New Momma Journal, Gardening and Other Outdoor Adventures

2012-01-23T04:38:00.000-08:00

A trip to White Sulfur Springs WV to see Papa George's Homeplace. He wasn't born in the barn, but in a house on the farm nearby. The barn, although newly painted, is the only original building still standing.

A few more cute shots of Eli enjoying his first Christmas Tree before taking it down. He loves his new rocking chair.

January 21, 2012 - One Year Old! These pictures are not in order The first two are after a change from eating a birthday cupcake. Eli got to celebrate his first birthday with the big 6 (parents and grandparents) plus most of his first cousins and aunts and uncles! We missed cousin Nate and his family, but will be wishing him a happy birthday this coming Thursday:)

December 2011

2011-12-29T17:46:00.000-08:00

Eli's first visit with Santa.

Nothing beats a quick hike to the river on a 60 degree day in December. Eli wore his happy face and practiced his patty cake.

Christmas Eve at Grammy's and Papaw Gary's.

Christmas Day at Papa George and Grandma Rita's. Cousin Daniel shows a little HoHoHo spirit.

I can't believe how big he has gotten. I love this picture of him hugging his little bear lovey as he naps. He still crosses his feet most of the time when sleeping, just like in the first ultra sound picture that we got at about 9 weeks. So many happy days. It is certainly a time to be thankful for our many blessings.

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-27T06:12:00.000-08:00

Grandma Margaret with her eight great grandchildren. Eli, Daniel, Timmy, Erin, Nathan, Rachel, Calvin, and Hannah.

Our third annual Black Friday Hike:) This year we went to the old golf course and club house at Mountain Lake.

New Eli Pics

2011-11-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

Halloween 2011

Looking hansom in his VT jacket - thanks Aunt Peggy :)

Rub-a-dub-dub, fun in the tub.

Sitting with two smart, beautiful girls: Cousins Rachel and Lilly.

Price's Fork United Methodist Harvest Festival.

Sunny Day in October

2011-10-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

Fun at Grammies!

2011-10-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Good Times at Grammies and Papaw Gary's House

(Some of the pictures are a little out of order).

2011-09-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

Eli got his first hair cut at 5 months, by my cousin Jess. It was a great haircut. About a month or so later he looked like he could use another trim and I tried my own hand at trimming things up. I made a total mess. I think the picture above was a few days after my attempt. Last week Clay's Aunt Norma couldn't resist trying to fix the mess.
Now he looks so grown up and he is officially a SITTER!

Price's Fork Fair 2011

2011-08-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

I didn't actually have my camera at the fair this year, but we had some memorable moments. Eli got his first blue ribbon for a miniature flower arrangement. Eli ate the food from the baby food jar so I could use it as a container, so he did his part to get his name on the entry!

On Thursday I ran out to the garden after work and gathered as big a variety of produce as I could find. I ended up with:
Red and Yellow bell peppers
Serrano and jalapeno peppers
Roma, Brandywine, Better Boy, Cherry, Cherokee Purple Tomatoes
Okra, Kale, Sweet Potatoes, zucchini, and Corn
I had a few purple beans left in the fridge.
To help decorate the basket I used a sunflower and lots of herbs including:
oregano, rosemary, basil, purple basil, Thai basil, dill, chives, mint, lavender, and pineapple sage
I also ran next door and picked a few pears to include some fruit (that may be cheating??)

By Friday evening when I got off work to see the exhibits, the basket didn't look as pretty, with a few items wilting, but it ended up with a Best in Show :)
Our sunflowers didn't do as great this year but I had a few beautiful small ones that I put together with some pineapple sage and Sedum in Clay's name and he got a Best in Show also.

So we thought we were Rocking the Big Price's Fork Fair so why not put Eli in the baby contest. Well, he wasn't such a big fan of the loud, crowded, hot Grange hall. By the time the 6mos to 1yr age group for boys was called he was a flushed, drooly, gassy mess. He didn't take home a ribbon. So when he starts getting a big head when he's older, we'll remind him he took last place at the PF fair:)

We had fun and I'm always happy to see a lot of people enjoying the little community fair. We will see what happens in the next couple of years when the new PFES opens and the old school building is sold. It will certainly change the dynamics of pulling off the fair.

As always, I usually see the fair as time to let the garden go. We still have a crop of corn that didn't seem to fill out like the first planting. We have an abundance of tomatoes. Clay's mom and dad made some salsa, and his aunt Dee helped can some tomato juice. We are so fortunate to have some folks help out to prevent us from wasting some great food. I tried dehydrating some okra, which turned out pretty good for snacking. I may try to dehydrate some more Romas as they come in.

Eli getting ready for the baby contest. Looks like he is about ready for his second hair cut!

2011-08-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

Several of my friends gave Eli little homemade decorated onesies using freezer paper stenciling. I knew I'd love the crafty project myself and have had it on my to do list for awhile. I finally gathered the materials together and here are my first four attempts.

Eli and I recently traveled to Haymarket, VA to visit cousin Jessica and her family. Oh - they are all too cute and just loved playing with Eli. He took a special liking to little Grace, who in return took a special liking to Eli's Bumpo seat!!

Harvesting has Begun and Eli at 6 months in his Birthday Suit!

2011-07-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

Little Roar and Mid July Garden

2011-07-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

I love seeing these bibs hanging outside to dry. Thanks Aunt Dee!!
Everything in the garden is doing well so far this year except for the squash and zucchini. Clay and I use to think those were the two easiest plants to grow, but we've been in a full blown war with the squash bug this year. We finally got some diatomaceous earth to use, but I think we started it too late. I spent a lot of time hand picking the adults and scraping off the little eggs that are so strategically placed near the veins of the leaves where it is all but impossible to rub them off with out tearing up the plant. In this picture we have two varieties of beans on the left, okra near the back/middle. We have peppers, and tomatoes on the right. We moved our corn to the back and did two separate plantings. We've had some bad thunderstorms that have tried laying the corn down flat. We also tried a row of sweet potatoes this year in the middle. We have basil in the front right and it seems to be going so fast that it may be spent before the tomatoes come in for capris salad. I did make two batches of pesto to freeze in ice-cube trays and I dehydrated some as well. I think one of the best things we did was not plant potatoes this year. For the past two years the potato beetle has been too much to battle and I think rotating potatoes and beans every other two years or so would be a good strategy.
Close up of the beautiful Thai Basil.
Happy Mid-July :)

2011-07-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Eli's Song by John Denver

Eli's First Hike and First Pony Tail

2011-07-07T14:29:00.001-07:00

We took Eli on his first hike up at Mountain Lake on the War Spur trail. He seemed to really enjoy his new backpack. It took as a while to figure out all the adjustments, but I think we're all pretty happy with it. It was great getting Eli out in the woods. War Spur is only about 2 miles. We gave him one bottle on the trail, the pack has plenty of space to carry all that Eli needs, including a little canopy cover, but this trail was very shady, so we didn't have to worry about the sun :)

Eli was zonked out by the end of the trip!

Outer Banks 2011

2011-06-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Raphaela, Scott, and Ella came to visit us on our first full day at the beach. The ocean water was FREEZING and it didn't take me long to decide I liked being at the pool more than the beach with a five month old.

Eli and Nate chillin' in their Bumbo seats. Nate has amazing head control, where as Eli swayed around like he had one to many to drink.One of Nate's favorite toys just happens to be attached to his head!

"Are you looking at my hair?"
Eli has a face off with dad.
Rachael loves her hip, older cousin Erin - Peace Out!
We took an evening trip over to Jockey's Ridge to hang out on the largest Sand Dunes on the east coast. Clay got a great portrait of Eli in the KaTan carrier.
Erin, Rick, Katie, Hannah, and Nate
A rare shot of the whole family!
Jennifer's family posing for another camera.
Braving the winds and the sharp as a sword grass on the dunes.

Eli loves having his "Cousie" Rachael read to him!
Eli thinks he is ready to turn the pages.

... roll on over and listen to some more stories.

We finally got them in their matching outfits and Nate was feeling a little fussy.
Eli tells Nate, don't panic, if we drool excessively on these outfits they'll have to change us!
Circle of Cousins. I'm loving Eli's wild hair more than ever.

One more dip in the pool.
Eli loved his sink baths. Especially when he discovered that he could turn the water on himself.

A few more shots that got out of order. On the last day, Katie's friends Shannon and Dave came to visit and took loads of pictures. I hope to post one with the whole group when I get one!

A Visit with Cousin Nate and Family

2011-05-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

Eli borrowed Nate's Easter outfit for church. Nate is in the small picture below on Easter Sunday, I'm not sure why it posted so small?

This photo is from home, but too sweet to not post!

Peter Rabbit Quilt Pictures

2011-05-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

Happy First Easter Eli

2011-04-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

Shake Rattle and Roll

2011-04-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

My sister, Jennifer, gave me this singing Elmo. Her kids loved it and Eli is totally fascinated by it.

The shirt should probably say I am the Chubbiest or I have Conan O'Brien hair, but he is pretty darn cute too!

Asparagus 2011

2011-04-11T20:02:00.001-07:00

My first non Eli picture since January. We harvested our first few asparagus spears of the year.

They helped make our dinner very colorful. The giant spear in the middle was very tender. It always surprises me how different all the spears grow with thickness and height. We also seasoned our pork chops with rosemary and thyme that came back strong after winter.

Couldn't resist one picture of this big boy wearing shoes for the first time :)

2011-04-07T17:16:00.000-07:00

Eli looks like he is going tubing with his Boppy.

Any advice on how to tame the hair? :)
Stretching out in an outfit from our friend Andrea.
Clay's Aunt made this incredible quilt. It is extra special because the calico print is the same fabric used for the flower girl dresses in my wedding.

Another super cute onesie, this one was given to him from our friends Katie and Cassie.

2011-04-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

Eli enjoying the colorful shapes that his uncle Larry made him that I hung above his changing table, along with some animal cards that my friend Erin gave him.

Eli gets oodles of comments about his hair when out in public. Here we are having fun with his hair during bath time.
Fussy face.

Eli 2 Months

2011-03-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

2 Month Checkup:
12 lb 6 oz
24 in
First two pictures were taken on the 21st - his official 2 month birthday.

Feeling good and happy after coming home from the doctors office. Eli had two vaccine shots and one oral vaccine.

2011-03-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

On the 13th, Eli took his first trip to church. Doesn't he seem thrilled to be wearing his fancy outfit :)

My sister Katie and her family arrived in Blacksburg to visit on the 15th. We were all excited to meet baby Nathan. Eli loved playing with his cousin that is only five days younger than him.

Eli takes a hit from cousin Nathan.

Thinking about an arm wrestling match.

The Warrior pose.
Big cousin Daniel with baby Nathan.
Grandma and MaryKay come to visit the new little ones.

More play time with the cousins small and big!

Pictures from Grammy's Camera

2011-03-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

Eli spends some time with his cousins Grace and Jake.

