Rascals!

My garden is being wrecked by potato bugs. The little rascals* have been eating the stems of my plants at the base. This isn't the first year they've been a problem, but it's the worst they've ever been! 

I've been scouring the internet for solutions, and I can tell you everything about potato bugs now - from the regional names they go by (pill bugs, rolly pollies, slaters, Tom, Dick, and Harry...) to their individual family trees!

On the internet, people argue that pill bugs don't eat plants. They are wrong. Those of us who know will fight to the death to defend this truth. They have burrowed into my cantaloupe! Chewed their way through my leaves! And nibbled my stems!

Rascals!

Every last one of them!

I thought they were supposed to be harmless. They are not!

I've lost several plants this season to potato bugs, and I've started fighting back! 

With potatoes!

One solution offered on the internet is to put potatoes around your garden. The bugs will climb on the potatoes to eat them, and then you can throw them out! 

(Aside: I thought my chickens would love to eat potato bugs, so I set them lose in the garden several times. They won't touch them!)

The other day I sliced up some potatoes we had that were starting to go bad, and I placed them around the garden. Guess what! It worked! The bugs climbed on the potatoes, and I was able to relocate them to the garbage can where they can eat all the gross stuff and go live a happy life at the dump where they can eat even more gross stuff!

I don't know if this will solve the problem long-term, but it's a start! I'm going to see if I can distract them with potatoes well enough to lower their population in my garden. I might also throw in a few beer traps - but I don't have beer sitting around my house like I do potatoes. 

The funny thing is that I'm using store-bought POTATOES to place around my home-grown POTATOES to protect them from POTATO bugs. 

Rascals!

This has become my life's work, and I will spend more money on potatoes to protect my potatoes than I would to just buy potatoes instead of grow them. Tis the way of the garden.

*The word I use in person is actually worse than "rascals," but I'm keeping it G-rated here

A Few Zucchini Recipes for Your Consideration

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #16:

Ingredients

In a normal summer, we have tons and tons of zucchini from our garden. This year is not normal - we haven’t had nearly the amount of zucchini we usually do. Luckily we’ve had some. Just not tons. It’s nice to not be overwhelmed by zucchini, but at the same time, it’s a bummer to not have zucchini available at all times. We have to wait for it and hope we don’t miss the thirty second window in which the zucchini goes from “too small” to “big as your thigh."

Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different ways to eat zucchini - some of the more interesting ones being mock apple pie and zucchini jelly. 

Here are a few zucchini recipes that we’ve kept around and used often (sorry for the lack of photos - lists of links to recipes drive me crazy. I want pictures!):

1. Fried Zucchini Spaghetti 

 

The lemon juice and fresh basil in this recipe really make it really yummy, and it’s kind of a unique dish.

(This is what I’ve been trying to make all week, but I haven’t had the proper zucchini appear in the garden yet. Meanwhile the basil is waiting patiently).

2. Chicken Zucchini Casserole 

My friend Julie passed this recipe on to me, and it’s delicious comfort food! Pretend it’s healthy… it has zucchini in it, after all! Most of my family really likes this, but not all members of this family will eat zucchini. Zoe usually eats around it.

3. Zucchini Corn Chowder

I’ve only made this once but intend to make it more.

4. Lemon Parmesan Chicken 

This one is on the healthier side.

5. Cashew Chicken

In this one, I just swap out all the veggies for exclusively zucchini.

Garden Success

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #16:

Success

As we move into fall, I have to start cleaning my garden up a bit. There are a lot of articles circulating right now that encourage you to not clean up your garden for winter but to leave the plants until spring to provide a habitat for pollinators. To me, this sounds like a really good excuse to ignore my garden for the next six months. But in all honesty, I can’t leave it alone. If I wait to clean it up in the spring, it will be my undoing. That’s just too overwhelming for me. 

My yearly routine, come fall, is to pull out a few plants at a time over the span of several weeks to budget my garbage can space. I’m sorry, pollinators. You’re welcome to make my yard your winter home, but I’m not leaving any plant carcasses for you. Actually, that's not entirely true. The strawberry plants will still be there, and I usually have to leave the sunflower and cornstalk stumps through the winter because they are too hard to get out while they still have life in them. So there you go, pollinators; you can live in my sunflower stumps. 

