what's up weekly. (garden adventures, canning, and a tummy bug.)

Well, I never thought I'd make it here today.

It's Friday again.  Somehow.  How is it Friday again already?  Summer seems like it's starting to spiral away from me and I can't take it.  How is it almost AUGUST already?  The bird songs are dying back, the cicadas are out in full force, and I am starting to feel a sense of panic that I am running out of time.  I still have so much I want to do with my life summer - I'm not ready for it to end.  Luckily on that front, it has been a cool, breezy week of temps in the upper nineties and low hundreds, so at least the weather is under no delusions that Fall has any authority yet.  

It has been a hot stretch, but we have thankfully gotten a good amount of rain, so things aren't looking baked quite yet.  That's the most depressing part of August - when everything that used to be green just starts looking like a loaf of bread.  So I'm grateful for the rain and all the remaining green.

The biggest news of the week was that I taught the kids to make origami salt-and-pepper shakers.  They also taught themselves a few more origami patterns from a random book I bought a while back at Aldi, of all places.  Many hours of fun (and ridiculous marriage prophecies) were had.

Sunday was Jenny Geddes Day, on which we remember the moment when a dear, bold Scotswoman threw a stool at a representative priest sent from the Church of England to lead their Presbyterian congregation in Anglican prayer and liturgy.  Well, sweet Jenny couldn't take it and threw her stool at him and started a riot (tensions were clearly running hot).  Todd honored the spirit of the day, if not the letter, by bringing water balloons to church and letting all the kids pelt him after service.

On Monday, a sweet neighbor called and told me to go pick whatever I wanted from his garden.  I took the girls over with me and we grabbed up some tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, canteloupe and dill.  (NO. CUCUMBERS.) I tried my hand at a new salsa recipe, and other than a jar breaking and leaking an entire pint of salsa into the water bath, it turned out well.  I still need to get the peppers processed into cowboy candy.

I finally got netting over my zucchini plants.  I'm running an experiment - one plant is fully netted and looks like a bag of avocados, and the other plant just has netting around the blossoms and looks like a bizarre head of cabbage.  We'll see if either strategy makes any difference, though I will go ahead and brag that I DID find one random zucchini tucked away under Avocado Bag as I was netting it, so I can now officially say I have grown a zucchini.  (Callista kept marveling at it and saying, "I am so apprised you made that.  It is so apprising you made that all by yourself."  It was indeed apprising.)

The wildlife in these parts is interesting.  Never in my life did I think I would have to do battle with chipmunks over squash blossoms.  In Iowa, you battle with rabbits and deer.  Sometimes moles or gophers.  But chipmunks are new to me.  (And somehow they get up on my deck and eat my cherry tomatoes, too - I'll see them streaking around when I go out the door.  How do they get up and down?!)  And yet, there is a rabbit who loves my side yard.  It never touches my unfenced, completely unprotected garden bed, it just sits next to it and nibbles dandelion leaves.  And there is a weird, disconcerting raccoon that runs across the back field every afternoon, going in a diagonal from the chicken coop area to the woods, but the chickens haven't seemed ruffled and the eggs haven't been disappearing, even though there is a spot in the fencing that needs to be reinforced.  What is happening, I ask you?!  (There was also a very loud, very ominous-sounding owl in our backyard a few nights back; I'm hoping it was on chipmunk patrol and that it had a successful go of things.)

On Wednesday night, we met up with some church friends for a midsummer celebration for the kids who have kept up with the Same Page Summer Bible reading plan.  (All my kids, with the exception of Oey, have been faithful to keep up, and will have read the entire New Testament this summer - I am so impressed.)  

I cannot even describe to you how hot and oppressively humid it was.  It was like walking around in someone's mouth.  We could only hack it for about an hour before coming home and trying to cool off before bed.  I introduced Oey to the joys of a cool foot bath.

Yesterday Rocco and Callista came down with some kind of weird summer bug.  Their throats hurt, and Rocco was running a fever and vomiting.  Rocco is usually such a silent sufferer - he never complains, always bears up, always remains pretty cheerful.  But I was cleaning out the food room yesterday, and he came down and just laid on the rug by me.  I looked more closely at him, and big, fat tears were pouring out of his eyes.  I was surprised and asked him if he was crying, and he just said, "My throat hurts so bad." It was the saddest thing ever.  Penelope even said, "Every time Rocco gets sick, it makes you want to trade places with him because you can't stand to see him suffer."  He is so good-natured and unruffleable, it is just heartbreaking when something actually takes him down.

