this new house

This is our new hen house. We converted an old doghouse that the previous tenants left in our backyard. It already had the open door (duh) and hinged roof, so we added legs, perches, a nesting box, and a piece for the door. It's not quite hen-ready; it needs a fenced run, for starters, since our yard is wide open and poorly fenced for completely free-range chickens. However, we're also planning a portable run of some sort to let the girls out for fun and forage. Yes, girls. We have no plans for a rooster as yet. There are a couple already next door, and that's enough for this neighborhood for now. If our preliminary small flock works out well and we're ready to increase the size of the house and the flock, we'll consider our options then.

In the background, you can barely see four of our six garden beds. That is some short corn, but we're still hopeful. I am almost ready to plant broccoli and greens, plus some cabbages promised from my dad's garden.

bug fun

We found this guy in the garden yesterday. I was so excited to see a real, live praying mantis in our yard! I've never seen one outside of the monsters inhabiting the bug house at the zoo. We had to (gently) examine it a bit before reinstalling it to the tomato box. It's a beneficial predator bug, so we're happy to give it a home. Go, mantis, go!

campy

We're winding up the last week before school starts, so we went for one last camping trip. It's a nice little place; not crowded, clean bathroom, pool. You guessed it: our backyard.

Backyard camping is my favorite. You really can't beat the amenities, the location is always prime, and even if you stay out there "roughing it" all day no one else has to see your scruffy camping hair. Our yard is huge, so we still get to bring the flashlight for the toothbrushing run, and there's plenty of room for a fire. Of course that means marshmallows, which is Small Person's definition of camping in the first place.

Bonus: getting out of bed to water the garden in the early hours is much easier.

this little piggy went to Boston

The Young Fellow is in the middle of a week-long trip to Boston and D.C. We miss him terribly. I'm not sure who has it worse, Small Person because she has to spend the week with boring Mom, or me, because I have no one to tag team with. Well, let's face it, she can't read or write, so I can safely claim greater hardship.  Anyway, to assuage our pangs, Young Fellow took along Piggy Pig to track their visits to the great representational monuments of American history.

This way Small Person gets a vicarious thrill out of Pig's adventures, and we both get a little more fun out of it than just the daily phone call.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what is represented in these photos, so the explanations will have to wait until the traveler returns.

Sadly, there were no photos sent to document their midnight flat tire misadventure, either. Now that would have been interesting for Piggy.

fruit of our labor

I picked the first zucchini out of the garden today. I know it's itty, but that's part of my strategy to stay on top of a potential glut. I plan to grill it with a couple more from my dad's garden as part of tonight's dinner.

In other garden news, the corn is finally getting tassels, the tomatoes are ripening, and the pumpkins are swelling. Yum! The cucumbers never sprouted, despite three separate sowings, so we'll chalk that up to bad seeds. I might try one more time, considering we still have a couple of hot months ahead of us. The beans don't seem to be very excited, which is odd; I've always had luck with even the most poorly tended bean plant. They had a hard time of it with slugs, though, so they might not have recovered enough. I'm optimistic about the peppers and eggplant, although the latter is barely limping along. Most of the sad plants have a lot to do with starting the garden so late and having to make do with the last lingering vegetable starts available. But, at least we're well-prepared for our fall plantings!

our house

"Mom, can we try bear sometime?"

"Mom, can we make cheese sometime?"

"Mom, I wish we lived where there were rabbits so we could hunt for them and eat them."

"Mom, the car is boring.  It would be much more interesting if we had a wagon."

These conversational gems were inspired by our current bedtime reading; the Little House series. We are both enjoying them immensely.  In fact, the history-geek in me likes them even more now as an adult. I admit to doing a little mom-editing on the fly, as I believe that manifest destiny is not the best bedtime topic.  We'll save it for the same day we discuss Columbus.

Anyway, the books are delightful. The details of everyday life and survival in the frontier West; hunting, trapping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, farming, housekeeping, all by hand or with very limited machinery. Plus travel by covered wagon, freak July 4th frost, "hostile Indians," and a blue-ribbon pumpkin.  What's not to love?

I did agree to some of her suggestions; we'll try to make cheese, we've started the garden, we're planning a chicken coop. But, I think we'll skip the hog butchering and bullet making.

Happy Birthday, Sahru!