Rocking out with Grammy.

Bath and Play Time

2011-03-10T06:50:00.000-08:00

The old man look, styled by Clay.

Eli's favorite rattle, made by an old co-worker at GVES.
Eli swinging over to play with Ryder and Harrison.

Ryder and Harrison say, "Wake up Eli." Eli is really just practicing his Walk Like an Egyptian dance.

Worn out from so much play time.

2011-03-01T16:18:00.000-08:00

His face suits the message on his shirt, "Going Bye Bye."
One of my students gave Eli these foot rattles and the little singing frog toy.

I discovered one more decorative onesie that I hadn't snapped a picture of yet. The giraffe with the long neck is perfect for Eli, he is around 75% on his height for age percentile chart.

Eli's room is up and running, although he won't be sleeping up there any time soon. I'm posting a before picture, to show the space when it was first gutted.

The two door closet. We still need to rehang the big door.

Eli - 1 Month

2011-02-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

Eli had a big day for his 1 month birthday. He actually spent most of the day being very fussy, worrying mom like crazy, but during all this time his dad and Grandpa Gary were finishing up the final touches on his nursery. His "Big Six" were all together for dinner. Clay and I ordered pizza and Grammy Linda brought a lemon pound cake. Eli was just full of himself the whole time we had company. He slept while we ate and then cooed and stayed alert to play with all his company. The girls gave Eli a bath, while Clay ordered a computer for my parents, then we all went upstairs to take pictures of Eli in his almost finished nursery. Oh, before the bath we tried to use finger paint to get Eli's hand prints for his baby book. He has one heck of a grip, like most babies, and we ended up with more of a blob than a print! We only tried one hand.

His hair looks very curly when wet.
The nursery was still full of drop clothes, pieces of scrap trimming, and various tools. We found a little clean corner to snap a few pictures. You can see a little trim work and Eli seemed to like the new carpet.

3 + wks

2011-02-15T08:49:00.000-08:00

Eli sleeping in his burrito wrap.

Unwrapping the top layer ...
I believe Eli has now had his picture taken in all of his designer onesies. This is probably my favorite. I keep squeezing him into them one last time!

Oh my, pacifier crisis!Our little square head. I love those lips!
Same scene with the flash off.
Mommy's little Valentine.
Dad picked up a Valentine's Day dinner from Our Daily Bread and it was heavenly, especially this dessert.

2011-02-09T11:29:00.000-08:00

Growing Baby Boy

2011-02-06T14:42:00.000-08:00

Eli is two weeks and two days. We can't check his weight officially, but he seems to be growing out of his newborn diapers and his newborn onesies are getting a little snug.
Eli put on his Hokie gear for one of VT's basketball games. He had to be changed before the game though, he always seems to have a diaper blowout when I put him in this onesie.
Here is the adorable Peter Rabbit quilt and pillow that several of my co-workers made for Eli. This is my little feeding station, where I spend most of my time now. Notice the hospital mug, that doesn't leave my side. The book sitting there has been a great read for in between feedings, The Friday Night Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs. The rocking chair came from mom and dad, I can't remember where they got it from. It is pretty creaky, but I think Eli likes it.

Eli's First Week at Home

2011-01-29T09:50:00.000-08:00

Another adorable homemade onesie, given to Eli from Elizabeth and Ashleigh.
Sitting with the flowers that Grammy gave to Eli at the hospital. The flowers reminded me of the wedding flowers Clay and I picked out.

Eli visited the Dr. on Tuesday. Then had his first trip out of the house at one week old. We visited "Aunt" Crystal and three of her kiddos, Layla, Luke, and Riley.

On the way home we made a special stop to visit Great Papaw Melvin. It tickled Papaw to hold the newest addition to the family!

Introducing Eli Sullivan Scott

2011-01-25T07:03:00.000-08:00

Eli made his debut at 12:20 on Friday, January 21, 2011. He weighed 8lbs 5ozs, and was 20.5 inches long.

Happy Mama!Happy, Happy Grandma Rita!

The very tired parents on day 2.

The Scott boys: Clay, Kevin, Eli, Gary, and Jacob.

Jacob admiring his new baby cousin.
Hello Papa George.
Aunt Jennifer with cousins Daniel and Rachel.

A special visit from Grandma Margaret.
Going home on Sunday, January 23, 2011.
Eli's first bath.
Keeping the Sullivan feet legacy alive!
Posing in a homemade onesie, made by Becca Rainey.

Baby Shower

2010-12-04T14:07:00.001-08:00

My cousin Jessica came down from Northern Virginia today to host a shower for baby Scott. We've been friends since we were crawling around in diapers ourselves. Below is the beautiful and absolutely delicious cake that her mom sent from Our Daily Bread.

Jess actually gave me a ton of maternity clothes back when I was 8 weeks pregnant, including this black dress.

Grandma Rita giving some tummy love.

I love this picture of Rachael's baby Ellie crawling over to help with presents.

Baby blankets were a big theme at the shower. Aunt Anza crocheted this adorable one with little teddy bears.
Here is a jungle blanket from cousin Cheryll.

Lucille Sheppard made the John Deere Quilt.
There were several other beautiful blankets and adorable gifts, but I didn't get pictures of them all. We had our first snow shower of the year and we decided it was best to cut the shower short so everyone could get home safely. It will be fun getting to have daddy help unwrap the remaining gifts.

Growing Belly + background remodeling updates

2010-12-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

Flash back to earlier in the summer.
15 Weeks
Almost 15 weeks later.
29 Weeks

Clay's been busy transforming our kitchen, while my tummy transforms! I'll have to post before and after pictures of the kitchen. The next two pictures show the cabinets, sanded and painted white, the new counter top, our first dishwasher! and our new to us stove. We were really sad to send our 1950's, 40in Ford stove to the dump, but I do love how easy it is to clean the eyes of this stove and it doesn't have faulty electrical connections.
31 weeks
32 weeks and 5 days

Clay is still finishing up the trim work, final painting coat, and putting up the back-splash. In the mean time he started remodeling project two - the two upstairs bedrooms. One of these rooms will be the future soon to be nursery. We are having foam insulation put in tomorrow, followed by hiring someone to do drywall.

Price's Fork Fair 2010

2010-08-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

I found just enough living edibles from the garden this past Friday, the 20th, to make a "garden collection" for the fair. I added a few more marigolds to the front of the basket after I snapped this picture, and it ended up with a red ribbon. At this point in the year I'm so ready for the garden to be done, I love the fresh produce, but keeping up with picking tomatoes before they rot on the vines becomes a lot to handle, especially with school starting. The fair is one last push for me to make something beautiful from all the hard work Clay and I put into the garden each year. The fair was a little bit later this year and just two days later I'm cherishing the cool evenings and even enjoying the soft beauty of the early dusk. Having time to socialize with community friends and admire everyone's craftiness is a nice way to end the summer and transition into school mode. The blackberry jam I made with grandma and the yellow tomatoes each got a blue ribbon and the sunflower, marigold, and zinnia each got a red.
The salad picture above has been my summer favorite. I've had trouble finding the right foods to fit my pregnancy cravings and this one does the trick. Fresh tomatoes, avocado, and mozzarella cheese on a bed of baby greens with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and pepper.

August Update

2010-08-10T18:33:00.000-07:00

The next move in the kitchen is to get the dishwasher put in. Clay successfully cut out a space for it and will need to do some wiring before it can be hooked up. The crazy part is trying to maintain regular kitchen function. You can see that we did some cooking tonight, but it's a little scary when you reach for a spoon to stir with, but grab screwdriver. If I wasn't determined to use some of the veggies coming in from the garden I would probably insist that we just eat sandwiches or eat out until the kitchen is done.
The blackberry jam was made at Grandma's house in a very well organized and fantastically clean kitchen. We started picking berries at 8:00 and had two gallons by 9:00. I'm not sure if either grandma or I could have picked much longer with the temp. going up into the 90's. Grandma helped me finish two batches of jam, making 16 jars. There is usually a little leftover that can go straight on what ever yummy bread you have around, at grandma's this was cornbread. The beautiful red tinted jar near the right is strawberry jam, which she traded me for rest of the leftover blackberry jam. I also placed the straw hat in the photo in memory of Papaw Bernard. I was very thankful to have it to wear today, and I was told to hang onto it since I may go seeking any last of the season blueberries this Thursday.
I'm not sure if I have the energy to organize help or enough good tomatoes to do any canning this year, but we have been using the dehydrator for the Roma and cherry tomatoes.
Our little August harvest. It looks like we'll get to eat fresh corn for about two weeks. We will not have enough to freeze this year, unless I go out and buy some. As for the all the tomatoes, since I'm not planning to attempt canning I've been taking extras to church and I found a few takers at PFES. Plus we've been enjoying fresh slices for sandwiches and salads daily! Sadly, the compost pile has probably seen the most.

Sunflowers

2010-07-31T10:10:00.001-07:00

My homeroom mom put together a beautiful package to give me for Teacher Appreciation Week. It included several packs of sunflower seeds. I didn't hold onto the packets, so I can't list the varieties, but I did snap some great photos. These guys are super photogenic. I love how the above shot shows the pollen that the bee has been busy collecting, how bee-utiful!
The purple morning glories are a lovely contrast to the bright yellows and they volunteered to come up.

Kitchen Remodeling, Land of Waterfalls, and a visit to Katies

2010-07-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

While I was away visiting my sister, Clay began putting our new kitchen vision into place. Although we are a little shaky on what that vision exactly is. We did decide eliminating part of the wall between the kitchen and dining room would make the space feel less cramped. I hate that Clay is working around so much stuff randomly floating between the two rooms. I plan to box up as much as possible, but our storage space in any other room is limited. Clay has to be able to access the upstairs and unfinished basement in order to redo some wiring, so piling up boxes in those spaces wouldn't be helpful. Our plan for the area in the above picture is to put in a pantry, then slide the refrigerator over next to it. So we will not be leaving the brick exposed, storage space trumps the more aesthetic idea!
The view from the kitchen into the dinning room. We hope to do a drop-leaf table in front of the window and an island/table with stools near the new big opening.
The view from the dinning room into the kitchen. We plan to keep the cabinets, but sand and paint them.
Our first baby bump picture taken at DuPont State Forest in Transylvania County, NC. This area is known as the Land of Waterfalls. Above and below is Triple Falls. We also hiked to Hooker Falls, which had an incredible swimming hole that we spent some time cooling off in.