As we near the end of gardening season, here are some of the successes we celebrate:

This was our first little harvest of the season. Strawberries and peas were sparse this go round, but we had a lot of cucumbers. 

We had plenty of zucchini and summer squash!

Here is the first cherry tomato of the year. We successfully grew cherry, roma, and celebrity tomatoes, and just yesterday I found some yellow pear tomatoes I planted from seed and didn't know they actually grew!

I was able to can some home-grown green beans. I think I got a few more pints in addition to this photo. 

We had a decent year for green peppers. This is the biggest one I've ever picked from our garden. We were quite proud of it. Sign us up for the State Fair!

We babied this crenshaw melon for months and finally picked it and cut it up for game night. It was a little too ripe, but it was still edible. We're just excited something actually came off the vine!

Some years we grow carrots, and some years we don't. This year we planted some and have just started eating them in the past week. 

Scotty planted a little potato garden (our first time growing potatoes), and that became his passion this summer - raising his little spuds. They've been great, and we will definitely do potatoes from hence forth. 

Last week I started picking our pumpkins. We had a good year for pumpkins! I harvested these porch goodies, and we have about five more still working on turning orange. 

It was a great year, and as always, we had our share or garden failures, too, but today is all about success! I can’t wait to try again next year!

Results Yet to Be Determined

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #23:

Try It

In the past few weeks, the tomatoes in our garden have been ripening. As a result, I've been spending a lot of time with tomatoes. Usually I put boxes of free tomatoes out on the curb every few days because I can't use all of them, but this year I've used so many that I haven't had the chance to give any away yet!

We make fresh salsa about once a week. We've had BLTs and burgers. I add cherry tomatoes to salads and veggie trays. I've also canned tomatoes and anticipate many more to come. 

Someone asked me the other day how many tomato plants we have. Honestly, I don’t recall what we planted, but I think it was 6 celebrity, 1 Roma, and 1 cherry. 

This year I'm trying a couple of new things. For the first time, I roasted tomatoes, peppers, and onions and made pasta sauce to freeze. 

Before roasting

After roasting

Pureed with some garlic, a hint of sugar, and a handful of basil

Everything pictured above resulted in enough sauce for a batch and a half of spaghetti. It's amazing how many tomatoes must give their lives for a little bit of pasta sauce! 

I have no idea if it's any good - I didn't taste it before I bagged it and put it in the freezer because I don't think I have the palate to assess sauce on its own. I don’t know what it should taste like! Plop it in a lasagna, and I’ll have a better guess. It smelled really good, though. So that's the first new thing I've tried with tomatoes... results yet to be determined. 

The next thing I'm trying is freezing cherry tomatoes. According to the always honest internet, frozen cherry tomatoes are a delight throughout the winter, so I am going to try using them in some recipes where I would normally use fresh cherry tomatoes... results yet to be determined. 

The third thing (which I haven't tried yet but intend to) is to freeze some of our celebrity tomatoes like so...

Results yet to be determined. 

Flower Talk

I’m not a great flower grower. I know little to nothing about flowers, and I don’t care to take the time to learn. So flowers, for me, are mostly random experiments with very few successes. Plus, sometimes it’s nice to try something without knowing all the rules because then you don’t have to live by them! 

(Don’t let my kids catch on to that mentality).

Last year in my garden I planted (I think) zinnias from seed. They ended up being about three feet tall. I never thought zinnias were that tall. They were pretty much my greatest flower triumph of all time. That got me feeling confident.

Last year’s zinnias

This year, I planted zinnias (I think) from starts, planning on them getting three feet tall, but they are just a few inches off the ground.

This year’s zinnias

I always plant marigolds by my tomatoes. I don’t know if this really helps the tomatoes or not, but I enjoy the little pop of color, so I continue planting them. 

You can’t see any tomatoes, but they’re in there somewhere

This year I tried planting marigolds from seed, but only a few grew. They are now two feet tall. I’ve never seen two-foot tall marigolds, and they haven’t bloomed yet, so I’m not sure what’s coming!

I’ve been anticipating the blooms for a week now, and I check every day, but so far this is it!

What will you be, my little mystery flower?

Speaking of tomatoes, tonight I picked my first cherry tomato! Sadly, I’m the only one who will eat them.

This spring I tried growing dahlias from seed. This is what I got…

That is not what dahlias look like on the internet! But my distant relative told me that dahlias from seed take a few years to start blooming well. I didn’t even know I planted perennials. Maybe next year I’ll have an accidental dahlia field (please bless! I’ll take that over my current mint farm, although I love the way the mint smells!)