Callista thankfully doesn't seem to have it quite as bad.  Her throat has been sore, and she has had a headache, but she has had more energy and no fever or vomiting.

Not much else has happened around here.  I've been trying to spend more time working out over the last couple of weeks, trying to finally lose this last ten pounds I still have hanging around since Ophelia was born.  It's going well (not the weight loss part, the working out part), but it does kind of become the "thing" I accomplished each day.  Between working out, and then showering, and then often napping later because I get worn out, it just kind of drains me of time and energy for other things.  So, trade-offs I guess. 

Plus, the heat hasn't helped with anything.  It just makes you feel sluggish and unmotivated.  But I did finally rouse myself yesterday to start tackling the basement organization, which has been the biggest project still looming since the move.  Our food room and storage room definitely need some TLC, so I started on that yesterday and will hopefully at least get the food room finished today.  Then maybe the storage room can get finished next week, the garage can get finished after that, and then the guts of the house will be in order before the school year starts.

For those wondering, I never made it to Home Depot for the wood I need for DVD shelves.  They are still sitting in stacks.  You can't win them all I guess.  

BUTTTTT just look at these kids enjoying summer.  Maybe you can win them all.

Isn't summer life THE life? If you vote for me, it will be Summer all year round.

what's up weekly. (A trip to the Amish, some plans for the day, and SUMMER!)

It's Friday, which I have recently decided will be dubbed, "Square-Away Day."  I'm going to do a better job of getting the yard, van and house squared away for the weekend.  It's desperately needed, or by Sunday afternoon the house looks like it was hit by a dry but stinky hurricane.  I swear I do my best to keep up with things, but by Friday afternoon our lives just need a little bomp in the right direction.  So, come and welcome to Square-Away Day.  

Today I have it on my agenda to get netting up around my garden, which is looking lush and beautiful and is also not producing anything because of the gosh darn blasted chipmunks.  I have so many swear words piling up when I think about it, so I'm just going to channel that indignant energy into something productive and put up netting.  Granted, I'm wanting to do it on the cheap so it looks like it will be held up with closet rods, shower curtain rods, and perhaps an old pipe I found in the garage.  Nothing if not classy.  I'll take photos so you can shake your head in consternation at me.  But my squash blossoms will actually get to turn into squash, so I'll get the last laugh while I'm eating deep-fried zucchini.

I'm also thinking I may head to Home Depot to see just how cheaply I can source the materials for some DVD shelves.  The Book Room (Library? Conservatory?) is the next item on my To-Tackle list, and I'm just dead tired of staring at stacks of homeless DVDs.  I think I can fit them all on shelves at the back of the closet in there, provided I can actually get shelves up in there.  So I might try.  But I'm also at the end of homeschool planning and I'm dead tired of spending all our money, so we'll see.

Other items on today's agenda?  Cleaning the basement bathroom, and very separately, eating as many BLTs as I can possibly stomach.  See, last weekend I headed to the Amish with a friend, so even though my own garden is producing nothing, I have a large number of homegrown tomatoes on my counter.  I was going to make salsa with them, but I'm pretty sure they'll all get eaten before that happens.  Viva la BLT.  I also bought a bunch of jalapenos, so I may go ahead and make some jalapeno poppers, and then I will die and go to heaven, where I will sit and eat a feast of jalapeno poppers and BLTS in the face of my enemies for all eternity and it will be sweet. (Maybe some of that won't happen, but maybe it will.)

What else did I get at the Amish?  Maybe a better question is, what didn't I get at the Amish?  I got four dozen ears of corn, five pounds of blueberries, tomatoes and peppers out the wazoo, eight gallons of milk, a quart of cream, five pounds of butter, new potatoes, the best fresh onions, a gallon of maple syrup, and sundry little sundries like bulk popcorn and mustard and salsa.  Also, the World's Best Broom.  And a friend there gave me some cucumbers, but y'all know how I feel about cucumbers, so I almost count that as a loss rather than a gain, but I couldn't tell her that so I took them with a smile.

