The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

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 Ultimate Indoor Photo Treasure Hunt

Remember last year when I made the Ultimate Backyard Photo Treasure Hunt for the boys and it was an insanely huge hit? We've re-earthed it a couple of times and I've since added some photos to it to make it more challenging. The problem is, it's 175 degrees out with 800% humidity these days and we (meaning "I") avoid spending too much time in the backyard. This leaves us with two very cranky housebound boys and one very cranky me who spends all day trying to come up with things to do - most of which are shot down instantly.

I decided to take my own advice from the Backyard Treasure Hunt and make The Ultimate Indoor Photo Treasure Hunt for the boys. I put this together in about 15 minutes and it was such a huge hit. Farmer B was home when the boys went on the hunt and was smiling ear to ear watching them tear around the house.


I set up the Treasure Hunt by going around the house and taking photos of everything I could think of. Being creative and taking pictures of items that could be moved around, such as a ride-on truck and the boys' little chairs, was definitely the way to go. I hid the ride-on truck behind some curtains and I put the Elmo chair in the front hallway. I also took some close-up photos that took the boys a minute to figure out the location of the clue.

Some other photos I took were:

Shoe basket
Underwear drawer
Toilet paper roll (they had to run to all 3 bathrooms trying to guess which one it was)
Paintings on the walls
Dog bed
Toys
Cat litter box
Vacuum cleaner
Key box
Dining room chair
Bed sheets

You get the idea. The dining room chair photo clue turned out great because I taped the next clue to the bottom of one of the chairs and since we have eight chairs this took them a few minutes of circling the table.


To set up the game, just take as many photos of things inside your house as you can. I think I took about 30 photos. I printed them out on cardstock paper, four to a page, and then cut them out. Farmer B took the boys outside while I set up the hunt. I started with a sign on the sliding glass door that told them a treasure hunt was on. The first photo clue was taped to the bottom of the note.




This photo clue was a picture of one of our barstools. The barstool with the photo clue taped to it was hidden in the hallway. When the boys found it and grabbed the clue, it sent them running to their playroom. I made sure that the clues were zigzagged around the house so there was a lot of running involved.



The final clue was on the patio hidden behind the pool boxes. It was a red bag (leftover from valentine's day) with a couple of little toys in it and two Tootsie Roll lollipops. The boys were completely overjoyed with the whole experience and said they can't wait for the next hunt. If you're stuck inside in the heat with some bored kids who aren't old enough to read real scavenger hunt clues, you've got to try this easy and fun activity. You can reuse it by changing up the order of the clues and moving some of the moveable clues to different places in the house.

Trip to the Farmer's Market

Farmer B had to work again this weekend so the boys and I trekked out to the local Farmer's Market for a look around. I'm embarrassed to say that we've never been to the Farmer's Market before, but it's quite a drive and it always gets put off, especially since it closes up shop at 1 pm and is only open one day a week. Today was the day to finally make the drive out there and I'm so glad we did.

The Winter Park Farmer's Market boasts that its Central Florida's number one produce and plant market. It's located at an old train depot in the picturesque city of Winter Park. Parking was easy, the atmosphere was great and it was a wonderful day out.











The boys favorite part of the day was watching the real kettle corn cooking over the fire - and of course eating the entire bag between them (with my help). I loved all the fresh produce, flowers, coffees, cakes, pastries, breads, honey, cheeses and homemade foods. There were so many people and dogs enjoying the day and it made me realize how much I miss having Baillan around. Rommel is a great dog, but I miss having a big, fat, yellow lump on the end of a leash. I told myself I'd get another dog once Jace starts kindergarten, but that's a long way off...

We'll be sure to make this Farmer's Market part of our normal routine now and try to hit it up as often as we can. Since I'm not growing much myself right now at least I can support local farmers who do know how to grow things right.

Chickens in Space!

Okay, the title was a bit misleading. I researched the animal astronaut files on the NASA website and there don't appear to have been any chicken astronauts. Mice, frogs, dogs, monkeys, newts, turtles, chimpanzees and even a stray French cat, but no chickens. Clearly NASA shows a slight prejudice to our favorite egg-producing yard fowl, which is a shame. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if a chicken can lay an egg in space? And if so, is that egg edible? Maybe I'm the only person who ponders these things - clearly no one at NASA has.