Side note: the mint reigns supreme! Every few weeks, I let Eva cut down a bunch of mint to make a salad for the chickens. Tonight she made them a salad with mint and other herbs that needed cutting back as well as some peppers and squash that we haven’t been able to eat. I had to laugh at her choice of serving dish.

Back to flower talk…

I plant sunflowers every year because they’re practically weeds, so that means I can actually grow them!

My favorites are a mixture of yellows and reds. I prefer thinner stems and a height of about 4’. I thought that’s what I bought this year, and yet…

The first one bloomed today, and it’s way up there!

Side note: we had a beautiful rainstorm this evening that was just what I needed! I sat outside for about three hours just enjoying the mild temperatures and the gloom in the sky. It was so refreshing!

But back to sunflowers!

I think this one grew on accident in the strawberry box. I don’t think I planted it there. Plus it doesn’t match the other ones that I really did plant. This is more the height and width I planned on. I think it migrated from the neighbor’s yard.

At my grandma’s funeral earlier this year, my little cousins handed out packets of flower seeds to plant in memory of my grandma. I assumed they were forget-me-nots (they weren’t labeled). I planted a bunch of them in our gargoyle thrones, threw my hands up to heaven, and said, “Okay, Grandma, it’s up to you!” I figured either A) nothing would grow because my grandma is stubborn or B) they would all go wild because my grandma is stubborn. I got mostly A. Just a few random flowers. They aren’t forget-me-nots. They are an assortment of (I think) wildflowers, and since they are weed-adjacent, I should be better at growing them.

When it comes to growing flowers, I just never know what I’m going to get! 

The Truth About Mint

In my life, I have compiled exactly two recipes that call for fresh mint. 

The first is Moroccan Chicken Skewers with Green Sauce, and the second is Slow Cooker Cuban Mojo Pork.

That doesn't equate to requiring a lot of mint, but I've run into trouble finding fresh mint at the store when I need it. Late last spring, I checked three stores before finally finding a mint plant at Trader Joe's. I used what I needed, and then I sort of let it die, but I decided to try throwing the plant in my herb box in the garden - not thinking it would actually come back and thrive. 

Thrive it did! And I had a lovely mint plant all summer... from which I didn't use a single leaf. But sometimes I would pick one to smell. I think that's what garden herbs are for, mostly - to pick leaves from and sniff. At least, in my experience. 

I need you to know, despite never really needing any mint, I was so proud of this mint plant!

A week ago I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw this:

And I thought, "Oh! That's kind of what I did! But wait? Is mint problematic?"

And then I went on with my day and didn't give it another thought. 

A few days ago, I went outside to work in the garden. I had already planted a few cold weather crops (peas and spinach and the like) and was excited to see that the plants were popping up. I proceeded to plant a few flowers, trim back some weed barrier we installed, and remove a bird carcass from the onion box. Then I moved over to the herb box to plant some cilantro when I noticed tiny green leaves coming out of the dirt all over the place. My mind immediately went to that Instagram post as I questioned, "Is this mint?" 

There was a little cluster of it around the spot where the mint plant had been, but it was also popping up in smaller batches all over the garden box. I picked a leaf and sniffed it. Sure enough, it was mint. Out of curiosity, I grabbed a bunch of it and tugged to see how it would come out of the dirt. I ended up pulling some of the plant out of the ground followed by a long runner that connected back to the bigger cluster. 

And then I went, "Oh no!"

Because this thing I saw on the internet that I never knew about... was happening to me.  

I immediately went back to the internet to get more information, and I read things like:

"Reasons to never plant mint in your garden"

"I had to use a blow torch to get rid of my mint"

"I left a potted mint plant in my green house, and it escaped and took over everything"

So suffice it to say, if anyone needs any fresh mint this summer, I can probably hook you up. 

Out of Doors

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #23:

Outside

Last week we had a nasty heat wave that kept me cooped up for several days lest I meet an untimely demise by melting. Yesterday we finally got a little bit of rain and some cooler temperatures, so I snuck outside to take a look around. 

I decorated my porch for fall. 

I put some cornstalks out - two batches on the gargoyle thrones, and one on the porch. I didn't think it through, though, and the stalks on the porch keep triggering the motion sensor on the doorbell. I might have to move them. 

