Last day of Vacation

I've got some mixed feelings about the end of summer. On the one hand, I'm glad we'll be back on a schedule. Quinnie has been missing her bus time - it's really the only time she gets a nap. Her mind is telling her she's too old for naps but her body tells a different story, and lately when she goes without a nap she gets hurt. Last Sunday (not yesterday), she fell off the playground equipment and got a concussion and three stitches in the back of her head. Last night she nearly toppled off the trampoline trying to get out of it (we have a safety net for the rest of it).

On the other hand, I don't want to give up days at the beach. We didn't have enough of those this year due to the near constant thunder storms and then when the weather finally cooperated Quinn's stitches. Today is, as I said, the last day of vacation and it's sunny and beautiful and we really should be hanging out at the beach, but Ali is off school shopping with Grammy and I don't want to go there without her.

They'll close the town beach after labor day, even though the weather still is nice. I suppose we could swim at the boat launch, or we could actually go to the ocean (it's only 1/2 hr away but we don't like the crowds of summertime people so we don't go in season).

Then again school sports have started and I'll have lots of trips to do, so I'll likely be busy most weekends, and we have Ali's special Pete Seeger trip coming up too.

Soon the weather will be turning cool and I'll have the energy to do all the yardwork I've been putting off since it got hot (I hate the heat). I have a chicken run to build and the rest of the fence to get in, and the winter garden to plant (gotta get going on that). Plus I've wanted to do some dyeing and canning and couldn't bring myself to run the stove (or bear the heat of cooking outside). Soon the leaves will change colors....Aaaahhhhh I love fall.

I got my bus back, and my new run, and I'm pleased with both.

Over all I guess I'm more pleased than not about the changing of the seasons. Still it's hard to let go of the beach.

Growing challenge update

Soooo, long time no post. (On this subject anyway). My garden is doing well despite the late start. We have some flowers on a couple of our pumpkin plants, but sadly some one who is two removed all of the plant markers so I have no idea which ones are which.

My greenhouse is overflowing with green. True, most of it is in the form of weeds but the humidity has been so darn oppressive I can't seem to bring myself to weed it. I need to stake my tomatoes. I still have a month or two before I'll need to install the plastic.

I've been putting nasturtiums in my salads since they started blooming a couple weeks ago. Very tasty! Sometime this week I plan to retire all the cut and come again lettuce and plant carrots in it's place. I'll plant new lettuces and spinach in the greenhouse between the tomatoes once I get those staked properly. We'll see how the weather cooperates.

My summer squashes have turned out to be the most rewarding though. Despite being completely in the shade they are big and bushy and quite robust. I can only attribute this to the 16 wheel barrels of sheep poop that they are planted in.

It's a twister! It's a twister!

Wow!!

So we had a tornado on Thursday. My family was safe, as were all of the kids on my bus (a couple of them live really, really close). I still haven't heard from my boss or the people at base, and I'll take a drive up there later today as they just opened the road. I know my boss is OK though, 'cause one of my co-workers who I spoke to saw her on TV, and I'm assuming the damage to the buses was minimal 'cause the news would have been all over it otherwise.

One of the little girls that came to Ali's Birthday party last night lost most of her house and her next door neighbor. Here's a picture of her Dad from the Boston Globe:

Interestingly, this is the fourth deadly tornado to touch down in Deerfield. Wow!

I'm glad it's over.