This all came up because the Space Shuttle Endeavor finally took off yesterday after a month of delays on its journey to the International Space Station. The boys were less than enthused to stand outside at 6 p.m. and watch it because a) they were convinced it wouldn't go up again and b) dinner was on the table and they both professed to be starving. But it did go up and Clementine watched it with us. I'm not sure she was as impressed as a chicken should be witnessing her first shuttle launch, but at least she got to experience it.


And I got a photo of a chicken watching the space shuttle go up.

However, it was the most boring launch we've ever witnessed. The sky was bright, hazy, and cloudy and the conditions were not favorable for good visibility. Oddly enough the wind must have been blowing the right way because we heard the shuttle go up, which doesn't happen too often. The loud roar of the engines rumbled through our back yard soon after take-off.

And because of the crappy viewing conditions, I did have to take the photo into Photoshop and "blue up" the sky a bit so that you could make out the tiny dot that is the space shuttle. It's not my best work, but it does help you to see where the shuttle trajectory falls from our viewpoint.

Compare that daytime launch photo with the two sets of night launch photos I posted on the blog for previous missions. Big difference huh?

The other launch photos might have been more spectacular, but this photo did have a chicken watching the launch. I wonder how many people can say THAT?

Summer Slow-Down

We're in the full throes of summer here at our house and between camps, swimming lessons and entertaining two boisterous, inquisitive little boys everyday, I'm finding that I have a little less time to linger over blog entries than I did during the school year.


Let's not forget that this is mainly a gardening blog and my garden is downright soupy (and dead) right now, which isn't helping. Please don't take this as an announcement of a blogging break, because blogging is one of the few things I actually do for me and I have no intention of giving it up for the summer. I think many stay-at-home-moms get so wrapped up in the kids and the home that they go days without doing anything just for themselves. I am guilty of that, for sure. That's one of the reasons I started this blog - it's my thing that I do just for me and I have no intentions of walking away from it for the summer.

However, I'm currently blogging six days a week and now that it's the summer, I'm going to slow down a little bit. I don't know if that means I'll have entries three days a week or five days a week, but it will be a little less than what I've been doing.

I've got to regroup on the garden and I know I can't plant any vegetables this summer. I made that mistake last year and have been told time and again that only very skilled gardeners dare plant in the summer in Florida. And as the name of my blog suggests, I'm short on gardening skills so summer planting is not in the cards for me. I think I'll focus on sunflowers this summer so I can do my part for the Great Sunflower Project. Sunflowers are something I've had success growing in the past, so hopefully that can be my summer gardening project.


Also, I need to get serious about my kid crafts and activities. Two boys. One long summer. It's too darned hot for mere mortals to go outside for most of the summer, so we spend a lot of time inside. As captivating as I might feel I am, the boys get sick of staring at me pretty quickly and resort to daring each other to jump off the back of the couch onto the tiled floor, so I know I'll need to get creative with some fun kid activities…many of which will need to be thought-up and put together at night while the boys are sleeping since their patience is thin for my prep time. I'm also hell-bent on teaching my 5 1/2 year old to read before he starts kindergarten because he's expressing such an interest in it, but can't quite put it together. So yes, my focus will have to drift away from the blog a little to accomplish that.


Finally, by the end of the summer I should have three mature hens popping out eggs like the lottery machine on the 11 o'clock news. They should be mature and of egg-laying age by about mid-August, so I've got that to look forward to. Plus I still want to build them an attached run to their chicken coop, but have to figure out how to do that on a very modest budget.


So there's my summer in a nutshell. If you see a day or three go by without an entry, just know I'm hard at work playing pirates or sculpting a masterpiece out of dried-out Play Doh or sounding out the word c-a-t for the 100th time. Or maybe like last night, I sat down to watch TV after an afternoon of swimming and fell asleep on the couch. I am sure I'll pick up again on the blog at full speed in the Fall once school starts and the new planting season arrives. But for now it's got to come second to my two favorite little guys because as any parent will tell you, they just grow up too fast.

Garden stake teepee

I bought a pack of six bamboo garden stakes for less than $3 at Home Depot the other day to use in the garden when we plant the green beans. Last time I planted green beans they all froze before they got to staking size. The package has been sitting on the patio for a few days just calling to the boys. They've been begging me to play with them, but I know if left to their own devices these would become swords in a heartbeat.

So we got the two fat blue rubber bands from around the broccoli and leeks in the fridge, a handful of chip clips and binder clips, two old sheets and the bamboo garden stakes and headed out into the yard.



