Our Garden Update

All this rain has been wonderful for our garden. I don't think we had to water it once in the last two weeks and yet everything is growing nicely.

The other day a woman stopped by our yard, got out of the car and knocked on the door. I thought she wanted to sell us something. Turns out, she wanted to ask some questions about the garden 'cause she said her own doesn't look anything this nice. I'm not trying to brag here, just saying...

So far we've had radishes and mustard greens, 2 kinds of lettuces, and some sorrel (it finally recovered from whatever's been bugging it). The blueberries are slowly ripening and I have to cover them with a net to protect from the birds.

The dwarf peach tree is doing great too, even though I broke the top of it while transporting it in our tiny car. I pulled all but one peaches off the branches. Want to give it a chance to properly root so hopefully we have more peaches next year.

The tomatoes and squashes and cucumbers are growing very fast. Actually, they are starting to bloom already. So hopefully we will start seeing more from our garden in just a few weeks. It's pretty hot, so swiss chard and kale aren't doing all that great. But they are growing nevertheless.

Since Chris can't help me much this year I didn't plant as much as I did last year. Still, all 4 beds are filled with no room to spare. And my small collection of herbs is doing fine in their containers. Now if I can only find a grape vine!

Strawberry Picking

Ah, finally, it's strawberry picking time. Admittedly, the season has started in mid-April, but with all the crazy weather and M getting sick and all that we are just now getting around to it. So a couple of weeks ago we went to our favorite strawberry place, Smith's Nursery. We've been going there for 3 years straight. It's a bit of a drive for us, 30 mins or so, but it's such a beautiful farm! Yes, it's more than just a big open strawberry field. There are plenty of things to do and see there, from admiring flowers in the nursery to checking up on the goats to having a picnic by the fish pond. There are also two playsets for kids and it's a very lively place in general.

The first thing that M said after he saw the field, breathed the aroma of ripe berries and saw all the bright red berries peeking from under the leaves, was "Let's stay here ALL DAY!" To which I thought "Hooray! I finally get to pick without any hurry". Right... Let's just say that after about 10 minutes M's mantra changed to "Let's go back to the car RIGHT NOW!" My fault really.

I told him not to eat unwashed berries and instead wait 'til we would get to the car, wash them and have a nice little picnic eating berries with slices of fresh bread I took with us for a snack. I think the only three words that M retained out of that lengthy explanation was "picnic, bread, snack". He figured that since we had enough strawberries for a picnic, what was the reason for staying out in the heat any longer?

We did manage to pick 2 buckets of berries though. Smith's has just about the largest strawberries of all the farms we've been to. And they generally smell great and are delicious. But the place is far, as I've mentioned.

So that's why I was so happy when, driving around picking up some free stuff posted on Craigslist, I found a smallish strawberry field only about 20 minutes from us. What's even better, we make it half-way there at least once a week since the Farmers' Market is on the way and Lake Wheeler Park is too. The place is called Porter Farm. And it just might become a contender for the title of the most favorite strawberry patch. It's just a strawberry field, no extras (they do sell some other produce and locally-made ice-cream). But the berries are delicious with a big "D". They aren't very big at all, but exceptionally sweet, even the ones that don't seem to be fully ripe yet. The berries also keep very well.

So both times we picked 2 large buckets of strawberries and I've made various deserts with them. No strawberry-rhubarb crisp though 'cause for some reason this year the grocery stores here don't sell rhubarb. And I'm yet to plant my own (yes, yes, next year).

I also tried dehydrating strawberries and they turned out yummy. Like sweet-tart strawberry chips. I plan on drying more for snacks and granola. I'm also making some strawberry jam, the one that everyone seemed to like so much last year. So we'll be doing more strawberry picking, most likely at Porter Farm (gas prices, you know). But we'll most definitely go to the Smith's Nursery at least once more, that one weekend when the strawberry field is still open and the blueberries and blackberries are ready to be picked as well. Irresistible!

Our Christmas 2010 - The Snow

The White Christmas didn't quite happen this year. But we new that something was on its way nevertheless. I had this humongous headache that I get every time it's about to rain or snow. It didn't seem cold enough for snow though. As we drove home from our friends' on Christmas evening, we noticed a few drops on the windshield.

