Homegrown Thoughts

So…holiday weekend.  Due to a pinched nerve in my shoulder I couldn’t go to the local parade, so my husband took the boys on his own.  He didn’t even want to go, so it was very nice of him to take them - they were really looking forward to it.  I think we’ve almost gotten through all the candy now, but not quite.  My older son took his camera and took some pictures, so hopefully he’ll get those up on his blog soon.  He’s way overdue for an update on it.  I see a blog writing assignment in his near future if he doesn’t do it on his own.

I believe this is our 4th, uh, 4th in this house.  We just discovered Friday night that we can see the town’s fireworks display almost perfectly from half a block up the street.  Over the years, we have tried to see them through trees, from across the street, driven around looking for a parking spot to get closer (unsuccessfully)… and the whole time we could have just walked half a block over.  At least we know now!  Maybe next year I’ll even remember to take my camera with me.  I was hurting too much to walk back to the house for it, so I just went without.

In other news, we are over-run with ants.  We usually get a small invasion each spring, then we set out some Terro and by the next day all is well again.  Not this year.  I suspect it has something to do with all the rain/flooding/humidity/what-have-you.  Whatever it is, they are coming in the front and the back and who knows where else.  I haven’t been able to find the point of entry.  It’s getting kind of frustrating, especially when I can’t spend a lot of time being upright now without a lot of pain ensuing.  (It’s getting better, but it’s going to take some time.  Trying really hard not to whine about it!)  I also have to be very careful about putting poison out with all the pets we have.  Soooo…yeah.  Ants.  Go away.

I’m happy to report that we sold our treadmill which we got a lot of use out of but that we just didn’t use anymore.  A family from our homeschool group bought it for what they considered a bargain price and we got it out of our garage and are sending the money to Selena’s family in Tanzania, where it will stretch even farther.  So that worked out well.  Oh, and I got a teacher’s guidebook I needed out of the deal, too. :-)

I had a couple more things I wanted to chat about but this is getting pretty long.  I guess I’ll save the Bible study stuff for the next post so I can focus on it a bit more.  I’m going through a Kay Arthur book now (”How to Study the Bible”, I think is the title) and need to decide what will be next after that.  Need help on that!  So that will be next time.

P.S. - Note that I have added a Twitter box to my sidebar.  I tried to resist the Twitter pull, I really did.  Alas, it was too strong for me and I have succumbed.  So if anybody wants to ‘follow’ me on Twitter, there ya go.  If not, I shall tweet into the void.

As I was reading my Wonder Woman neighbor Gina’s blog today, I realized that I haven’t posted any pictures of my knitting projects here.  At least I don’t think so.  Forgive me if I have and I duplicate anything.  I haven’t been knitting all that long, but I enjoy it and have done quite a bit.

Here are some of my favorite projects from the last year or so:

I didn’t want my cell phone to get cold, so I made it a little hoodie.

This was the first felted bag I made.  I use it as a purse.

This is a bunny I made for a friend’s baby.  The body is actually just a square folded and seamed to make it the right shape.

This is a bunny I made for another friend’s baby.  I guess I was on a bunny making kick.

Some baby booties.

More booties. :-)

Baby blanket - the pattern is called “Angel Baby”.

Baby sweater (fuzzy picture of a fuzzy sweater).

I have another felted purse that is what I use now, but apparently I never took a picture of it.  I guess I should do that. And yes, my friends have all been having babies lately!  Baby girls, every last one of them.  Hooray for an excuse to have some pink in my life. :-)

So that’s what I have to share today.  Maybe I’ll share some other items another time. I need to remember to take pictures of things when I finish them.  Usually I’m so excited to move on to the next thing, I forget.

I’m not really an outdoors person.  During summer, I greatly prefer the air-conditioned indoors.  I have had a few interesting encounters with the natural world in the last couple of days, though.

Sunday night when we came home from church, there was an interesting addition to the neighborhood.  A hawk had landed in our next door neighbor’s yard and it had *something*.  The hawk seemed to have no fear and was kind of glaring at the cars that drove by, probably just daring them to try to take its treasure.  It had some prey and it wasn’t going to share.  Several neighbors came outside to watch.  It was kind of funny because rarely are so many of us outside at the same time.  One had a camera, a couple of us brought out our binoculars.  We couldn’t figure out what it was eating, though.  We could just see it tearing out clumps of something white and throwing it all over the grass.  Hawks are not neat eaters, it seems.  We were pretty sure it was fur and hoped it wasn’t a kitten or something!  It seemed like too much white to be any of the rabbits I’ve seen in the area.  We were all fascinated and a little grossed out at the same time.  Yes, I know, it’s the circle of life and all, but this was a pretty aggressive ‘tearing limb from limb’ session we were witnessing here.  Eventually we decided we’d seen enough and left it to finish its meal without an audience.

The next day I got brave and inspected the leftover carnage.  It wasn’t fur.  It was feathers.  Lots and lots of white feathers.  From the length of what was left, I’m guessing it was a pigeon/mourning dove.  We have quite a lot around here and the feathers were pretty large.  I didn’t see any bones, just feathers and some other unidentifiable inner body part that I tried NOT to look at.  So it seems the hawk’s prey was not much smaller than he was!