I'm planning on repainting my front door in the next couple of weeks (just waiting for a day that's not too hot and where I can stay home long enough to leave my front door open while it dries). It will look much the same. I like the blue and want to keep it that way. It just needs a refresh. 

I planted three different kinds of pumpkins this year, and after months of growing pumpkins, here's what I'm getting:

There are two of them, and they're about the size of softballs. 

I don't really know anything about flowers. This year, I planted some zinnias from seed on the border of my garden. I had no idea that they can get up to 5-6' tall! (So... not a border plant, as I learned. Apparently I didn't read the seed packet). They were fun to have in the garden, though, and they completely took over and thrived! 

At the beginning of the gardening season, I found this strange thing at the thrift store and decided to buy it and use at as a trellis in the garden (I have no idea what it is or why it was wrapped in green plastic). 

This was the first time I've used a trellis, and it was fun to watch the plants climb it. I intended for it to be for cucumbers (which worked really well), but some tomatoes made their way up, too. 

Over the weekend, we integrated the baby chickens with the big ones. I always hate doing this because the Big Girls beat the crap out of the Babies for a while, so we have to keep a close eye on them. The pecking order is legit. Scotty added some extra perches to the coop and put some boxes and play things in there as well to help keep them busy during the transition. 

Zoe has been busy with chalk art lately. 

Nicky has been finding creatures. We are always abounding with creatures. 

And no visit outside is complete without finding someone's shoes and/or socks. 

Dang it, Nicky! You know better!

Because I Can

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #5:

Preserve

When Scotty and I were first married, he worked for a company called Back to Basics. They manufactured small appliances and canning equipment. I was able to acquire a lot of products for a discount and sometimes even for free! Because of this, I figured I should probably learn the art of preserving. 

My first ventures into canning were with a water bath canner. I bought the canning Bible - more formally known as the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving and got some lessons from my mother-in-law. I don’t remember the first thing I canned on my own, but some of my earliest trials were with jam, salsa, peaches, and tomatoes. 

For a long time, I steered away from pressure canning, but since I had access to free green beans galore (Scotty's grandpa owned a produce farm) and a hook up to get a really inexpensive pressure canner, I decided to overcome my fears of blowing up my kitchen and learn to pressure can (some produce requires pressure canning rather than just boiling - green beans being an example). 

I confess, pressure canning is still kind of scary. The noises the canner makes while the food is processing are quite unnerving. But I’ve come to terms with it and haven’t really had any issues. 

During my early canning years, I tried to can all sorts of things. I had a lot of stuff go to waste. I canned a lot of food that we ended up not using. Some of those things included:

• Corn (which tasted burnt)
• Carrots (which were too mushy) 
• Chutney (which I had no idea what to do with) 
• Peach salsa (it just wasn’t that good) 
• Regular salsa (I’m just not a big salsa eater, and after a few years of it sitting on the shelf, I ended up having to pour out about 40 quarts of it, so I don’t make it anymore). 

Some of the things I enjoy canning and am sure to use are:

• Berry jams (no peach, apricot, or grape - we don’t eat them)
• Peaches
• Apricot nectar (we drink it like a smoothie)
• Tomatoes
• Green beans
• Pepper jelly (but I haven’t made pepper jelly in years because I’m the only one who eats it, and the only way I know how to eat it is to pour it over cream cheese and then spread it on crackers)

With few exceptions, I only can what I grow myself or get for free (or very, very cheap), so there are some commonly canned goods like applesauce and pears that I’ve never delved into because I don’t want to spend the money. I made kiwi jam once, and that was fun, but I can’t grow my own kiwis, so I’ve never made it again. 

Canning is a hobby that I would recommend you only do if you truly love it and if it fits your lifestyle. Otherwise, it’s pure torture! There was a five-year period where I stopped canning because it wasn’t conducive to my phase of life. Sometimes it’s hard to set aside something you were once capable of and want to remain capable of. But taking a break was wise.  

Last summer marked my return to canning, and it’s been a joy to revisit this hobby. I try to not have too high of expectations for what I produce - I just enjoy whatever I’m able to preserve from year to year. This year I lucked out with a beautiful strawberry crop in my garden, so I was able to make jam. Then I had a decent harvest of green beans. My friend offered me some peaches from her tree, and my mother-in-law let me have free reign of her raspberry patch. By the end of the season (which is still underway), I could potentially have a nice stash of canned tomatoes. My storage room isn’t overflowing with rows of Ball jars, but I’m happy with what I’ve preserved.