So imagine our surprise when we woke up to THIS:

Yep, 6 inches of soft fluffy snow and more falling. I was fully intent on sleeping late, but how could I?! Not when it was so beautiful and fairy-tale-y outside. I did have a thought that we should probably re-pack the gift and replay the entire Christmas morning, including pineapple pancakes. How absolutely gorgeous would that be? So very Christmas-y! Instead, we all got dressed in many layers and went outside into the snow.

So we played some games, walked through the snow, and taught M to make snow angels. He, in turn, taught us how to snow-swim. After a bit of snow-swimming he needed to go home to warm up and dry off his clothes.

While in the house, we experimented with snow - melting it, then evaporating the water. The big words learned - "water vapor", "evaporating", "solution", "mixture", and, for some reason, "flavor". On his own M made an excellent observation that to make water boil faster or more vigorously he just needed to add some salt to it.

Once the clothes were dry, Chris took M onto the deck to collect some fresh clean snow for snow cream. But instead of the plain vanilla (1 cup milk, 1/2 cup sugar, some vanilla and as much snow as you feel like eating), we went fancy with a chocolate-cranberry-pecan snow cream. Delicious! (At least the first 3-4 spoons before the whole thing melts).

After another round of running the dryer and mopping the floors, we went outside once again. This time we went sledding.

You see, we have this hill in the neighborhood, just around the corner from us, that is perfect for sledding. On a good snowy day you can see most of our neighbors there. Last year we rode on the sled with M, but this year he was big enough and said that he wanted to ride alone.

Then, at the bottom of the hill, we had a good old snowball fight. We then got back home and M played some more with his one and only Christmas gift.

S'mores Time!!!

Yes, it's finally cool enough that all the mosquitoes died. So ok, maybe they didn't die, but are hybernating or have migrated to the warmer climes, but I prefer to think they ALL DIED. Anywho, we can finally spend meaningful amount of time in our backyard without pouring huge quantities of bug repellent on ourselves and still suffering most terrible bites.

So we've been busy on various yard projects, most notably - building a tree house. I've been busy pulling ivy, Virginia creeper and other weeds. We can finally see the soil that is our backyard. Seriously!

And now we have a little cleared out area that's just big enough and flat enough and close enough to the house to make it a (probably temporary) grilling area. So finally we moved the little smoker grill that we've had for like 3 years from the driveway to where it belongs, in the backyard.

And finally we toasted some marshmallows (or do you grill them?) and even made some s'mores!

Grandparents

Did I mention that grandparents were visiting from NY at the end of October? And I'm just now getting around to writing about it! Actually, I'm not even going to write about it. Instead, I'll rely on pictures which are supposed to be better than thousands of words (at least when taken by someone who knows more about photography than I do).

The main theme of this visit was "work hard and then work even harder". Here we go...

Grandpa was on a mission to build a ladder to the tree house. But we ran into a problem - the treehouse platform is just too high on the tree for any regular ladder to be used by a preschooler (or anyone who's not exactly a monkey). Grandpa came up with a solution so grand in scale that it included 3 flights of stairs and 2 landings. But darn it, it's safe! (Secretly, I prefer it to any other option 'cause I'm not giving up on an idea of a romantic stargazing evening with wine in real glasses and have you ever tried climbing down a vertical ladder in the dark after a few glasses of wine?!)

M got to participate in much of the action. Here he is helping to drill holes to secure one of the landings. But the rest of the time he ran around the yard, helped Grandma (more on this - later), bugged Xander (keep scrolling), and built various structures out of his newest set of building blocks - off-cuts from construction lumber (the non-treated ones).

At the end of the first day the super-structure looked like this:
And this is what it looked like at the end of the second day of construction work:

Yeah, that's a lot of work! Mind you, no construction plans or blue prints other than what Grandpa came up with on the fly and jotted down on a piece of paper that he kept losing. Add to that communication difficulties (Grandpa - almost no English, my hubby - practically no Russian) and this starts looking as challenging as the International Space Station.
Drinking to the success of the project became paramaunt! Plus it helped to bridge the linguistic divide.

