Gardening Without Skills

The Secret to Chicken Happiness only costs a buck

2011-03-02T08:30:00.002-05:00

Now that I'm back to blogging and gardening I thought I would do a little PSA on the Secret to Chicken Happiness. I'd like to think my girls are happy with their little chicken lives. They have clean bedding, fresh water, plenty of food and I don't think they spend much time worrying about predators, but none of that is the key to a really and truly happy chicken.

But if you really want a to send your chicken into a frenzied state of happiness, you've gotta give them a treat that will put them on the quick train to chicken nirvana.

For my girls it's the white curdled dairy product of the gods - cottage cheese. They particularly like the Breakstones 100 calorie single serve cups of cottage cheese mixed with fruit that you can buy for a buck at the grocery store. If I was the type that routinely bought cottage cheese for myself, I'd just give the chickens the leftovers, but since I don't, I buy one of these every couple of weeks as a special treat. Clementine likes that they're only 100 calories, because being a full-figured gal already, she has to watch her waistline so she can still fit in the door to the coop.

I once had a young cashier ask me if they were any good. I responded "I don't know, they're for my chickens, but I can ask them and report back to you." She was about 16 and gave me that look that teens give that lets you know you're a big loser in their world. I think she may have slightly snorted and there was definitely an eyeroll involved.

Clearly this young cashier has never had a truly happy chicken.

They key is to mix the fruit and the cottage cheese together for them because they're lazy and will ignore the spoon if you set it down next to the cottage cheese with instructions on how to mix it together.

When they're finished pecking each tiny fruit-splattered curd from the inside of the cup, they'll be covered from comb to wattle in goo and spend the rest of the day ba-gawking happily in the sun.

Ahhh... a zen chicken moment - for a buck.

A plan and a thank you!

2011-02-27T08:20:00.001-05:00

I really can't thank you all enough for giving me so many tips on what to do to kickstart my garden for the Spring planting season. I read through all the comments (and the emails I received) and have come up with a plan.

THE PLAN
I'm going to remove the dirt from box 1 and shovel it into box 2. Anything that doesn't fit will go into our wheelbarrow. Then I'm going to use the Devil's Urine itself (Roundup) to spray a kill-zone under the area where the box sits. I'm going to put down a new piece of useless landscaping cloth (because I still have some and feel better using it up) and then I'm going to put down some large sheets of cardboard (that Farmer B was nice enough to drag home last night). Then I'm going to put the soil back in, top it up with compost and wash, rinse, repeat on the other box.

The final step to my plan is to buy some stepping stones from Home Depot and place them around the garden as tightly as possible. I realize this is futile because they won't fit perfectly and grass will grow up between them, but the fact that we have thick weeds and grass butting right up against the raised beds can't be good. I figure if the stepping stones at least reduces this by 50% it's a step in the right direction.

I don't know if this is the best plan, but I do know it's at least a plan that's heading me in the right direction. I hope to get it done today and tomorrow, but I'm allowing myself the entire week to pull this off.

Thanks again for all your wonderful tips and advice!!!

Here's a photo of Saffie that I took this morning out at the garden. She's ready for me to be back out there too!

I'm back, I'm dirty and I need help...

2011-02-21T10:20:00.000-05:00

I realize I've been gone for a really long time and the list of excuses is long and irrelevant. However, the main reason for my absence is a gardening dilemma that I don't know how to fix. The good news is I've decided to return to the soil and find a way to make it work - even if it's far from perfect.

Here's my grubby garden-loved hand yesterday!

If you've been a long-time reader, you might recall how I let the garden go last summer because it just got too hot and rainy to go out there and weed everyday. One day away from the garden led to a week that led to the entire summer and next thing I knew I couldn't even see my once gorgeous raised beds.

When we finally cleared it out, I discovered - to my horror - that the weeds had gone to seed and my wonderful "Mel's Mix" soil was full of weed seeds. About two weeks after that long weekend back in September of clearing out the weeds I noticed the beds were green again - filled with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny evil weeds.

So I gave up and let the garden go again. You need to know I'm not proud to admit this, but it's what happened and it's time I came clean. It was easy to give up in the late fall. I'd already missed the Fall planting season, we were busy with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas and then we had a small stretch of cold weather that wasn't good for planting anyway.

Then January rolled around and ever since I started this blog I've always been AWOL in January. It's a month full of birthday parties for our family and it's easy to forget the garden.

But then February rolled around and I looked over at my once-loved garden and thought it's about damn time I roll up my sleeves and figure this monster out. If not, I'm one of those annoying people that "dabbled in gardening" as a hobby and let it go, like quitting scrapbooking or knitting or something. That was never my intention. This garden wasn't meant to be a fad. It was meant to feed my family.

So I went out there and cleared the garden - again. Luckily it wasn't quite so bad this time around. The problem is that I have evil thick Florida grass growing straight through the landscaping cloth at the bottom of the beds. Let this be a lesson to new Florida gardeners - no matter what people tell you and no matter what it says in Mel's SFG book, one sheet of landscaping cloth WILL NOT protect your garden from thick Florida grass and weeds growing straight up through the bottom of your garden.

Farmer B was frustrated that we have bare patches in the yard where grass will not grow, but underneath our gardening beds - underneath landscaping cloth - removed from the sun and air, we have thick grass growing like gangbusters.

I know this photo isn't a good one, but it's the bottom of the garden and you can see some of the thick grass roots growing straight up through the cloth. The grass roots pierced the landscaping cloth like ice picks. It's really quite remarkable. This has happened all throughout the beds. You have to imagine that on the ends of each of these little shoots were 3-5 feet of long thick grass snaking throughout the garden.

So now I have to decide what to do. As far as I can tell I have three options:

1) Spray the garden with Roundup Weed and Grass killer. This will hopefully remove the grass and weeds and give me a fresh start. The problem with that is I know too much about the evils of Monsanto and don't want my family to eat vegetables that have been grown in soil doused in those chemicals. But I know if I don't find a way to get rid of the grass and weeds I won't be able to grow vegetables in it anyway.

2) Remove all the soil from the beds, lay down something a lot hardier than landscaping cloth - some sort of Kevlar bullet-proof vest material - and then put the soil back in. I mentioned this to Farmer B who gave me the "you're on your own with this crazy scheme" speech. I'll be honest, it does seem like an insane amount of work, but maybe it is the way to go. I'm not sure what I should put down under the beds if I do this. Although it won't help me with the problem of all the weed seeds that are obviously in the soil.

3) Just add some compost to the garden, try to stay on top of the weeds and wing it. This seems like the most likely option, but I'm afraid that the thick grass coming through EVERYWHERE and all the weed seeds will make it too hard for me to stay on top of things and I'll be right back where I was last September.

Anyone else got an option for me? I really want to plant again...I'm in. I'm committed, but I don't know the "cure" for what ails my garden.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas - A Gardener's Version

2010-12-23T15:17:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my blogging, gardening, chickening friends out there! I'm still beside myself as to what to do with my weed-filled garden since I can't solarize it 'till summer, so I'm on hiatus until I can think of some way to fix it. Regardless, I still wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and re-post the Gardening Christmas poem I wrote last year! Hope you enjoy!!!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas - A Gardener's Version
by Kate at Gardening Without Skills

'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the yard,
Not a veggie was growing, not even the chard.
The trellis was strung by the green beans with care,
In hopes that an edible plant would grow there.

The chickens were nestled all snug in their nests,
While visions of pasta worms danced in their heads.
Farmer B with his light beer and I with my wine,
Had just settled down for some nice TV time.

When out in the garden I heard a big noise,
I leapt from the couch and tripped over some toys.
Away to the screen door in four seconds flat,
Flipped open the gate latch and tripped on the cat.

When what to my bloodshot eyes did appear,
But a master gardener with a new pair of shears.
He was pushing a wheelbarrow so heavy with plants,
That I started to do my best happy dance.

He was dressed all in green from his hat to his boots,
And his pants were all muddy with dirt from plant shoots.
A bundle of seedlings he had flung on his back,
And he looked for a place to begin the attack.

His trowel how it twinkled - his hoe was so shiny!
His spade was brand new - his gloves were so tiny!
His droll little mouth was drawn up in a smile,
As he worked with his tools in a whimsical style.

He spoke not a word as he started to plant,
And took out some seedlings that he could transplant.
He filled all the raised beds with veggies galore,
As I stood there watching from my screened back door.

And laying his shovel right next to his hoe,
I knew it was time for the gardener to go.
But I heard him exclaim as rolled out of sight,
Happy Gardening to all and to all a good night.

Greetings from Christmas, Florida

2010-12-01T20:44:00.001-05:00

You know how when you live somewhere you take the little things in stride and forget that out-of-towners might think something you see every day is actually quite cool?

Enter the town of Christmas, Florida. We're a stone's throw from Christmas and are quite used to seeing the year-round Christmas decorations at the main intersection. Don't make the mistake of getting excited about Christmas. It's not a quaint little town worth going out of your way to visit. It's rural homes, cows, trailer parks, auto salvage businesses, a gas station, a post office and a park with a historic fort. It doesn't have it's own police or mayor or anything and most people would drive through it and hardly notice they aren't in rural East Orlando anymore.

But when it's time to send Christmas cards, living near Christmas is great. Locals know that it's well worth the visit to the Christmas Post office to send your Christmas cards.

They'll be postmarked "Christmas, Florida," and you can borrow one of their ink stamps to stamp a message from Christmas, Florida, on to your cards.

(I forgot to photograph this myself)
Oddly enough, this year the postal workers are requiring you to give them your Driver's License in exchange for the ink stamps that say Christmas, Florida on them. When you're done stamping your cards, they give you your DL back and you can be on your way. Apparently last year all those stamps were stolen when they were just on a table in the lobby. Says a lot about people when they'll steal an ink stamp meant to adorn Christmas cards.

But we did it today - the boys chose a green candy cane Season's Greetings stamp and we put one on the back of each of our Christmas cards before sending them off. I believe this is an essential part of the Christmas Post Office experience in case someone rips open your card without noticing the oh-so-awesome postmark on the front.

So there you have it - a peek into Christmas, Florida, where it's Christmas year round!

Wildlife Weekend: Thanksgiving Roadkill and a Rescue

2010-11-27T11:49:00.000-05:00

We aren't into Black Friday shopping at all, but I did send Farmer B out on Thanksgiving morning to a local Walgreens to pick up a Christmas present for the boys that was on sale for 50% off. It was an odd place to find the present, but at that price it warranted a quick run to the store.

On the way home Farmer B called me quite excited that he was pulled over on the side of the road watching our national bird eating his very own Thanksgiving dinner. The eagle was about 3 feet away from his car window and was ripping apart some sort of roadkill. Farmer B took quite a few photos of it and even a short video and it was the hit our our Thanksgiving once he got home and shared it with the boys.

Bald eagles aren't unusual around here, but seeing one so close for so long isn't a daily occurance. I thought it was fitting that the turkey almost beat out the bald eagle as America's national bird and here was our up-close sighting on turkey day! Just think - if the turkey had been chosen as America's national bird, maybe we'd all be eating bald eagle and gravy for Thanksgiving dinner!

We've been on a bit of a wildlife kick recently. Right before Thanksgiving, Farmer B was soaking his legs in the swimming pool when he called for me to come over and see what the dogs were obsessing about. I walked over to the side of the pool and noticed an uninvited visitor stuck between the pool, the screen enclosure and the dogs. I'm not sure what it is about snakes, but we get an insane amount of them in and around our pool - luckily all the ones who have come in our pool area have been non-venomous.

This one was a little garter snake who happened to slither in to the right pool enclosure since I have a firm policy of never killing a non-venomous snake. I put the dogs outside and got a bucket and the boys plastic golf club to begin my rescue attempt.

After a few unsuccessful attempts and some awesome dancing on my part, I flicked the snake into the bucket and brought him inside to show to the boys. The snake was less than grateful for his rescue and spent the entire time striking at the air in the general direction of my hand.

I took him outside and released him under a bush by the front door. I think the whole experience was traumatic enough for him that he won't be back.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

2010-11-14T17:30:00.000-05:00

If you've read my blog a time or two you might recall that I have two sons. One's an outgoing sports-loving chatterbox and the other one is a quieter kid who enjoys imaginative play and doing the opposite of his big brother. I love that they're so different because I get the best of both worlds and being an only child myself I get to experience the weirdness of siblings.

Here's what my little one wore to play outside today. This is what he has been wearing pretty much solid for a few weeks now. He prefers to be called Luke (as in Luke Skywalker) and oftentimes he won't even respond to his given name.

This is the same kid that only let us call him Nigel for about a year when he changed into his alter-ego, Nigel Marvin, the British naturalist.

Whenever I point out the eccentricites of this child to my family, they come back with the apple/tree analogy.

I wonder what are they trying to say?

The $10 dog

2010-11-11T07:59:00.000-05:00

Remember this post?

And those adorable pictures of that sweet little puppy devouring my money?

Ah yes...way back in March of this year when I caught Saffron eating a $5 bill. Back when I was naïve enough to think that I could take that $5 to the bank and they'd give me a new one, but later discovered none of our local banks will trade out damaged currency.

It's true what they say about puppyhood. Sometimes you can barely remember the fat, fluffy little blob you could hold in your arms and sometimes their antics make it feel like it all happened yesterday.

…sniff...

Oh wait - it did happen yesterday.

Early yesterday morning I saw Saffie hiding under the sofa table looking especially guilty. That IS her normal look so I don't always give it a second thought. But yesterday I saw something hanging out of her mouth and again I had the "phew - it's just a kleenex/paper towel/piece of paper" thought before noticing the familiar color and shape of it.

DAMMIT - She ate ANOTHER $5 bill.

She is now officially worth $10. Although on mornings like that, it's highly debatable.

Halloween Horrors

2010-11-04T16:59:00.000-04:00

It's no secret I'm in a "bit" of a gardening and blogging lull. I know it's not forever, but it's the longest gardening and blogging dry spell I've had since I started this gig a couple of years ago. I'm allowing myself to do it guilt-free with the promise of coming back to both full-time when the time is right. That being said, the time was just perfect for this post.

We love to go overboard decorating for Halloween. We have tons of great Halloween decorations to entice trick-or-treaters and their parents, from a graveyard, to full-size skeletons, a fog machine, strobe lights, orange lights, talking decorations and masses of big stretchy spiderwebs.

It's these spiderwebs that caused the problem that led to this blog post. Poor little Saffron was having a hard time adjusting to all the weird decorations and was exceedingly spooked by the new scenery in the front yard. She was in one of her mad tail-tucked running fast "episodes" when she darted through one of the big spiderwebs and got stuck - fast.

She flopped around a bit looking pathetic while we all doubled over with laughter. I then wandered inside to get the camera and came back outside to find...

...that she hadn't moved an inch.

I'm just a puppy. Help me. Please?

Her back legs were wound up like you'd string up a steer.

The more she wiggled the worse it got.

She flopped around and we laughed hysterically. It was great.

The best part was that after we freed her - and it took two of us, by the way - she jumped up and went straight back to flying around the yard at full speed and shot straight back into the exact same spiderwebs and got stuck again.

Puppies. Not the brightest bulbs in the ole' Christmas tree, are they?

Kid Craft :: Make Your Own Bored Game

2010-10-05T13:56:00.001-04:00

I haven't posted a Kid Craft in ages and thought it was about time since my garden is on a hiatus right now. I prefer to tell people that my garden is on sabbatical to make it sound more impressive, but I know no one's buying it. I'll admit that I don't post kid crafts that often because I don't think my average reader comes here for that - I think most people come to this blog for my dyn-o-mite gardening skills - snicker, snicker, snicker.

I thought I'd put my gardening prowess to one side today and show off a kid craft that actually turned out great. The boys and I made this game at the end of the summer, when the long, hot days were dragging and I needed something creative to occupy them one morning. I'll start by saying that one of the fun things about having more than one child is that the chances of them liking the same thing at the same time are about nil. So one will like Star Wars while the other likes Indiana Jones. This led me to the game that killed the end of summer boredom blues for our family. It was a full-out life saver.

It was simple. I sat down with the boys with some pieces of paper and let them draw out some ideas for the game. Of course the ideas were awesome things like "Battle Darth Vader" and "Swing on a rope with Indiana Jones" and "Fight a monster with Scooby Doo" - all things that seemed impossible to integrate into one board game.

But then I had a eureka moment. Yes, we'd integrate all the ideas the boys had into the biggest mish-mosh of junk you've ever seen and everyone would be happy. This is something you would never be able to find in a store. It would be awesome.

I got a piece of poster board and a sharpie and drew out a long snaking trail for the game. I separated the trail into typical game board squares and gave the boys a box of crayons and let them color in the squares. We also made bridges (or the requested "shortcuts") that would allow a player to battle the bad guy of their choice, so they colored those in too. This whole process was quite time consuming for them, which I thoroughly enjoyed. That's not wrong, is it?

Then we went online to Google image search and printed out a handful of pictures of their favorite characters that we cut out and glued down on the game board in the appropriate places. We've got scenes from The Last Airbender, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Scooby Doo etc.

We used an oversized die from another board game and players can choose their own "guys" each time they play. We've used full-sized GI Joes and Star Wars figures, lego guys, army men, batmen and even a dirty sock once. Whatever tickles their fancy for the moment is their guy, which really does add to the fun of it.

My boys like twists in games so we made up a stack of game cards by making a bunch of simple text boxes in MS Word and writing appropriate game card lingo on each one. They all correspond to the characters on the board and some are just downright silly - "Sing your favorite song or go back 2 spaces" for example (I should note that my youngest son pulls that card, growls, and then moves back 2 spaces every time). I sat there on the computer and let both boys come up with ideas for an equal number of cards. We have some that move you forward (Yoda helped you. Forward 3 spaces you go); some that hurt you (You tripped on Indiana Jones' whip. Go back one space); and some that challenge you (A T-Rex is chasing you. Roll higher than a 3 to escape or go back 5 spaces). We made 20 cards and printed them out on card stock and cut them out. We also drew two rectangles on the board for 'cards" and "used cards" so they had a home while we were playing.

We then put numbers on all the bridges. When you reach a gateway to the bridge (a square marked with an X), you must roll the die and if you get the number on the bridge or higher, you can cross it. If not, you stay where you are (although one of the bridges where you battle the Emperor from Star Wars says right on the board that if you don’t roll the right number, you lose a turn).

We put star stickers throughout the game on random squares. If you land on a star sticker you draw a card and do what the card says.

If you land on a square with another player you have to battle the other player. Can you tell I have boys? This was their idea and their favorite part of the game. When another player lands on a spot that's already occupied, both players roll the die. The person who rolls the lower number moves backward that number of spaces. So if one person rolls a 4 and one person rolls a 2, the person with the 4 stays put and the person with the 2 goes back 2 spaces. And if you're really lucky you'll land on a bridge and get to roll to cross the bridge or land on a star sticker and draw a card. It's all very exciting.

I'm very surprised that we made this game in August to get us through a long summer day and here we are in October and the boys still enjoy playing this game almost daily. Since it's won the test of time at our house I thought I'd post it here incase another parent needs a basically free craft to entertain the kids. I am really amazed that they're still as excited to play this as they were the day we made it. You can customize it to whatever your children are interested in and you can put many different characters on the board to please multiple kids.

It's the best board game for killing the boredom around our house now… I'll admit that making a Halloween one with black and orange squares and Halloween characters sounds appealing and making a Christmas one with red, green and white squares and completing Christmas challenges also will be on the to-do list for the holidays. Who knew that a 59 cent piece of poster board could be so much fun?

Days Like These

2010-10-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

Days like these make me happy to live in Florida. I complain about the oppressive heat and humidity of the summer. I get upset when September rolls around and it's as bad as August, which was even hotter than July. Then October sneaks in and the weather becomes the thing tourists dream of. The highs are in the low 80s and the lows have finally dropped into the upper 60s.

And we have sunsets like this.

I'll remind myself of this awesome weather when November rolls in and we're back to having oppressive heat and I'm drooling over pictures of bundled up northerners dashing about in the cold.

Happy Birthday Saffron!

2010-10-02T04:00:00.000-04:00

Smile, it's your birthday!

Doesn't it seem like I JUST got that little bundle of trouble...er...joy for Christmas? I mean didn't she JUST look like this five minutes ago?

I can't believe I've had her for 10 months now and she's turning one year old today. Amazing. She started out at 21 lbs and she's 62 lbs of fat puppy now.

She's considerably less annoying now than she was back then too. She goes up to an hour without trying to eat something in the house now, which is a huge improvement. She's turning into a real live bonefide loveable dog right before our very eyes. We'll be celebrating her birthday in style today so point yourself toward Florida and give a birthday shout out to my girl on her big day!

Happy Birthday Saffron!

Always the chicken race bridesmaid…

2010-09-25T19:08:00.000-04:00

Today was a sad day for me - for the second year in a row. What are the chances that all the cards would fall into place in just the perfect way AGAIN so that I would miss out on what is obviously one of the most important and exciting days in my small town?? Clearly the answer to that question is 100%.

Today was the Charity Chicken Race in my neck o' the woods. And it fell on the exact day and time as my oldest son's soccer game…just like it did last year - my first year owning chickens and being aware of the race. I mean I'm a chicken lover and I live in a town that is so dedicated to chickens that they hold a chicken race and I CAN'T GO! But as any mom will tell you, kids come first, so there I was on the sidelines cheering my 6-year-old's soccer team while hoards of locals darted around a racetrack holding decorated chickens experiencing full-on chicken nirvana.