This was a spur of the moment overnight trip. We were suppose to visit my friend Erin in Sewickley, PA. over the weekend, but had to cancel the trip. Clay had worked so hard all week and I didn't think either one of us needed to stay in the house and be overwhelmed with all the remodeling. Our favorite quick get away has been Asheville, NC. We stopped at the visitor center on the NC border to look for hotel discounts and discovered that there would be zero openings due to Bele Chere. I'm sure it is a fabulous festival but I didn't feel the need to walk the streets in mid 90 degree weather with 300,000 tourists. So we decided to go further south to Brevard, NC. We ran into the same problem there because of their summer music festivals. We finally found a reasonably priced hotel in Hendersonville, east of Brevard. We weren't disappointed, the town was full of great eateries, live music in the street, and great window shopping. We loved the surrounding mountains and landscape. It all added up to the perfect getaway.
Below are just a few pictures from my trip to Indiana to visit my sister Katie and her family. I traveled with my mom and my other sister Jennifer, plus her two children. Daniel loved the backyard pool. I can't get over how tall this rising second grader is!
Hannah and Rick Booth, with Rachel Brotherton. Hannah is very active in her local theatrical happenings. We all went to see her in the play, The King and I. I didn't get any pictures of her in her fancy, shiny costume. She was one of the many wives of the king of Siam. It is hard to see in this picture, but she dyed her normally very blond hair for the show.
Below is Molly, the Booth's family pet. She is super friendly and just loved having company to chase around the pool and take her on nightly walks in the neighborhood.

Mid July 2010

2010-07-14T15:28:00.001-07:00

It has been almost a year since my last garden post. A lot has changed, which kept me from keeping the blog updated. I switched to a new school, going from Christiansburg Elementary to Price's Fork Elementary. This also included a grade change from 5th to 1st, which was no easy feat for me. Early June, Clay and I found out that we were going to have an addition to our family!! My due day is Jan. 18th and that puts me in the middle of my 14th week. We knew this would speed up our need to make some changes to the house. We started with wanting to add a dishwasher, which meant we had to change the cabinets, which meant we might as well redo everything in the kitchen, hence the pictures of the gutted walls. The brick below was put in when Clay's grandparents used a wood stove. We are debating on cleaning it up and leaving some of it exposed??
Last year too much rain saturated our garden and caused our tomatoes to succumb to the blight and literally rot from the inside, stems, fruit, and all. This year Virginia is officially having a drought. Below you can see where the lack of rain has caused our septic pipe line to show, and has kept our corn and sunflowers from getting any height, but the tomatoes have grown nicely and are beginning to ripen.
Knee high corn that is beginning to put out tassels. We've had terrible luck with cucumbers in the past and this year two of our three vines are doing fairly well. The spotted and striped cucumber beetles are my nemesis. They are too little and quick to hand pick off, and love to hide down in the base of a new bloom. (In the background of this picture you can see the bottom of the fence that Clay had his friend Ryan Vaden put in. It has kept our neighbors ducks and dogs from coming over daily to do their business. The ducks liked our place so much they decided to nest and lay 13 eggs under our canoe!)
This is our sacrificial lamb, the eggplant. These little nasty black bugs just sucked the life right out of it. Maybe next year we will come up with a netting system to protect it.
One of my students gave me a thoughtful gift certificate to Crow's Nest so I went shopping in late June and most of the plants were pretty root bound and not looking their best, but I found a happy home for this sunny one.
I few items from the garden. We love how versatile red cabbage can be and planted about 6 this year. But what can you do with 6 cabbages at once? Luckily they don't rot quickly after ripening up so we just pick one about once a week. What I did discover was that they are a favorite home to earwigs. I pulled one out of the garden yesterday and turned it upside down to carry it it and probably a hundred earwigs came raining out, they were so quick to scatter somewhere for shelter, I had them crawling up my legs. Just like cabbage worms they do damage, but I have found that they rarely make it into the heart of the cabbage and after removing a couple of layers you are good to go. I probably should look into how to avoid providing an earwig hotel.

The potatoes have started to die back, so I figured it was time to go digging. The plants started out thriving. They were bombarded with the same little black bug that killed the eggplant. I think we sprayed once or twice and did a lot of handpicking for potato beetles. I noticed a few more predator insects this year, probably coming to feed on all the squished potato beetles I left behind. One was a shield bug and some different wasp like guys. When the days of 90 degrees heat and no rain hit, the potatoes were often left out of my efforts to water the garden. So I wasn't too surprised to find that they didn't produce very big tubers.

We still have lots of zucchini that need to be shredded for bread and enough cucumbers that I need to experiment with cucumber dip.
Clay's first summer project was outfitting a canoe that his buddy Todd is letting us use. It had one rotten seat and was otherwise nothing but a shell when we got it. So Clay replaced both seats and put in two support bars. He also spent a lot of hot hours trying to seal up a tiny crack int he bottom. Luckily it doesn't go all the way through, because the sealer popped lose on our first trip out, but it is not taking in water and seems to be working really well!!
Dyed Queen Anne's Lace made for a nice 4th of July bouquet.

New Garden Pest Discoveries
Striped Blister Beetle - I have seen this beetle mostly on our Roma tomatoes.

Random Pics from Bottom Creek Gorge

2010-05-02T16:49:00.000-07:00

Early August in the Garden

2009-08-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

Even with our tomato disaster, we've still enjoyed several side dishes from the garden. I dug up 2-3 hills of Kennebec potatoes. Some of them had been eaten on already. I thought about moles first, but after some reading and more digging I think slugs are doing some snacking. One of our favorite ways to fix potatoes is cut them into chunks and boil until slightly soft. Then we rub them with olive oil, add salt and pepper, and cover with lots of chopped rosemary and oregano, finally roast in the oven for about 30 min.
Our yellow pear tomato plant survived enough to give us a few treats. We're also getting a few from the sweet 100 plant and I found one decent roma. The other two bigger tomatoes came from a friend.
Clay's mom harvested about 40 ears of corn while we were gone. Clay and I harvested 34 ears, and yesterday I worked on preparing some for the freezer.
After shucking the corn and cleaning off the silks, which is one sticky mess, I brought the corn inside. Clay's mom let me borrow a great steamer. I steamed a few ears at a time for about 3.5 min. then placed them in an ice-bath for just a few seconds and laid them out to dry for a couple of hours. Then I just cut off the corn and vacuum sealed it. I ended up with seven bags that have about 4 ears of corn each.
I also made some pesto yesterday. I didn't take a picture of the final product, but the process is pretty simple. From the batch below I pulled off the best looking leaves. I washed the basil, gently in a strainer, because is bruises and turns black easily. I laid the leaves out on a towel to dry some. While the basil was drying a prepared the other ingredients:
3 cloves garlic - minced
3 Tbls pine nuts, or walnuts
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
(You need at least 2 cps, basil, tightly packed)

Then in a food proccessor I add 3/4 cup, tightly packed basil and whip for a few seconds, and then add 1/3 of each item above and blend. I had to fix it in smaller batches because my food processor is small, and it gives you a better consistency. Then I put the pesto in an ice-cube try, so that it can be frozen in smaller portions for future meals. After it freezes in the trays, I slide the cubes out with a knife and store in freezer bags.

I added some pesto to a buffalo burger that Clay made, and learned that a little goes a long way, it was yummy, but you don't need a lot, or I just need to use less garlic when I make it.

I'm going to continue digging up the potatoes, since some of them are being eaten, and hopefully store them in my mom's basement. Our basement holds too much moisture. So although it is probably cooler than my parent's, I think they would mold easily in ours.

Garden Disaster

2009-07-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

We're back from an incredible trip to Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National parks, plus some fabulous places in-between, and spending time with great friends. After we sort through hundreds of pictures, I'll pick some to post.

On the other hand, our garden didn't fair too well while we were gone. I'm sure there are many factors that played into the disaster. We made a special effort to mulch our plants well to keep the weeds down, keep moisture in, and for the garden to be low maintenance while we were gone. This must of back fired with all the rain. I knew the tomatoes had signs of blight that spreads quickly with a lot of moisture, so I also found an organic dust to use on the peppers and some tomatoes, which also may have caused damage instead of helping.?.

I went out this morning to begin assessing the damage and of course it started raining. I'll have to pull up all but 2 or 3 of the tomato plants. I haven't had a chance to see if the potatoes rotted and the peppers look like they could use some drying out as well. The corn and the sunflowers did love all the rain. Our second set of corn caught up to the first set and seems to look even taller. (Thanks, to Clay's mom for helping to harvest some of the corn while we were gone!) I picked a couple of cucumbers today that survived on a pitiful looking vine and I haven't ventured into our squash plants to see what is happening in there.

I'm sad about the tomatoes, especially since I grew so many of them from seed this year, but as I was pulling up the cages and plants I just thought this is one less chore I'll have later this fall when I'm trying to adjust to teaching a new grade and being at a new school. I also want have to stress about canning tomatoes or making salsa. We'll have a lot of thinking and reading to do before we plant next year. We may take a break from growing tomatoes or need to dig up a new plot for them in hopes that the soil is free from the blight causing spores.

Mid July

2009-07-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Just a few pictures before we leave for a two week trip in the mid west. I visited crows nest and picked 2 gallons of berries in less than 2 hours.
This is the first year we've seen blight like evidence on our pepper plants. The bottom leaves are turning spotty/brownish yellow and falling off. I did get an organic fungicide dust to use. It would have been best to have used it as a preventative measure, but I wasn't expecting to have problems with our peppers.
Butternut squash is coming in. This is the one squash plant that didn't look devastated early on by cucumber beetles and squash bugs, but they seem to be moving in and actually eating on the fruit not just the plant.
Our corn is still doing well, we hope to have some to eat when we get back!
One view from the entrance of the garden.
Little cabbage sprouts growing from the original cabbage plant, pretty cool, and they seem to be worm free for now.
Thanks Jessica, for all the pretty sunflower seeds. I love the shorter and smaller blooms that don't seem to get top heavy and fall over! This is such a lovely shade of yellow with the dark center!!! I think this is called Moonshadow.

Returning From the Beach

2009-07-04T17:59:00.001-07:00

Clay and I just returned from a week's vacation to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. We had beautiful weather the whole week and warm, Caribbean blue water. We spent most of our time out on the beach getting toasty in the sun and cooling off in the water. Rick took some of us crabbing at the Roanoke Sound. We caught and released several small fellows. They had to be 5 in. across the shell to keep and we didn't net enough for dinner, but had fun trying. We also did some kayaking on the sound and on the ocean. We didn't have any spills this year and although I don't have and pictures, dad made it out in the ocean just in time to hang out with the dolphins swimming by. We went to Roanoke Island and toured the Elizabethan Gardens one morning. Minus the mosquitoes we were really impressed with the variety of plants and how well maintained the gardens were. Their most showy flowers were all of the Hydrangeas. We took several pictures that I may try to post at some point, but I thought this view of the boxwood edged flower beds, through the archway was a nice one.

Clay and I spent one day driving from Nags Head to the Hatteras Inlet and rode the ferry over to Ocracoke Island. We lucked out on the way back and caught a beautiful sunset from the ferry.