As I mentioned, M got all sorts of awesome homeschool education that weekend and not just in toasting. Here he is with his own tape measure:

Does he know how to use it? You betcha! Here he's measuring the girth of our cat, Xander. The verdict - too fat and too lazy.
In the mean time, in the other corner of the yard, Grandma was also very busy, but with landscaping chores.
Pulling weeds, raking leaves, building compost piles,

replanting some of the herbs (here she is replanting the Bay Laurel seedling that she first grew from seed, gave to me to be neglected throughout the summer, and then rescued just in time; not to say I don't have a green thumb - check out that huge mint mound behind Grandma)

Plus she cooked. One of the evenings we decided to dine al fresco (yeah, fancy like that) and put Grandma in charge of lighting the grill and fixing up something quick and delicious - baked potatoes, grilled hot dogs, baked apples. She's good at making the best out of the most rustic conditions.

As a reward, we took Grandparents to the Fair, fed them s'mores and let them spoil their one and only grandson. Totally fair!

A Drummer and a Colonial Chef

That's what M wanted to be "when he grows up" as of last week. The drummer is an old one, although I'm surprised that it's still making the list since he hasn't been obsessed with drums for quite some time now. The colonial chef needs some explanation (very little, so bear with me here).

Ok, so a few months ago we went to all those Lower Hudson Valley historic places and M paid particular attention to a gristmill and the kitchens and gardens. So I bought him a book at the souvenir shop, called "Colonial Cook". At first we read it every day, sometimes several times a day. Then things calmed down a bit and we moved on.

Except last week we went to the Historic Oak View Plantation. It's a great place to visit any day (and it's free to boot). But on weekday mornings they have lots of school groups and, consequently, ongoing presentations from 10am to 12pm. Fun!

On the days we went there (yes, we ended up going two days in a row), M collected the eggs from the chickens, milked a cow, drove a tractor (ok, that's not quite Colonial, but it's a real tractor!), washed laundry using a washboard and soap made of pig fat and lye, picked and cleaned cotton, churned butter, and cooked in a real Colonial-era kitchen! Ok, so all of this was pretend stuff, except for the washing.

But the kitchen is a real kitchen with all the real implements. So M sat through the entire presentation (he just made his way into the room and sat down on the floor amongst the elementary school students; he even raised his hand once or twice as the presenter was asking questions). And then, after the school group left, he walked around the kitchen and pretended how and what he was cooking. Needless to say, we're reading "Colonial Cook" again now.

Apples, Peaches, Grapes - Oh My!

Yes, we went to another pick-your-own farm. This one, Millstone Creek Orchard, is not as far as the vineyard we went to before, only about an hour away. It's also on the way to the zoo in Asheboro and the trips can be combined. We keep meaning to do just that.

This year we timed our visit in such a way so that both peaches and apples were available for picking. And then we found out that the grapes were available too, Concords mostly. So we've made up our mind to pick everything there was to pick.

First we started with peaches. M had to so much fun running from tree to tree, picking peaches (these are semi-dwarf peachtrees and the fruits hang low enough for him to reach). He bit into a few exclaiming every time that THIS particular peach was his most favorite.

Alas, peaches are easy and quick to pick. After only a few minutes we had a basket-full and then just walked around and admired the scenery and all sorts of pretty butterflies and many-colored bugs feasting on overripe peaches.

We decided to stop by the grapevines on the way back to the apple orchard (which is right next to the main barn). Concords aren't my favorite grapes, but freshly picked on a hot sunny afternoon these were delicious. Plus there were a few very ripe bunches of Reliance and those were irresistable. Just the smell alone can drive you crazy. "These are my favorite grapes!" said M.

By the time we finally made it to the apple orchard, we were pretty tired. So we only picked Honeycrisps. Nor did we wonder too far from the barn. We didn't have to. After only a few minutes we had a bushel of crispy red-cheeked apples. Turned out, these were M's favorite fruits! Who would've guessed, right?

All in all, we picked some 24lbs each of apples and peaches. And I ended up making lots of peach butter and apple sauce. Yummy!