Creepy Crawlies and Fuzzy Wuzzies

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #6:

Creatures

The other day I was in my in-laws' raspberry patch picking berries while bees flew around my head. Zoe was there for a minute, but she left because of the bees. I told her that when you grow fruits and vegetables, you have to get comfortable sharing space with creatures. She didn't like that and said (with much sass), "It's not like I ever wanted to be a farmer!" 

Okay then.

This year, we’ve had more bees in our yard than ever before. I hoped this would help with our garden. Ya know, pollination and stuff. But we had a lot of crops that put forth a really disappointing yield. We hardly got any zucchini (a strange occurrence for our area - zucchini is easy and abundant!), all of our pumpkins that started growing shriveled up and died, and our corn basically rotted out before it was ready to pick. I feel like the bees didn’t have my back. It’s like they just used me for my sunflowers. 

I’ve been BEEtrayed!

Recently I found a new creature hanging about, and I can’t help wondering what he wants from me. 

It's a grasshopper - look closely

Other creature facts from recent months:

1. We have had so many earwigs in our garden, yard, and (yikes!) house this year. I've heard that they are attracted to sunflowers, but I don't know if that's true (and Google isn't giving me much to work with).
2. A month ago, we had two mountain lions in our area. One day at the zoo they had a "cougar awareness" booth, and I stopped by and talked to a guy from the DWR that was manning the booth. He told me that he'd been on site when they tranquilized and relocated one of the mountain lions in our area (there were rumors circulating in our neighborhood that the DWR wouldn't relocate the animals and would actually euthanize them. I asked the guy about that, and he said, in this case, they were able to relocate the cougar). While they were waiting for the tranquilizer to take, the second cougar (which had, up until that point, not been confirmed) appeared. They weren't able to get it, though, and they went around the area where it has been spotted and checked people's yards. 
3. Racoons are not unknown to our area, but they've usually stuck to fields. This summer, they've taken over the hood. There was a dead one in front of our house one day, and last week, when I was walking with my friend in the early morning, there was a dead one lying in the grass at the park. 
4. Squirrels are also not unknown to our area, but they usually stay in certain areas (i.e. not my yard). This year, there have been squirrels everywhere. Still not in my yard (that I've seen), but I see one bounding across my neighbor's driveway across the street on the regular. There have also been some dead ones in the road.
5. We've also had deer in our neighborhood. Head five miles west, and deer are a bit more common. If they are here, they are definitely lost.

There are a lot of creatures I haven't had to protect my garden from, but with the appearance of some anomalies lately, I won't be surprised if I have to start deer and racoon proofing my yard within the next few years (let's hope not, though. I don't need that kind of chaos in my life). 

How I Peel Peaches (and Tomatoes)

I spent most of the day today canning peaches and tomatoes. It's a messy, sticky, and time consuming process, but it's also fun in some sick, twisted kind of way, and it gives me such a sense of accomplishment. "Food prep high," as I've recently come to call it. 

I did 13 quarts and one pint of peaches, and I have three quarts of roma tomatoes processing as I type this. So far, I know at least one jar of peaches didn't seal, so I'll be adding those to my kids' lunches for tomorrow. I'm still waiting patiently to check the rest of them (I'm always so tempted to mess with them before they've sat for the appropriate amount of time). 

Anyway, since I'm on a food prep high, I thought I'd share a little tutorial with you today about how I peel peaches and tomatoes. 

If you've ever canned peaches or tomatoes, you're probably familiar with blanching. I have my mother-in-law to thank for teaching me The Ways. I remember when she first showed me how to blanch tomatoes to get the skins off - it blew my mind! I had no idea you could do that! Twenty(ish) years later, I still think it's pretty miraculous. 

My mother-in-law passed on some pretty cool tips for blanching in large batches, so that's what I'm going to show you today. She taught me to blanch peaches and tomatoes in the sink. Here's how I do it:

First, I make sure the sink is nice and clean. Then I get a nice big pot of water boiling. 

After washing the produce, I plug my sink and put the fruit in it. I have found that filling my sink the amount shown in this picture is usually enough to get a full batch (7 quarts) in the canner with just a few pieces left over (which I usually freeze - but I like to have a bit extra just in case).