Ali's second sock

Well things have been progressing a little more slowly on the second sock. Not due to second sock syndrome or anything mundane like that but just that the weather has been sublime so we've been outside as much as possible. Yesterday we raked a wee bit, and then I went for a walk down to the boat launch at Pawtuckaway - that's about 41/2 miles away from my house. It was a gorgeous walk. I was reading the first few chapters of my newest book while I walked ($2.00 used Living the good life by the Nearings). I like it OK I suppose, but I think they're far more pompous than the author of Ten Acres Enough (same idea about 100 years earlier). In any event, it was a pleasant walk down and an even more pleasant sit down on the bridge at the boat launch. It's so beautiful there. The water was running fast but was about 5-7 feet lower than usual because they drained the lake (so it doesn't flood). I saw a couple of guys running the rapids in a canoe - that was a sight - and some kids were climbing a huge boulder at the trail head. It was a real pleasant pause. It was NOT a pleasant walk home. Something about my shoes I guess was not right and my feet hurt wicked bad, my calves were killing me and my hips were grinding the whole walk back from which I had to be rescued because it had already taken me twice as long to get half way home, the kids were crying for me and my hips couldn't take it anymore.

We went to the beach today to check out the tide pools. It was 40 degrees and windy but my family ditched their shoes and got their feet wet - and Quinn got her whole body wet when she fell down - Luckily I anticipated this and brought her a whole new outfit. We walked quite a ways but as I had different shoes on my hips felt fine. My feet still ache but not too bad. I didn't even think to bring the camera until Sean and Ali were way out in the tide pool and I thought how lovely a picture it would have been if I had thought to bring the camera - darn it.

So now about the second sock. I don't like the toe and heel on the first sock They just don't feel as luscious as the body, so on the second sock I switched yarn to something equally yummy, and once the pair have been completed I'll take out the first heel and toe and rework them in the better yarn. That's one of the reasons I like toe up socks and short row heels - you can just cut them off and redo the whole thing over new when they get worn. But I never wear those parts out. I always wear out the ball of the foot - wouldn't you know it?

Maple Season

It's maple sugar time! I love this time of year - it means there really will be a spring after all. I saw a lot of maple buckets on Batchelder Rd in Raymond (NH - On my bus route) this week and I just get all warm and fuzzy. Lately there's been a movement to tap with blue tubing into a huge rubbermade bucket, which I suppose is more efficient, but it isn't as picturesque. I'm glad the folks on Batchelder Rd are still using buckets.

Ali's Doll

Yesterday Ali was bitten by the creativity bug and wanted to learn how to make a doll. So I got out a saucer and traced it on some material, and then drew lines for the body and arms and legs. I helped her guide the fabric through the sewing machine while she worked the pedal.
Ali stuffed the doll with some of Eva's fleece I had banging around (washed but not carded), and I showed Ali how to make a wig and attach it to the doll's head. She got the doll nearly finished when we decided to take a break from the doll and go shovel out the new batch of snow.
It was such a nice day out there that we ended up staying outside sledding for the rest of the day.

Ali finished the doll this morning,

and gave it to Quinn.

Growing challenge thoughts

So I'm still really in the planning stages of the growing part of the growing challenge, and Wow did you all see the neato mosquito tuber that Path to Freedom had on their blog recently? It's Yacon.

I'm researching it. This and Jerusalem artichokes look like they could be a really neat experiment. I read the Mother Earth News article on Yacon and it said that the plant has a really long growing season and doesn't develop tubers until the fall, and that it needs to be stored in the winter like a dahlia. I'm ok with that 'cept I'm in a zone 5 and my last frost date is late May. If this infernal snow would subside long enough for me to put some plastic down to heat my soil up a bit I could probably get away with it. But the way we've been going it looks to me like we may be in for another year without a summer. Just kidding of course, but seriously, I think we've gotten more snow than the last couple years combined and we still have March and April left to go!

Thunder Snow?

I have lived in NH for 37 years and for the first 30 or so I can't recall ever having a snow storm with thunder and lightning, but the past 7 years or so, particularly the last 2, there have been multiple storms just like that, including this morning. Can I just say how incredibly weird it is laying in bed listening to the silent snow falling (for those of you in non snow areas - snow kind of muffles all the ambient sound, so it's a special kind of quiet you only get when it's snowing) when all of a sudden the room lights up and a couple seconds later there's the boom of late summer. I think it's just really, really weird.