And to top it all off, my son's team lost their game today, although my son did score one of the two goals for his team. But his best friend was on the winning team, so he wasn't sad that he lost since his friend was happy, and the kids are still young enough that they're just happy to be out there playing. How could I miss that?

Clearly I could not.

But I'll admit as I was sitting there, I was thinking how badly I wanted to decorate a chicken. And race a chicken. And buy chicken memorabilia. And listen to the chicken calling competition. And chuck a chicken. And fully immerse myself in local chicken culture.

Maybe next year the planets will align correctly and the game and the race will be on different days - or different times at least.

Until then I'll just chase my girls around the yard for kicks and fantasize about what would have been...

The Great White Beast Strikes Again

2010-09-21T21:22:00.001-04:00

Last night was one of those nights - you know the nights where you just shake your head and wonder if other people experience such weirdness in their own lives…

I had just put the boys in the bath and let the dogs out for a run in the backyard. Our obedient Shepherd barked to let me know it was time to let them back inside and I obliged. However, Saffie was not with him. This isn't highly unusual since she is prone to loping around the yard in search of mischief, but I hadn't fed them yet and since food is her priority, it was weird not to be bowled over as she dashed past me into the kitchen.

Hmmm….

I decided to do a quick jog around the yard while calling her name and whistling madly, which always gets her attention.

Nothing.

I started to get a bit concerned that somehow she'd wiggled her tubby body under the fence and escaped from the back yard. Our fence line is very secure, but that seemed like the only viable option since she's not the type of dog who could ever scale a 6-foot privacy fence.

Finally I walked around to the corner of the yard and called her and she appeared out of nowhere looking very guilty with something orange on her nose and her mouth. My first thought "GAH! She's eaten an orange kitty!" As she ran over I saw that this orange stuff stuck on her nose wasn't fur, but was feathers.

Oh dear.

She bolted from me back to the corner of the yard and I saw a mess of orange feathers there on the grass.

Next to the feathers I saw an orange lump wedged flat against the grass pinned toward the bottom of the fence. Oh man. It was a chicken, and not one of my girls, but obviously one of my Korean neighbor's chickens. And it was missing a lot of tail and back feathers. I could see from her underdeveloped comb and wattles that she was a young pullet - not of egg-laying age yet.

Saffie continued to nip at the poor thing so I grabbed her by her scruff and ran back into the house with her and tossed her into her crate. Then I grabbed the camera and headed back outside to rescue the terrified chicken.

The poor thing was panting and shivering and had a bloody bald spot on her back where her feathers were torn out. I was torn between being glad that Saffie's first instinct wasn't immediately killing and eating the chicken - and being slightly disappointed that she chose hurt it at all.

I picked her up and petted her and then realized I had no idea what to do with this thing. I ran around in circles a few times hoping to get inspired, but nothing jumped out at me. I set her down on the grass to see if she could walk, and she could stand, but was too shocked to move at all. Then I thought I should toss her over the fence back into the neighbor's yard, but she was in shock and I imagined her falling 6 feet to the ground and thudding into an injured, bloody lump on the grass and that didn't seem like the best idea.

So I ran onto our screened-in patio and put her there while I got the boys into their pajamas and tried to figure out what to do with the chicken. I told them what happened and that we'd have to wrap the chicken in a towel and drive her to the neighbor's house (since trotting around in the dark with a wrapped-up chicken and two little boys in PJs didn't appeal to me).

We went on the patio to get her and she was gone. Of course she was. A totally screened in patio and no chicken. The three of us searched for a good 10 minutes and found her inside a roll of art paper in the boys' easel.

We wrapped her in a towel and got in the car - me with the chicken on my lap - both boys giddy about the whole experience.

(Awesome photo taken by two small boys fighting over one cell phone camera - and yes, I'm appropriately wearing a chicken tshirt).

I pulled into the neighbor's driveway and told them the story. They were very thankful to have her back, but didn't seem as concerned as I would have been, which is fine because my chickens are family pets and their chickens are simply egg producers. I don't think they name their chickens, but I can tell they still like and respect them. The neighbor didn't seem very concerned over the missing feathers and bloody back either since she said that the chickens peck each other from time to time too, but again, different chicken-owner relationship at their house. She thanked me profusely and we left.

Saga over.

Damn puppy.

Focus on the Other Two Beauties

2010-09-18T17:24:00.000-04:00

I've noticed that my blonde beauty, Clementine, gets all the chicken-related attention around here. When people visit us, Clementine is the one that gets awkwardly held and fussed over. Clementine is the one who gets the most photo op's. And even on the blog, Clementine is the focus most often that not. It's easy to see why - she's a big blonde beauty who likes to be around people and actually enjoys the attention. Maggie and Clementine are the two more "chickeny" chickens who are harder to catch when I need to round them up and definitely don't fight over who gets to sit on my lap first.

I thought it was only fair to focus on the other two this time around because they are beautiful silly chickens who deserve center spotlight for once.

Sookie, my generic Easter Egger, looked like a chipmunk when she was a chick. She's the smallest hen, but oddly enough she reigns supreme at the top of the pecking order. She's faster than the other two and impossible to catch if she doesn't want to be caught. Luckily for me, all three of our chickens trust me enough to let me round them up when I need to. I chose her because I was told there was a huge chance she'd lay greenish-blue eggs and I was beyond excited about that. You've seen our eggs - all brown, so that hope came and went pretty quickly.

She has a beautiful set of feathers on her with a lion's mane sort of vibe around her neck. She has a small comb and wattle - I believe it's called a peacomb and her legs are a greenish-grey.

Poor Sookie desperately needed to lay and egg while I was taking photos and humored me just long enough and then bolted for the nest. Of course her two curious sisters stand there staring at her in her most delicate of moments. Can't a chicken have an ounce of privacy these days?

Maggie, my Barred Plymouth Rock, is the most inquisitive of all the chickens. If there is something unusual going on, she's the first one to investigate. She's definitely second-in-command to Sookie and spends a lot of time following her around.

She thinks anything I have in my hand might be a treat, so even a blade of grass in my fingers is enough to send her hurtling across the yard for a quick peck. She really is a curious little thing with gorgeous coloring and a bright red floppy comb. I know none of my chickens are show quality, but I'm not in this for the ribbons or the breeding, so it's irrelevant.

As soon as Clementine realized that she wasn't going to be the focus of my photo shoot she shot back into the chicken coop to sulk.

She can be so dramatic sometimes.

A discrepancy in the paint department

2010-09-12T18:49:00.000-04:00

You've heard of Christmas in July. How about Easter in September? There has been a mix-up in the Internal Paint Department of our chickens lately and we've had some interesting surprises in the nest boxes. This diagram of the inside of a chicken explains what's been happening to cause these issues. You can see the Hen Paint Department a bit above the man's hands in the photo. Clearly, we have a disturbance within ours.

Take the striped egg from a week ago. It looks like this one got stuck in the paint department a bit too long. The stripe forms an almost perfect line across the top of the egg with a much darker botom to the egg.

Then today we found a white egg in the nest. Clearly this one bypassed the paint department altogether. You can see it in the picture below next to a regular brown egg and one of our recent speckled eggs, which was obviously caused by some bad airbrushing.

I've had a word with all the hens but none will fess up as to who's the culprit. They're a very tight knit trio and their beaks are sealed during my interrogations. Although, Clementine did admit to laying a bizarre oblong egg a few weeks ago, she's mum on the rest.

Deep down at the bottom we found a garden

2010-09-06T19:58:00.000-04:00

As I promised, this weekend was THE weekend. The one where Farmer B and I tried to turn the thicket of shoulder-high weeds back into a garden. I have been dreading it since the beginning of the summer. I anticipated it being a horrible experience with oppressive heat and bugs... and holy heat wave - was I ever right.

Farmer B started by pulling up the anti-puppy fence that we keep around the garden and immediately both dogs dove in to the long grass. We ended up accidentally breaking the underground electric dog fence while pulling up the garden fence, which was an added bonus. Include an added trip to Home Depot to buy wire repairing equipment to this wonderful task.

Did I mention this weekend is Farmer B's birthday too? Yeah, he's a dedicated husband when it comes down to it.

Then Farmer B used the push trimmer to hack through the weeds in an attempt to find the raised beds. Surprisingly they were still under there - burried, but intact.

Did I mention how hot it was? Luckily the heat index was just UNDER 100 degrees so we didn't pass out, but contemplated it several times.

After he whacked down all the grass and weeds around the raised beds it was my fun-filled job to pull up the masses of weeds that had found a new home in the raised beds. As I was doing this with sweat running down my arms and spiders the size of cats running up my arms I really wondered if it was all going to be worthwhile at the end of the day.

When I got one bed about halfway cleared I decided to grab Clementine from the chicken run and toss her into the bed to save me from the creepy-crawlies who were hell-bent on latching on to my face as I pulled up 3-foot long weeds. My dainty (useless) yellow chicken spent 2 seconds in the blistering direct sun in the garden, made an angry bokking noise, then made a bee-line for the shady woody area all the way on the other side of the yard before I could even grab the camera. Pathetic chicken.

Then I decided to bring out Maggie and put her to work. I tossed her into the raised bed and went back to weeding. It worked out GREAT! She grabbed two large spiders and some wormy-leggy thing before becoming overwhelmed from the heat and making a bee-line to the same shady patch of trees where Clementine was relaxing.

Pathetic. Both of them.

At the end of the day I had a sore back, a visible garden area and one de-weeded raised bed. I was beyond exhausted, but felt good that it was done… but felt angry that I still had the other bed to clear.

On Day 2 I returned to the garden (sans useless sun-shy chickens) and pulled the weeds out of the second bed. I was happy to see that the spiders were just as comfortable in this bed as they were in the other one. I was a bit afraid that some big-fanged 8-legged creature might not ruin my day by jumping at my arm. Luckily my fear was unwarranted.

I did find something very interesting buried in this bed though…

Carrots! Who knew? I didn't attempt to bring them inside since I'm sure they were woody and rubbery and weird, but it was a funny thing to see growing amongst the weeds.

At the end of day two, it was done. A weedless garden. Two weedless raised beds. Finally.

I figured that when I was done I'd have one of those "See what you get for not weeding all summer?" moments. I was wrong. Instead I had a "Gah - this was HORRIBLE - THIS is why I didn't go out into the garden all summer" moments.

I'm now faced with a couple of problems.

1) I'm convinced that these beds are now full of weed seeds just ready to sprout at their first opportunity. I'm not sure quite what to do about that. I do not have the resources to empty out the beds and buy all new compost, peat moss and vermiculite. So I'll have to think on this one since I did want to try a Fall planting…

2) I now have about 3 inches less of mix in the boxes as I did when I started. Regardless of what I decide, the boxes will have to be topped up in a big way before I ever plant again.

So there you have it. As my dad would say "Good job done." As I would say after doing this "@$%^ job done!"

Hubcaps and Horseshoes

2010-09-03T16:02:00.002-04:00

You know how if you find a hubcap on the side of the road, you're supposed to lean it up against a street sign so the person who lost the hubcap can find it when they retrace their steps?

Did you know that apparently the same thing is true for horseshoes?

I was walking the dogs this morning and ran across this on the bottom of a street sign.

I am now heavily on the lookout for a limpy horse cruising around the neighborhood looking for his missing shoe. Clip, clop, clip, thud. Clip, clop, clip, thud.

Who knew? At least when horses lose their shoes they don't have to worry about anyone tying them together and chucking them over a power line.

I once was lost, but now I'm found

2010-09-01T20:48:00.001-04:00

I'm here. I'm alive. I'm riddled with blogging guilt… I blog for my own mental stimulation and amusement and I let is slide for entirely too long. I knew it was bad when my own mother scolded me for going 19 days straight without an entry. I always assume no one notices my absences, but then I get messages from my wonderful garden blogger friends who were nice enough to check up on me and make sure I hadn't dropped off the face of the Earth. (Thanks guys!)

The real reason for my 20-day lull in blogging is actually a lot less spectacular.

Remember how overgrown my garden looked in mid-summer?

Remember my plans to tie a rope around my waist and go into said garden and weed it back to something presentable and replant for the Fall?

Well I went in, but I forgot to tie the other end of the rope to something else and I got so deep in the garden that I couldn't find my way out. I spent the past 20 days lost in the deep overgrowth in my garden, clawing my way from raised bed to raised bed with the hopes of catching a glimpse of sunlight and a chance at finding my way out to civilization.

I had a glimmer of hope on Day 14 when I thought someone had spotted my signal fire, but was disappointed yet again when I realized that I hadn't actually built a signal fire, but was merely watching the "concert lighter" app on my iPhone.

It wasn't until I was spotted by a low-flying plane who saw my crude shelter by the bean trellis that a rescue attempt was started. By this point I had gone feral and was involved in a sordid affair with my garden gnome, Basil Boddywicket.

I've since showered, re-discovered clothes and mended bridges with Farmer B. However I'm still left with the problem of a dramatically overgrown garden that I'm too apprehensive to set foot in.

I have already proclaimed this weekend as the "reclaiming the garden" weekend at our house. Living in Florida I have developed a fear of large overgrown bushy grassy areas. I always equate them with poisonous snakes, biting bugs, spiderwebs and plants that adhere themselves to your legs causing itching, swelling and hives.

So although Farmer B doesn't know it yet, this weekend is his weekend to pull up the fence surrounding the garden, weedwack down the scary stuff that is higher than my children are tall, and put some ant killer down on the Antropolis that has claimed the back of the garden.

I will then daintily tiptoe in and weed the beds, rake, add some compost and try to kick this thing into gear again. Let's hope this time it all works out. It's actually written on our calendar, which is a huge step in the right direction. Maybe putting it out there to the world will also give me the motivation I need to follow through.

So, I'm as back as back gets right now... I'm crossing my fingers that it's for real this time...

The Great White Beast :: 10 months in

2010-08-10T20:02:00.000-04:00

While I've been slacking in a most impressive way on the gardening front, I haven't been slacking in the puppy-raising front. I've been feeding her and watering her and thankfully she doesn't sprout weeds, so she's been thriving nicely, thank you very much.

Saffron's hind legs are still entirely too long for her body, but I'm confident that she'll grow into them before the end of the year. She doesn't trip over them nearly as much as she used to, but she still has trouble trying to figure out what to do with those lanky things when she's sitting.

She still eats everything in sight in the house and my day consists of saying "Aaat! Drop it!" about a thousand times an hour, especially since I have small boys and the floors are dotted with army men, legos and various small plastic guns that go with "guys" - apparently they are all delicious. And yes, she picks up every. single. thing.

Puppies really are more work than anyone can imagine. But thankfully most turn into dogs and as most dogs owners can tell you, dogs are generally fun to have around.

Saffie still has a very goofy side to her. She likes to do her Wilbur the Pig impression while laying on her back.

And when the boys start school next week I promised her I'd start a new trend of taking her for a walk every morning after school drop-off. Rommel may choose not to go. He enjoys a walk, but seems to enjoy his puppy-free moments a little more. Every moment the two are together looks like this.

The good news is they are just playing. The bad news is that Rommel often gets so irritated that he plays to win. So far it's been nothing a little Neosporin can't fix.

But as this is officially a gardening blog and not a puppy-raising blog, I am already planning the removal of the summer garden and the planting of the fall garden. I'll admit to being a little afraid of the overgrown summer garden. I fear I'll need to tie a rope to my waist before I go in… Wish me luck! I'm sure to need it.

Chickens and Sustainability - a Comic

2010-08-07T15:40:00.000-04:00

Happy Weekend Everyone! My mother-in-law sent me this comic today and I just had to pass it on.

Another Angry Produce Rant

2010-08-03T19:19:00.002-04:00

When I started our garden one of my goals was to be able rely less on the produce section of the grocery store. I think about this every week when I fill my cart with grocery store produce. I'm already feeling a bit defeated when I'm squeezing cucumbers and eyeballing carrots so it doesn't take much to drive me over the edge.

You may have read about my anger with banana stickers, bell pepper packaging and cereal, but now I have a couple more things to add to my produce rage.

Have you seen these plastic-wrapped potatoes in your grocery store?

They're right next to the regular ole' naked potatoes, but these have been shrink-wrapped with a label and plastic wrap and cost about twice as much as a regular potato. I always think no one buys these bizarre products, but as I was standing there allowing my 6-year-old to pick out 2 lbs of potatoes for a recipe and watching him painstakingly evaluate every potato in the rack, I saw people leaning over us and putting these plastic potatoes in their carts.

The allure is that you can put them right in the microwave!!! Can you believe it?? If only the naked potatoes right next to them could also be microwaved. Ohhhh wait. They can be. Maybe these ones in the plastic are pre-washed? Maybe that's the allure? And it's not just a potato - it's a PotatOH! There's a sweet potato and russet potato brand - both mention they're available in 5-7 minutes due to their awesome microwavability. Yes, really.

Next time I visit the grocery store I'm bringing a Post-It note with me to place on the regular potatoes that says

If this wasn't enough, I also bought some baby carrots, which are a staple around here. It wasn't until I got home and was ripping them open that I noticed the awesome little sticker on the package:

"PLANT YOUR OWN CROPS…"

Awesome! A carrot package encouraging us to garden! Wait a minute... Farmville. Really? So we're buying pre-packaged baby carrots and now we're learning that we can plant our own crops in Farmville. Cyber crops. Cyber carrots.

I need an intervention.

Or a more successful garden.

******

For anyone with a morbid curiosity, here's a link to the PotatOH! website so you can learn all about these amazing plastic potatOHs.

The Curious Case of the Siamese Chickens

2010-08-01T10:36:00.000-04:00

When I went out to the chicken coop this morning with a big bowl of strawberry Greek yogurt, I expected my usual greeting from my three adoring hens. But instead, Clementine was the only one who shot out of the coop to greet me and go beak-first into the yogurt. Maggie and Sookie were AWOL.

As you may have read here before, although we have two nest boxes, only one is deemed worthy. So logic dictated that one chicken might be laying an egg, but that didn't explain two absences. And especially not after I sang my awesome "chiiiiiiiiick chick chick chick chick" song that always causes them to bust out of their coop with feathers flying.

Strange, for sure.

I decided to open up the nest box to see who was laying an egg.

I found this.

Two chicken butts in one nest.

And from the looks of it, both trying to lay an egg at the exact same time.

I decided to go around front to get a bird's eye view of this oddity.

Yup. That right there is two chickens in one nest both laying eggs at the same time. I guess when you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

Sookie looked irritated with the whole experience. She kept checking behind Maggie to see if she was finished.

The best part is that there is a vacant nest right next to them.

But chickens are fickle things. They rarely make sense, but that's why I like them.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: July 2010

2010-07-31T22:56:00.001-04:00

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome back to Garden Blogger's Death Day! We're here to list our losses for July, 2010! This is the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death. This is the day for gardeners like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, for cadmium-green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide, and for any poor soul whose plants fall victim to that fickle mother who controls us all - Mother Nature.

I mentioned last month that I gave up the gardening goat for the summer. I had full intentions of planting sunflowers in July, but a certain white puppy found the package of sunflower seeds so that plan fell by the wayside too. Apparently they were tasty and so was the packaging. I have no pictures of the garden because you've already seen the trainwreck it has become and after being gone for our family vacation, it's only become more overgrown.

The good news is that the Fall planting season is coming up quickly for us Floridians, and as long as hurricane season treats us kindly, it's a much easier season to keep things alive than our insanely hot summers. Plus I have plans to put down some stepping stones around the raised beds to help with weeds. I have a bad situation where I need a fence around the garden to keep the puppy out, but it also keeps the weed wacker out. I'm hoping some of these stepping stones will at least help...a little.

So how about all of you? What fell victim to your gardening wrath this month? Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog showing what you killed or maimed this month. We're here for you. Let's not judge, but support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.

**********
Thanks to Annie's Granny for hunting me down and convincing me to get back on the computer. I'm soooo out of the groove this summer, but think life will return back to normal once school starts in a couple of weeks and Farmer B and the boys get back into their regular routine....which will leave me with more time on the computer and less time figuring out how to entertain the troops 13 hours a day 7 days a week.

I'm back from vacation - and a chicken update

2010-07-23T23:27:00.001-04:00

I'm baaaaack! My family and I spent the past week in North Carolina on our summer family vacation. It was a 9-hour drive each way and my boys did great in the car, which I was quite apprehensive about with a trip this far. We had a wonderful time enjoying the change of scenery and seeing the boys experience hills and mountains for the first time.

Here's a snapshot of the mile-high swinging bridge at Grandfather Mountain that we crossed to climb on the rocks on the other side. It was a new experience for my Florida-born boys to feel the winds on top of a mountain and to see clouds below them. My 6-year-old wondered where all the palm trees were and wondered why he could smell Christmas trees on our hike. I guess he never realized that they don't grow in parking lots under a tent.

We also took the boys panning for gold at the Reed Gold Mine - the first place gold was discovered in the United States. They say if you're lucky you'll come home with a gold flake in a little vile of water after panning through a large pile of rock and sand. And oddly enough, BOTH of my boys found a piece of gold, which was an awesome experience. They also got quite a kick out of an outhouse at the gold mine with some interesting toilet paper.