When the water has come to a full boil, I pour it over the fruit and let it sit for a few minutes. I gently stir the fruit with a wooden spoon to make sure it all gets immersed in the water. It's important to make sure the sink is properly plugged and that you have enough water to cover the fruit! They float up a bit, and I just press them back down in the water with the spoon. 

If you've never seen this before, here's what happens - the hot water softens the skins and allows them to easily slip off the fruit. You don't have to use a knife or a peeler! It just slides off (with a few exceptions - like, if you have pieces of fruit that aren't as ripe, in which case, you might have to cut off a bit of skin, but for the most part, it's easy peasy, and they slip off like nothing). 

After the skins start to lift off the fruit (with peaches you can see it happening, but with tomatoes, you might have to test one with your fingers), I wait about one more minute (for the stragglers) and then use my wooden spoon to lift the plug out of place to drain the water (common sense tip: don't stick your hand in the boiling water).

After the water drains, I run cold water over the fruit to stop the cooking process (also known as "shocking" the fruit). 

From that point, the skins slide off easily, and I can continue the prepping process for canning.

I also use this method to prep peaches to freeze and even to prep smaller batches of peaches for my kids to have as a snack. 

Anyway, I really like using the sink rather than blanching in a pot. It allows me to blanch a lot more fruit at a time. Go big, or go home, amiright?

Happy peach and tomato season! However you choose to celebrate!

Ramblings of a Tired Mom Who's a Little Sick of Summer

I have the tendency to start my days off with a bang and then very quickly hit a wall. That's the case with today. I woke up to the sound of one of our chickens squawking rather loudly. She was too loud, so I had to get out of bed and go outside to shut her up. Usually this can be done with food. When I got out there, I found that she was being taunted by a cat. I don't know what the cat was doing because it ran off as soon as I got outside, but the hen was pacing back and forth in such distress that she kept stumbling over her feet, so for a minute, I thought she might be injured. But then a bucket full of lettuce scraps from last night's dinner made her forget her trauma, and she started walking just fine again. 

The Culprit

Nicky had to be to the golf course at 7:00 this morning for his first tournament of the season. He placed varsity for this one, so he's playing (and walking) 18. He has mixed feelings. Most kids aspire to play on varsity while my kid wants to cheat to not make varsity so he only has to play 9 holes. Scotty and I can't figure this kid out. We don't know if he really likes golf or not. He's been acting kind of uninterested in the golf team, and if he doesn't want to play, that's fine with us - we only want him to do it if he enjoys it. Now, not every game or experience is going to be great, but he should enjoy it at least 75% of the time, right? But he's just kind of cranky about it. After a few heart to hearts, he didn't want to quit, though. So we'll see what this season brings. I think he likes golf as a hobby and not as a high school sport. On the other hand, I really want him to stay on the team because I want him to have something to keep him busy. He's always bored and cranky at home. 

Peekaboo Sunrise Over the Golf Course

That's all to say that I had to be awake and alert pretty early this morning due to chicken drama and golf commitments. 

In recent weeks, for the first time ever, my kids have been sleeping in. In fact, yesterday, Nicky and I accidentally slept through a golf meeting. He was supposed to be to the school at 8:00, and I never would have thought I'd need to set an alarm for that (remember - I'm a morning person, it's typically no big deal for me to wake up naturally in plenty of time to get out of the house by 8:00). When I woke up, and the clock said 8:06, I was probably the most confused I've ever been in my life. I had been up at 5:00 reading a book, and then fell back asleep around 6:00, and I was out cold! I ran downstairs to Nicky's room and whisper-yelled, "We're late for your meeting!" He was equally confused because he, too, is a morning person, and between the two of us, this kind of stuff just doesn't happen! 

I know. We're weird. But I like this about us. 

It's been beautiful having my girls sleep a little later. Zoe and Eva aren't consistent with sleeping in, but sometimes they do it. Daisy is my one child that might not be a morning person. She has been sleeping until about 9:00. That's about my tolerance point, though. I don't let her sleep much later than that. She's been eating breakfast when the rest of us are eating lunch. 

This morning Zoe and Eva woke up pretty early, though, and my saving grace was that there are new episodes of Bluey on Disney+. They retreated to the basement to watch the show while I went outside to work in the garden. 

