firsts

Posted on August 3, 2012 by jen

I’ve had a bunch of photos sitting in my “new post” folder, some for a few weeks, so I decided to just post them. This was originally going to be about the few bits of color among all the green of the garden and trees, but then I noticed a few firsts among these photos: first real beet harvest (and canned pickled beets), first broccoli ever grown, first caspian pink tomato, and first homemade/canned jam (raspberry & blueberry).

(Man, I wish I liked tomatoes! And peppers.)

And on the topic of gardening, I love and can so relate in all ways to this post from Andrew Peterson. (By the way, our solution to the deer invasion problem was a solar powered electric fence!)

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salsa time

Posted on July 30, 2012 by jen

This might be the main reason why Steve likes to garden:

Last night he chopped all this into the first batch of salsa for the season. Pico de gallo, more accurately, since this version is uncooked. (Our kitchen will be taken over for the salsa canning operation in the near future when we have a deluge of ripe tomatoes). Also called salsa fresca, it doesn’t get much fresher than this, from in the garden to in the fridge in a couple hours.

Since I’m not a salsa eater (yet?), I miss out on this garden reward and cannot personally report on its goodness. I just document things.

A couple years worth of trials and notes:

I think it’s pretty cool that everything except the salt, ancho chili powder, lime juice, and cilantro (which we could have grown) is from our own garden. I have already bought more garlic because ours will run out soon, so this is pretty much as close as we’re gonna get to entirely “homemade.”

I forgot the “after” photo and just got word that it’s already gone (Steve took it to work). Apparently it needs more jalapeños next time. I guess we shouldn’t have used so many to make poppers the other day!

Posted in food, garden | 2 Comments

sadie’s 1st birthday

Posted on July 13, 2012 by jen

  Sadie had a birthday yesterday, July 12. (We actually got her in August, so that anniversary is coming up soon. Stay tuned for baby Sadie pics.)This was a highly anticipated day for the kids, Natalie especially. She had dictated long in advance everything that was to happen on this day: We were going to buy Sadie the dog ice cream she had seen many times at the store, then we were going to sing “Happy Birthday” to her, have a cake, and take her to the dog beach. The cake and beach didn’t happen, but somewhat against my better judgement, we did buy the doggie ice cream.

The kids also got ice cream, thanks to their free coupons from Sweet Temptations (gotta love summer reading programs at the library!). They chose the Birthday Cake flavor.

They relaxed with Sadie. We sang and Sadie ate her treat.  Video here: sadiebday (not the greatest, but a horsefly was biting my leg)

Then we attempted our first self/timer mode family photo with all “5” of us.             

Happy Birthday, Sadie! (For the record, this is how you rank: you got more airtime than either of the kids on their birthdays!)

Posted in critters, life, memories | 1 Comment

blueberries

Posted on July 13, 2012 by jen

Considering we live in the land of blueberries, we had to go pick some. We didn’t pick any last summer for some reason, so this was our first time ever. (We actually have 5 blueberry bushes that were planted by the previous owners and we’ve been waiting/hoping for our own bumper crop, but after two summers, it is apparent that they don’t just grow on their own without some intervention. Steve did spray to help with the bugs we had last year, but we didn’t water them and we’re in a drought, and they likely need serious pruning. Better luck next year?)

The kids and I picked 11 pounds from a small farm, came home and ate a bunch, baked cobbler (which I failed to photograph and was gone nearly instantaneously), and thought maybe Steve would like to be in on it. So two days later, we went back to the same place after he got home from work. This time we picked about 24 pounds, following Steve’s motto of “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” (This, by the way, is pretty much the reason anything fun, interesting, exciting, or of epic proportions happens around here. If it were up to me, things would be boring.)

The freezer is now stocked with berries.

With lots of blueberries, comes lots of baking, of course! The aforementioned cobbler, blueberry banana muffins, and crumb bars. Jelly is on the to do list.

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Any favorite blueberry recipes out there?

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summer fun

Posted on July 8, 2012 by jen

Some snapshots from the summer so far…

Cale wanted to do the celery experiment, but we didn’t have any so we tried daisies instead. It didn’t really work, but I thought the colored water looked pretty in the sunlight.

Bubbles at the Children’s Museum

Geared up at Higgins Lake

Cale’s first time on a wave runner. He loved it!