The garden was not too out of control when we returned, thanks to Clay's parents for checking on it for us a couple of times while we were gone. We had 5 large yellow squash to harvest, one zucchini (our poor zucchini plants are looking pitiful), and 10 cucumbers. The cucs are coming in great, but the plants look like they may not last long. We directly planted some seeds to have plants producing later in the season, but they didn't survive the long week of hot days with no rain. Although they don't exactly look very pretty in the picture, our best surprise when we got back, would be the potatoes. I was afraid that the potato beetles would take over while we were gone and they did a fine job trying (I probably picked off over 50 easily, I couldn't find any rubbing alcohol on hand so I used a cup with vinegar and it did the trick), but they didn't keep the potatoes from growing down below. We dug up one plant and found six tennis ball sized, red potatoes and a couple smaller ones. The roots still had several buds waiting to grow, so I think we will have a good crop to harvest later in the season.
Our last red cabbage was harvested while we were gone, I will have to try to plant those more spaced out next year to extend the season.
The corn silks are showing up, so we need to add some mineral oil to them asap, to help keep the worms out.
The tomato plants do have signs of the blight, but still look pretty good at this point. I've been trimming the bottom leaves that are looking spotty. There are tons of small green tomatoes, but I have noticed a few that appear to have the blossom end rot problem.
Peppers look ok - not a lot happening with them so far.
We have a ton of weeding to do tomorrow and some other general maintenance.

Harvesting Red Cabbage and other Random Happenings

2009-06-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

Clay was away this evening so I needed to fix a quick easy meal for myself. I ended up with a baked potato and sauteed cabbage. Last year my new favorite vegetable discovery was okra and this year my new favorite has to be red cabbage. I sauteed a small amount of chives (easy substitute for onion - we never use an entire onion when cooking and the chives are on hand in the garden) then added the cabbage and seasoned with salt and pepper. After it wilted a little bit I added some red vinegar and continued cooking for another 4 min. or so. It makes any dinner plate colorful and has a load of health benefits. I also love the stuff raw, especially in salads.

So as I was eating I started thinking about the yucky slimy, green eggs that I've spotted on our cabbage in the garden and just what might be happening inside their growing heads (lovely thought over dinner). I decided that they were getting big enough to harvest and if left alone too much damage could be done. I learned about harvesting from this site. I only harvested two of our four, the biggest one and the one that looked like purple Swiss cheese it was getting so many holes. I did find a few cabbage worms, but I don't think the damage was too extensive. We will have to eat one soon, because I cut it in half to see how far in the worms could get. I definitely want to try cabbage again next year but I will be more alert for worms - once again I blame it on the rain this year.

Now the random stuff. I'm probably the only one that will know there is a cool insect in this picture. Hopefully you can see it if you click on the picture. I spotted a Familiar Bluet Damselfly hanging out around our sunflower bed. I'm thinking it was a male, they are more colorful, and this guy was an incredible turquoise color with black stripes.

I also spent some time this evening watching the lightning bug show outside. I forget how amazing these insects are, check out this site! The site mentioned that firefly larvae like to eat earthworms, slugs, and snails - well they should be feasting in our garden then, they can have all the slugs they can get! It said the adults feed on plant nectar, I noticed today that they seem to like eating basil.

One insect I haven't noticed until this year that I found is the Golden Tortoise Beetle. It is related to the the ladybird (ladybug) beetle, but unfortunately it does eat plants.

Pretty shot of a Wild Geranium bloom!

I did go to the Farmer's Market today with my friend Rose to look at some Native Plants from the Enchanted Gardens stand. I ended up getting two plants:
Butterflyweed (Asclepias Tuberosa)
Sundrops (Oenethera Fruticosa)
I still need to find homes for them and hope they become well established.

One more thing I enjoyed reading about today: How to Grow Tea!

2009-06-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

Clay and I used my car and lots of digging to pull out some old shrubs from in front of our house. As we were getting ready to replant, Clay remembered that he needed to check on the old pipes that drained water from our gutters. Sure enough he found some busted cast iron/terracotta pipes that needed replacing. So that delayed putting in our new flower beds but why dig up the area twice? He took a day off of work and his dad came down to help dig tunnels and put in new PVC pipes. They also extended the distance that the pipes drained, and all of this happen just in time for monsoon season here in Montgomery Co.
I wish we would have taken a picture of the front before we dug up all the plants, but below is an after picture. The grass seed has loved all the rain. Clay did a combination of tall fescue and Kentucky bluegrass, which made it look more natural when it came up. We also planted a Minuet Mountain Laurel, Elsie Lee Azalea, and Russian Sage on each side of the porch with a few other smaller plants.
I did two mixed flower pots. This one turned out to be my favorite. I decided they didn't have to match exactly. I can't remember the names of all the plants off the top of my head for these.
We planted some Nasturtiums in the front bed. They like well drained sandy soil, which is not at all what we have in the front, but so far they seem ok. We can always put some in the garden next year, but they added some nice color to the front.
We found a Cecropia Moth near our potato patch last week. It wasn't living when I found it, so I relocated it to a better spot for a picture. It is the largest moth in North America. Shortly after the moth was found, we saw some strange white eggs attached to one of our potato plants. I didn't make the connection at first, but after IDing this moth I think the eggs may have belonged to this moth. At the time I was only interested in removing the eggs and I didn't try saving them. These moths like to feed on deciduous trees, but they might have enjoyed the potato plants as well??
Random pictures of our neighbor's cat again. He really is a cute cat and he keeps Dave entertained. He is an incredible hunter, so I try to discourage him from our bird areas as much as possible, but you can only do so much.

One of my favorite plants at the house is our black raspberry. It is producing early this year with all the rain and I haven't had a chance to protect it with bird netting. For one it is much taller this year and when I went to get the netting it had a layer of neem oil on it that had spilled from last year. We really need to clean out and take inventory of everything in the smokehouse.

The garden is loaded with weeds even though we have tried all sorts of extra mulch to keep them at bay. We did black mulch paper which helps hold in moisture as well. Then covered that with either straw or grass clippings. I think the weeds come up too easily with the straw and the grass clipping tend to mold easily, but better than nothing. We did not do black weed paper for the walkways this year so they have thicker layers of grass clippings. We put in a second set of corn and you can see here the differences in the two, so hopefully we will have corn for more than just a two week span.
Just a pretty picture of some lavander that we bought from a guy in Asheville last year. I love perennial herbs.
I have this great children's book called "It's an Ant's Life," it is written like a journal from an ants perspective. I wouldn't have realized with out the book that these were the worker ants cleaning the grubs, which is the larva stage for ants.
Our neighbor came by one day a few weeks ago to warn us of a football size swarm of honey bees hanging out in one of our Leyland Cypress trees. We didn't get to see the full mass of bees but we did catch a few still hanging around the next day. I don't know much at all about keeping bees, but I think somewhere in the middle of one of these masses is the queen bee and if you can catch her then you can farm the bees, but that is not on my to do list.
I have mixed feelings about how well plants are doing in the garden. The squash plants were being eaten on pretty bad, squash bugs are so ugly and stinky, and one of my least favorite to try picking off by hand. I did what I could and then I did spray an organic insecticide on the plants and it did seem to help some. I still see several wilted leaves and suspect a warm borer has already done some damage. Cucumbers are doing ok, but the seeds we put out later did rot so I will need to put in some more tomorrow. Potato plants are waist high, but who knows what is going on down below. Our pepper plants haven't grown a lot, but seem to be bug free and happy. The tomato plants have grown a lot, but some of the stems seem to have gotten too much water and appear to be ready to bust, like they are rotting from the inside out, hopefully this is not the case for all of them. I saw some pretty ugly stuff in the garden when I checked on it Wednesday after the last long rainy day. There was a layer of green slimy eggs in one of the cabbage plants, probably hundreds of them. I saw several slugs and threw a few out of the garden today when I could finally get in there to do some weeding. I always wander if all of my other gardening friends have as much trouble with garden pests as we do???

Memorial Weekend Garden Images

2009-05-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

Red Cabbage - Ornamental and tasty.
You can't see much from this shot, unless you click on it. Front left we have lettuce, spinach, then peppers. Back left we have potatoes and tomatoes.
Our corn is coming up nicely.
Not so nice looking - our potato plants have been hit hard from the beginning. When they first came up the potato beetle's set in strong and I picked them off almost daily. Then a small black mite looking insect has done the most damage and they are too numerous to pick off. So to fight these guys we have used an organic spray and some neem oil.
We have stopped harvesting asparagus and we have not been able to control the weeds.
Our strawberries are starting to ripen up. The oldest plants have always produced small strawberries, but they seem even smaller this year and may need to be replaced for next year, but they are still very sweet and tasty. The plants we put in last year have not started producing much yet.
Thanks to Clay's co-worker, Dewey, we now have a new giant heap of horse manure mixed with pine shavings to use for compost. The pile to the left is all the sod that we have been digging up around the yard to fix our gutter runoff and from starting new flower beds.

Bonkers and Dave have an Encounter

2009-05-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

Hike at Mayapple Glen

2009-05-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

Mom and I went on a little walk behind Papaw Melvin's house today and decided to nickname it Mayapple Glen, because the Mayapples were thick as a blanket over much of the valley. We have had a lot of rain the past couple of days leaving everything green, green, green. I love the smell of a forest after a fresh rain. I was so happy to spot a couple Jack-In-The -Pulpit plants. The pulpit that surrounds jack is not the flower, it is a leaf bract.

We also spotted several Yellow Lady's Slipper plants. These plants have a very interesting pollination process. They require a specific fungi to be present in their roots in order to survive, and their bigger Pink counter parts are pretty rare.

Here is the bloom of the Mayapple. To find one of the blooms you need to spot a plant with two stems. When I was little I can remember calling these little plants Smurf homes. I guess it was the shape, because they are not a brightly colored toadstool, but it was still fun to imagine.

We also spotted several other flowers that I tried to ID when I got home. I think that we found:
Prairie Ragwort
Daisy Fleabane
Golden Star
Hoary Puccoon

Mid April Garden Days

2009-04-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

Clay worked really hard today tilling up a section of the garden for seed potatoes. We actually decided to till over the area we planted the sugar snap peas because there was no sign of life. We did three thirty-five feet rows. One and half rows are Red Pontiac, and one and half are Kennabec. We also planted our final blueberry bush, that we ordered by mail (Patriot).

The seedlings we planted are coming up well. I majorly over seeded each cup, thinking that some seeds may not germinate. Plus I only have a few containers and not nearly enough space in the garden for all these seedlings. I have been thinning them out daily, feeling horrible that I'm killing a possible beautiful tomato plant, I still have about five per container and there should only be one. I did replant some of the seedlings in potting soil mix instead of seed starter and put a few cucumber seeds in today. I also started some oregano, Imperial Larkspur, and Delphiniums in pots. I know that these can be directly sown, but we are not sure where to put them yet.