*****

When we got home I ran straight out to the chicken coop to see how my recuperating girls were doing. Oddly enough, they seem to be handling this case of avian pox really well. All three chickens have some pox on them, but it's by no means severe. They seem better than when we left and it's definitely a very mild case. Thanks to everyone for the kind words of support and concern and all the emails asking for an update on my girls!!

I've got 9,000 loads of laundry to do and a ridiculous number of bags to unpack, but it's all worth it since our vacation was superb and we came home to healthy, happy pets!

Plants vs. Zombies - a zombie ate my brains!!!

2010-07-16T22:00:00.001-04:00

To explain my absence I think it's best to tell you that a zombie ate my brains. Really.

A year or so ago I downloaded a trial version of Plants vs. Zombies for my computer. I'm not a big fan of computer games anymore, but this appealed to me. I played it until my trial version ran out and never purchased the actual game.

Fast forward to about a week ago. Farmer B surprised me by buying me the Plants vs. Zombies app for my iphone. And sadly I've been hooked ever since. When I sit down to write a blog entry I end up fighting a zombie battle on the phone and next thing I know it's bedtime. I'm not proud of this, but I thought I had better come out of the zombie closet.

I'm out and proud, baby!

The whole purpose of Plants vs. Zombies is to stop zombies from entering your house. If they do, they eat your brains and the game is over. Your job is to plant appropriate zombie-fighting plants from the list of plants you've earned (by completing levels) to defend your home. There are plants that shoot, freeze, eat, explode, burn and block off the zombies. There are different types of zombies with different skills who slowly shuffle toward your house.

Here is the description from the game manufacturer:

A mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home, and your only defense is an arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants. Use peashooters, wall-nuts, cherry bombs and more to mulchify 26 types of zombies before they can reach your front door. Each zombie has its own special skills, so you’ll need to think fast and plant faster to combat them all. But be careful how you use your limited supply of greens and seeds… as you battle the fun-dead, obstacles like a setting sun, creeping fog and a swimming pool add to the challenge. And with five game modes to dig into, the fun never dies!

There is no learning curve with this game, which I love. My 6-year-old can play it with as much enjoyment as I can. That's my kind of game. I am amused by the bizarre zombies I encounter on each level - I've come across everything from zombies holding screen doors, to football players, to riding in a bobsled, to a complete zombie Michael Jackson Thriller dance video ensemble (which by the way is very hard to defeat since they all dance in unison toward your house).

The strategy is figuring out which of your plants to plant in order to destroy the zombies that are attacking your house on each level. Certain plants are only effective on certain zombies and you have a fixed number of plants you can chose from each time. And with each level you play the difficulty increases. So you start out with one strip of grass, but you can end up with a swimming pool, fog and darkness at night. It's ridiculously addictive.

Plus since my garden is having "issues" right now, I at least get the joy of planting different zombie-fighting plants in this game so I feel like I'm still honing my skills. When people ask me how my garden is going I now respond "It's fully prepared to ward off a zombie attack." It at least stops people in their tracks and I don't have to explain that my garden got overrun with weeds in this dreadful heat and I only have leeks growing right now.

So if you've got the iphone, download the app for $2.99 if you want some cheap entertainment. If you don't, you can still download it for the computer from
PopCap games for about $20 directly from their site. What other gardening-related game can prepare you for a zombie attack?

I think we have Avian Pox.

2010-07-06T12:40:00.000-04:00

Ugh. I'm so stressed. I went out to let the girls into their run this morning and I noticed that Maggie's comb and wattles looked dirty. I picked her up and noticed that it wasn't mud - it was little black scabs. I immediately wondered if it was Avian Pox.

So far Clementine and Sookie aren't showing visible symptoms, but they may have the disease since it's very highly contagious. I am not sure if I should quarantine Maggie or just let the disease run its course. I read that it can take weeks to months to run its course and that seems like a long time to keep Maggie in solitary.

I'm new to Avian Pox, but learned a bit about them when Dani (from Gardening Under the Florida Sun) recently dealt with it with her backyard chickens.

I've since read up a bit more on it and have learned a few things about Avian Pox:

1) It's usually transmitted by wild bird or mosquitos. We're very buggy and swampy here so I'm voting for skeeters as the culprit.
2) It's a virus, so you can't do much about it. Antibiotics won't help unless the birds get secondary sores.
3) It's usually not fatal, but can be very uncomfortable for the birds.
4) There are 2 types of this pox. Wet pox and Dry pox. The dry pox is usually survivable for mature birds. The wet pox gets into the mouths and makes it hard for the birds to eat and drink, so you definitely don't want the wet pox. Both are often deadly for chicks.
5) Once the birds recover from Avian (or Fowl) Pox, they're immune.
6) Birds may still lay while sick, but many lay much less or stop completely until recovering.
7) You can put iodine on the scabs to make them dry up quicker.
8) Humans and other furry pets can't catch it.
9) There are some sort of vitamins you can add to their water to help them fight the pox, but I've yet to figure out the details of this one.
10) It just plain sucks.

So here I am converting my chicken coop into an Avian MASH unit and trying to learn what I can about this to try and get my girls through it. If any of you are Pox Pro's, please feel free to leave me any advice or tips in the comments section. Thanks!

An Old Florida 4th of July parade and a kissable pig!

2010-07-03T16:47:00.002-04:00

I'm fortunate enough to live in a pretty good spot in Florida. We live within 45 minutes from all the major attractions, beaches, space center, malls and theatres. But where we live is quiet and rural and is one of the few towns that hasn't fallen prey to the grip of big developers. Today was our annual 4th of July parade and I took the boys to experience it for their first time.

It was wonderful, nostaligic, quirky, entertaining and so old-Florida. People not from Florida think we're all about beaches, but the middle of the state is full of Florida crackers - countryfolk who ride horses, drive tractors and aren't afraid to fly a confederate flag. It's a whole 'nother world!

I thought you'd enjoy some photos from today's parade. It might be a little different from how things roll where you are.

My dad would have loved the low and loud flyovers by the Spruce Creek Gaggle flying club. It was really amazing to see and hear them flying over the parade route.

What's a parade without some kooky old ladies having fun? And then you've got your decorated ATVs and airboats and people riding fake gators. It's all very normal.

This guy was wearing a chicken hat that flapped and clucked. I must get one of these immediately. Then we had some square dancers and the best decorated horse contest.

Once the parade was over the 4th of July festival began. There were pony rides for the kids, Southern food, bluegrass music and plenty of kids games.

Of course my younger boy was a pro at tossing the fake cow pie into the toilet. Three for three!

And I saved the best for last. The "Kiss a Pig" booth. If you kissed the pig you got a prize. I stuck around long enough to see that the prize was a pair of wax lips to give the pig a second free smooch. It really was hilarious to see all these people lining up to kiss this poor little black pig. Sadly I couldn't convince my boys to do it.

Hope you all enjoyed a peek into our small town's Independence Day parade! We're shooting off some fireworks tomorrow night and having a little BBQ so it should be a fun day! However, being British I tell my boys that we celebrate July 3rd too - the day that we decided we'd had enough and decided to turn this country over to the yanks so we could vacation here after they built it up and got it all civilized and such.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY EVERYONE!!! Stay safe!

Important egg safety lesson

2010-07-01T21:24:00.001-04:00

I know some of you out there have chickens and some of you plan to get chickens one day, so I feel like it's up to me to bring you this important public service message about egg safety. I figure it's the least I can do to save you from going through what I went through tonight.

I always end my day by going out to the chicken coop and putting my girls to bed. I check that they have food and water and collect any eggs that were laid during the day. Then I lock the door to the coop to keep them safe from nocturnal evil-doers while they're sleeping.

Tonight I collected two perfect freshly-laid brown eggs and noticed their waterer was just about empty. The problem is I had my cell phone in one hand, the two eggs in the other hand, and I didn't have a free hand to carry the empty waterer. I decided to put the eggs in my pocket, which I often do, so that I could have a free hand.

I then bent down to unhook the waterer from the clip that suspends it in the middle of the chicken coop.

CRACK!

DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Important egg safety lesson: If you're going to put eggs in your pants pocket, don't bend over.

The best part was that I had a broken egg and an unbroken egg in my pocket.

Fishing out the slippery yolk-covered unbroken egg was loads of fun.

I ended up with egg on my shirt, all over my jeans and my right hand, and running down my leg and dripping on my shoe.

Like sharks in freshly-chummed waters, the dogs honed in on the scent immediately. They then proceeded to madly lick my gooey slimy pocket as the yolk dripped on their heads.

It really was a delightful way to end the evening.

I can't promise I'll never do that again.

Of course, I'm not proud to admit that.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: June 2010

2010-06-30T10:42:00.001-04:00

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome back to Garden Blogger's Death Day! We're here to list our losses for June, 2010! This is the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death. This is the day for gardeners like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, for cadmium-green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide, and for any poor soul whose plants fall victim to that fickle mother who controls us all - Mother Nature.

June is the month where I realize it's time to give up the goat, throw in the towel and let the garden fat lady sing. I allow my garden to fall victim to the elements - the heat, the humidity, the heat, the weeds, the heat and the bugs. I can't go out in the garden during daylight hours and still remain conscious and coherent. My boys refuse to go outside too, so I have to visit the garden after they go to bed. They're still young enough that "before they get up" doesn't exist, so there's no visiting the garden early in the morning.

As any mother can tell you, that list of things you promise yourself you'll do after you get the kids in bed is really long. You have all these great aspirations of all the things you'll get accomplished once you have the house to yourself. You envision yourself waltzing around your house folding clothes, organizing closets, scrubbing floors and writing novels. The problem is that sometimes you become a victim of that Life-Sucking Vortex of Doom that lives inside your couch. You get the kids in bed, sit down on the couch for one minute, put your feet up and the next thing you know you burst back into consciousness, look at the pitch dark windows, realize it's 10 pm and you haven't moved an inch.

So after a few nights (weeks) of this, my garden has become an overgrown soupy mess of death that I have all but given up on. I'm not proud to admit this, but it's time I came out of the gardening closet and let you all see what my garden has become.

The beans are rusty, dried up and withered. The tomatoes are still producing - sort of. The tomatoes are tiny and covered in stink bugs, which I have yet to figure out a way of killing short of EG's method using the "thumb of death," which isn't really my style. The squash never produced anything but dead squash. The eggplants are turning a strange color. The cabbage is dead. The cucumber is dead and withered.

The grass and weeds are knee high. There is thick angry Florida grass coming up through the landscaping cloth (aka cheesecloth) in my raised beds. I'm embarrased to share these photos. I much prefer to stay in the gardening closet and give off the vibe that I've got it all together.

Okay, okay - yes, everything has bit the dust…

…except my leeks! I don't know what it is about leeks and my garden. They're like peanut butter and jelly - they just go together perfectly. So my leeks are looking fantastic. It's what I cling to until the Fall planting season, which for us is known as the heart of hurricane season.

So how about all of you? What fell victim to your gardening wrath this month? Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog showing what you killed or maimed this month. We're here for you. Let's not judge, but support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.

**********

On a different note, are any of you bloggers having blogger issues? My scheduled posts aren't working anymore. I usually write a post the night before and schedule it to appear in the morning. They aren't appearing now. Like this post should have shown up this morning since I wrote it last night and it didn't. Hmph. Also, I approve comments right from my email, but lately when I log in to blogger it'll tell me I have 10 comments awaiting approval. When I click on the link, it comes up empty. Very strange... Anyone else?

It's my 2nd blogaversary!!

2010-06-28T07:30:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was my big day and I didn't even blog about it! I don't often blog on weekends and I was too caught up in my farmer's market rant to give myself two big cheers for my second blogaversary. I figure I'm often a day late and a dollar short in the garden, so being a day late for my blogaversary just makes sense.

Hard to believe I've kept this blog up for two years. Even harder to think that in those two years I've gone from a 468 square foot vegetable garden to 2 raised beds (and a 3rd one that I haven't blogged about yet, but it's not really the same - I'll explain later). I started with 2-year-old and 4-year-old boys and ended up with a 4 year old and a 6 year old. I had an old slow Lab and a spritely German Shepherd. I ended up with an insane puppy and a mature Shepherd with some distinguished grey hairs on his muzzle. And let's not forget that I started this blog chicken-free and now have three mature egg-laying thoroughly amusing hens.

It's been a great two years. I definitely learned more than I expected, but wish I had learned a lot more. Who knew that gardening (in the insane temperatures of Florida) had such a big learning curve? Not me! But I do now.

Thanks so much to all my readers for taking time out of your day to read my blog. Thanks to my long-time readers, my new readers, my dedicated readers, my occasional readers, my accidental readers and my secret readers on the sly who only come out of the woodwork when I post "Who ARE you people?" entries on the blog! Thanks to you all for your comments, advice and plain ole' words of encouragement. It's what keeps me going on the days when I want to bulldoze it all and learn to macramé instead.

Another Farmer's Market Rant

2010-06-27T07:41:00.001-04:00

I've gone an entire month since ranting about a local Famer's Market and here I am on my soapbox again. I've been a bit AWOL from the blog this past week because my mom has been in town and we've spent our evenings playing iPhone Scrabble with each other and the blog got shoved to the backburner. Of course, I'm still trying to sort out my bandwidth issues, but that's another story.

So yesterday morning I thought it would be nice to take my mom and the boys to our local - and most popular - Farmer's Market. I wrote a blog entry about this market in July of last year, but since then I've learned a lot more about buying local so my expectations have changed dramatically.

I now expect the produce I buy at the Farmer's Market to be local and thanks to some wonderful comments to my blog entry about this last month, I see most of you do too! This Farmer's Market is in a very ritzy little town and it's such a popular market - you never hear a bad thing about it. It is definitely the biggest and best market around.

Am I missing something here? On first glance it appears great. My mom and I and the boys had a fab time wandering through the stalls, but I grabbed some photos on my phone to show you what I found a bit bizarre.

Look at these prepackaged baby carrots. Aren't these the same ones I can get at the grocery store? I'd rather buy them in the refrigerated section of the grocery store than here sitting out in 95+ degree heat.

I went looking for legitimate carrots and found these.

California carrots. That's a helluva trip from California to Florida. So much for buying local.

Then I found some Pink Lady apples and some Georgia peaches. Clearly they aren't from Florida.

I bought a small box of new potatoes from the busiest vendor in the market (the same place the bagged baby carrots were located). I asked her where the potatoes were grown? I used to be naïve enough to think that a produce vendor was associated with the farm that grew the produce. Now I know better. She said "Um…I think Florida. Maybe not? Their growing season is pretty much over for potatoes, so probably another Southern state."

Huh.

Well I do like blueberries in my morning oatmeal. I saw these and thought they might taste good.

But they're from New Jersey. Clearly they haven't met the carrots who'll win the "traveled the farthest" award at the vegetable reunion. So I didn't buy them - or even consider them. And the prepackaged plastic box didn't help either. The blueberries I buy at my local grocery store say "Grown in Florida, USA" on the box, so I'll stick with those.

It was hot and we'd just downed some kettle corn and croissants so I treated us all to freshly-squeezed lemonade from another hugely popular vendor who always has a very long line of thirsty patrons. It was delicious, although it was mostly ice. But styrofoam cups? Really? Here we are being green and bringing our own reusable bags and trying to buy local and organic from a Farmer's Market. But we end up with prepackaged food from other states and a styrofoam cup.

Regardless, it was a great morning out with my mom and it is a beautiful Farmer's Market, but when you delve a little deeper, things aren't quite as they seem.

Apparently I have bandwidth issues

2010-06-26T22:37:00.004-04:00

Just a quickie post to acknowledge the fact that most of my blog pictures are missing and have been replaced with a lovely "Bandwidth exceeded" graphic from Photobucket. I'm trying to work on how to be able to view my pics again, but so far I haven't quite figured it out.

So just wanted you to know I'm working on it.

Update: Turns out my bandwidth will reset on the 27th of the month (if I'm reading it correctly) so maybe things will return to normal tomorrow. How I have exceeded 10 GB of bandwidth in one month is beyond me. Crossing fingers.

Thanks for your patience!

Edible Stuff that didn't die.

2010-06-21T21:20:00.001-04:00

With all the chicken drama and weather woes, I find I sometimes forget to talk about the good things that happen in my garden. So here's a good thing. Real live edible vegetables. There was a couple of eggplant in this harvest too, but you'll have to imagine them since they were jammed in my back pockets while I photographed the kid with the basket. Luckily I remembered about them before sitting down.

Ta-da. Some more green beans, some tomatoes, a cucumber, and two hidden eggplants.

And this tasty little morsel. One long skinny parsnip.

And my leopard beans. Like them? I'm not sure what exactly it means when your green beans go all weird and spotty, but we put them straight into the compost after photographing them. Now all of my green beans are curled, small and weird-looking, so I'm guessing I won't get any more beans from my beanstalks. It was definitely good while it lasted.

So there you have it.

My big, fat June harvest photos! A good thing from the garden.

Happy Father's Day!

2010-06-20T08:07:00.000-04:00

Father's Day is always very special to me. I'm lucky enough to have a great husband who is a wonderful father to our boys. I know how important it is never to take that for granted, especially in the world we live in today. I'm also lucky enough to have spent just a hair over 30 years with my amazing dad, who did everything from coach year after year of my softball team when I was a kid, to look after my newborn son so that I could return to work for a few months (even though dad was in his 70s). He also gave me a great sense of humor, my love of the outdoors and an empty spot in my heart when he passed away.

Did you know that this year is the 100th Anniversary of Father's Day? It was started by a woman who was raised by her father after her mother died and realized on Mother's Day one year that fathers deserved a day to be recognized as well. You can click on that link if you'd like to read the story of how it all got started.

I wanted to share a little poem I found when I was creating the booklet for my dad's memorial service. I put it on the inside of the booklet and I think it's a perfect tribute to dads who are no longer with us.

He is Gone
Author: David Harkins

You can shed tears that he is gone
Or you can smile because he has lived

You can close your eyes and pray that he will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that he has left

Your heart can be empty because you can't see him
Or you can be full of the love that you shared

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday

You can remember him and only that he is gone
Or you can cherish his memory and let it live on

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what he would want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

Happy Father's Day everyone! To all the dads who read my blog and the wonderful dads of blog readers! Give them an extra big hug today and let them know how much you appreciate them being in your life.

Wildlife Weekend :: White Ibis 1. Lizard 0.

2010-06-19T13:39:00.002-04:00

We always have plenty of white ibises around here. They wander around in the ditches poking around for frogs and such. This one ended up with an adult lizard - or brown anole, to be specific.

Burrrrrp.

Spontaneous Combustion

2010-06-17T15:53:00.002-04:00

Here we are in the thick of July, and in my garden July means death. Now I realize that the calendar says June, but it must be July because it's hotter than hot, so clearly there has been some sort of atmospheric time and space mix-up. It can't only be June and be this hot. Because if it's June and it's this hot, what on earth will July and August be like?

Here's our thermometer at about 6:30 yesterday evening in the shade on our patio.

I'm afraid that this month's Garden Blogger's Death Day will be chock full of burned and badly scorched corpses. Because, honestly, it's too hot for me to even go outside and take care of the garden. It's so hot that we have heat warnings, which we never get here in Florida, because Floridians can handle the heat. But apparently even we can't handle this.

Take June 14th. Here was the temperature. Focus on the heat index - that's what it feels like outside once they factor in the humidity.

Then June 15th just before dinnertime. Again - the heat index. It's our version of wind chill.

We went out that night around 7:30 pm and came in before 8 pm because we were all so hot we were seeing stars and feeling sick. The heat index hadn't dropped below 100 degrees yet. The air is thick, soupy and stagnant from morning until night. There is no relief when the sun goes down.

The dogs don't want to go outside.

The boys really don't want to go outside, which is making for long summer days off school.

The chickens are panting non-stop. And I'm a little worried about them, but I'm sure if I keep their water topped up and bring them one cold treat a day, they'll get through this.

But their panting is quite pathetic to watch. Did you know they pant like dogs when they get hot?

You can hear their breathing, hot and heavy and loud.

You can see their little chicken tongues beating up and down.

It's really just too much for them. When they sit on their nest in their cozy little nest box, it's like an Native American sweat box and suddenly less appealing to them. Clementine is clearly not impressed.

Yes, that is Clementine laying an egg! She's back in the game!
So the last thing I'm able to do in this heat is keep up with the garden. I'm honestly afraid to have any metal garden tools that close to the tinder. One spark with a wreckless swipe of a hoe and it'd be curtains for the raised beds. And let's not forget we're under water restrictions, so we're really not *supposed* to water anything more than twice a week. I need to find something that can grow in hotter than hot, dry, baking sun, crispy soil, weather. And don't say okra - I tried it. It worked, but I don't like it. And don't say jalapenos, because I don't do spicey. Right now I'm leaning toward starting a cactus garden until Fall when I can try growing green things again.

The Mysterious Case of the Fairy Egg

2010-06-15T13:51:00.002-04:00

The girls have been a little off their laying schedule since Clementine danced with the broody devil and lost her groove. We always got about an egg a day from them, but since Clementine's momentary insanity, we've had a really funky laying schedule. We'd go three consecutive days without an egg - then maybe one egg - then an eggless day - then an egg - then no eggs for a couple of days. Things are just out of whack in Cluckingham Palace.

