Winds of Change

We're no longer homeschooling.

Farm-to-Table: Harvest and clean-up

Yesterday evening we cleaned out the garden.  Weeded what was the tomato bed and pulled out the soaker hose.  Harvested the last good watermelon (the other one was rotting on the vine) and pulled the plants.  Surprisingly harvested sweet potatoes in their garbage pail (we thought they didn't produce anything from when we had checked on them earlier.  Then we dumped the soil from the cans into the old tomato bed.  When I went to dump the soil from the failed potato experiment we discovered that it wasn't a complete failure after all.  From three trash cans we harvested a grand total of five small potatoes!!  We're gobsmacked!  There's a couple of banana peppers still on the plant, but we didn't harvest them yet.

After harvesting, we peeled back the damaged weed block cloth and threw it out, removed the rocks that helped hold it down and stacked them under the stoop so they weren't in the way for mowing, and dumped the soil from the empty containers into the wallows we had created to help keep the containers from drying out (but became mosquito cesspools instead) and into the old tomato bed.

The corn, green beans, and tomatoes failed this year.  They didn't survive the boys' lack of care.  We found that our garden grew better when planted into our clay soil rather than in a raised bed with "garden mix" fetched from a local landscaping company, so our long-term garden plans are reconfigured.

No fall garden.  Didn't have sufficient opportunity to get it put in when it was viable planting time.  I was thinking of experimenting with mini hoop-houses, but there's been no headway on that pondering either.  Compost happens...

What to Do About Memorial Day?

http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/flanders.asp

http://www.dltk-teach.com/minibooks/flanders/index.htm

http://www.coloring.ws/remembrance1.htm

Family Lore Friday: A Table of Bread

Mom followed up her "I learned about Joy when I was a kid" story with an "I learned about yeast in the ninth grade" story:

While at a friend's house (note a recurring theme here?) they decided to make some bread for her friend's family.  Mom's friend had watched her mom make bread lots of times.  They also decided that instead of making one batch, they should double it.

Her friend's mom came home to a table full of bread dough that needed to be taken care of.

Mom is careful with her yeast measurements now.

Family Lore Friday: A Lesson in Joy

When my mother was a child, around mid-elementary school age, she had gone over to a friend's house in the neighborhood to play.  The opted to blow bubbles, and because they wanted super bubbly bubbles, they used a considerable amount of dish detergent.

So much dish detergent that their bubble-blowing activity left the porch with a sticky residue that the friend's mother required they clean up.  Mom said she doesn't remember how many hours it took them to rinse that porch--the more they rinsed, the more bubbles they got.

To this day she will not touch Joy dish soap--it makes too many bubbles!

Field Trip: Ft. Dobbs

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Family Lore Friday: Nuthin'

During a conversation about how parents know when a kiddo has been up to "something," Mom shared a story about one of my cousins.  This cousin is about halfway between Mom's age and my age, and when Mom was a teenager she lived with her sister's family.  One night, my cousin was overheard talking in her sleep.  She spoke one single word:  "Nuthin'."

Mom said she wondered what she was dreaming about.

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Other evening lore about this fabulous cousin of mine during her childhood:

Some evenings mom would walk down the hall to use the restroom, and notice my cousin's bedroom light was on.  And it was still on when she walked back.  A shortwhile later my uncle was at her room telling her to go to sleep.  Mom remembers my cousin asking how it was known that she was still up.  Hehehehe....parents have their ways!  ;)