We put one rubber band around the ends of the bamboo stakes and spread them out in a teepee shape. We jammed the other ends in the ground. Then we got two old sheets and secured them to the top with the other rubber band and used the chip clips and binder clips to clip the sheets to the poles. Instant teepee. Instant happiness.



They got a handmade campfire set for Christmas so they tore in the house to get it and cook up their felt marshmallows in the teepee. They had fun for a good hour or two climbing in and out and playing with the teepee…until the dog tried to get in with them. He couldn't find the door so he flattened the whole thing.

But it was good while it lasted. The stakes are now in the garden ready to go in with the green beans next week and the boys are already planning their next fort with the pea trellis that's in the shed.

It's the Final Sproutdown!

After my not-so-hot first time planting experience last season, I decided this time around that buying a lot of seedlings for the garden was both too expensive and too depressing to make it worthwhile. It's expensive because it's about $2.50 to $5 a seedling and you need quite a few to fill up a row. And it's depressing when every seedling you buy wilts and dies within 10 days. Been there, done that. Don't want to do it again.

I decided that I'd buy just a handful of seedlings this time around and try my hand at starting more things from seed. Last time we did great sewing seeds directly in the garden even though many of them died before producing anything. This time I thought we might have even better luck starting the seeds indoors and then transplanting lots of seedlings. It just feels more economical to try it this way and I feel that with our garden there's safety in numbers.

I found a little mini-greenhouse seed starter kit at our local hardware store for under $5, so the price was right for this experiment. The directions were touted as simple enough for a child to understand, so it was perfect. It said to add a special seed starting mix to each little pot, so we filled the little pots with Miracle Grow potting mix because that's all we had on-hand.



Then it said to make a hole and drop two seeds in each hole. I cannot wrap my head around why you put two seeds in one hole. But we followed the directions - reluctantly.



We got a big stash of seeds and read the backs to find out which ones can be started indoors. I let the boys pick out which ones they wanted to try. This involved them in the gardening process and gave me two scapegoats to lay the blame on when this little seed starting gig doesn't work. I can call it the "children's project" and just roll my eyes at their inexperience when nothing sprouts. I'm not above this.



So after packing the little pots, we grabbed a pencil to make holes in each one somewhat close to what the backs of the seed packaging suggested. Then we started planting two seeds in each hole.



There are 12 little sections with 6 pots in each one. We chose 8 different types of seeds - Zucchini, cantaloupe, broccoli, watermelon, cauliflower, okra, tomatoes and lettuce. Then we were left with 4 empty sections. I divided these sections up into 8 rows and decided to see what would happen if we only planted one seed of the above-mentioned types in each pot since the two-seeds-per-pot nonsense bothered me. Is there any question as to why we can't grow things? I doubt everything I read.



I discovered that it's essential to make a little chart in a notebook to record where each seed type was planted. And then it's even more essential to put a sticker somewhere on the seed starter kit showing where at least ONE of the seed types is planted so you can figure out which way up the thing goes when you're referring to your chart in your notebook.

Then we watered them and put the top on them. The directions said to put them under a light, keep the soil wet and wait for life to blossom. So I stuck them on the patio since we have sunlight out there. I can't imagine they'd be better in the house than on the patio, so that's where they're living. We're crossing our fingers that at some point something sprouts.

Sunset Shuttle Launch

Whenever I talk to my friends who live elsewhere and see their pictures of gorgeous snow-covered mountains or beautiful canyon scenes, I'm quick to complain that there isn't much to see in Florida. Once you've seen the beach, we're all about strip malls and swamps. But then it's time for another launch from the Cape and while the world watches on TV, we merely walk into the backyard to experience the whole thing live.

A launch looks completely different depending on the time of day. We've seen them all from night launches, to day launches to Saturn and Atlas rockets and, of course, last night's sunset launch. We even drove over to the coast once to see a launch close-up.

Sunset launches are great because the sun's rays reflect sunset colors in the smoke trail behind the shuttle. On a rare occasion, if it's a clear day and the wind is blowing the right way we can even hear the low rumble of rockets upon take-off.

At about 7:40 pm last night we all wandered into the back yard and looked East over our back fence. The boys were in their pajamas ready for bed and were more excited at staying up a few minutes later than usual than actually seeing the shuttle. At 7:43 pm the space shuttle Discovery lifted off with six astronauts on board on a mission to the international space station.

