Scenes from the Trellises Part 1 2010

So since Maine has decided to turn into a Southern State this year...at least the part I am living in...(I do hear that my more northern counterparts had snow earlier this month...but here...it's been like...Africa hot this week) I have gotten my entire garden in and have even harvested stuff already.

Now I am not Acorn Farm Girl, but I do my best. Already have had lettuce, spinach and radishes fresh, and hoping that we don't get the biblical 40 days of rain like last year so I will have the opportunity to harvest more than a few moldy strawberries!


But here we are, my modest raised beds where the running list is: Sweet Potatoes, Blue, Yukon and red potatoes, wax beans, green beans (bush and pole), Lima Beans, Peas, spinach, lettuce (4 kinds), Beets, Turnips, Parsnips, radishes, carrots, Tomatoes (A bazillion types), cantaloupe, watermelon, eggplant, jalapeno's, Habanera’s, Green Peppers, Sweet Peppers, Pumpkins, summer squash, zucchini, acorn squash, butternut squash, broccoli, cauliflower, red cabbage, green cabbage, pointed cabbage, nasturtiums, basil, cilantro, thyme, oregano, mint, rosemary, lemon balm, red onion, white onion, spring onions, yellow onions, Brussel sprouts, cucumbers, Swiss chard, and Strawberries...I think that covers it... oh and chives...thats those things blooming in the garden!

Still haven't dared to plant Asparagus or Rhubarb, somehow I know that will mean I move the next year!

But I did plant Raspberry and Blackberry bushes this year, and hope to expand to grapes and blueberries next year!

So here’s to dirty hands and strung trellises...lets see what happens now!

The Boys new look!

So the other day I had an eye appointment due to my being completely blind with out glasses and all. I of course had little man in tow as I went which...around complicated machinery can be a real challenge.

After about 20 minutes of "what is that?" "What are you doing... what are you doing now? what are you doing now?"

My eye Dr., in either exasperation, or excitement that someone cared about what he was doing, said:

"Hey do you want to try out the machine that your mom is looking in?"

"YEAH!" Henry was very excited...I was thinking...oh what a nice guy....

Then I heard it...

"huh," from the Dr. then a few minutes later another.."hmmmmm"

Long story short...Here we are a couple hundred dollars later!

Blimps

Before preschool Henry was watching Curious George, which I question letting him watch anyway because of his natural bent toward curiosity in a way that shuts down cities and saves ducks and stuff...

George and the yellow hat guy went up in a Blimp...

Henry exclaimed "Hey look its a giant flying football!"

my all too literal oldest says "No Henry, that's a Blimp..."

To which he looks at her quite indignantly and says...

"Nooo, its a giant flying football." In his best wise tail voice...

At least he knows what he knows right????

My Mother's Day Present

OK so I was remiss in the midst of my flooded house to not mention that I got a very nice mothers day gift. This year in lieu of lovely shell jewelry and tissue paper pins, I got these!




And the best part is...they are Hokie Colors...so how could they be bad?

Ahhh now I just need an umbrella drink, a nanny and a crew of carpenters to put my house back together again!

The Gods Must be Angry

So this morning I felt like I was totally on top of things. I felt like mom of the year. I gave my kids cereal on paper plates since we have no kitchen due to the flood, thus no water…so dry cereal it was.

I had called my sister to drop the youngest and oldest off at their prospective schools, my neighbor agreed to put my middle one on the bus, all so that I could get to my meeting at 8:15. I am running out the door in my girl clothes shoving everything into the car, a change of clothes, a pear, and all the kids’ lunches, and yes I even remembered all the kids.

I pull out of the driveway and notice that as I am going my car seems to be dragging half of the rock with it…

Huh.

All of the sudden it dawns on me…this is not the way that my car normally feels… it is now 7:45 and I am getting perilously close to my deadline to get to my meeting on time.

I get out of the car only to see that the back tire is completely flat. After a long string of unmentionable things came out of my mouth… I just sighed and looked up and said:
“SERIOUSLY?”

(Thanks to Greys Anatomy it probably has a new entry in Webster’s.)

Clearly I have angered the Gods, I can only hope that perhaps I have started to pay off my debt…Because really I am totally expecting to wake up tomorrow looking up at the beautiful sky about to rain because a wind storm took off my roof during the night!

It's Raining It's Pouring the Old Man is...

Pissed to find that it’s raining and pouring in his basement!Ahhhh, the happiness of homeownership! Friday morning I woke up feeling a little overheated…”huh” I thought to myself. When suddenly my oldest daughter runs up stairs and says…

“Daddy, you need to get down stairs, there is water in the kitchen floor.”

Ok so I am thinking, something leaked…no biggie…I look at my windows…in my bedroom…upstairs…and notice that there is sort of a dew covering them on the inside.

“Huh” I think to myself.

I walk down stairs and see even more dew all over the insides of the windows downstairs, and that there is a certain…oh rain foresty quality in the air…

“Huh” I think…

Then I walked into the kitchen…the “Huh,” turned to “Holy S%$^#”

There was literally inches of water from one end of the house to the other…then what I am hearing starts to register…rain…Although outside was looking to be a beautiful blue sky, I heard rain…in my basement!

I went down the stairs to find that the floor beneath that half of my house was literally raining into my basement.

The culprit? An overactive dishwasher that clearly was trying to prove its manhood to the rest of the appliances. It had been set to run at 11 that night…and ran until 6 that morning gushing hot water into the downstairs of our house until saturating the floor so much that it leaked through and RAINED in our finished basement.

Yes, I am now questioning my use of the word apocalyptic in my last post.

Mowing the Lawn With Girls and Preschoolers....

The other day I had to mow the lawn again. First of all I find it slightly apocalyptic that I am even having to mow my lawn in April and May in Maine, but regardless of how odd being in a tank top in the beginning of May was making me feel, it had to be done.

I use this term, lawn, lightly because I believe that a lawn consists of lush green grass….ours is lush green clover, with lots of yellow dandelions dotting the landscape. And the moles have made lots of mounds where the dead patches are from the grubs…you get the picture…mowing is really more trimming the crabgrass and wild flowers than mowing…

This has become a battle between my husband and I, as he is from the south…the land of manicured lawns, and football games in the front yard. I on the other hand had a family that was akin to hermits and had big trees growing right up to the house, so lawn was more…well…pine needle covering.

As I was going over and over a patch of oh…400 dandelions, I looked up to find my daughter blowing the dandelion offspring onto my lawn to seed even more of the demonic flower that is taking over my yard. “Making a wish,” she yelled to inform me, incase I didn’t know what she was up to.

It was then, as I pictures all the jars, plastic sippy cups, bowls and pots full of these beautiful flowers that have been sacrificial offerings to the mommy god by a little boy who quite honestly needs to be sacrificing something to continue living, that I realized this was an exercise in futility.

I realize that I will not win the lawn battle…not with out waging a major chemical warfare, which frankly is just not really my style. So I will just continue to find containers for my flower offerings, make wishes on the baby lawn killers when I am asked to, and continue to expand my garden into the entire yard…until my husband kills me, or the kids stop wanting to give me flowers, or move out… Until then, I will have just gaze on my bluewhites, dandelions, crabgrass, and brown patches with a sense of defeat, and enjoy the sunshine on a nice May day.