Cousins at Higgins Lake

Our family at the end of the pier

Some breaking and rolling waves in Lake Michigan. Hard to tell from the pic how big they were, 4-5 foot waves at times. (Steve, Natalie, Cale, & Natalie’s friend are in the water here.)

Posted in beach, lake, life, memories | 2 Comments

critters

Posted on June 19, 2012 by jen

As I was scrolling through pics of the past few months, a critter category or theme seemed to jump out at me, so here are some random critter pics:

The first 2 are in honor of our stray/outdoor kitty who has been gone for a few weeks now. He had been gone for a couple of days, came back, then took off, it seems for good. His straw bale house has been dismantled and we kinda miss seeing him around.

While the “pretty nest” didn’t fare well, we also have a robin’s nest under our deck. There’s no way to get a good picture of it without putting a ladder on the patio below the deck, so we peer through a crack in the deck boards from above. There were 4 eggs, all of which hatched. The babies are now quite large and are very packed into the nest.

The moth is a Giant Leopard Moth that I found in the garage one day. I had never seen anything like it, so of course I promptly googled images of “large white moths with black spots.”

We’ve also been quite entertained by the squirrels, chipmunks, and birds out the front window, which now include hummingbirds, thanks to a new feeder on the porch that they managed to find in less than 2 hours.

Posted in critters, randomography | 2 Comments

bridge upgrade

Posted on June 10, 2012 by jen

This little bridge is the only way to get to the back 3/4 of our property (unless you want to get wet and muddy and stuck). It was in sad shape with most of the boards warped and barely attached. Turns out our neighbor started tearing off his deck a few weeks ago to completely rebuild it. Hmmm…old deck boards. Score! Our awesome neighbor also gave us a bunch of his extra deck screws and loaned Steve his handy impact wrench (now he wants one of his own!).

We hadn’t planned on working on this yesterday, but we had a few hours so Steve tore in before I had time to object (too much).

I thought it would have been a fun obstacle: running across the beams in our own Tough Mudder/Warrior Dash course. While Steve dug some junk out that was stuck under the bridge, I hauled the former deck joists and set them across.

I’m proud to say I did not fall in!

It still needs a few more rows of screws (need to recharge battery in aforementioned impact wrench) and a few boards need to be trimmed, but it looks way better now!

It’s sort of like our version of “the bridge to Terabithia.” We just need a cool name for what’s on the other side.

Posted in projects | 1 Comment

bolting

Posted on June 10, 2012 by jen

Last year we planted onions. They didn’t really grow. We were late getting the sets in the ground because we were still unpacking or something like that.

This year, we planted onions earlier and they appeared to be growing awesomely. But then the weather had hot then cold/can’t decide what season it is issues. Turns out that when it gets cold, onions think they are going to die and go into survival mode, which means sending up a flower so that the plant can reproduce. This is called bolting. This can happen if it’s too dry also. We’re totally learning all this as we go.

When this happens, the bulb is done growing, so you may as well pull it so it doesn’t rot. We harvested all of the bolting onions yesterday, maybe a third of the total. You can’t store these like a full grown onion, so you have to use them soon. I guess we’re eating everything with onion.

They still look pretty though.

I don’t have a picture of all the ones remaining in the ground, but here’s a partial view, along with one half of the garden. C’mon onions, the salsa will be counting on you!

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just some random pics

Posted on June 8, 2012 by jen

I thought these shadows on the driveway looked cool.

Some of the traffic at our "Grand Central" bird feeder, Mr. & Mrs. Goldfinch.

Light & trees. My faves.

Mr. Snail that Cale spotted one day on the way to the bus.

Wild iris in the swamp.

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turtle

Posted on May 17, 2012 by jen

A couple weeks ago, I saw a turtle sitting on the driveway as I was headed out. I didn’t have a camera in the car with me, but I got out to take a closer look and that was enough to get it to move off to the side so that it wouldn’t get run over. Steve also found a turtle last November (pics shown here). I’m now starting to wonder if it could have been the same one.

It looks to me like an Eastern Box Turtle, “uncommon to rare in southern and western Lower Peninsula,” according to the Michigan DNR website. Many of these turtles stay in the same 5 acre area for their entire lives which is several decades, sometimes up to 100 years.

The one pictured here seemed to have a front foot that was missing its claws, but I wasn’t thinking to look for that most recently.

Hopefully we’ll see one (it?) again and be able to tell if it is the same.

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