The first thing we see is a small white light appear low in the sky. It goes up and to the left and is easy to see by the large smoke trail behind it. After a few minutes you can clearly see the two solid rocket boosters seperate and descend to the earth. After that you can watch the shuttle getting smaller and smaller until it disappears into orbit.

(If you click on this photo to make it larger you can just see the SRBs falling away from the shuttle. It's the two white dots under the brighter dot)

Then we all go back inside and rewind the DVR to watch the shuttle life-off again on the TV. After that my little pajama-wearing boys head off to bed without realizing how lucky they are to witness this from their own back yard.

Do you Tiddlywink?

Since I'm allowing myself to branch out from an all-gardening blog this year, I thought I'd showcase my favorite old-school children's game that has now become one of my boys' favorite games: Tiddlywinks. I'm not sure if you Americans played it growing up, but a good game of Tiddlywinks was a rousing good time when I was a kid in the U.K. I also used to enjoy fun games such as hitting a ball against a wall for hours and talking to my stuffed animals, so apparently it didn't take much to entertain me. I guess nothing much has changed.

If you're not aware of Tiddlywinks, each person has a set of four small plastic discs called winks, a larger disc called a squidger (or as we so creatively called it "the big tiddlywink"), a felt rectangle and a plastic dish to aim your winks. Each person takes turns pressing down on the edge of a small tiddlywink with the larger tiddlywink with the hopes of popping a wink into flight and landing it in the plastic dish.

I don't know what it is about this game that is so captivating. Anyone who comes over and sees it out always wants to give it a go. There's something so simple and yet insanely entertaining about pressing two discs together to fling one through the air toward a plastic dish. It brings older people back to their childhood, it gives young kids some old-fashioned fun and maybe gives them a primer for playing quarters when they're in college.

I'm also not embarrased to admit that Farmer B and I have settled disagreements with a tiddlywink face-off. If he wants to do A and I want to do B and neither of us wants to budge, we've been known to have a fierce tiddlywink face-off on the coffee table. There's nothing worse than having to spend the night watching "Death Race" instead of "Bridget Jones' Diary" because he got a blue wink in the 100 score part of the dish while my yellow winks flew madly across the room and only one landed in the 10 score part of the dish.

I have found that when you play Tiddlywinks with little ones you should set up the game box upright around the game board so that you don't spend the entire time chasing the winks around the room. Once the winks start flying it becomes more entertaining for the kids to watch an adult scurry around the room on their knees picking up pieces than it actually does to aim at the dish. Best to nip that in the bud before it starts.

Aidan spends a lot of time aiming and really tries to score high. The middle spot in the dish is marked with a 100 so that spot means big points.

Jace is still trying to get the hang of aiming so he flings the winks all over the room, much to his amusement, but he often ends up getting the hang of it by the end.

But you know what? They really play this game. They get into it. They take turns. They jump down and find each other's lost tiddlywinks. They even cheer when anyone gets one in the tray. If they keep it up, they could enter Tiddlywink tournaments and even become a member of the "English Tiddlywinks Association". Oh you didn't know there was such an organization?

Their website says that the adult version of the game of tiddlywinks started in January 1955 and the English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) was set up in 1958. The ETwA's objectives are to promote the game and coordinate winking activities in England and the rest of the United Kingdom. To this end, ETwA maintains the official rules of tiddlywinks; arranges tiddlywinks tournaments; publishes the journal Winking World; and keeps winks players in touch with what's going on. Because...you know...without Winking World the players just wouldn't know what's going on...

They compare the game to a three-dimensional chess game with a fascinating mixture of manual dexterity and intellectual activity as well. In fact, Prince Philip designated members of the "Savage Club" as his royal champions to compete against the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (CUTwC) on March 1, 2008, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first royal match. I know you're wondering, so here it is: CUTwC won!

I love people that take things seriously. I love hard-core winkers. So pick up a game of Tiddlywinks, get serious with your squidger and wink away your troubles.

Mommy, are we going to grow horses?

After a lot of plant pulling, soil tilling, poo spreading and determination we finally got the garden ready for replanting. I'm excited to try this gardening gig again, even though I'm a bit anxious about the possible disappointment. But we keep moving forward with the hopes that we can trick a plant into growing and producing before we kill it off with our evil black thumbs.

Aidan was a GREAT helper pulling up all the plants from last season. I haven't seen this kid this happy helping out in a long time. This is a synopsis of our conversation.

You mean I can pull up the plants?

Yes

And throw them against the fence in an explosion of soil and leaves?