Color Code for Seedlings:
green-blank-green = Brandywine
green-black-green-black = Green Zebra
orange = Silentz
orange-green = Brandywine (2008)
black-orange-green = Risentraube
black = Purple Tomato (Sarah Black)
blue-orange = Red Belgian Pepper
blue-green = European Hot Pepper
plain = Early Russian Cucumber
We had our first asparagus harvest today. We usually like the skinnier pieces when we buy asparagus in the grocery store, but these were coming up pretty thick. We were pleasantly surprised that they didn't take long at all to cook and were perfectly tender and super yummy.

Garden Pics and Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory

2009-04-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

We have had horrible luck so far with planting an early spring crop. So far no sign of spinach, lettuce, or sugar snap peas that were planted two weeks ago. Although I planted a second round of peas and lettuce, so they still have a chance, I hope! Last year we tilled in a large truck load of horse manure to help fertilize the soil and we added compost and organic fertilizer with each row of seed or each hole for a plant. I was in such a rush to get something planted that I neglected to add any compost to the soil. I have some more seed to try to put in later today or this weekend. We did put in four red cabbage plants that need to be mulched (I hope to save some grass clippings for the next time we mow the yard). Also in the picture above we have returning oregano and lavender. Good News!!! In the picture below we have our first signs of asparagus coming up. We should be able to do a light harvest from the patch, because this is the second year it has been established.
Below are some pictures from our trip yesterday to Hanging Rock. Hanging Rock Tower is in Monroe County, West Virginia which is in the southeastern part of the state near the Virginia border. It is on part of the Allegheny Trail, which intersects with the Appalachian Trail.
The best time to visit the tower in in the fall from late August through October, during migration season. Our only bird sightings were Turkey Vultures, which we see every day down at the river and all over the place, but it was still amazing to see them at this elevation. We did see some other interesting birds and bird calls on the trail up, including some woodpeckers. The other great part about going this time of year was we had the place all to ourselves and the view is amazing. During peak season the spot can get up to 100 visitors daily.

This pictures shows why it is called Hanging Rock. The wind was not too bad (otherwise I wouldn't be sitting on the edge), I can easily imagine being swept off the rocks on a really windy day.
Elevation - 3812ft

The building has an interesting history including plenty of vadalism, requiring it to be rebuilt. It has to be hard keeping the shingles and the roof in good shape. There was one window with a broken latch that kept banging open and shut.
Meet Grendel!
On the way back we took Rt.600 to Paint Bank. We have visited this are before, but neglected to check out the buffalo farm. The sign is very entertaining.
After visiting the farm we ate at the local restaurant, Clay had a buffalo burgar and I had a grass-fed beef burgar, not too cheap, but very yummy. The history of the town is pretty fascinating. When reading about one of the old flour mills, that is being renovated to do demonstartins of the milling process, I realized that the owners of basically the whole town graduated from Roanoke College.
We were able to stay on the scenic country roads for the whole trip. We returned to McCoy just in time to catch the train.

Cold Mountain

2009-04-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

Clay and I traveled to Oronoco, Virginia (near Buena Vista) for a day hike. It took about 1 hour and 45 min. to get there. Then we hiked 5.8 miles to the summit of Cold Mountain (Which is actually Cole Mountain, but somewhere along the way the name changed). This is the first clearing we came to that is maintained as a campsite, with a large stand of mature Oak trees.

Bloodroot

This open meadow had a 360 panoramic view.

Elevation 4033ft.

One shot from the top.

A few other images we enjoyed along the way.

Barney's Wall

2009-03-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

This hike did not start out as planned. We started out with poor directions from a website for "Scenic Mountain Views Near Blacksburg". After deciding that the name of the road we were looking for had been changed , we did eventually find Paces Gap Rd (now Little Meadow). The "road" ended up being a complete mud hole, but Blueberry (my Subaru) made it though the sludge. We couldn't find the sign for the Nature Conservancy Trail, so again we went out on a limb and tried an unmarked trail that seemed to be in the right area. This side trail did lead to the right trail, but we didn't know which direction to turn when we found it. Our first two guesses of the day worked so we turned right and walked, then just as we were about to give in we spotted this sign!!
Barney's Wall turned out to be a sheer drop off of about 700 ft. It is not the kind of drop off that had little ledges sticking out on the way down, in fact the ledge you stand on it jutting out over the cliff. I'm not too scared of heights but this one made me nervous, especially with the wind blowing pretty good. It is hard to see the degree of the drop off in this picture but I didn't want to spend too much time near the edge, but those toothpick looking trees are not seedlings.
This is a side view of the wall.
The view looking out wasn't so bad either!
I did say I was nervous about the edge, but I couldn't resist another last look. Laying down kept me from feeling like I might just blow off.
On one of the side trails we stood under this pile of layered rock.

Below - Running Ceder
Right before we were about to get back to the forest service road (Little Meadow), I spotted our first critter sighting. Clay was sprinting ahead of me and almost stepped on these guys. (We were pushing to get back home before the VT B-Ball game) Meanwhile, I kept stopping to take random pictures like the two pics above, and at first glance I thought I was looking at one snake, but then realized it had multiple heads. We counted three garter snakes.

Lobster Day

2009-02-14T05:43:00.000-08:00

I went to Kroger's to buy some beef for a pot roast, and the nice man behind the counter told me I had to sign up to win a free lobster. I filled out the slip not wanting to hurt the man's feelings. The next day Clay sent me an email telling me that he had a voice mail from some man saying "Congratulations you won the lobster!" I had accidently put Clay's number down on the form and he had no idea what was going on. I went by Krogers after work to find out the details. I hadn't paid any attention to the lobster tank at all, since I was a kid and was fascinated by living creatures being at a grocery store. The man chuckled as he told me our lobster was the big one with the white bands around the claws. It was over 5 lbs! He assured me that they could steam the lobster if we didn't want to tackle it at home. So I planned to pick it up the next day.
We did have it steamed at Krogers, although Clay and I agreed that it would have been better if we would have tried it at home, so it was hot and fresh out of the pot. We did put it back in some warm water just to heat him up and we were lucky to find a pot that was big enough. We read that a 5lb lobster could cook for 23-25 min. and he was only steamed for 20 at Krogers so we also thought it was good to give him a couple more minutes.

Dave, our cat was terrified of the thing, as you can see here. It was easily as big as the cat. Clay was wishing we would have brought him home alive to watch Dave's reaction to it crawling around on the floor.
So here is the final set up. We had no proper lobster eating tools, so we had to go to the toolbox. We also used a regular nut cracker, which worked fine for me. The claws were so big that you could just pull chunks of the meat out with a fork, once you twisted the legs off. We decided that 5lbs is just too big. By the time we got to the tail it was getting cold and was actually a little tough. Older lobsters are probably not the best for good eating. We certainly had fun trying something we never would have purchased on our own, but we just couldn't finish it off. Dave was more than happy to help us clean our plates.

Cedar Run

2009-02-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

Today I had a chance to explore a little nature trail with a couple of my co-workers. We were trying to scout out the area to see if it would be a good hike for our Wildlife Club kids. It most likely would not be a great area to take the kids. There is a ton to see, but it is not really a long enough hike to allow them to use up a lot of energy. Plus there was very limited parking and several areas where monitoring even a small group of kids would be challenging. It is difficult to find a good spot to take 15-20 kids (with parents) on a hike where you do not risk having a negative impact on the surrounding area. The hike is just off of Ellett Road across from Buckskin Road. There are a couple stoned in areas where people collected water from springs and then several buildings that were used for storing the water for the people that settled in the valley. The trail runs right along Cedar Creek, which is surrounded by Northern White Cedar trees. Here are a couple of shots from our walk.

This was taken through a small hole in a huge water tank. A few musicians decided to put some stools down there and take advantage of the acoustics.

The roof of this old building collapsed, making a nice reflecting pool, with some cool colors.

Go Hokies

2009-01-21T19:07:00.000-08:00

Another far fetch from outdoor adventures, but I had to add this to my blog!!!!!

Crafty Crochet

2009-01-17T15:21:00.000-08:00

This has nothing to do with outdoor adventures or gardening, but who wants to go outside when it feel like 0 degrees outside. Plus since I've had a couple of snow days I've had time to venture upstairs and dig through my yarn baskets. I'm not sure who is suppose to have the time to crochet little mini stuffed animals, but for some reason I've been a little hooked on them, simply because they're so darn cute. When I visited my cousin Jessica last summer in Kansas I bought a book called "Amigurumi World." I'm not even sure how to pronounce the Japanese word, but it translates to "knitted stuffed toy," but the instructions are for crocheting. They are a great way to use up scrap yarn, but more time consuming than I expected because of sewing the pieces together, which I'm really not so good at. Below are my first two attempts. I will have to do something to make the bear's eyes stand out more. In the background are a few easy coasters that I made.
The following two pictures are afghans that I had previously made. These patterns were also chosen to use up scrap yarn. My mother-in-law is always giving my bags of yarn, which is fun because I never know what I'm going to get. The granny squares were really fun to make, but a pain to sew together. I've seen blankets since then that have a border between the squares and I think that looks a lot better.
More coasters.

Field Guides

2009-01-02T11:14:00.000-08:00

Since I started the Virginia Master Naturalist class I have been reading/reviewing various field guides. Santa left Clay and I each a field guide one for Insects and one for Caterpillars. They are part of the "Peterson First Guides" series, very small and easy to use. I needed to clean out the leaves and other various trash items that had blown under our rhododendron plant near our porch. As I was raking I discovered this little jewel tying to overwinter beside our porch.

You can see how we rolled up into a ball for protection and reviewed the red stripes on his body. They are easier to see if you click on the picture.

So I got to use my new field guide and discovered I had a Giant Leopard Moth. My little guide discussed what to do if you want to "rear" the larva, and I couldn't resist, my students will be so fascinated by this guy. Wish me luck, I will feel terrible if he dies before emerging. This is a link about the moth that another curious naturalist wrote, notice the adult moth picture!

At the same time I took the picture of the caterpillar I discovered the little bugs in the background and got to use my other field guide.
These appear to be a scentless plant bug called Box Elder Bugs. They congregate in large numbers to hibernate during the winter, sometimes choosing human abodes to do so.

I also wanted to include a couple of sunset pictures that Clay recently took. I really like the pink reflection on the river.

Current Reading

2008-12-29T15:07:00.000-08:00

My posts are far and few between, due to the lack of any outdoor adventures. I am looking forward to browsing a few seed catalogs as we prepare for next years garden. I have had more time for reading since I'm not outdoors as much, plus having a winter break from work helps. The following is a quote from the current book I'm reading titled, " The Unsettling of Am erica."

"It is possible, then, to believe that there is a kind of work that does not require abuse or misuse, that does not use anything as a substitute for anything else. we are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone."

The last sentence really rang a bell for me. The following review is a great summary of the book highlights.

I hope to post more pictures again soon, I've neglected using the camera for awhile, although we've had some beautiful sunsets and a few birds at our bird feeders that I would like to photograph.