Yesterday we needed to go to the post office and I decided to make a stop on our way back.  We’ve searched for a geocache at this park once before and failed.  So I thought I’d let the kids play at the park for awhile and search for it again.  We got a little more brave and ventured further into the woods where I’m certain it’s hidden.  My GPS was only giving me an accuracy range of 21 feet at best, so we were looking in a little wider area.  I found many places that would be awesome locations to hide a cache, but none of them hid the one I was looking for.  I finally had to give up because I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.  The final tally was 7 mosquito bites (although I think one might actually be a spider bite as it’s on my knuckle and my finger is swollen today).  Those were all on me.  The boys had NONE.  I am not kidding when I say I’m a mosquito magnet.  For some reason they just love me, even when they aren’t biting anybody else.  I feel so honored (not).  We again found some of the tiny frogs that are in the grass between the pond and the woods.  They are so adorable.  I think they are called cricket frogs.  This is because of the sound they make, but I really thought they were crickets at first, they are so small.  It’s fun to hold them and they are very cool to the touch.  I thought about getting a couple to keep as pets but I did some research and it seems they only live a few months and like to eat *gulp* crickets!!  I’m not dealing with crickets, no-siree.  So we’ll just go visit the frogs in their natural habitat instead.  And next time we go I will try to remember to take my camera!

Today I went out and harvested more raspberries from the back 40.  Actually, we don’t have a back 40.  We have a regular ol’ suburban back yard.  I’ve written about my raspberry bushes before.  They actually were volunteers that snuck under the fence from our neighbor’s yard.  I decided to go with the flow and have made a little patch for them.  It’s about 2.5 x 5 feet.  I am amazed at the amount of berries I’m getting already this year.  They’re very early and there are tons of them.  For the last week I’ve been getting a good cup to cup and a half of berries every day.  I didn’t get any yesterday so I got a ton today.  This is my harvest from this morning shown in a 3 cup container:

Keep in mind that anything I purposely plant dies almost immediately.  But volunteer raspberries…they thrive.

Oh, I almost forgot.  We have also discovered that we have a mulberry tree.  Actually the neighbor behind us does, but the tree is on the fenceline and a good portion of it hangs over our property.  This tree has never had fruit until this year.  It’s making up for lost time.  I read that people don’t like to plant female mulberry trees because they make such a mess with the fruit.  I can attest to this fact now!  There are mulberries everywhere.  It’s like a mulberry carpet in part of our yard.  The part where the swingset and shed are.  Mulberries stain.  My children play on the swingset.  One of them walked all over the carpet after coming inside.  Do you see where I’m going here?  I have some carpet cleaning to do.

Nature and I…we have quite the interesting dance going on here.

I came across this recipe awhile back and couldn’t wait to try it out. Warning: This stuff is addictive! This makes a lot of bars and unless you want to gain 10 lbs., it’s probably best to share. :-) These are very rich - FIVE eggs in this one. This is one of my new favorite recipes. Let me know if you try them!

The recipe is from Bake or Break.

Butterscotch Cream Cheese Swirl Bars

Cream Cheese Filling

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add egg and beat well. Add flour and combine. Set aside.

Bars

1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 cups butterscotch chips
2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts (I omitted these completely)

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 12″x 18″jelly roll pan.

In a medium saucepan, melt butterscotch chips and butter over low heat, stirring occasionally until smooth. Alternatively, you can melt them in the microwave. Remove from heat and beat in brown sugar. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, to butterscotch/butter mixture. Add vanilla extract. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat until well combined. Stir in nuts, if used. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Drop the cream cheese filling by teaspoonfuls over the batter. With a small knife, swirl into the batter. Bake 25-30 minutes or until a pick inserted into center comes out with moist crumbs attached. Cool to room temperature before cutting into bars.

Makes 24 3-inch bars.

Okay, I have no idea how to do this myself, but *somebody* needs to do it.

Here’s the deal. I don’t like veggies. Never have, most likely never will. I have some exceptions - fresh green beans, sweet corn, potatoes, carrots in some forms…I think that covers them all. Other than that elite group, no thanks on the veggies, I’ll pass.

I do realize that veggies are good for me. I realize I should eat veggies. But I’m also a 5 year old child and I just can’t force myself to eat something I don’t like. The ol’ gag reflex kicks in and that’s really not pleasant for anyone.

So, this is my idea.  I think they should create hybrid vegetables. Cross the healthy (not so yummy) veggies with (very yummy) chocolate! I know, I know, it’s genius. Chocolate is one food that I will eat in nearly any form or preparation, and I do so on a very frequent basis. Milk chocolate, white chocolate…I don’t discriminate, I love it all.  LOVE it.

I’m sure it can be done. They make hybrid roses to make them bigger, brighter, more aromatic - even into trees!. They mix different fruits to make new ones - aren’t tangelo’s a mix of tangerines and oranges?

Just imagine. Chocolate flavored broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, lettuce (did you notice that lettuce was NOT on my list of veggies I’ll eat?), spinach, radishes, peas, various beans…all of them! Not only would I eat them, I’m sure most kids who balk at them now would gobble them up. No more arguments over eating your veggies. Well, that might be a little optimistic, but the arguments would at least be different. “No Johnny, you may not have any more spinach. You’ve eaten quite enough already!”

Since I’m unable to pull this off myself, I invite those who are able to work on this little project of mine. Just cross the veggies with cocoa bean…bushes? trees? vines? Whatever, just get to work on it. Whoever pulls this off will be a hero to many a mother and child. Including me. So snap, snap, get to work!  We’re counting on you!