Yes







He felt great man-power from this and as Martha would say…it was a good thing.

Then my man-tool-operating Farmer B stepped up to the plate with the gas-powered tiller and went to town tilling the garden.



It looked almost back to something recognizable when he was done. That man of mine does work hard and I appreciate him for it.

Of course the magnificent ending involved Aidan and I poo-flinging with our newly-acquired trash can of horse manure. Funny how kids put things together in their heads.



Aidan and I are taking shovels of horse poo and spreading it around the garden when he looks at me pensively and says

"Mommy, are we going to grow horses?"

It was a valid question. Everything else we've spread on the garden was in an attempt to grow said item. So if you spread horse poo, logic could dictate that you're trying to grow horses. The rest of the day has involved questions about horse poo, gardens and just animal poo in general.

The dog quite enjoyed this Smörgåsbord of deliciousness. Please don't tell Farmer B. He just washed the dog and he doesn't smell like goat for once, so I don't want him knowing that he was frolicking in horse manure all day.



I got to work too and decided to take a photo of myself hard at work so you could see that I really am a shovel-carrying, horse-poo-flinging gardener.



Now we whip out the Florida Veggie Gardening book and see what we should plant...I have potatoes, sweet potatoes and lettuce on the list, but that's it. Actually I need a good how-to vegetable gardening book, you know the kind - how to thin, how deep to plant, when to transplant, etc. Since I did so much wrong last time, maybe I need more direction. Anyone got any book recommendations for me?

Night Launch

I know this is a gardening blog, but it's my gardening blog so I give myself the right to go completely off-topic should the mood strike me. Since I'm mood stricken right now, I thought I'd post some photos of last night's space shuttle launch…after all, we were standing next to our garden when we watched it, so I'm calling it garden related.

The Space Shuttle Endeavor lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 7:55 p.m. on November 14th. Our family is famous for forgetting to watch shuttle launches, but honestly, when you live in Florida it is easy to forget since it's a way of life for us. We were determined not to forget last night's launch because there is just something special about a night launch. No matter how many launches you see, it's always just an amazing moment when you first peer out of the backyard and see the glow of the burners and know that seven very gutsy astronauts are hurtling toward space at about 18,000 mph.

Ever since I was a kid and I stood outside of my school with my class watching the Challenger take off with teacher Christa McAullife on board and it blew up, I always get a bit nervous watching a shuttle take off. I always try to imagine how scary it must be for the astronauts inside and I think of how odd it is that most of the country is inside watching Wheel of Fortune while this amazing thing is happening right outside of my window.

We had the boys dressed in their PJs ready for bed and we all walked out into the backyard and looked East.
The moon was hidden behind the clouds at first and it was a very dark night We're very close to the coast so we always get a great view. It's much harder to find the shuttle in the daytime, especially if there are low clouds. But a night launch is totally different. You stand there in the darkness waiting for the glow and then it happens - a bright orange glow lights up the sky starting at the horizon and quickly filling the night. If you're inside you can see the orange glow light up your windows. Photos really do not do it justice. We were lucky enough to have a full moon, which made for a very beautiful night.
The bright orange glow sort of arcs up into the sky and the clouds get really bright and you focus on the bright yellow glow of the shuttle. If the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can hear the rumble of the rockets. Last night we heard someone blaring Elton John's "Rocket Man" from some speakers at a party up the street. No matter where you are you always hear people clapping. There is something so spectacular about it that you feel the need to clap or cheer when you first see it over the horizon. But soon after you hear a quiet silence as people old enough to remember the Challenger suck in a collective nervous breath in the hopes that nothing will go wrong. As you watch, the bright white plume of smoke off the shuttle's tail follows the ball of fire as it lifts up into the sky.
It's impossible to photograph from a home camera, but when the shuttle gets quite high in the sky you can watch the solid rocket boosters separate from the shuttle and fall back to the Earth. The shuttle eventually becomes a tiny white speck and you're left watching what's left of the smoke trail fading in the night sky. Eventually the sky darkens again and it's all over. Then we all raced back inside and hit rewind on the TV and watched it all over again.
I love that our boys can experience this. One day when they're old and grey they'll be able to tell their grandchildren about watching the space shuttle take off right from their own back yard. I'm sure space shuttles will be obsolete old-fashioned pictures in a history book by then - just like the rockets from the 1960s are to us now. But I'm glad they get to experience this part of history first-hand with Farmer B and I at their side.