Are you feelin' hot, hot, hot?

It's hot! I mean hot! Add in a bit of humidity yesterday mixed in with 100 degree heat and we were all a bit sweaty. It's so hot that:

--Someone grew impatient waiting for the soda to cool in the fridge, so they put it in the freezer and promptly forgot about it since they decided to drink MY Diet Coke that I had JUST opened. Guess who gets to clean the freezer today? Not me!!!

-- having fur becomes a bit uncomfortable and kittys must expose themselves on my cool sheets in cute ways to keep me from making my bed. Aww...

Another fur issue...Spohie playing dead...tongue out and all! What is it with my animals playing dead?

IT'S HOT!!!

more randomness

I love my doggie. She is a big poo poo head and can be quite a crank sometimes, but she loves people and doesn't mind little kids. She loves to go out with me early in the morning to work on the sprinklers and check on the garden. I love this picture of her enjoying the morning sun. It looks like her idea of a perfect dog moment.

So, I have another chicken issue. This is momma #1. She has decided to roll the eggs out of the boxes and sit on them. Every day for about a week I was crawling in their little house to collect all of the eggs she'd roll out of the boxes. She'd get so mad and peck at me something terrible. I finally got tired of that and hoped that if I put all of her eggs in a box she'd stop stealing the eggs and would be happy with her 4 or 5 eggs I gave her.

Oops! Picture out of order. What do you do when your cat catches a baby mouse? You put it in a jar of course! Yuck! It was squeeking and climbing the jar. Chris finally got tired of it and made them put it down. We went over why they couldn't bring a wild mouse into the house and put it in a cage. We aren't going to think about what the cat did with it after they let it go.

Back to the chickens. The stealing didn't stop. Now she has an accomplice and they weren't happy until they had about 10 eggs under them. We had to mark them so we'd know which ones were the sitting eggs and which ones they were laying. It's a bit of a trick getting them out from under the testy birds. Lots of pecking, lots of puffing up. They looked at the eggs a bit strangely when we put the blue stripe around them but finally gave in and are happily sitting on their clutch of eggs. Unfortunately they have slowed down production from the other birds a little as well. Where I was getting 9-10 eggs a day now I'm only getting 6. The good news is a couple of my newest babies are now laying peewees so they'll help pick up the slack. Hopefully the kids will have new babies in 2 or 3 more weeks to take care of. Summer makes for easier hatching since I don't have to keep them warm. Then it will be time to do in a few of the flock. We've not done any culling yet since we're only approaching year one with our birds. Egg production is influenced by the age of the bird so I'm putting Chris in charge of doing some of the oldest birds in this Fall. That's the theory anyway. I'm not sure I can go through with it. I've grown quite attached to them. Little buggers.

Fruits of our labor

Here's what we've been working towards with our garden. We've been busily storing up for winter. The first picking of green beans yielded 16 quarts and we're in the midst of doing pickles in 3 or 4 flavors. So far we have dill relish, dill pickles, golden glows, and zucchini relish. The next batches will be bread and butter and more dills, but more of a kosher kind. I'm learning a lot about estimating amounts needed and methods used...ice bath, lime bath, pickling salts, soaking, rinsing, flavoring, the possibilities are endless! What kind of recipes does your family pass down? What little tricks do they use to make their veggies shine? We want to know!



We're really trying to get done with this stuff to make room for when our tomatoes really come on. They've been slow to ripen due to the mild weather we've been having. When they do come on we'll be in trouble!!!

Here is my little helper. He made sure I did dill pickles, since those are his favorite. His other favorite that I showed him this year is to take cucumber, slice in spears(which he can now do by himself) and sprinkle with salt and pepper. He probably eats a couple of large cukes a day!!!

Thebest thing about all of these veggies? I don't have to buy them to use on my South Beach diet I'm doing! In phase one you can have lean meats, veggies(non-starchy), eggs, and low fat dairy. That means I'm eating a lot of veggies!!! I am getting a little tired of zucchini and bell peppers though! The great part is I've lost 10 pounds and get to start phase 2 which means I can have fruit again! Have a great week! We're headed out of town on a camping trip.

major project

Here is what's been taking up a lot of our time in the evenings this past month. Veggies galore!!!

Our garden has really taken off! The kids love going out in the evenings to pick what's ripe.

We have watermelons, cantalope, crookneck, zucchini, butternut, corn, tomatoes, green beans, basil, green onions, peas, peppers, cucumbers, and dill. Here is a collage Chris made of some photos he took. It's a busy place out back!

I've been canning this week. Wow! I'm tired! Picking, washing, processing, needing a latte and a pedicure...

More randomness

Summer food...steak and roasted veggies. Yum

Outdoor discoveries. Wooly bear catepillars.

Summer projects. Amanda's doll with her clothes almost done. It looks like she's wearing a kimono. I tried to talk her into thinking this looked cute, but she didn't buy it. I guess I have to hem them soon.

Here she is in her underclothes. We'll get her eyes on sooner or later so it doesn't look like she's sleeping all the time.

Camp Beckwourth

We spent a week in the middle of June driving to Nevada City every day to go to a boyscout camp. Siblings were allowed at camp so Amanda got to go too. She was one of about 5 girls there. They got to do all sorts of fun stuff. I was at the flowerbox station. We made about 220 wooden flowerboxes. I can still hear the nailing. One thing I learned is little kids tap each nail about 35 times, times 12 nails per box...you do the math. Needless to say I needed quiet time by the end of the day.

At the end of camp they do a big water war. Amanda sat this one out, but the boys all went nuts! I'm not sure who were the bigger kids, the Dads or their sons. It was a free for all!

One of my kid's favorites activities was archery. They both were bubbling with excitement explaining it to me.

By the end of the week I had two exhausted kids. It was a good tired though and they are looking forward to it next year.

Lobstah pahty

Uh oh. Men standing around steaming pots of boiled alive crustaceans can only mean one thing. Yup, it's time for another Maine Lobstah Pahty. My Dad turned 75 this June and that kind of thing warrants getting his favorite food.

I'm not a lobster fan. Maybe it shoving them in when they're still alive, or the fact that it's eyes are still looking at you when you're eating it, the tenacles touching your neighbor's plate, or the sucking of the legs, or the stomach gunk that people gave a charming name to so it wouldn't be offensive to eat(tamale, which I always thought was funny since they really don't know good Mexican food up there)...In any event, it looks like great fun, but not my thing. The kids all tried it. Evan and Grace had Aunt Lorna and Marjorie help them get theirs ready, took one bite, and passed it off to the next bidder...I was proud of them. Amanda, however, wanted no part of it. I wasn't surprised since she doesn't even like chunks in her yogurt.

These two were more on my wave length. I'd just as soon skip to the cake and ice cream! Raspberry!!! Yum! Since I made the cake I decided to let them clean the frosting off of the bottom edge. We always tell them they are told not to touch it, but I thought just this once wouldn't hurt. Right? Hey! I'm just the Aunt! Let their parents retrain them, right? :)

Summer finally has hit and lots of various activities as well. I'm going to try to catch up today so be ready for randomness...