While I was gone, the kids made the most of it.  They went to the park, colored, baked cookies, and had  a grand old time on Saturday Dadurday.  When I got home, I quickly threw together Sabbath dinner (Pasta Carbonara, and it was amazing, thankyouverymuch), then after we ate I set to work processing as much of the stuff I had bought as I could, knowing I wouldn't even try to tackle it on Sunday. 

The kids helped me shuck the corn, and I got that in the freezer.  I froze the blueberries.  I made (and kind of burned) some paneer.  By the time bedtime rolled around, I was dead on my feet but very happy.

Not to brag or anything, but look how clean our patio is.  No mildew on the deck stairs, no Cat in the Hat Comes Back ring of grime on the house.  I am in love with pressure washing.

That was probably the biggest news of the week.  Other than that, we spent time with friends, Atticus had a few mowing jobs, and I tried getting ahead on a few cleaning projects that have been begging for my attention for months.  I am not even going to tell you what they were, because you would be appalled at what I had let slide.  You would say, "YOU CAN'T LET THAT GO FOR MONTHS! THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE DONE EVERY SINGLE WEEK.  THAT IS DISGUSTING." And you would be right, but I don't want to hear it.  So I'm just going to leave you to guess.

Okay, okay, one of the jobs was vacuuming my living room rug.  I had my buddy with me for moral support.

Let's just zoom in a little on that photo and see how she felt about it...

What a great little pal and cheerleader.

Other than that, the week was uneventful.  I actually read a book or two.  I worked out.  I watched installments of Forrest Gump while walking on the treadmill.  I am still committed to not scrolling Instagram (which has been so good for me).  We had some rain, which was much needed, and very much reveled in - I let the kids have a movie and popcorn party while it stormed away outside.  As much as I love hot, hot, eversohot summer and never want it to end, I do love a cozy afternoon in every once in a while.  Evvvvvvvery once in a while.

BUT.  Not to end it on a stormy note, enjoy these SUMMER-SUMMER-SUMMER photos of us enjoying ice cream bars in celebration of finishing swimming lessons!

Oey never needs her own food.  The kids vie for the privilege of sharing theirs with her.

Long live Queen Summer!  God save the Queen!

what's up weekly. (Get ready to use your inner eye, because I took two pictures this week and they're both terrible.)

Okay, whose job is it to hand out participation trophies?  (Or better yet, whose job is it to cut participation checks?)  BECAUSE YALL.  I have officially completed our four-week jag of swimming lessons and I think a celebration is in order.

You know me.  I am a homebody by nature. It has not been easy to have a daily standing appointment on the books for the last FOUR WEEKS.  But I did it, and it was worth it.  The kids really learned and improved a lot this year, and had a blast doing it.  Lolo especially seems to have the water bug, and keeps asking if we can "rent the pool."  By which she just means she wants to go swimming some afternoon, but "swimming as a leisure activity" is an intriguing new concept to her.  And who knows, maybe we'll try it sometime.  (Sometime during nap when the little girls are home with Todd.  I have heard enough "drowning toddler" stories to fill me to the brim with hesitation, but I think I could manage if the toddlers are out of the way and there are paid lifeguards on duty to help me keep watch over everyone.)

I have like two photos to share of swim lessons.  It is remarkably difficult to photograph your own child without looking like some kind of pervert on the side of the pool, photographing everyone else's children.

Plus, the kids are always super far away and not looking at you and photobombed by strangers and the whole endeavor is just not very photogenic.

Beyond swimming lessons, this week has been sponsored by the word "Cleaning."  I have tackled a few major projects I'm pretty proud of, none of which I took photos of because I was too busy, well, cleaning.  On Saturday, I gave the van a deep clean, which was desperately, desperately needed.  You guys.  It was so disgusting.  Everything was sticky and gritty and greasy and stuffed full of garbage.  So I pulled all the carseats apart, washed the covers and sprayed the frames.  I cleaned the windows inside and out, sorted the accumulation of detritus (most of which was trash, and most of which was Finneas').  Then Lolo and I drove over to the carwash and got it sprayed down and vacuumed out.  We stopped at Aldi and bought a new liner for the cargo space.  And finally, after about three hours of work, it finally looked like something the health department would not fine me over.

This is the place where a photo of my sparkling van would go.  Imagine it in all its glory.  Looks good, right?!