I find it odd that the other two chickens have been so affected by Clementine's behavior. Maybe her sitting on their nest non-stop threw them off. Maybe she was giving off strange chicken vibes. Who knows? I just know that they aren't quite back in the swing of things yet and until I get three eggs a day again I won't consider this episode over.

But as you've all probably noticed, chickens are much more complicated than most people anticipate. They're full of personality and quirks and are always throwing something new your way. Take the recent incident of the fairy egg.

I was working in the garden the other day when I heard one of the girls singing an egg song. I knew someone had laid an egg so I walked out to the coop to get the egg and bring it into the house. When I opened the door to the nest box I found this cute little egg you see in the right side of my hand:

Here it is placed next to a regular egg so you can see the size difference.
That is a fairy egg, a witch egg, or even a 'wind' egg if you prefer. According to the My Pet Chicken website, in a mature hen, a fairy egg is unlikely, but can occur if a bit of reproductive tissue breaks away, stimulating the egg producing glands to treat it like a yolk and wrap it in albumen, membranes and a shell as it travels through the egg tube. You can tell this has occurred if, instead of a yolk, the egg contains a small particle of grayish tissue. In the old days, no yolkers were called "cock" eggs. Since they contained no yolk and therefore can't hatch, our forebears believed they were laid by roosters.

I can only assume that Clementine laid the egg because she's the one who's out of whack, but she normally doesn't sing an egg song when she lays an egg - that's more Maggie and Sookie's thing. I haven't cracked it open yet to see if it contains a yolk because it's just so cute. It's in the fridge in the egg boxes with the other eggs. I thought about poking holes in it, draining it and making a little ornament out of it for the Christmas tree. But for right now I just enjoy seeing the cute little thing every time I open the fridge.

The World's Messiest Orange Tree Hole

2010-06-13T04:00:00.000-04:00

You may remember that Farmer B and the boys got me an orange tree for Mother's Day. This is directly related to my first blog post ever (almost 2 years ago) where I showcased a mostly dead orange tree in our back yard. This tree eventually died (no surprise) so this weekend we decided it was time to pull out the dead orange tree and put my new one in its place.

I spent an eternity digging out the dead tree and making the hole big enough to accommodate our new tree. Here in this part of Central Florida when you dig down about 12 inches you hit water and then you've got a mucky sandy mess at the bottom of your hole. That makes it fun to keep digging, of course. But I was dedicated, so I kept scooping out slop until I had a perfect new hole for my tree.

You can see the dead tree I pulled out off there to the right. I figured we'd take a little break from the heat to get a drink and then put the new tree in the hole.

But then Saffie disappeared. I was worried.

Until I found her.

Ohhhh did I find her.

Lucky for me she decided to make the hole deeper. She's such a help.

Yeah. I know. Whatever you're thinking - I've already thought it.

Yes. The shaking helped.

Think she knows she did wrong?

The full body shot is delightful. She still hasn't grown into her muddy legs.

There's really nothing left to say, is there?

Wildlife Weekend :: Gorgeous in Green

2010-06-12T11:54:00.000-04:00

This little green dragonfly stayed with me for about an hour while I was working in the yard. I figured he really wanted his photo taken so I went inside the house, got the camera and he was waiting for me in the same spot when I went back outside. Whenever I photograph dragonflies I'm always amazed by how beautiful they are close-up - something you never realize while they're just buzzing around the back yard. It's one those 'stop and smell the roses' moments for me.

Amazing little creatures, aren't they? You can click on any of the photos to view them larger if you'd like.

The Broody Hen is Busted. . . right?

2010-06-09T21:34:00.001-04:00

If you read my post on May 27 you know that my Buff Orpington, Clementine, received the call from the mother ship and entered the mysterious realm of the broody hen. And you may recall that I was concerned because broody hens can actually die on the nest if they don't eat or drink for long enough while sitting on unfertile eggs that will obviously never hatch. And we live in really hot and humid Florida weather, which means they can get dehydrated really quickly.

Clementine's comb and wattles had turned a very light pink and had shrunk dramatically. She rarely left the nest and I hardly saw her eat or drink. We tried putting her in our moveable hoop run, but she just settled down on the grass in one spot and stayed put. I knew it was time to make her a Broody Buster Box.

This required purchasing a cage, so I scoured Craigslist and spent entirely too much on a used blue wire cage. I read that the cage should have a wire bottom and be slightly elevated so air blows under the hen's undercarriage and she loses the urge to sit and get all warm and cozy on a nest. I cut some hardwire cloth to fit the bottom and wrapped it around the side bars so there were no sharp edges. Then I put the cage on two old 2x4s that I found in the yard and shoved her in.

In case you're not aware, chucking a broody chicken in a cage means she will throw her half of your best friends necklace out the window. She was less than thrilled with me when I put her in there and locked the door. She may have growled a bit.

To make sure she had food and water available I grabbed a couple of empty Stonyfield Kids yogurt containers and attached them to the cage with some safety pins. Nothing but high tech and high class here, but it worked!

I put her in the cage in the morning when I let the others out into the run. They stared at her with an "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh what did you do?" look. When it was time to lock the girls up at night, I took her out of the cage and put her straight on the roost. I'd find her the next morning back in her place on the nest.

Wash, rinse, repeat for three days.

This morning instead of finding her on the nest I found her at the door waiting to come out into the run. When I opened the door, she bolted out with the other two and hovered around me waiting for a treat. She didn't even fluff up and hiss at Saffie!

YES! She was no longer broody! She was a regular ole' loveable chicken again!!

Three days in solitary and she was ready to join general population. The jailbird was free! Hallelujah!

She knocked Maggie out of the way for a bite of cottage cheese today. She didn't try to attack the dogs when they sniffed her through the fence. I knew I had broken this broody and made a few phone calls to friends and family to boast about my success.

Then tonight I went out to lock up the girls and dammit if Clementine wasn't back on that nest again. She's a persistent little bugger. I suppose her parole is being revoked tomorrow and she'll be back in the hole for another couple of days. I guess I'll see where she is in the morning.

That's what I get for feeling cocky.

The Great Florida Potato Harvest

2010-06-08T11:40:00.000-04:00

I've been eyeing up my potato plants recently and wondering if it's time to pull them out and see if there are any potatoes buried below. I'll admit that I had no clue what you're supposed to do with potato plants when they appear ready. I wasn't sure if they are the kind of plants that you keep in the ground to grow more once you harvest from it (like a tomato) or the kind of plant that you pull out to eat (like a radish or a carrot). Annie's Granny told me that a couple of weeks after a potato plant blooms, you can start poking around for potatoes. Or, she said, you can wait until the plant matures and dies off and get all the potatoes then. Well my plants had definitely matured because they were yellowed and drooping. So the decision was made for me.

I got the boys and told them we were going to plunge our hands into the soil and see what we came up with. That little boy of mine was instantly disgusted and left, but that big boy of mine was game and liked the idea of getting his hands really dirty.

We started digging and surprisingly enough we found potatoes. Last time we planted potatoes (in our regular garden - before we switched to a SFG) none of them grew. Well actually one of them grew, but I mistook it for a weed and pulled it up. So you can imagine how surprised we were when we kept finding potatoes on the ends of our plants this time around! It was like reaching into a grab bag with your eyes closed… you'd poke around until you found something and grab hold and pull it out and viola! - a tatery gift!

I had two squares of the SFG dedicated to potatoes and was really hoping to get at least a pound or two of potatoes. But every time we dug our hands into the ground, we came up with more and more potatoes. It was strangely exciting and surprising! That's the thing about growing potatoes. You see these plants growing above the surface and you have no idea what's going on below the soil. It could be feast or famine - there's no telling. Of course, I expect famine and am overjoyed when something actually grows as it's supposed to.

At the end of the day we ended up with 10 1/2 pounds of potatoes. Not bad for only two squares in my raised bed! I'm sure if I'd have known what I was doing, I could have reaped a better harvest by pulling out some potatoes every few days after the plant bloomed, but as we all know it's guesswork for me and I can't complain about 10 1/2 pounds of unskilled taters.

Now I just have to find out how to store them so they last longer because we surely can't find a way to cook that many potatoes in a week! We're low on root cellars here in Florida and really low on cool, dark places, so for now they're just sitting in a big bowl on my countertop with a cloth napkin thrown on top.

I'm especially happy that I pulled these potatoes the day AFTER I purchased a 5-lb bag of potatoes at the grocery store. I'm also in search of some tater-friendly recipes where I can enjoy the true potatoey-essence of this harvest and not just mash them up and pour gravy on them. Any suggestions?

The BP Oil Spill Hits Home - my home.

2010-06-04T13:18:00.001-04:00

I like to keep things light on my blog because there are enough serious things in the world without me using my gardening blog to get political. But this recent Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill is something I feel the need to discuss because I think about it constantly and as a Floridian, it affects me personally.

I'll leave politics out of it, which is easy for me because as a Brit living in the UK, I can't vote so there's no use in me picking sides. And I think any of you who have read my blog in the past already know that I'm big on environmental issues so the fact that we have such a dependence on oil upsets me, but honestly I don't know what the alternative is at this point. Every product I buy uses gallons of oil just to produce it and transport it to me. I'm as oil dependent as the next person, especially since I live in a town that forces me to rely on my car. I'm a stay-at-home-mom with two kids - I can't exactly jump off the grid.

But let's get past that and talk about what this means for Florida. We are a state that is 100% dependent on tourism. Tourists are to Florida like corn is to Iowa. Without it, we crumble. The state's tourism industry was crippled in the 2004 hurricane season. It barely recovered just in time to be struck by the recession, where people decided keeping their homes was more important than going to Florida on vacation. Again, it started to recover a bit this year and now the oil spill has dealt another blow.

My mom is the manager of two small resorts on Sanibel Island and her husband manages another resort on Captiva Island (I took the photo above in front of one of my mom's resorts). These islands are quiet barrier islands on the Gulf Coast that are famous for calm, clear blue seas and white sandy beaches that are heavy with shells and wildlife. The local seafood is unbelievable and a must-eat for anyone visiting the islands. So obviously my family, like many others, relies on tourism to pay the bills. I know how scary and potentially devastating this disaster is for the tourism industry. They're saying this damage from this spill will be measured in "generations" not years. If your business (or your state) relies on fishing, beaches, tourists or wildlife, what do you do? How do you plan for this?

I can't imagine these Gulf coast islands covered in oil. I can't imagine seeing wildlife - birds, fish, manatees, dolphins, turtles, gators - sick and dying and covered in oil. Of course, all of this is possible. Just seeing the pictures of the devastation in coastal Louisiana makes me profoundly sad and angry. I can't imagine this on my home turf. As it stands, they're predicting that the currents will keep the oil away from these islands and their beaches will stay as pristine as they are today. But it's irrelevant in the eyes of most tourists. They hear "oil on Florida beaches" and they lump all 1,200 miles of coastline into one big beach. International tourists see headlines that say "Oil nears Florida beaches" and cancel their vacations. It's a worldwide disaster that hits home hard for my family and anyone else who calls the Gulf Coast home.

To make matters worse, did you know that June 1st was the first day of our 6-month long hurricane season? The chances of a massive storm coming through the Gulf and spreading this oil inland due to hurricane-force winds and a wicked tidal surge are very real. It's something locals just plain don't want to talk about, but it's extremely likely that a hurricane will hit the oil slick and then all bets are off as to where this nightmare will travel.

I'm sad that as a nation we're not more outraged by this. I'm not sure what we should be doing, but I just don't feel like our response is appropriate. We hold telethons and donate money for so many worldwide tragedies, but not for this? This is in our own back yard! I drive down the road and see cars lining up at the gas pumps at the local BP gas stations right here in Florida and I'm floored someone would choose to buy their gas there at this point. I expect to drive past a BP and see it standing there empty, but it's business as usual. No picket signs, no boycotts - nothing. I realize these BP businesses employ locals, but it just doesn't seem right to give that company money at this point.

So what can you do? I'm sure, like me, some of you see this tragedy unfolding on TV and wonder what an individual can do to help. We can't all afford to convert our homes to solar power and buy an electric or hybrid car, but there are some things we can all do to make a difference. Here are some that come to mind.

1) Don't give any more of your money to BP. Boycott them and encourage your friends to do the same. Granted Exxon and Shell have had their own disastrous spills, so picking an oil company to patronize isn't easy, but giving money to BP after they created the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history just seems insane to me.

2) Buy as much local and/or organic food as you can. Most pesticides are petroleum-based, so when you purchase "regular" vegetables, you're adding to our nationwide dependence on oil. Every acre of organic food grown is an acre FREE of these petroleum-based pesticides. And let's not forget all the petroleum involved in shipping these items across the country to your local store.

3) Obviously, grow what you can in your own garden and keep it organic. The reasons here should be self-explanatory. Garden to table is as real and petroleum-free as it gets.

4) Buy local grass-fed beef. This is something that we're unable to do so far, but we're scoping out some local Florida ranches and we're seeing if we can adjust the budget to be able to afford this. Currently we're buying grass-fed beef from the grocery store and it's far from local, but it's a start. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan shows how it takes one barrel of oil to raise one steer from birth to slaughter. That's just how much petroleum-based fertilizer and pesticide it takes to feed a cow feedlot corn until he reaches slaughtering weight. I believe about 90,000 cows are slaughtered daily in the U.S. so that's a lot of oil. Again, you have the shipping of the beef to your local store that uses oil too.

5) See if you can have one car-free day a week. There is a movement called "Slow Sundays" that I think is a wonderful idea. You bake bread on Sundays and stay home with your family and garden or paint or just have family time and reduce your carbon footprint. To learn more about this wonderful idea, watch this video and see if you're inspired to bake some bread and stay home this Sunday.

6) Donate to an appropriate relief organization, such as the National Audubon Society, the Gulf Coast Restoration Society or the National Parks Service - or any similar organization of your choice. As they always say, every little helps.

7) Finally, if you're the sort of person who does visit Florida from time to time, don't cancel your next trip just because you're afraid of the oil ruining it. Talk to the local Chamber of Commerce or your local resort of choice and ask them what the forecast is for their beach. With 1,200 miles of coast, there is a good chance that your favorite getaway in paradise is still as pristine as you remember. Plus, many Florida resorts are offering refunds if the oil does happen to come their way and you have to cancel your trip.

Thanks for letting me mount my soapbox for this very important issue. I don't know how all the residents of all the Gulf Coast states will ever recover from this, but I suppose somehow given enough time, they'll find a new normal. My hearts go out to all the people and animals who are affected by this manmade disaster. No fears though, I'll get back to gardening, chickens and insane puppies next week.

I've placed many great links within the text of this blog post, but here are a couple more I wanted to share:

Excellent CNN story on how the oil spill affects ALL Americans

This site lets you enter in your home address and the graphic will move the oil spill to your neck of the woods so you can see how big it really is

Cabbage Expiration Haiku

2010-06-03T13:53:00.002-04:00

One of my new-found gardening problems is having no clue when certain not-so-obvious vegetables are ready to harvest. I have potatoes growing right now that might have been ready two weeks ago and then again, might not be ready for another month. Who knows?

I have an eggplant growing that looks ready to harvest. It's much smaller than a typical grocery-store eggplant, but it's about the size of the eggplants I got in the veggie co-op a few weeks ago. Maybe it's ready to harvest? Maybe it's past ready? Again, clueless.

And let's sidestep to talk about my dream the other night. I watched a YouTube video on how to harvest a cabbage because I had a feeling that my lone cabbage plant was ready to be harvested. It had some holes in the outer leaves, but the center head looked great. It had to be time. All of my spring cabbage plants went kaput in the heat, but I had one pretty cabbage plant from last Fall that looked about ready to go. I watched the video and decided that my cabbage was about ready come out of the garden. I went to bed that night and had a weird dream about pulling the cabbage up and it made this horrible ripping sound and I pulled and pulled and ended up ripping up half of the Northern Hemisphere up with it. It was very disturbing.

Fast-forward to yesterday morning. After having that dream I decided that it was finally THE day to harvest that cabbage. I figured I'd let the chickens out and then come back inside, get a knife and head on out to the garden. On the way back inside I swung by the garden to discover, much to my horror, that some evil creature of the night clearly had the exact same dream and eaten the cabbage before I got there.

WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?

I'm always a day late and a dollar short in the garden.

To mark my cabbage's demise, I've written a short haiku.

(*note: I spelled basterds with an e, much like Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds". No one knows why he did it, but apparently it's less offensive to spell it wrong. And on a gardening blog, I aim to unoffend, even in the face of cabbage murder).

Supermarket Ploy

2010-06-02T13:17:00.001-04:00

I have a favorite product in the produce section of our grocery store. I've never purchased this item, but every time I see it, I think it's magnificent. I see people putting it in their carts from time to time and it must be the awesome slogan on the bag that draws them in.

Great for Chopping.

Now if THAT's not a reason to buy a bag chock full o' green bell peppers, I don’t know what is.

What's next? Carrots that are great for peeling? Soup that's great for stirring? The possibilities are endless. You know the phrase "great for chopping" isn't something you see very often in seed catalogs to describe vegetables. Maybe they're missing the mark!

Another product that makes me giggle is the new corn-emblazoned box of Kix cereal. Anyone that's watched any of the recent food documentaries like King Corn or The Future of Food knows that the food companies are sneaking corn into almost everything we eat. I like any product that doesn't mess around with subtlety.

Just cut right to the chase. It's a box o' corn for breakfast. Yummy.

If those two products aren't enough to get people growing their own food and making their own cereals, I don't know what is.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: May 2010

2010-05-31T04:00:00.001-04:00

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome back to Garden Blogger's Death Day! We're here to list our losses for May, 2010! This is the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death. This is the day for gardeners like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, for cadmium-green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide, and for any poor soul whose plants fall victim to that fickle mother who controls us all - Mother Nature.

Thanks to some poorly-timed planting and my big insect invasion I have a lot to lay to rest this month. I think a moment of silence will be in order at the end of this post because a mass burial in the compost bin will be taking place momentarily. On a brighter note, I have much more alive than dead, which as you know, is a huge measure of gardening success in my book.

The spinach just wasn't meant to be. I'm going to assume it was just too hot for spinach. It's either that or it's that "gardening paradox" issue that keeps coming up in my yard - you know about the paradox, right? The more I'm looking forward to a plant growing, the greater its chances of death. Of course the opposite is true as well. If you don't care about a plant or even like the fruit that it puts out, it'll be big, bushy and prolific just to spite you. I think I had about nine spinach plants growing because I was SO looking forward to fresh spinach, and they're all brown wilted sticks now. It rained all day today and yesterday so I didn't get outside to photograph it, but here it is about three weeks ago before it died.

You know, my spinach disaster has reminded me of a very important lesson I've learned from my garden failures. If you're a new gardener (especially a new Florida gardener), take note of this important lesson that I learned the hard way:

You'll read in numerous gardening books and websites and you can feel safe planting what is offered in season at your local nursery or big box store (like Home Depot or Lowes). The idea is that each planting zone's stores will only stock the seedlings that should be planted in your area at that time of the year, so plant what's being sold and you'll have success. IT'S NOT TRUE! I planted spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage this Spring because they were for sale in these stores. But I have a Florida Vegetable Gardening book that specifically states that spinach should only be planted in Central Florida in October-November; that broccoli should be planted from August-January; that cabbage should be planted from Sept-Jan and cauliflower from October-January. Well aren't I the sucker for planting the seedlings this Spring that we picked up at local nurseries? Indeed I am. So the big lesson - consult your local planting guides to see what's safe to plant and don't rely on the old wisdom of what's for sale is what's safe to plant.

The cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli just plain need to come out and move into their new homes in compost-world. They bolted straight to seed and never grew out, but grew up. I'm not sure why I have hung on to them for so long…I think I just liked seeing something green in their little squares, but clearly they're just attracting pests at this point. I only had a couple of each that went in the garden this spring, so I suppose it's no great loss in the grand scheme of the garden. This is how the broccoli has looked for about two months.

And one of my summer squash plants grew a nice looking squash and then the end turned rotten and fell off. I assume it's blossom end rot, but if it is, I'll admit to being quite surprised it appeared in my SFG. I assumed the soil was good enough that it didn't need too much tinkering with. I believe if it is BER, then the plants cannot be saved? I suppose I do have some reading up to do - as always.

So how about all of you? What fell victim to your gardening wrath this month? Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog showing what you killed or maimed this month. We're here for you. Let's not judge, but support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.

Farmer's Market Conspiracy?

2010-05-29T13:31:00.001-04:00

I love hitting up local Farmer's Markets, but I'll admit that I rarely make it out to them. For most of the year we have soccer on Saturday mornings and that's the big Farmer's Market day around here. The market location and the soccer fields are on opposite sides of town, so I'm out of luck most of the year. I think there are a couple open on Sundays only, but we try to stay home on Sundays so we have at least one car-free day a week.

But the soccer season is over and I happened to be in a shopping center today that does a Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings. But it just didn't feel right to me. It felt more like a flea market than a Farmer's Market. I could get sno-cones and funnel cakes and all sorts of jewelry and flip-flops and I only found two tented produce stands. I expected a lot more than just two, but they were both large booths so maybe they'd be just fine. I wandered over to them and immediately noticed a few things that just felt off.

