veggies in a circular pattern around the edge and in the middle of the pan. We used 2 small eggplant, 2 small yellow squash, one medium red onion and a few more whole leaves of basil. Make it pretty.

Spoon the remaining tomato sauce over the top, cover with foil and bake at 375* for about 35 minutes, remove the foil, sprinkle with finely shredded cheese (we used a blend of mozarella, parmesan and asiago). Turn off the oven and put the dish back into the oven for just long enough for the cheese to melt.

Serve over pasta (we used penne) with extra shredded cheese if desired.

Independence Days- week 14

My how time flies!!! It can't be Monday already, can it. Oh yeah, it is. I went to work today- the first of a 6 day stretch since I work on Saturday. We worked so hard this weekend, it was difficult to get up out of bed this morning and I actually overslept. I turned off the alarm with every intention of getting up (it was 5:20 am) but when I woke up next it was 6:52!!! I normally catch the 6:40 bus- so I was LATE!!!! I quick threw on some clothes, gulped some coffee and had V drive me all the way into work.

But, the house in town is essentially done. V has gone down this evening to brush on a thin coat of varnish over the dining room floor. He tried to spot finish the places where it had worn thin due to traffic and chairs moving in and out but then it obviously looked spot finished. So he will dry brush a very thin coat over the entire floor to make it all shiny. The realtors will be doing their walk through tomorrow morning at 9 and there is another showing later in the morning. That will be, as far as we know, the third showing of the house since it went on the market on Wednesday of last week. Not too bad. We haven't heard any comments from the first two walk throughs so I'm curious what people have thought. I'm a bit nervous about the realtor comment session tomorrow although I know they're doing it to be helpful.

But on to my usual Monday business: The Independence Days challenge. So, here goes:

1. Plant something- transplanted a few of my flowers from the old house to the new but that's about it.

2. Harvest something- Yup! Behold:

Peppers and the first of the tomatoes.

So far we've got tomatoes ripening on two of the heirloom varieties, Cherry Roma and Bloody Butcher. The Bloody Butchers aren't very big but they are quite tasty and very juicy. The cherry romas are just plain tasty and are a tiny grape tomato.

The last harvest of broccoli.

Who would ever have thought that I would be harvesting the last of the broccoli in August! It's official, we have had the coolest July on record. I harvested one HUGE head, two normal sized heads and one small one. And most impressive- on all of that I found only 4 worms when I soaked it in brine (and I did look carefully).

I also have harvested some more peppers, beets, some onions and a few new potatoes.

3. Preserve something- Froze 4 quart bags of broccoli and I have some beets cooling that I need to do something with this evening.

4. Reduce waste- The usual, composted LOTS of weeds from the old house. We also hauled out the brush that we trimmed from the bushes. We've got space here and it will probably go for kindling for fires later this fall. Things have been kind of crazy lately and I haven't always remembered to put my cloth bags back into the car. At the old house we would put the bags by the back door but we haven't figured out a good system yet.

5. Prep and storage- Construction continues on J15's room, V plans to start drywalling on Wednesday. Woo Hoo! For storage- I have the 4 bags of broccoli and my Mom brought us 10 packages of frozen sweet corn.

6. Build community food systems- Stopped at the farmer's market again last Wednesday. Otherwise, we've been eating from our garden or from what my Mom brought us.

7. Eat the food- no problem here. We've had sweet corn, broccoli, stuffed peppers, boiled new potatoes, green beans, beets. We also have been eating most of our meat products from the freezer. I used my new griddle that came with my stove to make whole wheat pancakes (with fresh strawberries and blueberries) on Sunday morning. Unfortunately on both Saturday and Sunday we ate out since we were in town with no food or means to cook and I wasn't organized enough to pack lunches. We ate KFC on Saturday and Subway on Sunday. Well, I guess that counts as our annual fast food stint that is usually while we're on vacation.

I'm really hoping that, now that work on our old house is done, that I can start settling into some sort of routine here. I've been feeling so disjointed lately, I don't know whether I'm coming or going. Even though I take exception to the word "normal" I would like to regain some normalcy in my life.

Yard work

We spent the day at our old house, working on the 'curb appeal'. I was right, weeding and a bit of mulch worked wonders. We mowed and weeded. Tomorrow we will haul away the piles of brush and weeds. Normally we would have composted the weeds but I'm not adding anything new to the compost pile there.

My parents stopped by this morning on the way to a family reunion. We had hoped to go but with the need to get the yard work done we begged off. Even my Mom was understanding about our need to get things done. They brought us green beans, cucumbers, sweet corn and summer squash. My sweet corn isn't tasseling yet and I picked a total of 4 green beans last night. Mom also brought me 10 bags of frozen sweet corn. She said she knew our patch isn't very big so she thought we could use some for our winter stores. Thanks, Mom!

In exciting news. After V dropped J15 off at tae kwon do he went to our old house to get started (I was still at home with boys trying to get some laundry done). When he arrived at about 9:20 am there were cars in the driveway and people on the front porch. A realtor was showing our house to a young couple!!!! We haven't heard anything but V talked to them and told them that we would be doing some more work on the house this weekend so hopefully anything they found objectionable we can take care of. The realtor was from the same firm as out agent so we should get a report of what comments they made. It's only one showing but it's hopeful.