Then I borrowed a pressure washer from our neighbor and tackled basically every exterior surface I could.  I did our driveway, the front step, our back patio, the grill, and the deck and stairs.  I still need to do the side of the deck that is growing mildew, some of the kids' outdoor toys and the brick pavers in the yard, but everything is looking so much better.  Is there a psychological condition where a person becomes pathologically addicted to powerwashing?  It feels like it's going to become a problem for me.

This is the place where a photo of my sparkling driveway would go.

I also processed a bunch of green beans and cucumbers that a homesteading friend gave me before they left on vacation.  I just blanched and froze the green beans, but I've been experimenting with different flavor combinations of fermented pickles.  They are turning out... okay.  The kids have really liked the dill ones.  I have a couple of spicier jars bubbling away on the counter now.  But Lord do I hate cucumbers, so pickles that still have any remnant, any residue, any memory of cucumber flavor are just a no from me dawg.  So a lot of experimentation is happening around here to make pickles that can convince me that they never involved cucumbers in any way.  They've never even heard of cucumbers.  Cucumbers? What are those?

   This is the place where a photo of my fourteen quarts of pickles would go.

And now here is an imaginary photo of my three gallons of green beans.

And now, just because I'm on a tear of making up images that don't exist, here is where I would put a gif of someone pushing away a proffered cucumber with a look of disgust on their face.

My own garden appears to be doing well.  I say "appears" because it's beautiful - lush, full, tall, green, with almost no blight or insect damage to speak of.  But it's all a facade - it isn't producing anything.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm not getting as much pollinator activity as I need, or if something is coming in at night and eating things.  I suspect both.  My squash blossoms are definitely disappearing entirely.  One day there will be huge full flowers, and the next day there will just be a stem.  No wilted flowers on the ground, no sign of them at all.  Go figure - the one year that I have seemed to have outsmarted the vine borers (toilet paper roll collars at soil level, you're welcome), something else is ruining my zucchini crop.  WHO BESIDES ME IS INCAPABLE OF GROWING ZUCCHINI?!  Zucchini is basically a weed - it is impossible to not end up with zucchini coming out of your ears when you have even one plant.  But leave it to Paige Van Voorst to figure out a way to never - NEVER - have harvested a single - SINGLE - zucchini.  Not one.  Not ever.

Imagine I took a picture of my lush garden.

Now here, imagine a photo of the bald zucchini stems.

Maybe here is a homemade gif of me rubbing my temples and shaking my head back and forth.  Or shaking my fist and cursing a thieving squirrel.  You pick.

Alrighty, I'm going to go.  I have big plans to sleep in tomorrow, and then clean the bathrooms and power wash whatever I can get my hands on.  (Maybe I should just give the bathrooms a good, powerful spray-down?)  Then we have a Psalm Sing tomorrow night, and then on Saturday I'm headed to the Amish with a friend from church.  It's sweet-corn-and-peaches season you guys.  I'm so excited.

what's up weekly. (more swim lessons, and the Fourth of July.)

Look at me go!  Here I am, for the second week in a row, and feeling fine.  And they said it couldn't be done.

Last week, I mentioned that the kids narrowly escaped being Timbered by a tree they had been climbing mere minutes before.  This week, I am here to say that there is no great loss without some small gain.  While the kids no longer have the climbing tree in all its majesty, they do now have a jungle to explore.

The evening of the next day, the tornado sirens started going off around 9:30 p.m., so we all headed to the basement to hunker down for a while.  It was kind of annoying, since I had to get Oey out of bed, and it turned out to be just a thunderstorm warning.  But it was good for me to have a kind of trial run for future siren incidents: I realized I need to stock our basement room with lanterns, flashlights and stuff to occupy the kids with.  Luckily, I had just cleaned out a closet earlier in the day and set a box of Playdoh in there while I looked for a new place for it to call home.  The Playdoh turned out to be a huge hit, and the kids just created masterpieces while Todd read Lord of the Rings to them, and the power never went out, so it turned out to be a pretty luxurious tornado drill.  But I should definitely look into prepping that space a little better for any future time in the bunker.  If I learned anything from the Wizard of Oz, it's that you don't mess around with tornadoes in Kansas.  (Also, it's good practice to not let your dog bite a witch, or you could end up spiraling into all kinds of avoidable chaos, but that lesson seems less applicable here.)

