Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Harvest Time has begun!


Above is this morning's stroll through the garden. With all the dry weather we had, then rain, my large tomatoes are splitting (dang it!). The large ones in this picture are HUGE, see the pumpkin for a reference point. This is a baby pam pumpkin, so a pie type not a jack o' lantern, but these are very large tomatoes indeed. The yellowish one is a "pineapple" tomato, very sweet and yummy.


This is the cucumbers I harvested that were hiding from me in my jungle of a garden. This is in actuality only half of them, as I made a dish to freeze that included the other half. I did not know you could freeze cukes, did you? I'm giving the recipe a go, I figured I have nothing to lose as we can't possibly eat all these...and I have given a few away, too.

We've been crazy busy here, good busy, but very busy. We entertained friends the last two weekends and I have had the boys out doing something almost every day of their summer vacation break, so it's been a great one for them. We've had the summer I wanted for them when I quit my job, full of fun and friends and it's been one to remember. I also took the time to write on my calendar everything we've done each day so that we all could look at the calendar and remember all the fun we've had and that the loss of income has been more then worth it. It has, for sure.

I started them on their "back to school" bedtime...no more late nights, we've had some VERY late nights this summer. Little Red is NOT a morning person, so I knew I needed to get him back into the swing early enough to be well rested for school to begin. They go back to school in two weeks and I wanted them to be more on their schedule for that. I'm a firm believer in routine and boundaries for kids, they thrive when they are well rested and know what the boundaries are for them. As they get older, I'm allowing Maestro a bit more freedoms, and that's been interesting. For now it's little things like staying in the car when I just need to quick run into a store or post office to mail something. I've never done that before. I've also been allowing him more choices in things like his new school clothing (we shopped together for his clothes and he picked out what he wanted, which I was happy to note was tasteful and age appropriate). In years past, I just bought what I wanted them to wear. I still do for Little Red because, God bless him, the kid can't match to save his life...and he'd wear nothing but athletic pants and tee shirts every day as if we let him.

When the boys go to their room at night, they share a room with bunks, they go in at 7:30. As they are both very avid readers, they are allowed to read until 8:30, then it's lights out and no more chatter. Some nights it's tougher then others to actually enforce this as they don't stop talking when they are together and are very loud when they chatter. They have what seems to the outsider like their own language between them. It's almost like twins, they are close enough in age and in each other's space all the time and they just chatter incessantly. It seems non-sensical to others, but they understand it all between them. Kind of funny and neat at the same time.

Well, I've got to get back to the garden. Pulled the wax beans plants as they were done and being eaten by some weird little orange fuzzy things, so I pulled them. Gonna try swiss chard there, so need to get that in the ground and also weed the corn so I can start some sugar snaps under them. Trellises of the best kind, those corn plants.

What's happening in your little corner today? ~Peacemom

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