Garden News

We got fruit from our trees this year! There were a lot of tiny plums and pears starting, but the internet told us we needed to knock most of them off due to the size and age of our trees. We did so reluctantly, but Bryan left 4 plums and 5 pears to ripen. As the end of summer approached, we harvested our bounty and happily ate our 9 delicious fruits.

I am not a good gardener. This is known by everyone except Bryan, who keeps trying to convince me that if the conditions are right then I could be a great gardener. I will concede that if my beds grow no weeds, the rain falls predictably on schedule, and someone else picks the produce to bring it inside then he's right. Those are the conditions, though, and if they aren't met then I just grow beds overflowing with weeds and rotting vegetables. Bryan has decreed that next year he's taking over.

This year I planted cucumbers and, not receiving much in the way of care, they languished. I left them to their sad little lives while we went on vacation, and when we came back a week later the stars had aligned. There was enough rainfall at the right times that the cucumbers suddenly exploded, taking care of their own budding weed problem. My three (or was it four?) plants took over the whole bed and started eyeing the bed next door. Bryan gleefully picked them for me (that's the third condition!) and we had cucumbers. Now, the only reason I grow cucumbers is to pickle them, and the only way I know how to pickle them is with refrigerator pickling. I could learn to can them, but this year I did not. So we made refrigerator pickles. So. Many. Pickles. Jars upon jars that we took places and gave away and somehow kept finding in the back of the refrigerator. We did some experimenting with other spices (with the dill, not in place of it) and really liked the way our mint pickles turned out. Basil pickles, rosemary pickles, and cayenne pickles were good as well. Chinese five spice... not so much.

I also sprinkled salad seeds in one bed, parable of the sower style. I had several mixed greens packages to use up, so into the bed they went. We got a few varieties of lettuce and some swiss chard, enough to make a decent sized salad several times.

Bryan planted beets in his garden bed this year and after a modest harvest planted cantaloupe as well. The cantaloupe benefitted from the same neglect filled week as the cucumbers and set off to spread as much as possible. Bryan and Theodore have been eating a lot of cantaloupe since the rest of us don't care for it much.

The raspberry patch is flourishing, thanks in a large part to my mom weeding when she visits. There's a tipping point where the raspberries are able to hold their own. The kids and I have been happily stripping the bushes of berries whenever we happen past them, which means we don't ever save any to make things. There have never been enough in years past, but based on this year's bounty I think we could get a decent amount next year if we pick them and freeze them until fall instead of instantly popping them in our mouths.

Rhubarb is my kind of plant, and although this year was rough I fully expect next year to be better. Bryan and I split the rhubarb last spring, spreading it out along the front of the house. But then the basement guys bulldozed the place where we planted some of it, and Steve enthusiastically weed whacked the rest. So no rhubarb this year. I'm not worried about the weed whacked rhubarb coming back. The bulldozed rhubarb might be finished. Luckily for our rhubarb consumption, I have quite a bit in the freezer that I forgot about. It turns out that my pantry tracking skills are only marginally better than my gardening.

Catching Up

Matthias plays a typical childhood game by a slightly different name: Duck, Duck, Moose. He must have heard someone wrong and decided that this was the right name. Uncle Brad heard him, though, and told him that the moose part means he has to put his hands up by his head like moose antlers when he runs. So now that's an official rule when Matthias plays Duck, Duck, Moose.

At the beginning of the summer Matthias jumped on his bike and promptly fell over. This is the bike that he rode for 2-3 months without training wheels last summer. Suddenly he couldn't remember how to do it. We took the pedals off and after a day of balance bike training he was back to riding normally.

Theodore has been jumping for quite some time, according to an undated note I found on my phone. He particularly likes jumping on the trampoline. He also jumps as a way to display anger when we do something he doesn't like. Sometimes he gets the two confused and rage jumps until he lands on his bottom in the middle of the kitchen. Usually the shock of sticking the landing on the floor rather than bouncing comfortably back up onto his feet on the trampoline jolts him out of whatever tantrum he's throwing.

Other Theodore things of note, he weaned forever ago. Maybe back in March or April? I couldn't get headache medication until that happened, so it would have been back in the spring. He also has opinions about his place setting now, and requires a fork and/or spoon, although about half the time he still uses one hand to feed himself while the other one holds his utensil. He can drink from a real cup and does so most of the time, and he's getting much better and getting his cup on and off the counter without accidentally spilling the contents on his head.

Theodore has strong opinions about a lot of things, but one thing he's always done well is let me wash his hands after meals. The other kids didn't care for that part of mealtime, but Theo will happily hold his hands out to be cleaned.

Gretchen had a moral crisis about eating shrimp during Lent and decided she might need to be a vegetarian. Since the conclusion of Lent, however, she's decided she might like chicken too much to really commit. Kaitlyn has had similar concerns and recently decided that she's going to take care of God's creation by not eating the animals. She doesn't care for most meat, though, so it's been an easier stance for her. So far both of them tend to remember to ask if we're eating meat only about half the time and about a quarter of those times they'll be conscientious objectors to dinner. I'm waiting for it to be enough of an issue that I have to make a vegetarian version of meals.

Theodore had a birthday at the end of August. He turned 2 and proudly sang Happy Birthday and God Grant You Many Years to himself. We almost postponed his birthday at the last minute because he wasn't feeling well that day, but then grandma and grandpa came and we couldn't not have cake. So he got cake and got to open his presents from them, but as a result of the confusion and indecision he actually hasn't received his gifts from us yet. Maybe we'll give them to him on his baptism birthday tomorrow.

Bonus Post: Sound Bites 60

Matthias: I want to play the piggie game!
Me: What's the piggie game?

Matthias: It's where they do a trick and if you mess up you get peed on and spill pigs everywhere.

Me: ...

Me: You mean you get a P and if you spell PIG you lose.

Matthias: Just so you know, what's for lunch?

Theodore, pointing to a chicken: Meow.

Bryan: No, that's a chicken. It says bawk bawk.

Theodore: Meow.

Bryan: No. Bawk bawk.

Theodore: Oh. Bawk bawk meow.

Me: How come you girls get up and ready so much faster when dad wakes you up?

Kaitlyn: It's because we love dad more.

Gretchen: I want to have adventures, but we never go anywhere where there's a vine to swing on or a cliff that we have to get across with no bridge.

Matthias: Can we listen to "Dancing queen, Aunt Justine in the submarine"?

From Bryan:

So Theo is 1 and in his attempts at speech he says shoes as "yoosh" and socks is "ock." He also, being 1, is starting to have opinions about things, such as if he should be wearing shoes and socks or if he should be sitting still during the homily. He got both of those opinions wrong today but I, being his parent, enforced him keeping his stuff on and remaining on the bench. What this amounted to was me wrestling him into stillness while he yelled about shoes and socks. To the untrained ear, however, if you walked into St Stephens around 10:30 and looked left, you'd have seen an adult pinning a child to a bench while the futilely wiggling one year old kept yelling what sounded like "you suck."