I picked some green beans and canned a quart (my canner is currently depressurizing). It's so disappointing to can just a quart (and a low-fill quart at that), but if I want home-canned green beans, I have to do it as they're available. I think this is probably my last one, though. The green bean plants are just about done.

My green bean box

And now, at 9:14 a.m. is when I've hit that wall I was talking about. I started strong, and now I want to go back to bed and sleep off the rest of summer. 

I might be a little excited for school to start. 

Okay, a lot excited. 

I'm so over summer. At this point, my kids and I are all just miserable together. I'm so tired of breaking up their fights and trying to keep them busy, productive, and entertained. This summer was different because it was the first summer that really felt like I have teenagers. My children's ages and interests were more divided than ever this summer. I got to deal with teenage angst and moodiness. It probably would have been good for Nicky to have a job this summer, but we didn't find anything that worked for us. Being 15, he's at that point where he can get a job, but there are a lot of limits for his age, and he didn't really need a job. I'm so undecided about what my expectations are as a parent when it comes to my children's expenses and contributions. Nicky hasn't demanded much from us financially (aside from regular living costs). He's always been pretty thrifty. He's not a spender, and he doesn't ask us for money, so we haven't really had to buckle down on him in that regard. We've been happy to fund a few of his hobbies and interests (such as participation in the school play and the golf team) because we're just so excited that he's actually doing something. We're like, "Yes! We will pay for this! Just enjoy it!" Plus, we've paid for our girls' dance classes for the past ten years while Nicky hasn't had any classes or sports, so sure, we'll fund some stuff now. But soon, he'll be able to drive, so we need to figure out how we want to handle things like gas and insurance. I'm running out of time with this kid in my house, and I still haven't figured out how I want to raise him!

Nicky made a big purchase this summer, though. He bought himself a nice guitar and has been practicing it every day. I hope he sticks with it. His poor fingers are in rough shape. I pitched in $50 toward his guitar because he has been very helpful with housework and yard work. 

But yes, summer? I'm over it. As we've been getting ready to return to school, I feel like my life is falling back into place. This past week I've been prepping some freezer breakfasts for when school starts. My kids are strange, and they're not really into cereal. On days I tell them we're having cereal for breakfast, they're always disappointed. I would love to feed them cereal everyday! But I also know that cereal doesn't hold them over until lunch at school, so it is wise to give them something a little more substantial as a courtesy to their educators and peers. Plus, I really love making and freezing things. It gives me a food prep high. Anyone else experience this? Even my little quart of green beans contributes, as inconvenient as it may be. This week I've made and froze chocolate zucchini muffins, pancakes, waffles, mini breakfast casseroles, breakfast burritos, and eight dozen cookies - and I sing and dance in my kitchen the whole time because A) food prep high and B) school is just around the corner! It's all I can do to not pack my kids lunches for the next month RIGHT NOW. 

Speaking of lunch, for the first time since COVID started, we have to pay for school lunch. We’ll probably stick to mostly home lunches, but I no longer remember how to navigate all of this! It’s been quite cozy to just send my kids to school and not have to ever pay for their lunch! 

Don't get me wrong in all this talk of going back to school. I love my kids. And when they go back to school, I miss them. But I am a much better mom when we have structure and schedules. I also function better in every aspect of my life when the weather is cooler. So bring on Fall! 

With school starting, I have decided to try going off antidepressants for a while. It's been a few years since I've tried, and I have felt, during those few years, that I needed to stay on them consistently, but right now, I feel like I need to test the waters a bit and see where I'm at. Don't worry! I have a plan! And I'm proceeding with caution and have started tapering off. I also prayed about it and feel good about it. That's not to say that I think I'll be okay without them - I might not be - but I want to know. If I can go without them, even just for a season, that will be a nice break. I'm tired of the side effects - weight gain, excessive sweating, and tummy problems. But I'd rather have those than debilitating depression. So I'll go back on them if I need to. 

With that, it's time to burst through the wall and take my humble quart of green beans out of the canner. 

But before I go, can I just say thank you for being a reader here? I have no desire to be a big time blogger or online influencer, but I enjoy having a little corner of the internet where I can share my thoughts and stories and have a tiny readership. So thank you for being my readers! I have been given so many kind and thoughtful compliments on my blog over the years, and it just warms my heart! 

(I’m not going anywhere! I just wanted to express my gratitude!)