Devil's Marble Yard

2008-11-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

Clay and I took a Black Friday hike to the Devil's Marble Yard to work off a few Thanksgiving calories. You can see how the destination got it's name! We didn't spend too much time at the marble yard at first because we were concerned about not having time to complete the rest of the 11 mile hike before dark.

I really liked how something as simple as tree bark could make such a cool picture. Great texture and colors.

Late fall colors.

The two pictures above were taken after we left the Gunter Ridge Trail and met up with the Appalachian Trail. We then left the AT to an un-maintained Sulphur Spring Trail with an opening called the "Helicopter Pad." The deep blues and purples of the Blue Ridge Mountains were spectacular.

After the 3 mile detour on the AT we were suppose to do a loop back to the parking lot, but didn't want to get caught in the dark. So we headed back to the Marble Yard, cutting the hike short by about 2 miles, and spent some time exploring the boulders. This picture does a decent job of showing the magnitude of how big the boulders were. One of the dark patches on the right is me (click on the picture for a clearer view). I didn't realize how much my legs would hurt after hopping from rock to rock. My legs felt like jello and didn't want to function at all after we got back on the main trail.

Here are a few more pictures of the Devil's Marbles.

Flurries and Brussel Sprouts

2008-11-18T19:30:00.000-08:00

We had a dusting of snow on the ground today. All the surrounding counties were either delayed or closed, but Montgomery County schools were on time. All the teachers were a little pouty for the first couple of hours to say the least. I was just happy to be able to stand up straight after spending two days in bed, feeling very SICK.

We fixed a yummy pizza for dinner, and my appetite is almost back to normal. We actually have leftovers, which doesn't always happen. Clay also had his first taste of Brussel Sprouts, and said he would try them again, just not in large amounts! I use to turn up my nose to these little mini cabbages when my mom fixed them, but have grown to like them. Plus I'm willing to eat almost anything that I take time to plant in the garden. They were attacked by pests pretty bad when still young. I did end up spraying them with an insecticidal soap, but tried my best just to hand pick any little green worms off. Clay kept teasing me about the plants because the edible parts were no bigger than peas for the longest time. Then after it stayed consistently cooler they really took off. So they ended up being a fun plant that I will try again next year I hope.

These pictures are not the prettiest, but it is rare to have anything green left in the garden at this point!

Chocolate Eclair Cake

2008-11-13T18:24:00.000-08:00

I can remember my mom asking me what type of Birthday cake I would like and my answer being chocolate eclair. It has now become my staple go to recipe for special events. The fifth grade teachers are hosting a Goody Day for the staff at CES tomorrow, so I prepared old faithful. As I stood stirring the homemade icing I thought about how many times my mom has stood over the stove waiting for the chocolate mix to boil. I also wondered how many people besides my mom and I actually cut the graham crackers to make them fit just right in the casserole dish. Then after all is done and the cake is chilling in the fridge using the broken pieces of graham crackers to clean the pudding, cool whip, and icing bowls, yum, yum! I can remember my first attempts at the dessert didn't go so well. I tried putting the icing on too soon and didn't have the cake layered evenly so it all just rolled off to the side, looking like a soupy mess. So I hope my attempt tonight still looks pretty by the time I get to work tomorrow.

Besides chocolate eclair I have also made mom's stuffed peppers a staple recipe at home, as well as her spaghetti sauce. Nothing beats the taste of home sweet home. Although I know Clay is waiting for me to master a few recipes that remind him of home, potato soup keeps coming up as a suggestion!

For any of those that read, what are your favorite recipes that remind you of your childhood home?

I'm off to hope the Hokies pull off a win!

Brinner for Dinner

2008-10-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

I have become a big fan of Brinner for dinner, which is just a fun way of saying breakfast for dinner.

More importantly I just had to write a quick post that I finally prepared kale for dinner that I truly enjoyed. I didn't mind it in the past, but it was more of, I better eat this stuff because it is packed with nutrients and is good for me. Tonight I just simply heated some oil in a skillet and added some garlic. Once the garlic turned a little darker and smelled good and ready I added the kale (this time I chopped it up smaller), a little bit of water, pepper, a little salt, red pepper flakes, and even a little bacon (because we were already fixing it for the other part of our dinner). I let it simmer for at least five minutes until the kale was wilted but still a bright green.

I think part of the reason I liked it so much was because it went so well with the eggs, bacon, and black beans and rice that we fixed for Brinner!

It's Been a Busy Day

2008-10-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

Dave's Fall portraits!!

This is Dave's friend, we call him Frisky.
Clay took this picture early one morning before work.
This is just a hint of what our ladybug infestation looked like. It started last weekend and lasted for about 5 days.
This looks like what use to be a tomato horn worm, but the black part on the head seems unusual.
The next two pictures were taken on a hike at Glen Alton. These pictures were taken 10-12-08.
This is a sourwood tree. We were excited to see one because Clay and I went to the Sourwood Festival in Black Mountain, NC this summer.

We hiked on a side trail called Kelly Flats, but this is the main entrance to Glen Alton. I love these gates.

Back to 10-18-08 The Wildlife Club at CES had their Fall hike today. We ended up going to Camp Alta Mons, one of my favorite places. I haven't hiked there in the fall. I was a little bit worried about the little ones falling on the wet leaves and hidden rocks, but no one went home with any scars. We had 4 teachers (Including Denise Washington from New Orleans, she was excited to be out with us because she didn't grow up spending a lot of time outdoors, she said she might go home a "tree hugger."), 5 students, 4 parents, and one little brother. One of the girls ended up with a wet foot on the first of three creek crossings. She seemed to be pretty uncertain of the whole experience on the way up, but once she got to the falls she was loving it. She kept scooping up handfuls of water and was so eager to explore everything. She was much more confident on the way home and crossed the creeks on her own with no mis-steps. I think we met our goal of getting some families out hiking and enjoying the Fall colors. Claire one of my co-workers had a great motto she had heard, "No Child Left Inside!" I got some great photos of the students, but I wouldn't want to post them without permission, so I just included some nature shots.

Shelf Fungi.

I named these marshmallow fungi!

We are expecting to have a freeze tonight, so we worked late in the garden. We continued to pull up the tomato plants. I picked the green tomatoes, thinking I could try to see if they would ripen up inside. We pick most of the basil to dehydrate. We dug up one basil plant to pot and bring inside, hoping to keep fresh basil around a little longer. The clover Clay planted is doing well and will make a good ground cover to keep the soil from blowing away and can be tilled into the soil when spring comes. We just left the pepper plants alone to brave the cold. If the plants freeze and die we will collect the rest of the peppers. I didn't have the energy to cover them with a sheet and try to keep them going a week or so longer.

A closer view of the peppers, some lettuce, and kale.

For such a big plant the Brussels sprouts are still very small. I'm still hoping to have at least one meal with them, and I've always liked the small ones anyway!

One last view of the evening before dark.

I tried to post a couple pictures of the October Fun Day that we had at church today, but It didn't work, and I don't have the patience to try again just now. I have to say my favorite moment was when all the adults and one child were doing the Hokie Pokie, while all the kids watched. I'm pretty sure it was suppose to be the other way around!

Overdue Update

2008-10-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Just a few quick pictures of what is left in the garden. Clay took these pictures about two weeks ago. We don't have any sunflowers left but the cosmos are still bright and colorful.

We are still getting a lot of bell peppers from the garden. I'm trying to keep my ears open to when the first freeze will be here. I will need to pick anything left growing to put in our freezer before then. The latest peppers are super sweet and great for salads or eating fresh. We also have several hot peppers that I could pick and let dry out.

I have loved the mesclun lettuce that we planted this fall. The combination of different greens have such a varied taste that you really don't need to add anything else to the salad except dressing. The spinach didn't do well at all, you can barely find the baby leaves among the weeds. The kale is doing great, but I can't seem to find a favorite recipe to use it. I've been giving bags away to any takers.

Other garden adventures have been taking place at Christiansburg Elementary with the Wildlife Club. The students have enjoyed snacking on the last cherry tomatoes, picking weeds, finding worms, smelling herbs, and turning the compost bin (that isn't really composting well, they just like to turn it). We have so many great ideas to do with the club, just not enough time to organize it all. I have also been helping to keep up our school pond that has turned a snotty green because our pump broke. We got it fixed for free with the help of Tetra Aquatic and it is slowly clearing up. I love having my classroom near the pond. I can send a few kids out at a time to read in the fresh air and watch them from my window or take the whole group out. At the end of the day I let the second load bus kids go out and help skim the pond to scoop out all the leaves that are piling up in it.

I also had my first Virginia Master Naturalist fieldtrip at Glen Alton and another trip tomorrow at Brown's Farm. I can't wait to spend some time outdoors with the perfect fall weather!!

The Kindness of Neighbors

2008-09-09T17:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight Clay and I had a wonderful feast with several goodies from my neighbors garden. He has grown several things that I've never tried to grow or at least didn't grow this year. Here is what we had in pictures.
Okra has become one of my favorite foods this summer. A friend of Clays had us over for dinner and prepared some grilled okra with olive oil and salt. It is best as a finger food because the skin can be tough to cut, so just pick it up by the tail end and dig in. I had never eaten okra before or had I seen it growing from a plant. So shortly after my first taste of okra my neighbor calls over the fence hoping that Clay and I might be interested in some of his okra before the deer ate it all. Since then we have fixed okra three times thanks to John (our neighbor). I look forward to trying to grow some next year!! (The picture was taken after rubbed in olive oil, but before it was cooked).
We didn't actually eat any of the carrots with our dinner but they will be in my salad for lunch tomorrow. I have grown carrots before but not purple carrots! John informed me of a little carrot history that you can read about here, that helps explain the purple part. (The tomatoes came from our garden, our constant supply just made a nice backdrop).
Here are the carrots after I washed them up. I was amazed by the color.
John probably wouldn't want me to post this picture because the watermelon was not quite ripe. I was actually able to get several sweet, juicy bites from it. The other reason I went ahead and posted this picture is because I already ate the first watermelon that he gave us that was perfectly ripe. It was just the right size to cut in half and just use the rind as a bowl.

These grapes smelled incredible. Before John and Kim moved in the house next door was vacant. Clay and I would wander over sometimes during the summer and snack on a few grapes when they were ripe. We were very happy to have such great neighbors move in, who continued to let us snack on the grapes.

This last picture is not from our neighbor's garden. This weekend I visited some other neighbors on the river named Faye and Dudley Scott. Faye just happens to be my grandmother Rubel's sister. I have always admired their house and garden when I drove by. Papaw went with me to their house for a Sunday visit. I was given a brief history of the McCoy mines and the ferry located where Clay and I got married. Faye showed me her basement full of canned food. Dudley showed me two giant tanks he uses to collect rainwater and if that runs low he has a system set up to pump water from the river. Of course they wouldn't let me leave empty handed. I took home a book titled "McCoy, Virginia Remembered," (This book has pictures of Clay's grandfather that built and lived in the house we are in now!) and a couple Brandywine tomatoes. I wish I would have taken a picture of the tomatoes before I cut them, they were so pretty. They also made the best caprece salad that I have eaten all summer! (This is the salad before I added balsamic vinegar.