On Monday, the younger-than-Atticus, older-than-Ophelia kids started swimming lessons.  They are loving it.  The first day held a little drama, as Penelope didn't feel well, the little girls didn't want to go to their classes, and Ophelia is starting to get wise that any time we show up at the pool she just ends up having to sit there forever, so she started to rebel.  Luckily, Todd had the day off work for the long holiday weekend or I'm not sure how I would have gotten everyone where they needed to be.

Rocco and Callista spontaneously held hands all the way from the van to the pool.  I love them so much. 

This session is a little different than Atticus' session.  First, we have to get up much earlier in the morning to get there on time.  You know I am not an early riser, so the loss of sleep has done a number on me.  Second, we are there for two lesson slots - the younger four swim for half an hour, then Penelope and Finneas swim for half an hour, with a ten minute break between.  Which means Oey is in the stroller for over an hour, and after the little kids get out of the water, they sit shivering for forty minutes before we can go home and change into dry clothes.  But all things considered, they've been pretty good sports.

They spend their post-swim time bundled up and blue.

Gosh, how I wish I hadn't blinked in this photo.  But oh well - it's still the best, so I'm keeping it.

Oey was OVER. IT.  We have since started leaving her and Atticus at home with Todd while the others swim. Not sure if she's any less fussy at home, but she's at least not fussy in public.  I think everyone, including her, is happier this way.

Monday after heading home to change, Todd surprised the kids with a trip to the fireworks tent.  We picked out a few small things, not knowing what level of tolerance our neighborhood would have for anything more than that.  (We should have known - our whole town is full of active and retired military personnel; Fourth of July is still happening in these parts even as I type this.)  Next year we'll go bigger.

On Tuesday, Todd helped me at swimming lessons again since he was still off work.  Then we picked up our milk after lessons so that we could be home at dinner time to grill out.  I made brats from a pig that was raised by a friend's dad, cheese I made that day from Amish milk, zucchini we found under a "free" sign by a farmhouse on the way to get the milk that morning, and potatoes.  Oh, and some of the pickles I fermented the previous week from the cucumbers and dill I got from the neighbor.  It was one of those meals that I feel really excited by - not because it was fancy or anything, but because I knew where almost everything came from.  I don't know why that makes a meal feel so special to me, but it does.  I love that feeling.  So I even put a tablecloth out to celebrate.

The boys busted out their airsoft guns and shot at homemade targets in the yard while I grilled.  What a way to celebrate Independence Day.  Eat your heart out, England.

After dinner, we lit off smoke bombs and played with sparklers and called it a night.

The smoke bombs made for a fun opportunity to pretend they were running a military operation.  These guns were fashioned from Legos.  Boys are boys and I'm here for it.

The rest of the week has kept us busy.  I did the menu planning and grocery shopping for the month.  (I'm trying out a new system where I only shop once every four weeks.  I don't love it, but it's possible it could save money in the long term.  I'm giving it a test run through next summer to see how it goes.  The other advantage it offers is that, since I have to cancel school on grocery mornings, during the school year this should give me more time at home to tackle our work.)  Atticus had mowing jobs, so I drove him where he needed to be.  I finished up last year's portfolios, bought our school supplies, got everything organized for our lab sciences next year, and continued chipping away at planning and printing the rest of next year's work.

Today, our next door neighbors from our Columbia house are coming to visit for the day!  So we have another full day ahead.  

Life is full of good things right now, but gosh I feel mortal.  Learning to juggle lots of good things without wearing out is work that makes me more fit for eternity.  I'm glad it's such enjoyable work.

In Oey news, she is talking more!  She's saying Mama, Dada, Sissy (Lissy), bye bye, hi, hello, and baby.  Which are wonderful to hear, not only because her voice is so sweet and I'm glad she's finally getting chattier, but also because it's a welcome break from hearing her say only "Hey!" "Ow!" and "Stop!" for so long.

And that was it for our week!  I'm headed into the weekend with plans to clean out the van, and spend most of my free time napping.  It should be a good time.

We still can't figure out the problem with our dishwasher, and I don't want to spend money on a new one until next tax return season, so it looks like a lot of handwashing is in our future.  The kids are logging plenty of practice hours, and look pretty cheerful about it when asked to smile for the camera, so I feel like we're doing okay with the situation, all things considered.

Happy weekend, folks!