1) The person selling the produce did not give off the vibe that they were employed by the farm where the produce was sold. I can't explain this any further without sounding horrible, but the sellers just didn't look like they'd ever set foot on a farm. Call this a bias on my part, but they appeared to be hired hands from a local labor pool and not affiliated with any farms.
2) There were no signs on either produce stand stating which farm the produce came from. I've noticed this even at nicer farmer's markets from time to time. I realize that not every farm has a name, but it is sort of strange to me that there was no farm name or city anywhere to be found.
3) Many of the items being sold did not appear to be local. I saw cherries, apricots, bananas and potatoes labeled "real Idaho potatoes." I suppose there could be somewhere locally that grows these items, but Florida isn't famous for any of those things as far as I know.

Then I got to wondering…. There is a local city in Florida appropriately called Plant City. It is where all the produce comes in to the state and gets distributed. I belong to a local veggie co-op and the coordinator goes to Plant City every two weeks and buys whatever looks good and is affordable and boxes it up and sends it out to the co-op members. I stopped getting co-op deliveries from her awhile ago since my boys had seen enough squash to last them all summer, but I did find it odd that we sometimes got grapes and bananas in the box - again, two items that are not grown in Florida. I once asked the coordinator if the squash was from the Orlando-area and she said "I don't know - I just get it all at Plant City." But things come into Plant City from all over… so am I really buying local?

So what stops someone who wants to make a buck from going to Plant City and buying up produce and then selling it at local Farmer's markets under the guise that they grew it themselves? Just hire some workers from the local labor pool, buy some card tables and a tent, and you're got yourself a quick business. The buyer has no idea if pesticides were used on the produce or if the produce is even local. We go into it with a set of assumptions about the Farmer's Market faire that might be false.

Then I noticed that some of the fruits and vegetables were so incredibly uniform, much like you see in the grocery store. I know that some locally farm-produced foods can be uniform, but they usually don't look so "grocery store perfect," if you know what I mean. Then I got to thinking…what stops this same person who wants to make a buck from seeing that the local Albertson's is having a sale on Idaho potatoes where you can buy a 5lb bag and get one free. Then buying a bunch of bags of potatoes, opening them up and putting them in trays, raising the per-potato price and selling them at their booth at the farmer's market?

I've read repeatedly that Farmer's Markets are one of the fastest growing alternative food business in America. They're popping up all over the place, which I do think is great. But I started wondering if some unscrupulous sellers might be pulling the wool over the eyes of unaware buyers and selling them produce that's not from a local farm at all, but might be from overseas or half-way across the country, and might be laden with pesticides. I know that one of the main reasons I visit a Farmer's Market is to buy local, pesticide-free produce, but now I wonder if that's what I'm getting at all.

I'm not knocking the Farmer's Markets, but I am suggesting that 'Buyer Beware' might be the best philosophy when you visit one. Michael Pollan mentions how great the markets are since you can talk to the farmer about their farming practices and shake the hand that feeds you, so to speak. Maybe we should ask questions from the person taking the money to make sure we really are getting what we pay for. If they're a legitimate farmer, I'm sure they'd love to talk to you and you'll be able to buy fresh fruits and vegetables with confidence.

Bring on the Broody Buster Box!

2010-05-27T21:10:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted much about the girls lately because their life has been trucking on nicely with no hiccups. I enjoy normalcy when it comes to my chickens. I don't want to deal with any drama. I want them to be happy and healthy and provide me with eggs. The end.

But something has been different about Clementine lately. I don't think it would be noticeable to anyone else, but I can tell she's been a bit "off." Her cluck has changed a bit and she's not pushing Maggie and Sookie out of the way when I bring them treats. In fact, she's been hanging back and avoiding most of the treats I leave in the run.

I've also noticed that she's spending an inordinate amount of time in the nest box lately. We have two nest boxes, but apparently one isn't up to snuff because all three of the girls prefer the nest box on the right and won't even acknowledge the identical (evil) nest box on the left. I'll admit that when I first got chickens I was surprised to learn that hens usually share a nest box with other hens and that there is usually one or two coveted nest boxes in each coop.

Then yesterday I noticed that she was in the nest box in the morning. Then she was still in it in the afternoon. Then there she was at bedtime. That is not a good sign. She's always the first one up on the roost half-asleep and cooing when I lock them in their coop at night. I went out there this morning and there she is in the nest again and she's fluffy as all get out - almost twice her normal size when I got close. Like a marshmallow in the microwave, she expanded within seconds and even let out a low hissy-growl.

Then it hit me. Oh snap. She's gone broody.

You chicken people probably recognized this instantly. You non-chicken people probably don't know what broody means. When a chicken goes broody it means that she received notice from the mother ship that right now is the time to hatch some eggs. So she'll sit on the nest and she'll barely come off for food or water until whatever she's sitting on hatches. After 21 or so days, she'll have chicks and leave the nest to eat and drink and all is good in her world. This is fine if you've got fertile eggs in the nest.

But we are sans rooster and she's sitting on a Titleist and two infertile eggs. Sorry sista - but no matter how long you cook those, nothing is going to happen. And it's 90+ degrees here and if she keeps sitting there without eating and without drinking, she'll get weak and then she's vulnerable to a list of possible chicken diseases. Not good.

So I went to my #1 chicken source - the Backyard Chicken forum - and started reading up on how to "break a broody," meaning, how to get my chicken off that nest so she stops being broody and starts being chickeny again. The most common advice is to make a Broody Buster Box and shove the broody girl inside for a few days until she forgets about her golf ball and life returns to normal.

The idea is that you put the broody hen in a wire cage where air can get to her undercarriage and she doesn't feel the instinct to sit on a nest - she has access to food and water, but nothing else. It sounds mean, but the alternative is her getting weak and dehydrated and possibly dying on the nest. So I called Farmer B and started yammering on about how we have a chicken emergency and need a Brooder Buster Box NOW so he told me he'd ask around at work for a cage we can borrow for about 4 days.

So here we are hoping we can come up with a cage so that we can break this broody before I have to learn how to hook up an IV drip to a chicken. And I'm sure Sookie and Maggie would like me to get cracking on this box because they were standing there with their legs crossed looking anxious since their fat sister won't let them get in the coveted nest box so they can lay their daily eggs. They seriously look ready to bust.

I felt bad for them so pried Clementine off the nest, which was about as easy as ripping apart industrial-strength velcro while wearing mittens, and tossed her in the run for some fresh air. Saffie came up to the fence to inspect this bizarre creature and Clementine went all Tom Turkey on her, which was a behavior I've never seen in her before.

I yelled at Maggie and Sookie to go for the nest but they were too busy eyeballing their strange fluffy broody sister. As soon as Maggie snapped out of it and turned toward the coop, Clementine shot like a rocket back inside and I think we all know where she is right now.

If you're wondering how often a hen goes broody, there isn't a straight answer. It varies dramatically from hen to hen. Some will go broody every few weeks. Others a few times in their life and some think motherhood is for the birds (not chickens) and never go broody. If I manage to break Clementine it'll be interesting to see if she goes broody again or if this was a one-time deal.

Invasion 2010

2010-05-26T22:06:00.002-04:00

Well it's about time my garden was invaded by unnamed and unknown beasties hell-bent on crushing my gardening bravado yet again. It started with a teeny-tiny tomato hornworm a few weeks ago, but I knew that meant it was time to whip out my BT and put the beat-down on them. It was my own fault for feeling so confident in my killing abilities.

Because not soon after I noticed that my will-never-be-edible-since-they-bolted-instantly-due-to-heat cauliflower and broccoli plants were holey as could be. I searched the plants and under a few of the leaves I found tiny green wormy bugs. Shudder. I hate that I have a bit of a bug phobia, but worms are the worst thanks to too many TLC specials about humans as parasitic hosts (Farmer B won't let me watch those shows anymore, which is irrelevant since I scream when I even see the previews). I decided to spray the BT again since these appeared caterpillar-like and BT is the caterpillar kill-all in my books.

Again, feeling like a cocky killing machine.

Then dammit if I didn't go out there and notice my Swiss Chard had turned to Swiss Cheese AGAIN! This happened before in the garden and last time the culprit was armyworms (or so my gardening blogger friends told me). This time I didn't see any worms, but I suppose they could have been hiding. I am not sure how to go about killing them, so each day I have more holes and less chard.

And let's not forget the red ants that killed my green peas, but that's in the past.

Then a couple of days ago I'm out in the garden with that older boy of mine and we're harvesting some green beans for dinner when he starts eyeing up my potato plants and asking me when we can eat the potatoes. I told him I think the leaves start to yellow or something when the potatoes are ready. He said "Well I hope we get to eat them before all these bugs do"

WHAT? And there on the leaves of my potato plants were all of these orange leggy insects just making themselves at home. I did what I always do when I encounter a new bug - get a big case of the willies, then run inside and open up my Organic Pest Control book and try to identify the bug. The best part about that experience is that the gross-out factor of turning page after page of wriggly vile bugs is off the charts and I have yet to identify one bug from the book. This is confounded by the fact that bugs mutate constantly - you have to look at the egg, larvae, juvenile and adult photos for each and every writhing multi-legged creature. And this time was no different - nothing in there looked like these bugs.

So I was left wondering - should I kill them? Are they good bugs? Are they evil bugs? How do I kill them? So I found a bottle of Garden Safe Fruit and Vegetable insect killer spray that I've had for a couple of years and never used and went running out to the garden with it. It says "kills instantly" on the label, so I figured I'd use it and hope these weren't good bugs. I sprayed every last one of them and nothing happened. They even looked angrier and stronger an hour or so later. So if they were good bugs, I did them no harm. If they were bad bugs, I'm screwed.

Apparently I am not prepared for the invasion. I'm taking a big, fat mental note of this.

Make this Granola - or else!

2010-05-24T14:03:00.003-04:00

As you may have gathered from my Earth Day post, we try our best to make as many things from scratch as possible. We're by no means hard core, but we do make an effort to avoid processed foods and boxes of junk from the grocery store shelves. Since watching The Future of Food and Food Inc., and reading a couple of Michael Pollan's books (namely The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, which I'm reading now) Farmer B and I have become really squiggy about corn and HFCS. It's really turned us off these boxes and bags of processed corn disguised as food. This has us particularly uncomfortable around boxed cereal. The affordable stuff is just corn in a costume with a heavy dose of HFCS and the good stuff is so pricey it's unrealistic for a family of four.

A year or so ago (maybe longer?) I found this great granola recipe and I've been making it on and off ever since. I wish I remembered where exactly I found the recipe, but it's been so long that I can't remember. I don't pretend that it's my creation, but it has become part of the regular recipe rotation around here.

The first thing you should know is that this recipe makes a lot of granola. Don't be tempted to halve it. You'll regret it and wish you'd made the full recipe. I weighed it once and it comes to about five-and-a-half pounds of granola - depending on how crazy you get with the nuts and dried fruit.

Here's what you need:

HOMEMADE GRANOLA

10 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup milled flax seeds (I don't use this)
1/2 lb unsweetened dried shredded coconut
1 cup sesame seeds
1 1/2 cups slivered almonds
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 cup brown sugar substitute (regular brown sugar can be used)
1 1/2 cups water
3/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup honey (local or organic is best)
1/2 cup sorghum or molasses (I use molasses)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 cups dried fruit (combination of raisins, blueberries, cranberries)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
In a large bowl combine oats, wheat germ, flax seed, coconut, sesame seeds and nuts, mixing well.
In a large saucepan, combine the brown sugar substitute or brown sugar, water, oil, honey, sorghum, salt, cinnamon and vanilla.
Heat until thoroughly mixed; do not boil.
Pour the syrup over dry ingredients and stir until coated well.
Spread onto three large cookie sheets. (You want to sort of smush it down and keep one even layer.)
Bake 10 minutes, then move each sheet to a different shelf in the oven. (Keep repeating this process until you've baked the granola about 35-40 minutes. I take mine out when the edges just start to brown).
Cool mixture and add dried fruit. (You MUST let it cool completely on the pans. Don't stir it up until it's cool if you want chunkier pieces).
Store in airtight container in a cool dry place. (It will become crunchier as it cools.)
Will keep up to 6 months. Lasts about a week around here.

The first important thing I learned about this recipe is to buy some of the ingredients at our local natural foods shop instead of the grocery store. You can buy a tiny little 1 oz container of McCormick sesame seeds for $2.99 at our grocery store, or I can go to the bulk bin at the natural foods store and buy an entire cup for about $1.50. The unsweetened dried shredded coconut is also impossible to find at our grocery store but Bob's Red Mill coconut is very affordable at the natural foods shop.

The original recipe said you should stir the granola every few minutes too. I prefer the texture if I don't stir it - I get larger crunchier chunks, which we love. But it's up to you. Oh, and I line the pans with parchment paper so I don't have to worry about any of it sticking to the pans.

I have also made this recipe with 1/4 cup molasses and 1/4 cup real maple syrup, which turned out great. I plan on trying it with all maple syrup and no molasses sometime. You can change out the nuts and fruit to change up the flavor of the granola too. Try dried cherries and blueberries one time - then Craisins and raisins the next time. Substitute walnuts for pecans for a change also.

Farmer B inhales it by the bucketful. Both of my boys can't get enough of it (even that picky younger one of mine in the picture) and it's beyond filling. I love it with Vanilla Almond milk on top since I can't have dairy. We end up storing it in about 3-4 large Tupperware containers and I'm embarrassed to say we occasionally go through this much cereal in just over a week.

So there you have it. Make your own granola and stop relying on the boxed junk from the grocery store. I'm sure you'll love it!

Apologies. . .

2010-05-20T23:16:00.001-04:00

Apologies from me, the blog slacker. I keep meaning to write something spectacular and then life gets in the way. Next thing I know it's midnight and yet another blog-free day has gone by. Not that you all are on the edges of your seats wondering what's living (and dying) in my garden, but I feel like a slacker when I'm a sparse blogger. And sparse is being kind lately.

Maybe seeing how much my puppy is growing will make up for it? Maybe??

I promise I'll get back into the groove next week now that my work-at-home life is relaxing again. I've got all sorts of strange things going on in the garden that I want to share, so I'm planning on getting back into the swing of things next week.

Thanks all!

Final Call for Space Shuttle Atlantis

2010-05-15T04:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the final flight for the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which launched at 2:20 p.m. on its way to the International Space Station. I went outside with my very curious 4-year-old to take some pictures and hopefully imprint another shuttle launch into his memory before the program ends for good later this year. I hope he's old enough to one day have distant memories of dashing out into his backyard as a child to watch a light and smoke trail ascend into the sky.

It was a beautiful clear day to watch the launch and I was determined to have my camera on the right settings this time around. I brought out the video camera, my SLR camera on a tripod, and the iPhone so my budding photographer could take his own photos of the launch. I also brought out a ladder so he could get the perfect vantage point.

This video with his commentary is priceless. My videography skills are crap because I was concentrating on taking photos, making sure the dogs didn't knock over my camera and making sure he didn't fall off the ladder. Look past my footage and listen to how excited he is.

I got some really nice clear photos of the launch, albeit not much different than previous daytime launch photos I've taken from the same spot looking East from our back yard.

Then I decided to get a pic of the kid taking his own photos of the launch.

And here is one of his photos.

Not bad for a 4-year-old, huh? There I am perched with a digital SLR on a tripod and he snaps a perfect shot with my camera phone.

There are only two launches left - unless the shuttle program gets some sort of last minute reprieve - and I'll do my best to get my boys outside to watch them both. (That older boy of mine got to watch this one from his Elementary school - no fear!)

Bean counter

2010-05-13T23:31:00.001-04:00

I've got something to add to my list of Spring SFG successes! I've finally succeeded in growing the elusive green bean! Hoo-ra! I've attempted green beans several times before and they always fizzle out and die before they really get going. I'm not sure what's different this time around. Maybe it's finally the right time of year, but whatever the reason is we made it to our normal "fizzle-out" time and motored right through it. They kept growing and growing and damned if there weren't real live green beans hanging from the vines right about the time the seed packets said it should happen. Astounding.

And not just a couple of beans either. Bunches and bunches of healthy, crunchy delicious green beans hanging all over this thing. It's amazing to me when something actually grows the way it should. I stand there and marvel at the awesomeness of it all.

The boys have had a great time picking the beans and cutting them off the vines with their rounded-tip Kindergarten scissors. They eat them by the handful whenever I prepare them for dinner, so it's been a wonderful experience. I've got three varieties growing - Kentucky Wonder and two British varieties that my aunt in the UK mailed over and that haven't grown well when I've planted them before, but are alive and kicking this time around. Again, no clue what's different this time. The planets aligned just perfectly so that the beans are prolific.

When I was harvesting beans for dinner the other night I saw this strange-looking bug clinging to one of the leaves. I looked around online and discovered that it's probably a stink bug. I wasn't sure if this little guy is the sign of something bad or just a fluke random bug.

I realize I should have killed it, but I'm not a bug-killer by nature, with the exception of ants and mosquitoes. I'm not sure why, but I just can't, so I tossed it into a container of bubble soap on the patio. I don't like bugs by any means - my anti-bug-killing philosophy isn't a stance on bugs, but more a squeamish barfy turn-off thing. Great issue for a gardener to have, right? And don't get me started on worms. Shudder. I'm keeping my eye open for any more creepy crawlies, but so far this little green beastie the only one of his kind I've found. I'll just cling to the hope that he was a loaner - a drifter - just passing through. Although now his body is stuffed inside a container of Amazing Bubbles. I must re-think my bug corpse disposal strategy pronto.

The Gardening Motherload

2010-05-12T13:31:00.000-04:00

As we all know, this past weekend was Mother's Day. I was looking forward to my hand-made card and presents from the boys, which I love more than anything. I know that many moms secretly hope for some romantic trinket from their husbands too - a necklace with the kids initials on it, a birthstone bracelet, something sparkly and beautiful. But Farmer B knows that I'm not into the sparkly stuff, so I wasn't sure what to expect for the big day. Honestly as long as I got my handmade cards and gifts from the boys, I'd be happy.

But Farmer B pulled out the big guns and I got the Gardening Motherload for Mother's Day.

They had me close my eyes and walk out to the garage, where I first saw this:

A big beautiful orange tree. In my first ever blog post, I mentioned our almost dead baby orange tree. Of course it has since died and I've always felt bad about that since it was a present to my husband from my mother. Now we've got a new orange tree to take its place and I'm determined to force this one to go against its natural instincts and live. I'll actually try and feed this orange tree and water it - and all the other stuff you're supposed to do to make trees live and not die.

Then I noticed a big brown box in the corner and realized that it was a real-live composter!! The kind that you can turn periodically with a handle!! Look how happy this woman looks in her white pants and straw hat. That's gonna be me soon! I can dream, right?

Not that my homemade garbage can-composter isn't awesome, but it's next to impossible to turn the compost so it just sits there getting heavier every day. Now I've got two composters, which I think will be perfect! This thing has an assembly book as big as a phone book, so I think it'll take us a full day to put it together next weekend.

And just when I was giddy with my new tree and new composter I noticed three little plants on the floor. I am now the proud owner of a blueberry plant, a raspberry plant and a blackberry plant. EEEEK!

I have plans of building a raised bed along the side of our well where we already have a trellis in place (more so to hide the well) and planting the three new plants and some existing strawberries that aren't doing too well. I realize I'll need to cover the plants with chicken wire to keep out the Great White Beast, but I'm excited about the whole shebang.

Did Farmer B give me a great Mother's Day or what???

My potatoes are growing tomatoes!

2010-05-08T22:52:00.000-04:00

Granted I still have a lot to learn about gardening, but what I saw the other day confused me and made me doubt what knowledge I have picked up along the way. I was watering the garden and admiring the gigantic bushy potato plants that have overtaken the scenery in one of my raised beds when a little something caught my eye. I leaned in and saw a little green tomato that had fallen off one of my tomato plants and landed on my potato plant.

I remember having a fleeting thought about how strange it was that a little green tomato had fallen upward about 12 inches from where it was growing - and over one full garden bed to land on my potato plant. I thought it was bizarre so I reached out to grab it and chuck it on the ground. When I grabbed a hold of it, the thing was stuck and not laying loosely on a leaf like I expected. Obviously some sort of vine had wrapped around it so I looked at the stem of the little tomato to see why it wasn't moving. Turns out it was stuck because the TOMATO WAS GROWING OUT OF MY POTATO PLANT.

And when I looked deeper, there were little tomatoes growing all over on my potato plant. You can't imagine the thoughts that ran through my mind. What had I done? Had I inadvertently created a new species of plant by violating some plant law and planting potatoes and tomatoes too closely? Why wasn't this in the gardening book? Were there tomato seeds in my compost that had morphed with my seed potatoes? Had my lack of gardening skills led me to single-handedly mess with Mother Nature, possibly causing some horrible potmato hybrid to take over the world?

So I came inside and called Farmer B and my mom right away. They both had the same startled reaction and doubted my sanity and my discovery. So I did a quick internet search to see if anyone else had created such an abomination or if there was some sort of number I should call to turn myself in to the proper agricultural authorities. I was relieved and surprised that a lot of people have found tomatoes growing from their potatoes and were equally surprised by them.

