September days come and gone

Making applesauce despite the missing crank (Dean and his dad fit a huge awl crank to it)

Studious

Last harvest~cranberry beans, calypso beans, tomatoes, baby corn, sunflower dead heads, and one tiny yellow cucumber

L. in his sunflower house (really just a lean-to since only 4 plants survived)

Shirtless through the yard..can't do that anymore

Building things with the shape blocks really meant for educational pattern-making, but how cool is this?

Lots going on here. I'm taking 3 classes right now and each expects @80-120pgs of technical reading per week. I will try to post at least once a month until I have more personal time. I hope Autumn is treating you well.

Mobility

Lot's going on right now. Boys starting school. I'm starting school. Getting back on a budget after reunion-family activity weeks and weekends.

But not before I get a laptop.

For some reason if you're going back to school you've got to have a laptop. Especially if you're taking the entire course online. Not that I'm complaining. It will be nice to unplug the computer during class time and lock myself in the bedroom. Fewer 'Mom!!!' pokes and prods that way.

This thing is also the reason I haven't posted in a bit. First I have to figure out how to upload pictures to this thing while the boys enjoy Dust or Splitter or building a Roman city in CivCity Rome (I can't tell you how embarrassing it is that my 9 year old is so much better than I am at this game..not that I'm a gamer but your people shouldn't starve to death because you can't figure out how to get the food out of the store houses) on the regular computer. I can't tell you how much they like that I now have my own to IM Daddy without interrupting their trade with the Phoenicians.

Made my first pesto this week. Learned how to make a roux so I could make creamy pesto sauce with some pasta. I'm not a very good cook. It's a big deal if something I learn is in French.

I ate my first tomato today. It was excellent cut up with olive oil, garlic salt, basil, oregano, red pepper on some toasted bread. Yum.

The bad news is that I have some kind of bacterial wilt on the deck tomatoes. What started as dryness and wilt from our 5 day vacation has turned into brown dots covering all of the Yellow Lemon tomato plant, the Clear Pink Early, and bits and pieces of the others. It doesn't look good and I think I spread it from the Lemon. Lots of hand washing going on here now. And dirty looks at the miniature corn and zucchini and squash which flower but refuse to give me anything.

So the garden is passing, even as I get a few tomatoes and beans. And posts may begin diverging a little early this year.

Getting Into August

The sunflowers are getting long. Not enough to make the sunflower tent I was expecting this year but I'm pleased that most of them survived.

Some beautiful Ice Queens. Short, pretty, but I don't see any seed developing on the one that's started to dry up.

Regular ones didn't grow tall but dried nicely.

Meow. This fellow enjoys the cover.

Lots Going On...the Other Update

We were on vacation in Door County and we ran into a Civil War reenactment. These guys really lived there a few days. They came from all over northern Wisconsin.

The boys liked the muskets. They demonstrated how many actions they had to do just to fire. Soldiers were expected to fire 3x a minute.

J. didn't want to be the girl in this shot. We ate across the street at some dwarfish establishment. We really should have taken more photos but we were having too much fun I think. No sunset over Lake Michigan shots. No beachs. No Peninsula State Park. No Chicago fireboat cruise. No lighthouses. Sorry.

Dean's family reunion. Norwegian stand off.

Lots Going On...the Veggie Update

Is THAT what got into the Boxcar Willies?

L. picks them. Animals/bugs eat them.

The great end rot vacation episode. I think we're back on track now.

We did get one little one. Yellow lemon or yellow pear? J. and I thought yellow lemon, nice and mellow interior with a slightly sour exterior.

The rest of the harvest. Yayyy!

The Busy Time

I haven't been gardening lately. I've been sitting in an unfinished basement (and a beautiful 100 year old home with a crazy floor plan) in the middle of Illinois.

Roommate reunion!

The good thing is that while I was gone it rained, and rained, and rained...thus the basement smores.

Things are going well here and we're heading out to Door County this weekend to meet up with my in-laws and their 'camping' group.

It's wet. It's wet. It's wet. But I don't mind really. We really needed this rain. That's me in the black licking my fingers.

Fingerling potatoes a friend gave me around July 4th are up. I attempted to hill them a bit yesterday. Bush beans are blooming. A few of my diminutive tomato plants have grown a few inches and are blooming. I'm thinking of digging up some of the others and transplanting them into the squash bed.

I swear I have the smallest squash plants in North America.

L's first photo on the blog

Wayahead. Not bad for a 4 year old.