Finally, I had my first meeting for the Virginia Master Naturalist program last night. One of my first assignments was to look up some information on a local species. We drew animals from a basket and I got the Eastern Spotted Skunk, so I included a link. We were just given a brief overview of the program and discussed keeping a nature journal, book or electronic. I hope to keep a book but will continue to post info here of the fieldtrips we take.

A Few Random Pictures

2008-08-31T18:40:00.000-07:00

I love finding bizarre shaped veggies in the garden.
Most of you reading know by now that I actually like learning about the critters in the garden, especially if they aren't eating anything I'm hoping to eat later. Click on the picture to see the bright yellow spider above.
I got this pitcher plant at the downtown market in Roanoke at the beginning of last summer. It started out with beautiful pitchers that were actively catching insects. Then one by one the pitchers seemed to dry up and some of the leaves were looking a little cooked also. I brought the plant inside over the winter and continued to water it, but was not expecting much since it is a tropical plant and the weather in McCoy is not exactly tropical. But as you can see after putting it back outside this summer and giving it plenty of water and misting it is happily growing more pitchers. I was pretty pleased with my success and hope to take it into my classroom. I think the kids will love it.
The peppers below were sliced and put into our dehydrator, except for the serrano, which were put in whole. They turned out pretty good although it took about three days for them all to finish. I sliced the jalapeno peppers too small and several fell through the trays of the dehydrator, so I may just try cutting them in half next time.
Below is a lovely picture of some of the tomatoes that my mother in-law canned for me.
I have only cooked with butternut squash once before, so it looks like I need to be on the search for some new recipes to use!

Flower Pictures

2008-08-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

This last picture was taken at the Biltmore Estate in NC. It is a pizza garden and it is planted in slices. Each slice is represents a different ingredient that would go on a pizza. Pretty neat!

Odds and Ends

2008-08-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

This guy was already dead when I came across it in the yard, but I was so impressed with the colors I snapped a photo anyway.
Here is a mixture of some of the goodies still growing in the garden. I picked around 50 red tomatoes to give to my mother in-law, who is going to can some whole and make some juice with them. We are also loaded with yellow tomatoes and I'm giving them to anyone I come across, but we know not to plant so many of them next year since they do not can as well.
I pulled the weeds that had covered the Brussels sprouts I planted in July. I don't know much about what to expect from these plants. Some of the leaves have been heavily chewed. I actually sprayed them with an insecticidal soap. I also discovered about 10 little worms all curled up inside the very center of one of the plants. I couldn't believe how packed they were in there.
I thought it was neat to see the old corn and the new corn that is just coming in. I was really worried that the new stuff would not fill out since we've had so little rain, but I had some tonight and it was delicious! I also picked the rest of the butternut squash that you see in this picture. A couple of them were spoiled where some little critters had dug into them. Man there is some gross stuff hanging out in the garden sometimes.
Clay and I finally planted some fall crops. Here is a mixture of red and green leaf lettuce and some mesclun mix. Then off to the left of these plants I put in some spinach, kale, and broccoli seed.

I've used the dehydrator twice. First a filled five trays with cherry tomatoes, which took about 1 and 1/2 days to finish. Then today I filled five trays with basil leaves and they started finishing in about 1 and 1/2 hours. I so have to rotate the trays. The bottom trays and the produce near the center of the dehydrator dry faster so I have to check on it pretty regularly to keep stuff from turning black.

2008 Prices Fork Fair

2008-08-17T15:03:00.001-07:00

I was really hoping to get some pictures for those of you who read this blog that grew up attending the PF fair. I deliberately went home to get my camera and change into my PF fair 75th anniversary T-shirt from last year, so I would be showing the fair spirit when I helped mom with Little Miss Prices Fork. Of course the big draw back to digital cameras is they have to run on batteries and even though my camera was working that morning it didn't have enough juice to take a single picture at the fair. This year it didn't rain either day so there was a good flow of visitors on both days. There were some new booths including a cool lavender booth set up by a lady who grows her own lavender plants on Norris Run. We didn't have enough exhibits to need both floors of the grange but it seemed like more people were participating. With the steady rain we have had this summer the flowers were spectacular and farm and garden seemed to have a boost also. For the past two years Prices Fork Elementary has posted their teacher list at the fair and offered to let students do their talent show acts at the fair. I think this has been great and has brought some new faces to the fair. I also really enjoyed the music by Dean Trimble and Friends. One of the guys singing happened to be grandma Rubel's son in-law.

Getting Ready for the Fair

2008-08-15T19:27:00.000-07:00

Since I can remember my family has participated and helped out at the Price's Fork Fair. I like to carry on the tradition except instead of entering my dressed up doll and 4-H crafts I mainly have veggies and flowers. Thursday after work, going on a short run, and looking at floor tile with Clay I went to the garden to harvest as many goodies as I could find. I collected red and yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green bell peppers, one yellow bell pepper, anaheim, serrano, and jalapeno peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, corn, a few beans, purple peppers, and butternut squash. I also had one volunteer pumpkin and a volunteer melon of some sort.
Mom came down and helped me arrange all of these for a "collection of fruits and vegetables" entry. She helped me spice it up with a few herbs, kale, and lettuce leaves. Clay added a few strawberries for a bit of color. Dave wanted to help too!
Here is the final product.
Friday morning I got up early to pick flowers. I'm not very good at making arrangements, so once again I took these to mom for some help. She even contributed a cool looking long stemmed flower to fill in the center that isn't in this photo.

A close up of the arrangement and one of the individual sunflowers we entered. When I drove the flowers up to mom's house she commented, "Do I take the bees with the sunflower?" (Zoom in to see them) I didn't think the bees would hang on. I'm not sure if they were dying or just in a drowsy state from it being early in the morning. I noticed they seemed frozen to several of the flowers and you could just knock them off like they were in a coma??

I did visit the fair after work. Clay and I did get serveral ribbons which is always fun. (Actually Clay really doesn't get into taking exhibits, but I put a few things in his name since he contriubtes a lot to the work). I may take some pictures at the fair tomorrow for a follow up post.

From Garden to Table

2008-08-07T16:41:00.001-07:00

Today, when it wasn't raining I was busy weeding and finding some ripe goodies. I picked:
3 cucumbers, a quart of cherry tomatoes, 10 tomatoes (mix of red and yellow), 2 squash, 2 zucchini, 4 ears of corn. Clay and I leave to go out of town tomorrow so I wanted to use as much of this as possible for dinner. I fixed a Tomato Zucchini Casserole (Thanks to my sister Katie for this recipe!!) I rarely fix a casserole that my husband and I really enjoy eating and this one worked! Then I just sliced up some cucumbers and cooked some corn for the side dishes. Clay made a caprese salad also. We finished it off with a peach cobbler made from peaches that Clay's boss gave us. I will need to work on perfecting that dish a little.

Here is the recipe for the Tomato Zucchini Casserole
1 1/2 c grated cheddar cheese
1/3 c graded Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp dried oregano (I used about 1 tsp fresh)
1/2 tsp dried basil (I used a little over 1 tsp fresh)
2 cloves minced garlic
salt and pepper to taste
2 medium zucchinis (slice thin)
2 tomatoes (slice thin)
1/4 c butter
2 tbls finely chopped onion
3/4 c fine bread crumbs

*I used one squash in place of a zucchini and one yellow tomato, which made it very colorful!

Preheat over to 375, lightly butter 9x9 pan. In a large bowl combine both cheeses, herbs, and garlic. Season with salt and pepper then set aside. Arrange half of the zucchini slices in the pan, sprinkle with 1/4 cheese mixture, arrange half of the tomatoes and sprinkle with 1/4 cheese mixture, then repeat layers. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in onion and cook until soft and translucent. Stir in breadcrumbs, cook until they have absorbed the butter and sprinkle on top of casserole. Cover loosely with foil and bake for 25 min. Remove foil and bake until the top is crusty and the veggies are tender, which takes about another 15- 20 min.

Clay and I did freeze some corn a couple of nights ago. The process consisted of shucking the corn and pulling the strings. Then rinse just a little and steam for seven minutes. Right after they steam dip them in ice water and immediately remove to a dishrag or paper towel to dry. I let them dry for at least two hours and I replaced the paper towels as needed. I probably could have used a drying rack if I had one! Then we cut the kernels off (about 3/4 deep on the kernels) and used a vacuum sealer to get the air out of the baggies. First time using a vacuum sealer that a friend gave us and we love it!

Dragon's Tooth

2008-08-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

After dad's hike at Camp Altamons he has been motivated to keep hiking, which I think is super cool! So today we took on a not so easy day hike up to Dragon's Tooth. Here is one view a little over half way up.

These bugs were everywhere at the lower parts of the trail.
Updated: After using a field guide I believe these are Milkweed Bugs. I see these a lot when running in the late summer when new nymphs are emerging on the milkweed plant. The field guide I was using says that they often stray far from the plants, which would be the case here.

Here is dad looking through the two big "teeth" out over the valley below.
I didn't climb to the peak of the tooth but I did get halfway up on one, pretty incredible view.
This shows how high the tooth is and you can see why I didn't climb up to the top of it.

Can't wait for our next hike.

2008-08-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

I don't have many pictures for this post, but if you zoom in on this one you should find an amphibious garden visitor.

This morning I made blackberry jam with my grandma. She had a very cool machine called the Squeezer II, that was probably made to deseed tomatoes. She used this to deseed two out of four cups of the berries we used in each batch of jam. I also made some pesto for dinner with enough extra to freeze some. My friend suggested using an ice-cube so that I could freeze small amounts that could easily be sepparted for future dinners. It worked spendidly. I've been eating a lot of sweet corn straight from the garden and have the freezer bags now to freeze some. Clay put vegetable oil on the silks of the first set of corn we planted and I have found very few worms!!! Although, I have seen a lot of earwigs down at the bottom of some of the ears. I will need to put vegetable oil on the second set we planted tomorrow also!

Identifying two new pests.

2008-08-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

Kale - Harlequin BugTomato - Colorado Tomato Beetle (I thought I had two pests to identify but found one to be the larva of this beetle.Adult Harlequin Bug and the Adult Colorado Tomato Beetle

Colorado Tomato Beetle Larva (Zoom in for a better image.)

Flowers Plus Garden Woes and Worries

2008-08-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

Mom's Green Thumb!

This last picture if zoomed up on shows a very creepy little critter that had his lower body attached to the squash and was probably the same critter that decorated the squash with the fancy, curvy artwork.

I've been very interested in finding out about all the living organisms in the garden, but on several occasions I've been completely grossed out, and scared of what I might discover if I keep looking so closely. Sometimes I just want to turn a blind eye. I threw out one of our squash plants that wilted overnight, victim to a stem borer most likely. I'm seeing similar signs of damage on my other varieties of squash plants.