Turns out this is normal. The round green cherry-tomato-looking fruit actually are the fruit of the potato plant and not real tomatoes. We eat the tuber, but the fruit is what the plant produces, complete with seed in there for growing future plants (although I read that these plants can be iffy, so best to start with seed potatoes and not actual seeds). The potato and the tomato are both in the nightshade family, which explains why the fruits look similar. However, they're poisonous, so you don't want to chop one up and put it in your salad and you might want to tell your kids to leave them alone.

Phew. I could walk free another day.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: April 2010

2010-04-30T04:00:00.000-04:00

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome to the first Garden Blogger's Death Day for the Spring planting gardening season of 2010!! It's GBDD for April, 2010! This is the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death. This is the day for gardeners like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, for cadmium-green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide, and for any poor soul whose plants fall victim to that fickle mother who controls us all - Mother Nature.

I've done quite well with this year's garden, but I always start off cocky and confident and end hungry and shamed. Each planting season I do get better and I find that less plants fall to my black-thumbed wrath each time I start a new garden. But, of course, there are always victims.

Here is my nice little square of 16 carrots - please excuse the ugly weed poking up in the front of the picture. As you can see, I only had three carrots poke through the soil. The other 13 have died a sad little seedy death in my garden. I blame the heat since that's always a safe bet around here.

Now this one I'm mad about. I've tried to grow English Peas a few times now and every time something happens to them when they get about this height. This time it's that huge mound of ants you see at the bottom. They've raised the soil, pushed the plants over to one side and flat-out displaced my peas and overtaken at least a third of this raised bed. I am working on a plan to annihilate the buggers, but I think it's a little late for my peas. RIP English Peas. One day the planets will align correctly and I'll find a way for you to survive in my garden.

This bottom half of a tomato plant falls right into the category of "I know better," which says a lot since I rarely know better when it comes to gardening. I often fly by the seat of my pants so the fact that I screwed up AND I knew better says a lot. This tomato plant was tall and gorgeous and full of wonderful little yellow flowers. I knew I should put a cage on it, but I can procrastinate better than anyone. Then a big storm came through this past weekend and the plant fell over and broke in half. Well isn't that special? I put a cage on it and noticed that I have a little growth out of the top of the main stem, so hopefully all is not lost.

Overall this was a nice quiet first Death Day of 2010 for me! I have something eating my eggplant, strange white spots on my spinach, a prematurely flowering broccoli and sickly parsnips, so I fear that May's Death Day might be chock full of crime scene photos if I don't get my act together this month.

So how about all of you? What fell victim to your gardening wrath this month? Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog showing what you killed or maimed this month. We're here for you. Let's not judge, but support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.

A prematurely flowering broccoli and a Garden Bloggers Death Day Announcement!

2010-04-28T22:55:00.001-04:00

I've been a bit busy lately and the blog has taken a nice comfy seat on the backburner. I've finally found a spare couple of minutes tonight and thought I'd share my latest gardening dilemma with you. I have a prematurely flowering broccoli. What gives?

It's a new plant and with the first little heads of broccoli came yellow flowers. It never grew a nice large head of broccoli - I got funky small little broccoli buds and yellow flowers. I can't eat yellow flowers with my dinner! What happened to my broccoli? Do I need to get rid of the plant now?

Any ideas? I've never had this happen before and I'm perlexed - as usual.

*****
And my BIG ANNOUNCEMENT is that I'm holding the first Garden Blogger's Death Day of 2010 on April 30th for the Spring 2010 planting season!!

Garden Blogger's Death Day is the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death. This is the day for gardeners like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, for cadmium-green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide, and for any poor soul whose plants fall victim to that fickle mother who controls us all - Mother Nature.

So join me on April 30th for GBDD! Post on your blog what fell victim to your gardening wrath this month. Feel free to leave a comment explaining what you killed or maimed this month. If you have a blog leave a link to it so we can visit and check out post mortem photos too.

Remember, we're here for you. Let's not judge, but support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.

Happy Earth Day! Add to my green list!

2010-04-22T04:00:00.004-04:00

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day - the day where we're all supposed to stop and think about how we're treating the only home we'll ever have, and maybe find a way to tread a little lighter. I'm a huge follower of environmental news and the more I read, the more I worry about the future of the planet. I do worry that we'll damage things beyond the point of no return if everyone doesn't try to do something to make a difference.

All my friends know that I'm an out-and-proud tree hugger. In my eyes, I'm not hardcore, but many of my friends seem to think I'm over the top. I think it's really important to raise my children with a respect for themselves, their food, and their environment. I want them to know where food comes from, where garbage goes, where water comes from, what pollution is, etc. Raising them to respect our planet is one of my most important parenting goals.

That being said, here's the list of 20 things we do in our family to tread as lightly as we can on our home turf. And before anyone thinks this is some sort of go-green brag to be the best, it's not…it's just my list of things WE do with the hopes of inspiring someone out there to pick one thing off my list and add it to your family's routine. Do you do something earth-friendly that's not on my list? Please let me know in the comments section - I'm always interested in learning new ways to live a little greener.

1) We have a vegetable garden! Of course. It might not be perfect, but any space dedicated to growing your own vegetables is a well-used space. There's really nothing better than a garden-to-table meal.

2) We compost. All meat scraps go to the dogs. All cooked veggie scraps (and rice, pasta, etc.) go to the chickens and everything else goes in the compost. We couldn't afford to buy a big fancy composter so we made one out of a garbage can and it works just fine.

3) I make our own cleaning products. I do have a couple of store-bought chemicals cleaners, but about 90% of what we use is homemade by me. You can clean almost anything in your house with vinegar, baking soda, Borax, hot water, essential oils, rubbing alcohol and good old-fashioned elbow grease. You'd be surprised that most homemade products work so much better than chemical-laden store-bought junk - plus you're reusing the same container instead of just tossing it in the trash and you're not bringing chemicals into your home (and then flushing them down your sink).

4) We used to cloth diaper our kids. This freaks people out for some reason. But modern cloth diapers are just as easy as disposables, but don't get tossed in landfills where it turns out they never really degrade. How crazy is that?

5) We use cloth napkins as much as we can and really limit paper towel use.

6) I make reusable cloth snack bags for the hubby and boys to take their lunch in, meaning we don't use and toss ziploc bags, which is a major pet peeve of mine.

7) We don't water our lawn. Yeah, it doesn't always look pretty, but the lawn always comes back because it will eventually rain.

8) We don't use chemicals on our lawn. No weed and feed here. And yup, we end up with a lot of weeds that need to be mowed down, but I read that people's yards are about the most polluted places on the planet due to all the lawn chemicals and I didn't want my kids and pets running through a chemical landmine every day.

9) We have pet chickens to provide our family with fresh eggs and to provide our compost heap with nitrogen-laden chicken poo! They're a joy to have and another small step toward grasping the fringe of sustainability.

10) We recycle everything we can. The garbage company picks up cans, plastic, glass, newspaper, magazines and cardboard, which is amazing! We also recycle batteries, but we have to drive those down to the local battery store. Between the chickens, compost and recycling we hardly have any trash anymore.

11) We've got a heat blanket on the hot water heater. This is something anyone can do. It's a silver insulated blanket that just wraps around the hot water heater and you duct tape it on. I've read it reduces energy costs by 25-45%, so for $20 it's well worth it.

12) We've replaced most of the bulbs in our house with CFLs, which are pricey but do last a lot longer and use a lot less energy than regular light bulbs.

13) We keep our A/C set on 80 degrees most of the year, which a lot of our Florida neighbors think is outrageous. But we're used to it and it's a huge energy saver.

14) We limit our consumption of meat and try to eat vegetarian meals a couple of days a week. We can't afford to buy grass-fed beef, but we only buy Murray's chicken, which is certified humane and we try to buy Maverick Ranch meat products from time to time.

15) I try to buy local when I can. I joined a vegetable co-op so when my garden isn't producing I can get local vegetables for the family's meals. I try to buy local honey as well since we have an apiary that supplies to a few produce stands around town.

16) We don't eat any fast food, unless you count the periodic pizza a few times a year. We won't patronize McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, etc. because we don't think they're healthy and we don't like how they try to suck children in by channeling their advertising to kids, offering kids toys and kids play places. My poor deprived children have never been into a McDonald's and actually enjoy giving speeches to others about the evils of the company. My 6-year-old likes to say they trick you into thinking their food is healthy by giving you a free toy, but he's not buying it. I know the day will come when they'll venture into a FF restaurant, but not at this age - and not on my watch.

17) We try not to buy products from companies that have bad environmental reputations. This one is a tough one - we read up on companies and try to avoid food from places that don't gel with our mindset, such as Perdue chicken. This one is easier said than done though. You can watch "The Future of Food" to learn more about this.

18) We try to eat homemade as often as possible. This means homemade pizzas, burgers, fries, cookies, bread, dinners, lunches etc. We avoid processed food and try extremely hard to make as much food as we can from scratch.

19) We eat some organics, but not as much as we'd like. The price is out of our budget for most things, so I'll get one or two organic purchases with each week's groceries and call it a day.

20) We keep our options open and read as much as we can about the environment, food, choices, etc. The more we learn the more educated choices we can make. I'm reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" right now and it's eye-opening.

I hope something on here inspired someone out there to make a change. If there's something you do that's not on my list, please let me know in the comments section! I'd love to learn about it.

Thanks and Happy Earth Day!!

My live nesting bird cam obsession

2010-04-19T22:47:00.004-04:00

It's Spring and with Spring comes nesting birds and cute little wobbly baby birds growing up under mama's wing. I've started a fun new obsession this Spring - watching live webcams from inside the nests of three eagle families and one owl family. They're so captivating to watch so I thought I'd share it with you so that you can ignore your responsibilities by watching a mother owl trying to sleep while four little owlets drive her insane. I have taken a screen shot of each bird family below with links to the live cams.

Here's a screen shot I took tonight of the owlets waiting for mama to come back with a nice mouse for dinner.

Here's Molly and McGhee's live cam from San Marcos, California. A man built an owl nesting box in his back yard and waited a couple of years hoping someone would move in. He's now got a gorgeous family of Barn Owls living live on the web in his own back yard and he has close to 9 million followers online.

FYI, the man behind the cam is Carlos and he periodically comes on the cam in a picture-in-picture and talks about what's been happening with the owl family. Take last night for example, Molly left the owlets for about 20 hours and everyone was extremely worried about her. She eventually came back with a mouse a minute after McGhee, much to everyone's relief. It turns out that she'll start leaving them longer now that they're older and a few of them can swallow prey whole. (Also, a couple of books are being written about Molly's story - one is a children's book for less than $5).

You can check out their blog and info page here. They have some gorgeous photos and owl facts you won't want to miss.

I've also been quite captivated with nesting eagles, thanks to friends of mine constantly passing along eagle webcams. Here are three eagle families in three very different stages of life.

The first one is an eagle couple on Hornby Island in Canada who recently laid two eggs. Apparently it's getting close to chick hatching time, which would be amazing to watch live. I like watching the mama eagle turn the eggs from time to time and otherwise sit there keeping them warm looking slightly bored. Here's a pic I grabbed this afternoon of mama eagle giving us a peek at her eggs.

The next eagle family in British Columbia has a tiny little baby eagle in the nest. I've only seen one, although there could be another hidden one or one that hasn't hatched yet. Mom and Dad eagle both bring food back and rip it up into tiny little strips for their baby to gobble down. So far I've only seen them bring back fish. You can just see the little baby reaching up his head and taking some food on this picture.

The final eagle family in Norfolk, Virginia, has three big fat babies who are getting adult feathers and losing their chick fluff. I've seen both eagle parents visit the nest with food for the kids. This site is great because they often do a live chat where the eagle experts from the park will answer questions from you about the birds.

A little warning - all of these webcams have microphones attached to them. If you have one of the webcams up on your computer and turn your head you risk hearing a loud SCREEEEEEEEEEECH! that will cause any dog to come out of their skin and cause you to do a very embarrassing jump in your chair. Also, be prepared to watch these birds of prey bring back dinner for their babies and rip it to shreds. It's such an amazing look into these birds lives and I've become quite addicted to my own form of reality tv!

Rural Schoolin'

2010-04-14T20:08:00.001-04:00

My oldest son's elementary school is a nice country school, which is pretty rare in the Florida school system where we're famous for sprawling suburban schools holding three times the number of kids they were designed for. Now my son's school isn't a quaint one-room schoolhouse or anything. It's a nice-looking school with over 500 kids, but it's in a quiet rural area and there are plenty of old-Florida-type country folk who send their kids there. It's an interesting mix of people and as far as public schools go (especially in Florida), it's a pretty good school.

I thought I'd give you a glimpse into this place.

First of all there's this sign on the car ramp that I always found amusing. (Please excuse all the photos in this entry - all were taken with my camera phone).

Seriously, no horses allowed on the sidewalk? I thought it was a cute old-fashioned reminder of how things used to be.

Then I saw this.

And realized that it's a necessary sign. People picking their kids up on horses seem to stay across the street by the church - thanks to the sign I assume. Score one point for the school signage committee.

I was there this morning since I volunteer weekly in my son's class, and as I was walking out of the front office after signing in, I saw a man in a parking lot with a cage in each hand walking toward the office.

He was what we'd call "a good ole' boy" - that's someone who was born and raised in rural FL and probably drives a pick up truck and has a large supply of old mesh-style ballcaps. This guy was a well-tanned man in his mid-50s with worn boots, dirty jeans, an old plaid short-sleeved shirt, an old redneck ball cap and a rusty old cage in each hand containing…

…you'll never guess…

…wait for it...

...really fancy show chickens.

I squealed with girl delight when I saw the two birds in the cage in his left hand. "Ohhh!!! Silkies! Can I see them?" I blurted out. The guy looked shocked and said "Dang. Don't meet many people who know these birds are silkies." We stopped and chatted in front of the school office for a good 20 minutes - him, the chicken man - me, the chicken girl - instant repoire. We talked about the types of chickens he raises, we laughed about the absurdity of "showgirls" and just plain talked turkey while his little bantam Serama rooster crowed along.

Turns out the guy was bringing the chickens in for a presentation to the kindergarten classes. Since I was volunteering in my son's class I got to see his presentation. He also delivered a huge box of fertile eggs and an incubator and the kids are going to try and hatch some chicks! He's coming back in 2 weeks to show the kids how to candle the eggs and look for a chick embryo.

I always seem to come away with a story when I visit my son's school. This time I came away with a chicken man's business card and I now have a local connection for purchasing chickens, should I ever decide to expand my clandestine chicken operation by a bird or two. Shhh...

Wildlife Weekend :: Florida Beach Nature Walk

2010-04-10T09:14:00.003-04:00

This week is Spring Break for my boys and we had plans to go back down to visit my mom for a few days, but the planets didn't align correctly and it just didn't work out. Although we stayed at the house, we managed to pack every day with plenty of fun-filled activities from painting to geo-caching to theme parks to swimming in the pool until they dropped.

But since it IS Spring Break and Spring Break in Florida is all about the beach, I thought I'd post these photos from our visit my mom's house a few weeks back. Taking my boys to the very beach where I grew up is a fun experience and I enjoy watching them learn about all the beachy things I took for granted as a kid.

Running along the sandbar - it's a semi-attached sandbar, depending on what the tide has done the previous hurricane season. The vibe of the beach is pretty dependent on what's thriving - or dying - along the shore. Stingray season - not so much fun... this time it was seaweed and jellyfish - lots and lots of brightly colored dead jellyfish. Most of the time there's hardly any seaweed and no jellyfish, but both happened to be in season on this day.

Most of the jellyfish were black or orange or white and resembled rocks. There are NO rocks on Florida Gulf beaches, so if you see something in that photo that looks like a rock, it's a dead jellyfish.

I tried to convince the boys that this jellyfish was a disembodied brain from some sort of underwater Frankenstein. I almost sold them on it.

Pretty coral of all colors and textures.

A few horseshoe crabs...mostly dead ones though. Did you know that horseshoe crabs haven't evolved much in 250 million years? They look pretty much like they did back in the time of dinosaurs. And did you know they have a copper-based blue blood? And that this blue blood is used by science to test out new medicines? Interesting stuff.

They might not have fall leaves in Southern Florida, but the mangrove leaves turn pretty colors at times. Mangroves are one of the most important living things in coastal areas - their roots hold the coast together and the area under the mangrove roots are fish nurseries.

Ever wonder where baby shells come from? This is a shell egg casing. Some people refer to it as a "mermaid's necklace." This one is a whelk egg casing and it is filled with tiny shell eggs from the female shell. Once it's done its job, it floats away, washes ashore and dries out.

The boys found some beautiful conch shells. This one is a Florida Fighting Conch. We showed them the difference between a live shell and a dead shell and explained that if you find a live shell on the beach you always throw it back in the water - as far as you can out of the reach of uneducated tourists.

Check out this freaky-looking jellyfish. I think it's a Moon Jellyfish. Was good to teach the important lesson about being stung by a jellyfish - they can still sting you even when dead, so don't step on one just in case the tentacles are lurking under a thin layer of sand.

What's a beach without some driftwood?

No matter how pretty the scenery is, if you've got two little boys, they'll zero in on the dead fish. It made me glad we didn't bring the dogs because they love to roll in some dead-stink.

Much of the sandbar is roped off because it's an endangered sea bird nesting area. But, as we know, it only takes one minor Tropical Storm to wash it all away.

Here are two of the shells we brought home. They'll be making an important appearance at Kindergarten and Preschool show and tell next week...if we ever remember to bring them!

I hope you all enjoyed a little peek at our beach walk! It feels like old hat to me, but I'm sure there are some landlocked readers who don't see this type of thing every day.

Broiled grapefruit for brekkers

2010-04-08T21:13:00.003-04:00

I do love Florida citrus and I really love a good grapefruit. There's an older couple with a nice sized grove up the street and when it's in season we buy our oranges, marmalade, pomegranate jam, lemons and grapefruit from them. Right now they're selling 2 grapefruit for 25 cents. How can you beat that?

I came home with an enormous sack full of grapefruit the other day when Farmer B started reminiscing about the toasted grapefruit that his mother used to make them on cold mornings.

I instantly recoiled. Warm citrus? Hot citrus? Cooked citrus? Blech. But then late one night he was at work and the grapefruit pile was staring at me and I thought I should give it a shot. Afterall, I'll try almost any food item once.

I followed his instructions along with some I found online and the hot, soupy beast emerged from the oven.

I smelled it and was intrigued. I ate it and I was hooked. I now spend my days hovering around the broiler jonesing for my next hot grapefruit. I'm going through about two grapefruits a day at this point - one for breakfast and one for a late-night dessert.

If you want to try it, here's the super simple instructions.

Boiled grapefruit

Put the oven broiler on while you cut the grapefruit in half. Remove the seeds and cut around the little walls and edges.

Sprinkle the grapefruit with brown sugar.

Place it on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet and put in the oven on the middle shelf and broil for about 6 minutes.

Then move to the top shelf for about 60 to 90 seconds - watch this step like a hawk. You don't want blackened grapefruit - you just want a bit of stylish singeing on the edges.

Remove and enjoy.

Help! I've got ants in my plants!

2010-04-06T04:00:00.000-04:00

In the back row of one of my raised beds I have evil, red intruders. An enormous nest of fire ants has moved in and has overrun at least half of the bed.

I noticed the soil around the pea seedlings was much higher than it should be so I grabbed a handful of soil and it was alive with ants. After doing a girly squeal, hand fling and dance I realized I have a red ant problem and I don't know how to fix it. I also have an empty square that's begging for something to be planted in it too, but when I dug into it red ants streamed up my Garfield trowel.

I wouldn't say I'm going 100% organic with the vegetable garden, but we are doing our best not to use any unnatural chemicals or pesticides. So dumping a bucket of ant-killing insecticide into my vegetables doesn't appeal to me, but I've lived in Florida long enough to know that fire ants don't move easily. It takes a lot to tick them off. I've never met an organic product that does anything other than amuse the ants or beef them up like they're on steroids. My dad once told me that he treated a fire ant nest with a natural pesticide and the ants threw it back at him in disgust.

Anyone got any suggestions for me? As it stands I'm afraid to go near the garden at this point because it's like a mine field. I've got a sneaking suspicion that there's a sleeper cell of fire ants in my other raised bed too, so my problem is definitely spreading.

Help!

Final Nighttime Space Shuttle Launch photos!

2010-04-05T08:00:00.003-04:00

We got up about 10 minutes early today to dash out into the backyard and watch the Space Shuttle Discovery take off at 6:21 a.m. I love night launches because the sky goes from a dark black to a brilliant orange in the blink of an eye. Granted this was a sunrise launch, but the shuttle lifted off a few minutes before the sun rose so we still got the benefit of a night launch. I read that this was the last night launch scheduled for the shuttle program, so I didn't want to miss it.

My oldest son was all geeked up to watch it too, so I woke him up and we dashed out in the backyard with a flashlight and a camera and looked East. I realized at about that moment that I did not have the camera on the right setting and wouldn’t be able to find the correct setting in about 5 seconds in the dark with a flashlight. I knew the photos wouldn't look very good, but I took them regardless and tried to focus on enjoying the experience, especially through my son's eyes.

When we look East we walk to our back fence and can see our neighbor's house, which is usually pretty hard to see from our house. We're a straight shot to the space coast so the shuttle launches are quite an experience, no matter how many times you see it go up.

Here are the photos (on the wrong setting) that are blurry and off, but it's better than having none at all. I will have the tripod and the right settings for the final launches, I assure you.

