Bitter Sweet

Typically at this time of year, I am ready to hand Little Man over and head back to work.  While I love my son, the first few summers of his life I realized that there were times I needed to be my own person.  This year is different, however.  While I am right back in the grove of things, there is a part of me that is sad that the summer is coming to an end.  For the first time in my life there is a little part of me that wishes I was a stay at home mom, for just one year (next year he will be off to Kindergarten and have the same schedule as me). 

 

So here is to .....my hiking partner

My little runner

My sense of adventure

My little helper

My leisure time

 

On another note, too much Daddy time means that things have gotten really strange around the house.  I may need someone to stop in occasionally on Saturday morning during cross-country season to make sure the house is still standing.  So far this week, I have come home to the house rock and rolling, knight vs. dragon games and a very interesting game of volleyball going on in the back yard. 

Haphazardly

Before I start, I have to exercise my bragging rights for the day. I did The Race to The Top of Vermont today and not only did I finish the 4.3 miles that averages a 10% grade, I finished in the middle of the pack.  A year ago, I would have finished at the back (not that I would have even started a race like this a year ago).

 

OK ,now that I have that out of the way, I have determined this weekend that the name of this blog is so incredibly fitting.  We bought our house four years ago and the perennial garden was so overgrown, that had it not been for the the flowers peeking out and the bird house in the middle, you would have never even know it existed.  I spent the first few years making it look like a garden. 

 

This year my goal was to actually start to play around with the flowers.  First task at hand was thinning them out; separating and replanting them.  This needs to be done in the fall once they have bloomed for most of the flowers.  What I did not realize it that this should be done about every three years.  Lets see four years of me getting rid of the weeds, 5 years of the man who lived here before us letting it become overgrown, that means I am about 6 years behind.  In layman's terns, it took us all day yesterday to did out and separate just the clump of dwarf irises'.  The picture bellow is Little Man standing over 1/4 of the the clump which I was trying desperately to separate.  I will admit, there was a big chunk that did not get separated because I hit my breaking point.   

 

 

 In addition to the mass clump, after I finished I found, 10 Tips for Separating Flowers on Pinterest.  I broke about 7 out of 10 of the rules.  So we will see if my poor dwarf iris is there next year or if I need to go out and purchase more bulbs.  There are days I wish my mother in-law (an avid gardener) lived just a bit closer. 

Embracing My Inner Southerner

The title of this blog may seem slightly misleading to those who know me well, since many of my southern friends view me as a complete Northerner.  In some ways they are right, the first time I went out to eat with a group of friends I made Andy and pretty much everyone else that was with us laugh because I had no idea what okra and/or hush puppies were.  That and prior to moving Virginia for a few years the only time I had been south of the Mason-Dixon Line prior to the age of 22, was for the typical Disney Vacation and a friend's wedding in Tampa, neither of which I really consider the true southern experience. 

 

With all of this to consider, there is a part of me that loves sitting and sifting through my mother in-laws Southern Living Magazines (so much so that my Christmas present this year was my own subscription). Then of course there is this small fact that I married into a southern family all of whom I love dearly.  So of course there was a part of me that was curious about this whole fried green tomatoes thing and had determined that at some point in my life I would have to try them. 

 

Fast forward to this past week at the farmers market.  One of the vendors had one lonely basket of green tomatoes.  I decided it was time and bought them from the man.  Now I have to explain, I live in a small Vermont town, many people up here have never eaten fried green tomatoes and just like me a few years ago have no idea what hush puppies or okra are.  The man looked at me completely shocked that I was actually going to buy his green tomatoes, and sold them to me at a cheaper price than his other tomatoes.  He could not possibly imagine why anyone would buy the green tomatoes.

When we arrived at home, I sliced them up and pulled out the fried green tomato recipe I had kept from one of the Southern Living Magazines.  Thankfully I had all the ingredients I needed for my little project (There has been more then one occasion that I have started cooking something and realized I needed to improvise halfway though because I was missing something: no wonder Andy does not like me in his kitchen).

Overall they did not come out all that bad.  Little Man successfully pulled the breading of every piece he ate and concluded he like the outsides and not the insides, while I determined that they tasted a lot like breaded zucchini with a little bit of a bitter after taste.  That and I can now say I have eaten fried green tomatoes.  I can add it to my southern foods list, along with the hush puppies, collard greens and okra. 

Hide and Go Seek

I may have planted the cucumbers a bit too close together this year.  I am typically pretty good about spacing, but since a garden plot we expected to have ready for this summer was not, I packed too much into the raised beds.  I am having a lot of trouble finding the cucumbers in the bed; thankfully Little Man is a bit lower to the ground and typically is able to spot many of the larger cucmbers.  Note to self: be mindful of spacing next year. 

My How They Grow

I am always amazed at how quickly chickens grow.  We added six chicks to the flock in May and they are already catching up to the four older chickens we already had.  The two with the combs (red part on their heads) are the two year olds and the six behind them are the babies. 

This, of course, is bad news for the older chickens because they have been relentlessly esablishing a pecking order and picking on the younger six.  Often you will find the older chickens in the ideal spots in the coop and outside, while the younger ones are huddled in a corner someplace else.  As the babies have been getting bigger, I have noticed that they are begining to get a bit bolder about where they are in location to the older hens.  Before, when I would bring out food scraps (they love cherries and beet greens) the babies would often not get any, now they are begining to work their way in for the good stuff.  It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks progress as they continue to grow and assert themselves a little more.  The older chickens may have wished they hadn't been so relentless in esablishing a new pecking order when we added the new six to the flock.