I have felt overwhelmed by all the rain we have been having. The garden is getting out of control. The plants that I want to grow such as the tomatoes are turning yellow, and the lower fruit on the pepper plants are starting to rot on the bottom. The only plants loving this much rain seem to be the weeds, of course.

I also pulled up the rest of our bean plants that were completely covered by the squash beetle larva. Everyone bragged about how pretty the first harvest of beans were, but the new beans were covered in holes and some were looking very rusty. I found a few good beans to save for a future meal. I'm actually happy to have an area of the garden cleared for a fall crop.

This is the time of the year that I get scared of plants dying before the veggies are ready to be harvested or that I will get so much stuff that I want be able to preserve it all, and I will end up wasting a ton of good food. I have one gardening friend that just got a dehydrator and we used it for making some dried tomatoes, which is a method I never tried before. I also need to find a good way of drying some of my herbs before they go to seed or die. I've tried drying basil several times but have had no luck. I should probably just make a lot of pesto to freeze and save.

Besides gardening tasks that need to be done I will be making blackberry jam with my grandma this Monday morning. We went to Crows Nest Farm to pick berries on Wed. It is amazing how much bigger the u-pick berries are compared to the wild ones I'm use to picking with grandma, and even weirder is that the plants have no thorns. I'm not complaining, but it makes me feel like I'm cheating.

I will also need to be picking and freezing corn this week. I will be eating some also, one of my favorite summer treats.

Canning Beans, Camp Alta Mons, and Dave

2008-07-27T19:19:00.001-07:00

This past Thursday my parents came to help me pick the tenderettes (green beans). My mom was horrified when she arrived because I was pulling up the whole plant to pick the beans, and I was wasting a future crop. I pulled the plants on purpose because the leaves were so eaten up by the same little yellow beetle larva that was on the squash. They also made fun of me for being determined to kill as many as possible. I did leave the plants that were not eaten on so bad and may get a few more to pick. Mom took a mess of beans home with her and I took the remaining beans to my mother in laws to can. We ended up with 14 quarts, I think we could have gotten 21 if we had the ones that mom took but I was ready to be done and we had enough left after the 14 to give more away and cook some for the church service at Camp Alta Mons.

The service at Camp Alta Mons is a yearly tradition. Several of my favorite childhood memories took place at this camp when I was little. Many things have changed since then but I still love to go. The creek that I use to find and collect crayfish from has almost dried up, it was redirected to fill a giant pond that never filled?? A few of us hiked to the falls. (Nobody went rock hopping up the creek like we (myself and all my cousins) did way back when!) The falls have turned into a trickle and there is no swimming hole at the bottom, it seems to have filled up with silt along with some shifting in the rocks below.

The basket in the back is twice as big as the one in the front, so we had a lot of beans.

We have been in strawberry heaven this year!
I have been obsessed with learning about all the pests in the garden this year. Here are the squash bug eggs and nymph stages. They were hatching out like crazy for a couple of days but I think the outbreak is over for now, I hope.

I think these eggs look so amazing when you zoom in on them, they are from the squash beetle.

Here is a view of the falls at Camp Altamons.
My first photo of human beings. My sister, dad, and me!

My sister's son spotted this snail on the trail.Finally, here is a picture of our cat Dave. We got him as a wild, ferrell cat. We took him to the vet to be vaccinated and neutered. They clipped his ear in case he ran away when we got him home. Since we was use to running wild we had no idea what he might do. At first we didn't see him for several days, but we kept putting food out that was getting eaten. Then my husband used a sensor camera to snap a photo proving he was the critter eating the food in our barn. At that point he started showing up every night around 7:00 and we slowly got him to let us feed him there a little and even touch him. Before we knew it he was at our house all hours of the day and spends most of his time on our porch. He craves attention, is constantly under our feet, and follows us around in the yard like a puppy. So we have a real pet!

Returning to the Garden!

2008-07-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Some of these pictures were taken before I left to visit my sister in Indiana.
Before I left I made pesto, for a pesto shrimp pasta dinner with salad. Everything in the salad came from our garden, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, peppers, and strawberries!!
A few pictures of the garden before I left.
This is one huge cherry tomato plant.

I've been away from the garden for five full days. It is amazing how fast things change. Clay picked 23 cucumbers in one day while I was gone and several squash. Today I harvested another 11 cucumbers and 12 yellow squash a couple zucchini and several cherry tomatoes. I cut up about three squash to freeze for later stir-frying, grated two zucchini for future baking. Later today or tomorrow I will give away as much as possible!!

I tied up several tomato branches that were dragging the ground and staked a couple cages that were falling over. The blight on the tomatoes is still spreading and the first ripe tomato Clay picked ended up being rotten. It is so nerve racking waiting to see if any of the tomatoes will be edible (not counting the cherry tomatoes). We will either be swimming in tomatoes soon or throwing away a rotten harvest. Our bean plants also have a blight, but it shouldn't be devastating to the crop. I'm thinking the beans are ready to be picked so I will be working on that very soon.

It rained last night after three very dry days! Clay watered a little bit while I was gone. Although the squash plant is producing like crazy the pests are starting to devour the plant. I have spotted the squash bug (it looks like a stink bug), and the squash beetle. The beetle larvae is a little yellow, fuzzy looking worm that I had to hand pick off today, and squish to kill, yuck! I also picked off as many squash bug egg clusters as I could find. I'm not using chemicals, but I read they wouldn't help anyway because most of the pests are found under the leaves and near the core of the plant. Hand picking before it gets out of hand is the way to go.

I also watched an excellent farm documentary last night called "The Real Dirt on Farmer John." It is a very positive and inspiring documentary compared to many that I watch that seem to focus on devastating tragedies. I highly recommend it!!!

Below is today's harvest in pictures!

School Garden and Mountain Lake Hiking

2008-07-15T12:03:00.001-07:00

I decided to post a few pictures of the garden beds I'm helping out with at CES. I'm embarrassed by all the weeds, but maybe I can get a few people to help me clean things up better before the students come back. There are nine fenced in beds. I'm only using five of them now so I will have four to play with when school is back in session.

Here is the squash, zucchini, and basil bed. The sunflowers popped up from last years seeds.
I have not seen any of these insects on my plants at home but there were lots of them on the squash plant at school. I need to research this one. Click on the picture to see him up close. (I saw an article in a gardening magazine today that suggested keeping a list of insects found in your garden and to identify them by preserving one in a little medicine container that you freeze overnight to use as a specimen. Clay will love having insects in our freezer!!)
This picture is out of order, we don't have a fern bed with a beautiful forest behind it at school. This is up at Mountain Lake, War Spur Trail.
This is the flower bed the kids helped me plant. It is packed with sunflowers and cosmos (I think!) It probably needs to be thinned a lot. The big barrel in the back is a compost turner that was donated to us from the librarian. I'm not having much luck with it, but I'm not there to turn it often during the summer.
Another picture of the squash bed with a view of the purple basil and lots of weeds. We put the black weed paper down between the beds at the end of school. It is puffing up as a lot of grass continues to grow underneath.
This is one of the tomato beds. We just planted cherry and Roma, so there would be more for the kids to pick if they are still producing then. We have another tomato bed with some peppers, but they are not doing as well.
This is the herb bed. It has dill, Thai basil, mint, chives, and rosemary. Plus we through in a rhubarb plant.
From mountain lake we saw a lot of rhododendron.
A view of the hotel from the far side of the lake. Those that have been here before know that the level of the lake is shockingly low.
Colorful shelf fungi.
Another view of the now horseshoe shaped lake.
I liked this picture of the tree roots blending in with the rocks.

Gardening Question

2008-07-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

For any of those reading that garden I wanted to see if anyone has used a copper spray for their tomatoes to fight the blight and other diseases. Clay and I have used a product called "Dragon Dust," although we mix it with water and use as a spray. It is considered organic from the reading that I have done, but I still felt weird spraying once fruit was starting to grow on the plants. Besides the spray I just continue to trim the leaves that are blighted.

Purple Peppers and Weekend Events

2008-07-14T09:47:00.001-07:00

Our peppers are coming in much earlier this year for us! We have harvested this purple one and several anaheim peppers. We used the purple one in a salad, but learned a great recipe from a friend for the anaheim. We broiled the peppers until they were a little charred then put them in a plastic bag to "sweat." Then the skins were suppose to be very easy to peal off. Cut a slit in the pepper and stuff with cheese. Prepare some whipped egg whites and fold in some of the yolk for a batter. Dip the stuffed peppers into some flour then the batter and deep fry. This was super yummy!! I don't have any pictures because these were fixed at our friend's house, where we also enjoyed some amazing zucchini gazpacho soup.

On Friday Clay and I enjoyed the above described dinner. Saturday we attended a wedding at Maison Beliveau. A beautiful bed and breakfast located in Catawba Valley. My favorite part would be the lavendar walk ways, the smell was spectacular. Sunday we had a guest preacher, Mr. McPhail at church and then celebrated the 130 year anniversary with a picnic. I fixed a couple dishes with goodies from the garden, some chocolate spice squash cookies and cucumber dip with crackers. The food and fellowship was wonderful for about 20 min, until we had a 30 min. downpour that increasingly got worse and worse. A few people ran to the covered porch while the rest of us under the tents watched as water poured through the space where the tents were placed next to each other. Water bounced off plates for the unfortunate under the cracks and flowed like a river down the tables. Dishes were attempted to be covered but my dip became soup and the cookies very soggy. Those under the dessert tent continued to snack away as the rest of us were trapped huddled together under the other tents. Dad sacraficed himself to shelter Mrs. Kinnear from the rain blowing in sideways. Eventually the rain settled down and a few of the kids escorted the older folks to their cars under umbrellas, it was a cook out we want soon forget.

Jess and Rach - Kerry put together some pictures of the church over the years. Including everyone holding hands and counting off attendance at VBS and hanging gifts of warmth on the mitten tree. My favorite of you both was from a wedding where you were wearing these adorable pink dresses, your little girls would love to see their mommies being princesses!!

2008-07-10T15:02:00.000-07:00

Rose of Sharon
This guy seemed very interesting.
Today's harvest - 11 cucumbers, 3 squash, 2 zucchini
This basket belonged to my Grandpa Sullivan. Dad gave me several when he cleaned out Grandpa's shed. Grandma was telling me how it use to stay full of beans during the summers when he gardened.
Cucumber Donut
We looked into this a little bit and think it is something called catface. It can be caused by cool temperatures, or excessive nitrogen. If anyone else has any info on this problem please share!
This is what the fruit of that weird volunteer plant I keep writing about now looks like. What is it??

Today was another busy day. I went blueberry picking again with my uncle Larry and another good friend of mine. Larry and I both gave some of our loot to grandma who is very excited to make a blueberry cobbler. When I got back home from some other errands I worked in the garden some. I cleaned up the tomatoes plants where the leaves have gotten spotty from all the rain and did some harvesting!