It was a quiet, still morning so a few seconds after the shuttle took off we could hear and feel the low, loud rumble of the rockets. We put our hands on our wooden fence to feel the vibration and my son was impressed by that. We watched the two solid rocket boosters fall from the shuttle and we were fascinated by the strange vapor trail-type thing in that last photo. (Farmer B said to Aidan, "Look, they just released the boosters. Can you see them falling in the sky?" Aidan says "WHAT? they released their boosters??? What will they sit on if they got rid of their boosters???")

My son recently had a NASA employee speak to his kindergarten class and he told me that the man said they use a chicken egg to train people. Apparently to use one of the robotic arms they have to successfully pick up a chicken egg and move it without breaking it to pass the test. He wasn't sure if it was ground workers who retrieve the SRB's from the ocean or if it was astronauts in space, but regardless he liked that story since we have chickens - and eggs - in our backyard.

As the shuttle was launching, Farmer B and I really tried to impress upon him the awesomeness of what he was witnessing - that there are only three shuttle missions remaining and then the whole program is ending; that children all over the world would love to be as lucky as him and be able to see the shuttle take off from a vantage point in their own back yard; and of course how brave the astronauts are that are hurtling to space at over 17,000 mph.

This shuttle mission is going to the International Space Station to carry supplies and science equipment and will return to Earth in 13 days on April 18 at 8:35 a.m. It was a strange feeling knowing we'll never see the sky light up orange from the night launch of a space shuttle ever again.

I can't imagine how busy the space coast will be for the final three launches. We'll be camped out in our backyard (if the timing is right) and will try and capture all three of them on film and hopefully in the memories of our boys who will one day be able to tell their children about this.

To see some past entries with shuttle launch photos, click here.

Happy Easter Everyone!

2010-04-03T20:08:00.003-04:00

I'd like to wish a very Happy Easter to all my readers, friends and family!!! Hope you have a safe and fun holiday weekend!!

Saffron enjoying the Spring

Dyed eggs in homemade brown paper nests!

Recipe :: Swiss Chard & Walnut Ice Cream

2010-04-01T04:00:00.003-04:00

As you may remember, my Swiss Chard is growing like gangbusters and I've been thoroughly enjoying it in quiche along with Canadian bacon, leek and fresh eggs from my chickens. But the chard is growing so much that I knew I had to come up with another use for it. I've sautéed it and mixed it in with omelets, but I wanted to come up with something new and exciting that the whole family would love.

I have been tinkering with this recipe for awhile and it's finally perfected and I'm excited to share it with you. Presenting…

Swiss Chard & Walnut Ice Cream! I like to serve it over a nice warm sponge cake. It's become our family's favorite homemade dessert! Here's the recipe:

Swiss Chard & Walnut Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of fresh baby Swiss Chard (try to stick to the white/green chard)
1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar, divided
4 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Put the baby chard in a blender with the milk and pulverize until well blended. Transfer to a pan and bring to a bare simmer, remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 30 minutes. Strain the milk into a bowl and reserve. Clean the saucepan.

Combine the heavy cream, 1/3 cup of the sugar and salt in the clean saucepan and bring to a bare simmer. Whisk the yolks with the remaining 1/3 cup of sugar in a large bowl. When the cream is hot, very gradually pour it into the yolks and sugar, whisking vigorously at the same time so the yolks don't curdle.
When all the cream has been added, return the whole mixture to the saucepan. Heat slowly just to 170 degrees (or when it coats the back of a wooden spoon). Pour into a large metal bowl and add the reserved, chard-flavored milk.

Cool over an ice bath and allow to chill in the refrigerator for 3 or 4 hours.

Churn in an ice cream machine according to instructions. As the churning finishes, add the walnuts.

Freeze 4 hours or overnight. For details and a step-by-step photo tutorial, click here

***
I encourage you all to blend your greens and come up with your own awesome ice cream flavors. It's really something to impress company too - the spinachy, earthy, leafy vibe is such a nice way to top off a meal! It's especially delicious after spending an afternoon doing my other favorite activity when I'm not gardening - photographing wildlife!...specifically the rare Florida Sun Badger - something I had a run-in with on THIS VERY SAME DATE last year.

***

Now that it is no longer April 1st, I thought I owed it to some late readers to put the hidden message (available from all the links in the blog post above) right here out in the open so there is NO confusion! (especially since I have people who seem intrigued and now want to try this salady-ice cream).

I'm lactose intolerant, for corn's sake! I'd NEVER be making ice cream, let alone any salady ice cream! APRIL FOOL!!

Eight is Enough?

2010-03-31T06:30:00.002-04:00

We're obviously suckers for animals. Two dogs, two cats, and three chickens felt like plenty to take care of on top of a husband, two boys, a house and a garden. Then Farmer B called. He has some friends who got a Dwarf Hamster from their friends. Apparently their friend's young child wasn't being nice to it so they gave it to our friends for their very young child, who, it turns out, wasn't the thing's number one fan either. So here's this young, small Dwarf Hamster in need of a home.

I told him we'd think about it.

You guessed it.

Next thing I know the cage, the hamster and its accessories are in the house. And this little critter has found a new home.

We were told it's a girl, but when I visited PetsMart to look at Dwarf Hamsters the other day I noticed they only appear to sell boys. I'd assume the original owners bought this one at PetsMart, so maybe it's a boy or maybe it's a girl...I'm sure I'll never find out. It came with a pretty spiffy brand new cage with all the plastic tubes and such, so we don't have any big initial expense.

Do you know about these Dwarf Hamsters? I know about the typical hamsters that I had as a child - the Syrian or Teddy Bear hamsters, which are big enough to hold in your hand and interact with. These Dwarf Hamsters are about the size of a mouse and as fast as a bullet so I don't see us ever being able to pick her up and hold her. She's skittish as all get out and has no interest in being in the vicinity of my hand. The pamphlet I got at Petsmart says that they're very fast and if they escape you pretty much have no chance of catching them. Comforting, no?

So there she sits in my oldest son's room - sleeping all day and blindly running a rodent marathon on her wheel all night. The boys are intrigued with her, but I think they'd be happier if we could touch her just once. They seem quite pleased we're giving her a home when she was unwanted elsewhere, so that's a pretty good lesson in itself.

The boys are having a very hard time coming up with names since we're iffy on the boy-girl issue. Skull-bones-Skeletor has been suggested, but I shot it down with the hopes we'd come up with something more appropriate. We've tentatively named her/him Chewie, so we'll see if that sticks.

And in case you're wondering how I got these photos of an uncatchable hamster… I waited until she went into her exercise ball and then removed the ball and placed it in my photo light box. I then waited until she came out and madly snapped photos for about 10 seconds of her running away from me. I felt **pretty** safe with her contained in the light box. I then put the ball back in and she scurried inside it and I quickly put her back in her cage. It was a touching moment for both of us.

Ode to EG

2010-03-29T06:30:00.002-04:00

If you've poked around my blog before you know I have a thing for silly poems. Here's one I wrote for EG as a thank you for his recent gift to me.

Ahem…

Ode to EG

There once was a gardener from 'Bama
Who's as good with a hoe as a hammer
He grows his own food
With a big dog named Jude
And he speaks with the best redneck grammar

If you're into garden blogs as part of your quest to grow an awesome vegetable garden, you should know about EG. If you don't know him, visit his blog at "Our Engineered Garden" and start reading. To save you the time of getting to know him, let me paint a picture for you. Combine MacGyver, Yoda and Jeff Foxworthy and there you have it - EG.

He's like MacGyver in that he can make or fix just about anything….from a fridge to a rain barrel to transforming a bucket into a self-watering container. Somehow he'll make it using old yogurt cups, a kitty litter container, a ball point pen and four paperclips. And if you want to do it too, just ask him - he's quick to post a step-by-step tutorial on his blog to help out his readers. He's like Yoda because he's got some seriously mad skills and is definitely tied in to the force (of nature?) in his gardening exploits. Yoda's "Do or do not, there is no try" quote wraps up EG's gardening mantra perfectly to me.* He can talk you into trying anything new in the garden because he makes it look so easy! And just watch one video on the man's site and you won't need my Jeff Foxworthy explanation….'nuff said.

I'd like to thank EG for the awesome box (covered in messages) he sent me this weekend! (He sent Ribbit one too and you can read about hers here). He included a CD that is the Holy Grail of Gardening - it's got more information on that CD that I ever imagined. I spent hours last night ignoring my family and flipping through the cyber-pages of gardening literature on that CD. When I'm done with it I'll be like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz when he finally got his brain.

He also tucked in a jar of my favorite jam - Blackberry Jam! I'm giddy and can't wait to try it on some homemade bread later this week. Thanks so much EG!!!! I can't begin to express my gratitude!! I hope to have a tenth of your gardening knowledge one day…

* Star Wars analogies and quotes make you a huge geek IF you don't have two small Star Wars obsessed boys…which I do…so it's okay for me to quote Yoda and still be cool. Just sayin'.

Wildlife Weekend :: Eye Contact

2010-03-27T17:25:00.000-04:00

Dogs don't make eye contact with you when they know they've done something wrong. It's a surefire bet that your dog has been up to no good if they won't even turn their head to face you. Case in point...

Don't look at her...

Don't look at her...

GAH! She's looking at me... must resist the urge to look at her.

SAFFRON!

what?

Well I'm not THAT muddy, right?

Don't worry. It's just my face. I wouldn't let my whole body get muddy since you already gave me two baths today.

Oops.

The Green Mile

2010-03-26T19:42:00.000-04:00

Spring has sprung and the planting has begun in our second season of square foot gardening! Woohoo! Can I get a Hoo-Ra? I always imagine what it must be like for new plants entering my garden... Seedlings pop thru the soil (or show up in little pots from the store) and they're all excited to be planted in someone's vegetable garden... and then the other half-dead plants clinging to life in my Little Shop of Horrors shout out "Dead plant walking!" and they realize they've entered the gardening version of The Green Mile. Quite sad.

We've got a lot going on in the garden this year, and as always, I'm hoping for more alive than dead at harvesting time, which means a big fat success in my world. I don't measure success in pounds, but in live plants.

Here's what's entered Death Row…er, my garden. Let's hope we get a lot of pardons before their sentences are up. I've gone for variety again with the hopes that I find something that gels with our gardening mojo.

Cabbage
Broccoli
Swiss Chard (existing plants doing well)
Carrots
Parsnip (I'm about to give up and pull out my remaining one. Funny story. I was weeding my raised bed and saw a funny looking weed. I yanked it out and there was a parsnip on the end. CRAP! I quickly dug a hole and stuck it back in with the hopes the 5-second rule that applies to fallen cookies also applies to accidentally pulled parsnips. Note: it does not. It's dead and in an impressive show of solidarity, the other parsnip is going down in a blaze of glory as well.)
Leeks
Kentucky Wonder beans
Yellow beans
Green beans
Cucumber
Peas
Spinach
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Strawberries (holdovers from last season)

I put the cucumber and peas in there as sort of an offering to the garden gods since it's no secret that I can't grow those at all. They're my gardening sacrificial lambs with the hopes that once they've given their lives, that fate will leave the rest of my plants alone.

Of course everything is quite young and already has issues. The bottom leaves are yellowed on most of the plants, which I think would mean they're too wet, but in the raised beds this isn't supposed to be possible. Maybe the two big boatloads of rain we've had recently were just a bit much for the new seedlings. We had about seven inches in a week, so that's what I'm clinging to as the explanation for my premature yellowing at this point.

I've fantasized about growing spinach and my little seedlings already look ready to give up the goat. They, too, are yellowed and droopy, but I'm hoping that they'll come around soon enough. They've been in about three weeks at this point, so I hope they turn around quickly.

My chard is going strong and I've come to love a chard, leek and Canadian Bacon quiche for Sunday lunch. It uses 8 eggs, so it's a good use of eggs, which is always great since the girls' egg factory is still in overdrive. I don't know at what point chard gives up and dies. It's been growing for quite a while, but I'm sure it has some sort of growing expiration date, right?

Whoever said that a SFG doesn't have weeds hasn't met the thick angry weeds of Central Florida. We have pricey landscaping cloth underneath each raised bed, but these thick grassy weeds have still managed to poke through just to show me that I was feeling too cocky about my weedless SFG. Take THAT, Mel.

Knowing nothing about strawberries, I assumed that because they were brown, brittle and dead that they should be discarded. I've found that dead things do best in the trash, but luckily I'm a procrastinator and didn't throw away these dead pots of strawberries . Oddly, they have awoken from the dead and are looking green again. I've even seen the odd bloom on them. Gardening lesson learned: Like zombies, strawberries rise from the dead. Must make a note of that.

On a sad note - and I'm almost embarrassed to admit this - Farmer B brought home a bunch of cabbage and broccoli seedlings, but I didn't have enough room in my raised beds to plant them all. I don't have anywhere to plant them, so they sit in their tiny little seedling pots slowly dying. I actually think they're past the point of survival.

In a perfect world I would have whipped together another raised bed and slung them in, but it takes a good chunk o' change to get the wood, peat moss, vermiculite and compost necessary to get a raised bed ready for action. Every time I go to the garden I see their purple leaves and I feel so incredibly guilty.

Dead plants walking, indeed.

Happy 1st Hatchday to my Girls!!!

2010-03-24T21:15:00.000-04:00

Can you believe it? It's the chickens' 1st Hatchday today!!! It's hard to believe it's been an entire year since I brought home those tiny little fluffballs and stuck them in a tupperware box with a heat lamp and some pine shavings.

They went from tiny little peeping babies to big egg-laying, full-figured, fluffy-bummed inquisitive hens. And you know what? I've enjoyed every minute of owning them (save that time when we had really bad backyard flooding and I wanted to throw them over the fence to the neighbor's yard, but let's not bring that up).

Want to join me in a song to celebrate?

Happy Hatchday to you!
Happy Hatchday to you!
Happy Hatchday Maggie, Clementine and Sookie,
Happy Hatchday to you!

I wouldn't be me if I didn't share these pictures of them celebrating turning one year old! They got a hatchday brunch of cottage cheese, oats and green beans. As thanks they presented me with three perfect brown eggs for my collection in the fridge.

I know...I know...I know what you're thinking. You're shaking your head and saying that it's not a true hatchday without a cake, but I didn't want to get all crazy-chicken-lady on you. That would just be weird.

Wildlife Weekend :: The Grass Is Always Greener...

2010-03-20T16:21:00.000-04:00

...on OUR side of the fence. Don't believe me? Ask our neighbor dog, Toby.

They're Always After Me Lucky Charms

2010-03-17T03:00:00.003-04:00

You expected this, right? Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

I couldn't pass up an opportunity to put a cape on a chicken. I'd like to start a holiday chicken cape revolution! Dress up your chickens people!

(I'm so glad Farmer B rarely reads the blog and isn't home when I'm photographing chickens. We have a good marriage and I'd like to keep it that way.)

And just edited to add this little pic of Saffie celebrating St. Patrick's Day!

Road Trip :: Fort Myers Beach Shrimp Festival

2010-03-13T17:34:00.002-05:00

I took the boys on a road trip this weekend back to my U.S. hometown to visit mom and take the boys to the Fort Myers Beach Shrimp Festival. The Shrimp Festival and Parade is about the biggest thing that happens on the 7-mile-long barrier island where I grew up. The entire island shuts down for the parade and festival and it ends with the crowning of the Shrimp Queen. The parade started in the 1950s when they blessed the Shrimp Fleet and held a big beach party. It's now grown into a fun small-town parade and festival where they serve huge plates of peel-and-eat shrimp fresh off the shrimp boats.

It was fun taking the boys to see their first ever parade and it totally took me back to my childhood where I watched and rode on floats in plenty of shrimp parades. There's something so great about a small town parade - it's all the great slices of a small Florida beach town that you'd expect - it's a little quirky, a little trashy, a little touristy, a little taste of America that kids in big cities never get to experience.

Here's a taste of the Shrimp Festival and Parade for you.

This group of golden oldies was preparing for the parade and I couldn't resist snapping this photo of them lining up in their bikini shirts.

The rear view on the parade route was even better.

Of course the shrimp princesses vying to be shrimp queen were on the backs of the corvettes and waving appropriately to the crowd.

This group of older ladies were dressed like pink fluffy birds and loudly cawed and flapped their feathers in unison down the parade route. I have no clue what they were representing, but they were enjoying themselves.

And this Kookie band uses kazoos and washboards to make quite a racket.

And what's a parade without a old guy in a Fez?

Of course everyone loves the Shriners in their Flintstone cars, although most kids today have no clue who the Flintstones are.

Did you know I'm terrified of clowns? Like seriously creeped out. I was not a fan of the clown float.

But I did like the guy blowing the conch!

And the seeing eye dogs had stars spray-painted on their rear ends.

There were plenty of floats with people throwing out beads and candy. My boys ended up with so many beads they could hardly stand. Many of the beads had shrimp beads on them, which were really cute. My old elementary school was marching in the parade too. It's a small island school with only 9 kids in the kindergarten class.

Then we went down for some Peel and Eat Shrimp, which we snarfeled up with gusto.

And finally we caught part of the judging for the much-coveted Shrimp Queen title. Even when I was a teen I eyerolled at the Shrimp Queen contestants. I've never been a beauty pageant kind of girl, but it's fun to watch them vying for the title of Shrimp Queen. Now THAT's something for your resume.

The weather was gorgeous - the island was hopping - the boys had a blast - and I had fun going home to see my old neck o' the woods. Fort Myers Beach is off the Southwest coast of Florida and is connected to the mainland with a bridge on either end. It's known as "the world's safest beach" and is a great family-friendly place to visit off-season. It's a bit too busy during tourist season for my tastes, but it's worth the hassle of the traffic and the tourists to experience the Shrimp Festival!

Banana Rage

2010-03-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

I try not to get angry at fruit, but this morning I found myself with some serious banana rage. I need to preface this with saying that I have a 6-year-old who is obsessed with video games, so we strictly limit when he can play them and when he can talk about them. Really - we have to limit how much he can talk about them - he gets just that obsessive. He gets far less play time than most kids his age, but we're big on limiting all screen time from the tv to the computer to video games.

I was packing his lunch for school today and I said "Do you want an apple or a banana with your lunch?" He wanders over and starts poking through the fruit bowl and sees the banana and goes ape over the thing.

Why you ask?

Because it's got an ad for a Wii video game on it. "Ohhhhh a new Wii game? Can we get it? Can we look it up online? What's it like? Is it a banana game? Does it have monkeys in it? Does it? Does it?"

I don't want advertisements for video games on my bananas, thank you very much. Can't it just say "Chiquita" or have a smiley face or something? But a Wii ad?

I am just so disgusted with ads on fruit. It makes me wonder what's next.

Stepping off my soapbox now.

Wildlife Weekend :: The Broccoli and the Bees

2010-03-06T19:30:00.000-05:00

I accidentally let my big broccoli plant flower in February. I don't really go outside when temperatures dip into the 30s and 40s, so before I knew it my broccoli plant was a mess of yellow blooms and all I could do was watch from my heated living room. I knew there was no way to prevent it from blooming without braving the insanely cold temperatures and possibly slipping into a hypothermic coma...so I just let it happen.

When I finally did venture outside I noticed that the plant was alive with bees. At one point I counted over 20 bees on it going from flower to flower in a mad rush to get as much nectar as possible from the only flowering thing around.

I figured the rest of the garden was pretty much dead so the least I could do was let this flowering broccoli thrive to feed this mass of bees. It lasted for a good month before it wilted and the bees went away.

I then yanked it out and tossed it in the compost. It was definitely great while it lasted though - the bees seemed happy to have something to buzz around in this insanely cold winter. And I enjoyed watching them.

A Shout Out to Bob Barker

2010-03-03T12:56:00.000-05:00

Saffron is at the vet today getting spayed. My widdle biddle squishy muffin who can do no wrong is going to be there until tomorrow afternoon and will come home all stapled up with a sore belly and a cone-head and wonder what on Earth just happened to her.

This spaying is important for two reasons:

1) Bob Barker says you should help control the pet population - always spay or neuter your pet. I firmly believe in Bob's message and to be honest, the idea of a litter of mini-Saffie's running around is enough to make me go fetal.

2) I have realized that I really and truly do love The Beast. When she's eating my stuff, digging in my garden, chewing up my money or attacking the cats, it's easy to forget that I really do love her and she has become a member of the family. But when you walk into an animal hospital and hand off that little white innocent puppy to a tech and say "see you tomorrow" and you actually get a lump in your throat, well dammit, you realize you really do love her.

The vet's office just called and told me that the procedure went off without a hitch and that she's in a cage wrapped up in blankets and is starting to wake up. They also microchipped her, which I'm a HUGE proponent of as well. The vet said we have to keep Saffie on a leash for walks for 7 days after the operation - so no running in the house or the yard. Clearly I'll have my work cut out for me since I can count on one hand the amount of times I've seen that puppy actually walk anywhere - she does everything at a full-tilt run. Wish me luck! I'm sure to need it.

Dirty Money

2010-03-01T21:34:00.003-05:00

You know that saying about puppies where they say that the only people who like puppies are people who are not currently living WITH a puppy? Oh, you don't? Well I just made that up. It's totally true. Ask anyone living with a puppy. Like me.