We had tons of fun playing tea party and stuffing ourselves with treats.  I drank so much tea, I was awake until 2 a.m.  Fortunately, leftover tiny tea sandwiches make a delicious midnight snack.

lady grey

Kathi's recent post reminded me to share our new combined laundry and watering system.

I know I'm desperately nerdy for admitting this, but I love a good grey water system.  You know, the kind that takes the outflow from your kitchen sink, say, and uses it to water your ornamental landscaping.  I've seen (or more likely, read about) some pretty awesome systems that send everything but the toilet water through an elaborate filtration system encompassing gravel beds, aeration fountains, and plants to purify the water enough to use it as irrigation for food crops.

Ours is not nearly so fancy, but it's still pretty keen.  Since our laundry outflow was previously uncoupled from the septic system even before we moved in, we were able to set up a simple system fairly quickly.  From the washer, water goes to two storage barrels that have free-flow irrigation hoses hooked to them.  The hoses go snaking along the property, through fences, under paths, around landscaping to drip on all of our ornamental borders.  Yes, we use eco-friendly soap.  No, we don't use the water for anything we're planning to eat.  With five people in the house, it's easy to do at least one load of laundry a day, more often two.  Which, coincidentally, is the exact proportion to fit on our newly-installed clothesline.  We'll just pretend we planned it all that way.

fair enough

Corn dog, soda, cotton candy, Fun House, Drop Zone, roller coaster, frozen lemonade, chocolate malt, carousel, Moto-Cross, Philly cheese steak, chili-cheese fries, goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits, flower show, giant slide, Ferris wheel, Hurricane, Tilt-a-Whirl, funnel cake.

We had so much fun at the county fair yesterday!  Since the Small Person is actually quite tall for her age, she is thrillingly allowed to ride most of the big-kid attractions.  I stand by with mom accessories (sunscreen, hats, water bottle, snacks) and try to snap photos of high-speed shenanigans.

We endured the minor discomforts of fair attendance (blistered feet and slight indigestion), but happily avoided the grand ones (tantrums and sunburn), and returned our dusty and dehydrated selves home to bath and bed.  Can't wait to do it again next year!

squashed

The garden is coming along nicely. I’m wilting in the recent hot weather, but the plants are delighted. Squashes of various sorts are spreading leaves and tendrils in all directions, the corn gains inches behind our backs, and the tomatoes are exploding in blossoms.

This is my first real garden. As a kid, my participation in the various family gardens was limited to eating the produce. Well, I could occasionally be talked into toting rocks out of the beds, but only when my dad paid me for it. At ten cents per bucket, I think he got the better end of the deal.

Anyway, I am excited to be running the show myself this time around. Okay, not really “I.” That just means that I boss and let everyone else do the building and heavy lifting. But, really, I’m happy to be getting out there early in the morning to water and evict snails and give the daily pep talk to the cucumbers. I’m ambitiously awaiting the moment when this project moves from experiment to actual food-source. We specifically planted things that are both easy to grow and beloved by most of the household, so we don’t get burnt out in our first season.

I am amassing a master file of zucchini recipes, though, just in case.

red hot

I have only myself to blame.  I've been particularly careful with sunscreen application this summer. Weeks of habitual daily application and re-application before gardening or pool dips.  Staying shaded or indoors during the middle of the day.  The new sunglasses and super-dork gardening hat.  Responsibility, yay!

Today, however, we hit the park.  The Small Person was having so much fun (in the shade) and I was immersed in my book (in the sun).  Of course I didn't pay attention until I felt discomfort.  Of course by then it was too late.  Now I'm slathering on the aloe and holding my iced beverage against my shoulders.  Yeowch!

Oh, and the book? A history of the founding of the ACLU.  Riveting!

Battle of the Bulge

This is the birthday cake I made for the Young Fellow's WWII-obsessed dad.  He prefers the box cake, so that left the creativity for the outside.  We had great fun scoping out just the right hobby store supplies, laying out the battle scene, and coating the whole thing in powdered sugar snow.  He was appropriately wowed, but then: "hey, is that an AK-47?!"  Yeah, yeah, WWII-era little plastic dudes are hard to come by these days, so we had to settle for a more modern-warfare look.  Still, I think the amputee rounds it out nicely.