I'm one of those people who never carries cash on me, but I found $5 in the laundry this weekend and was quite ecstatic. I told myself I'd take the boys out for ice cream at this cash-only ice cream shop on Wednesday after school and I've been babying this $5 bill like a kid with their first allowance. Wednesdays are early release days from school and I've always wanted to do a little something special with them. So this $5 was the ticket.

You know where this is going, don't you?

I was doing dishes and I saw the puppy chewing on something. I noticed it was something papery, so figured she'd got her gazillionth Kleenex and left her alone while I kept scrubbing dishes.

But then I saw a glint of something green…

Oh you little…what is it they call female dogs again?

Those eyes let me know SHE knows she's in trouble.

Big trouble.

Well, we have half a $5 bill. I wonder what we can get at the ice cream shop for $2.50?

Wildlife Weekend :: The Cats are Revolting

2010-02-27T19:51:00.000-05:00

You know it's time to give the dog a bath when the cats start revolting.

Oh the things they put up with.

Who ARE you people?

2010-02-25T04:00:00.001-05:00

I'll admit, when I started blogging almost two years ago, I always hoped someone would read my ramblings. I didn't know if I'd have one reader (thanks mom) or a hundred readers, but I think anyone who takes the time to write hopes someone will take the time to read.

One of the strange things about blogging is that you really don't know how many people read your blog. There are a few readers who often take the time to comment (thanks to my "regulars" - it means a lot to me!), but there are plenty more of you who visit on the sly - not leaving a trace that you peeked into my blogging life.

I visit blogs daily and I only have a handful that I routinely comment on, but many, many others that I read without ever saying a word. I'm not sure why I don't comment on so many of the blogs I read - I think some blogs become like a newspaper column to me - I read it, enjoy it and then move on. Sometimes I don't comment because I know the blogger probably doesn't read the comments section and other times I simply don't know what to say or have time to say it. Writing "hi, I read what you wrote and enjoyed it" doesn't seem comment-worthy to me, but maybe I SHOULD write that from time to time on other people's blogs...

So here is my chance to ask you. Who ARE you? If you stopped by this blog - even for a moment - tell me who you are - where are you from - are you a secret blog reader stealthily reading random blogs on the down low? Just hit the comments link down there and give me a quick "hi" so I can see who my silent readers are. I know my site statistics show hits from all over the world... so I'm dying to see who you people are...

THANKS!

The Triumph of the Carrot!

2010-02-22T20:17:00.001-05:00

Bwa-ha-haa!!! I have conquered the carrot! Bow down before me you long rooty orange fiend! You thought you beat me last season, but I triumphed this time and forced you to grow in my kingdom of gardening horrors!

Mwa-ha-haaaa!!

But seriously - I did it! I successfully grew carrots! They're one of the things that has petered out in past gardens and they just plain grew well in my SFG this time around. I was floored when I pulled a few out of the ground and they actually looked like carrots and smelled like carrots and were bug-free to boot! I am seriously giddy about this carrot harvest. But I'm sure you didn't gather that, did you?

The boys were equally giddy and it was like Christmas morning as each rooty beauty popped out of the ground. One of the good things about being a not-too-successful gardener is that if ANYTHING actually grows, your kids think you're a gardening god. It's wonderful!

But the best part was they even tasted great. We had about half of them for dinner last night and I've got to say nothing makes a mama prouder than hearing her boys arguing over who gets to eat more carrots.

I bet you thought I had forgotten about gardening with all this talk about puppies and chickens, but I'm still trucking along. I'm getting ready to plant our Spring veggies and I'm going to try potatoes for the first time too. Before I can plant we need to revamp the garden fence since a certain white puppy of mine has recently discovered that if she gets really really wet and then jumps in the SFG and digs a hole and rolls in it, she gets really really awesomely muddy...right down to her skin.

Wildlife Weekend :: A Whole Year Later

2010-02-21T04:00:00.002-05:00

It was a year ago today that my mom was in Boston for a travel show and I made a late night phone call to her as she sat in a noisy restaurant with bad cell reception. "Baillan just died," I repeated about five times until she heard me. A pet lover, she was deeply saddened. She knew that dog had been my protector when I lived alone in a crappy apartment in college and was an important part of our family 13 years later

I vividly remember giving Baillan a big hug and a kiss and burying my head in her white fur as she laid awkwardly panting madly on a blanket in the back of the car that night. It was weird to see Farmer B pull away leaving me standing there without her knowing I'd never see her again. And when he came home without her holding her collar I felt empty, but I do remember feeling surprisingly good that she'd had such a long life.

Here we are a year later and right now my mom is at that same travel show in Boston, and I have another furry white lump who likes to carry around her blue bowl and has that funny otter-tail that goes thump-thump-thump when she sees me.

New puppies are born, old dogs become a pleasant memory, and life goes on. The boys still talk about Baillan constantly, which is nice, because I know she'll be that first dog they talk about when they're older and reminiscing about their childhood.

A little known gardening hazard

2010-02-18T19:12:00.001-05:00

I was out in the garden earlier this afternoon turning the compost pile and adding some scraps from last night's dinner when I heard a clunking and a whining next to me. I had just watered the compost by using my watering can and apparently the little bit of water in the can was just too tempting for Saffron.

She stuck her head in to take a drink and… well… you know what comes next. To think, she almost went a full day without getting her head stuck in something.

She even got an eye out for a change.

She gets an A for effort for using her paw this time.

Even Rommel showed up to see what that strange little creature was doing again. He was disgusted, as usual.

Isn't she pathetic?

You cannot leave that puppy alone for 5 minutes.

SNOW WAY!!!!

2010-02-16T12:01:00.001-05:00

I'm sure you all heard that bizarre statistic on the news the other day about there being snow on the ground in 49 of our 50 states with Hawaii being the hold out. Just an insane thought, don't you think?

Even more insane are these photos of our hiking trip from the other day. Farmer B, the boys, the dogs and I headed out for a very chilly hike out to a pond not far from our neighborhood. Look at all the white stuff! And let's not forget that we live in Central Florida… Here are some pics from our hike.

So did I fool any of you? Even for a split second? Did I make you take a second look? Okay, so it was in the 50s, which is still REALLY too cold for my tastes and instead of snow we had sand, but when I looked at the pictures I was struck by how similar sugar sand looks to snow. I think our green snowless trees sort of gave it away, but it was a fun regardless.

Stay warm everyone!

The Curious Case of the Cardinal Couple

2010-02-15T13:12:00.000-05:00

When I go out in the mornings to let the chickens into their run from their coop I'm always surprised at what's in the run waiting for me. I've found squirrels, sparrows, blue jays and cardinals in the chicken run frantically zipping around looking for a way out. There is a little space where they could crawl in along the dirt near the corner posts, which doesn't surprise me with squirrels, but I am always surprised that birds squeeze under there.

We seem to have found some permanent guests in a curious Cardinal couple who can't go a day without getting stuck in the chicken run - and even in the chicken coop sometimes. I tried putting birdseed in a feeder in a tree near the chicken run, but it didn't seem to reduce the number of days I found the cardinals in the run.

Some days it's the male in the run. Some days it's the female. Most days it's both. It's sweet that when one is stuck in the chicken run and the other isn't, the outside one scampers around the chicken run right next to the one who's stuck inside, following like a shadow.

Getting them out in the mornings is quite simple since I just open the door and they fly out, but some days they get in there in the middle of the day while the chickens are in the run, so getting them out becomes a bit more complicated. I can't open the door or the chickens will get out and the dogs would really enjoy that. I end up running around like a lunatic trying to keep the chickens in, the dogs out, the boys out, and get the cardinals out.

One time the male cardinal got in the chicken coop, which sent Sookie into a frenzy and she pecked out all of the red feathers on his head giving him a haircut like a monk. I had to reach in to the coop, grab the cardinal with my hand and throw him out. To thank me for saving his life he bit me really, really hard. I had a perfect pink X on my palm where he was holding on to me like a crab on a beach. You'd think he'd learn his lesson after that, right? Apparently not.

Look what I found yesterday afternoon. The cardinal couple flying madly around Sookie's head trying to get out. She was not amused. I got them out just before she monkified him again. It took that male cardinal about a month to get his red head feathers back after his last scalping.

When they get out he always perches in the big tree near the run and screeches for a minute before flying off with his mate. I'm sure what he's saying is wholly inappropriate and from the angry ba-gawks the chickens reply with, I'm guessing the chickens know what he's saying and don't like it one bit.

The Great White Beast

2010-02-10T19:24:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure at what moment we started calling Saffie "the beast." I think it may have happened after she devoured the head of the fourth large frozen frog from our backyard. Or it might have been after she flattened one of our tiny little Siamese kitties. But when Saffie and her huge paws and fat belly come charging in a room the boys yell "AAHHHH! The Beast is loose." I've got to say - she does fit the name.

I spend a lot of time trying to take really sweet photos of the puppy, but I realized recently that showing her true colors is really a better representation of life with a Lab puppy.

Here is a photo a day from the past week. She is such a full-time job. I'm not sure a day goes by without her rolling in mud, eating something dead or chewing on something she shouldn't. She's the Christmas present that keeps on giving.

We heard a thumping outside of our bedroom door and I came around the corner to find this. Sadly she gets her head stuck in this thing at least once a day. Farmer B just yells "Your dog is stuck in the pumpkin again!" and I shuffle over to where she's thumping her head and pull it off.

We emptied out the boys sandbox the other day and then it rained. She spends every possible moment in the sandbox now and prefers to lay down in it and roll around until there isn't a dry spot on her.

The boys have a plastic table on the patio for painting and arts and crafts, but Saffie prefers to lay on it and eat my garden trowel. Or a shoe. Or a rock. She's not picky.

Her frog-eating habit is one of my favorites. She prefers ones that smell like roadkill and obviously the bigger, the better. I really enjoy prying them out of her mouth and flinging them over our fence. It's always a highlight of my day, especially if it's a bad throw and it falls back and touches me.

If there's mud, she finds it. If there's a toy left in the yard, she chews on it.

Mud. Rake. Enough said.

And finally, you know that Saffron and Rommel have become best friends, but you might wonder how she's adjusting to the cats. Not very well. Not very well at all. They have yet to come to an understanding. My two kitties are disgusted with the Great White Beast and have a whole new appreciation for their former foe, and new best friend, Rommel.

Wildlife Weekend :: The girls

2010-02-07T08:18:00.000-05:00

I can't believe next month I will have had these girls a year. Time definitely flies when you're raising chickens. I haven't posted any pics of them recently and I thought it would be fun to show off their full combs and wattles now that they've grown into them.

Here's Maggie, who is insanely difficult to photograph. She does that fast-moving-head-thing like pigeons do so every photograph is either blurred or she's not in it. I have to take about 50 of her to find a couple where she's focused and in the frame.

She's got an awesome comb that's so big it flops over a bit. I know we're not talking show quality birds here, but I'm giving her major points for style and personality.

Then we've got our big softie, Clementine. She's a full-figured gal and doesn't go anywhere fast. She stays perfectly still for photos and will look straight at you when you say her name.

She looks sort of mean in this photo, but she's just being all fluffy and cute and looking right at me when I ask her to strike a pose.

Poor Sookie missed out on the entire photo shoot because she was laying an egg. There is just something nice, old-fashioned, natural and sweet about seeing a chicken sitting on a nest. I still can't get enough of it.

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On a personal note, the blog has taken a bit of a backburner as of late. We've had some tragic news from family in the UK and my mom has flown over to the hospital in London. It's hard to focus on blogging when we're focused on that right now. I'm crossing my fingers that I don't need to go over there too... it won't be good news if I do.

The emu and the orange tree

2010-01-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned a few times that we live in a pretty rural area of Florida. It's nice because in an hour I can drive to the beach or to any of the theme parks, but my day-to-day life consists of driving past cows, horses and orange groves.

Here in Central Florida orange groves are a dime a dozen. Around these parts lots of people with a decent amount of property have a little grove in their front yard - maybe 30 trees or so is pretty common. I enjoy the smell of orange blossoms at some times of the year and we often buy a 1/4 bushel of oranges and marmalade from an older couple with a small grove past our house, but other than that, I don't even think twice about the groves.

But there's an orange grove by our neighborhood that also has fancy-looking black and white sheep that graze amongst the orange trees. It's a funny thing to see, but something I have also become used to since I pass it at least 12 times a week thanks to trips to and from school.

The other day my youngest son yelled "WOW! That's one big turkey!" and pointed at the orange grove.

And he was right. There in the grove trotting around with the sheep was a big brown bird. I got closer and noticed that it's an emu. I don't know how long the emu has been living among the sheep and the orange trees, but now that I know to look for him (or her?) I see her everyday.

It's a strange site for sure, yet I'm getting used to seeing it. It's funny how your "normal" can change so easily.

Wildlife Weekend :: The corpse arrived before 7 a.m.

2010-01-24T00:30:00.000-05:00

Early Saturday morning I woke up at around 6:40 a.m. after a long sleepless night thanks to a sinus infection, and came out to see my oldest son who was already bopping around the living room. I immediately let the dogs out into the backyard to do their business while I chatted with my oldest son, the consummate early-riser. Rommel came running back inside first and disappeared to begin his morning nap.

A few minutes later Saffie came charging in with something in her mouth. It was still quite dark out and I could see she'd grabbed a dark stick from the yard. I reached down to grab it to throw it back outside when I could see legs. Stiff long legs.

Shudder.

I screamed and grabbed the scruff of her neck and she dropped it.

The "it" was now clearly a stiff, dead, big, long-legged frog - I'd guess about 7-8 inches long. When it hit the ground all the ants and bugs that had been feeding off this early morning breakfast buffet scattered all over the floor of the living room.

I had to scoop the thing up - and all its surrounding beasties - with a stick-down floor tile I happened to have nearby, and chuck it outside. The best part was coming back inside and gathering up the remaining bugs and flinging them outside as well. The icing on the cake was going back outside about an hour later and finding the petrified frog corpse and this time flinging it over the fence so that it didn't end up in my living room again.

Looking like this is her only saving grace.

And They Call it Puppy Love...

2010-01-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

There is a reason they make puppies so cute...so you keep them...no matter what they get into. Even when you give them a bath and they're all fluffy and wonderful and you let them outside for 5 minutes alone and they discover their first mud puddle.

And you look outside and think, didn't I have a yellow lab? When did I get a black lab?

And the belly is sopping wet with stinky, gloppy mud.

And the paws... oh the paws.

So I went inside to get a big towel and came out to find out the source of her happiness.

Because two young boys, two strange cats, three chickens and an overzealous German Shepherd just weren't enough excitement for me.

A Sunday Morning Chicken Show

2010-01-17T13:49:00.000-05:00

I've been a bit busy this week trying to thaw out from our cold snap. I thought I'd post some video I took of the chickens this morning so you could see a peek into their little lives. Of course the sun was shining right into their window making the video a bit washed out, but I thought it was still cute. Clementine was a bit camera shy this morning so she's not visible, but Maggie and Sookie ham it up. Is it appropriate to say chickens ham it up?

Here are Maggie and Sookie after they layed their morning eggs inside the nest box area of the coop.

And here are Maggie and Sookie trying to eat my phone in the chicken run. They're so used to me giving them treats that they peck anything in my hand when I visit them in the mornings. My boys find it insanely hilarious whenever the chickens peck at my fingers - as you can hear.

We got Florida snow!

2010-01-11T12:38:00.000-05:00

It finally happened. Saturday morning - the day of my 4-year-old's birthday party - we sat there staring out the window waiting for "it" -the wintry mix/sleet/snow that the weather forecasters had been promising. It was cold enough and cloudy enough and we'd seen photos of snow in counties just north of us… the anticipation was insane.

Then I heard some rain that sounded a bit thick. I went outside and it was some real live sleet. We waited until it passed and went out to check on the chickens and we saw it. There were snow flakes on the slide and a few lines of snow on the ramp to the boys' playset.

It was really quite a sight to see. The boys were intrigued and excited. My oldest son ate some and they both touched it and poked it and shuffled it from hand to hand. I'm kicking myself for not having them make a microscopic snowman like I keep seeing on the news. They ran in with tiny snowballs to show my mom. We all ooh'd and aah'd over the whole thing.

Now I know many of you Northerners will scoff at our snow, but please try to remember that this is Florida - the state of palm trees, beaches and sunshine. Not the state of sleet and snow. I think this is the coldest weather the state has seen since… the ice age? I've lived in the state for 26 years and never seen it snow here (although I've seen flurries on the news before in random locations), so this is a very rare event for sure. We seem to be setting records every day from the most consecutive days under 60 degrees to the coldest day to snow to sleet to ice… it's just the strangest experience.

My poor chickens were shivering in their coop. I went to see them that night and they were shivering so hard that I could barely hold onto them when I picked them up. I ended up wrapping their coop in old comforters and drop cloths and then jamming chairs and wood against the edges to keep it from blowing up. I know many people also laugh at that since chickens survive fine in cold climates, but remember, we have a warm weather open coop - not one designed to keep the heat in and the cold out. Their drinking water has been frozen in the mornings too - another first for us.

Just today at Noon I went outside and found ice on the garbage can in the backyard. My youngest son told me to be careful with the piece of glass I was holding. This real-live-ice thing still isn't quite clicking for him. Please don't be too jealous of my awesome green hoodie sleeve and multicolored 99 cent stretch gloves.

On a side note, Farmer B completed the Disney marathon on Saturday. We're so proud of him! It was the coldest day in the history of the marathon. He said the cups of water and PowerAde they were handing out to the runners were frozen on top and slushy and the bananas, raisins and chocolates were also completely frozen. He said it was dangerous near the water stations because the spilled water from the runners had frozen into sheets of ice on the road and the runners were slipping and sliding like Bambi on ice. Even though he was numb he completed his first marathon in 4 hours and 4 minutes!! Here's my oldest showing off daddy's newest medal.

The weather isn't so funny to local wildlife and crops though. There are many stories of animals suffering terribly from the cold - especially turtles and manatees - and all the damage to the citrus crops that is just devastating to the farmers. Better enjoy your OJ now - it'll be pricey pretty soon!

Stay warm everyone!

Kamikaze iguanas and credit cards on ice

2010-01-07T10:46:00.001-05:00

I'm t-t-t-too c-c-c-cold to t-t-t-type. This Arctic Blast was fun for a moment and now it's stopped being fun and is just downright horrible. We're not equipped for such low temperatures here in Florida, especially not in Central and Southern Florida. We're thin-skinned sun lovers and we know it. We've had low temperatures in the 20s and 30s for days and days and days… and I am ready to move away from the frigid confines of Florida at this point.

We don't have the clothes for it and we sure don't have the patience for it. No one owns a real jacket around here and I don't even have any fleece-lined Croc's. I have two pairs of jeans and three long-sleeved shirts. It's all a bit too much. I'm calling it quits on this weather. Hmph.

Farmer B is running in his first ever marathon this weekend and temps and windchills are expected to be in the 20s. That means he'll be running in weather that's 70 degrees colder than what he's been training in!!!! He's very stressed to say the least.

Yeah, we're a mad, mad mess.

Just how cold is it?

It's so cold that iguanas are falling out of trees in South Florida because the cold puts them into a state similar to hibernation. They're calling them kamikaze iguanas because they're just dive-bombing to the ground.

It's so cold that my boys were almost late to school today because our car was frozen. We don't own ice scrapers here in Central Florida so when the car is frozen we stare dumbly and numbly at it for awhile before scraping off the ice with our credit cards. That takes a long time, by the way. I saw an ice scraper once and asked my mom why someone had a kitty litter scoop in their glove box. Also, recess is cancelled in school because it's too cold for the kids to play outside since many don't own jackets.

It's so cold that the chickens get warm cooked oatmeal for breakfast instead of just the as-is oats scattered around their run. Yes, I'm aware that I cook my chickens oatmeal when it's cold. Please just gloss over that.

It's so cold that I think the garden is history. I threw a tablecloth over my best-producing tomato plant just in case, but I'm afraid to look under it. I fear it'll be like lifting a sheet in a morgue - just too gruesome to take right now. Everything else outside is a funky shade of grey, including my oh-so-cute flowers by the front door.

It's so cold that our local weather guy is predicting a *chance* of snow/sleet/wintery mix this Friday night into Saturday morning. SERIOUSLY? And we're about to set a record for the most days with temperatures under 60 degrees. Oh and airplanes are stuck at our airport because they have ice on them and of course, we have no deicing equipment. I should call them and let them know about the credit card technique.

Well I'm going to go and curl up with a cup of tea, a warm puppy and a blanket and try and thaw out before I have to trek outside into the bitter Florida weather again.

Sigh.

An Olive Branch

2010-01-04T20:31:00.000-05:00

It finally happened today.

The warring factions seem to have come to a peace agreement. An olive branch was extended and happily received as both parties seemed willing to work things out. It was a ratty old tree branch to be exact, not a legitimate olive branch, but the results were the same.

Friendship.

Who knew a ratty old stick could bring them together?

He even let her climb on top of him and straddle his neck. That's HUGE in dog language.

And he laid down so she could get the stick and allowed her to hold one end and walk next to him when he could have easily taken off and left her behind.

She chased him relentlessly.

But they ended up wandering around the yard together happily playing with this stick like they've been pals for life.

It was amazing! And it only took 14 days - a fortnight to go from bitter enemies to friends. If only us humans could work things out so well...

Maybe we've found the key to world peace??