Summer vacation

The month of July took us on vacations to Michigan and Carolina Beach, and both were a great success. We flew to Michigan for the first time since Ruby was a baby. After her first year we just didn't think she would fare too well on an airplane but this year she was rip rarin to go! For two months leading up to departure she would ask about every picture of an airplane she saw, "Is that the airplane we're going on to Gramma Pat's?" The correct answer is always yes, to which Ruby would always reply, "Whaoow." On to the photos (click to enlarge).

Ready for take off!

Waiting to lick the beater

This is at an indoor water park in Boyne Falls, MI - it was in the 50's outside

Visiting my paternal grandfather

Heading to the Boyne City 4th of July parade

Grandpa Jerry, Ruby, Oscar and Grandma Pat waiting for the fireworks to start

Gardening with Grandma Pat

Enjoying some Michigan cherries

Relaxing on the deck of our beach condo

Waiting to get on the ferris wheel (stuffed animal ever-present)

In the surf

water retreats

and returns

A church was setting up a puppet show and there was music playing. Ruby stepped into her stage persona and started to dance, emphatically.

As she would say, "Thank yooou, thank you very much!"

My little running blog

I've got this side-blog, see, and I feel a little funny hiding it. So here it is:

http://kirstenrunninaround.blogspot.com/

It's nothing exciting, believe me, but I've found it's the best way for me to keep track of my running. I joined a running team for the summer and we're expected to keep up with our miles. I sit down at the computer several times a day so I know I can easily update things there. So, if reading dull running blogs is your thing, go for it!

In the garden 2009, volume I

I had planned a long, overall catch-up post, but just wasn't feeling it. So, onto the garden.

This spring I finally put up some deer fencing. It's not gorgeous, but it's not bad looking either. I used green stakes along with mom's bamboo to extend the length. Then I attached pieces of deer fencing (sheer, thin, black plastic stuff). It wasn't too hard and I got a lot of the garden surrounded. The deer of course have nibbled on some things (maybe only beans?) in the non-fenced part of the garden. I hope to put up some semi-fencing around that section of the garden later.

It's been a wet spring and while I've been able to keep the deer away, the slugs have been at it! I don't want to resort to nasty chemicals, but they've done a number on a lot of things. I could never get any cuke seedlings to get past one inch, and I lost many (though not all) zuke/squash seedlings. Most sadly, though, was the damage they did to the peppers. I can never have enough peppers (great for freezing - goulash, etc.) and probably bought about 20 plants. I may have 8 left? Sigh. They're not such an issue now that it's consistently hot and dry but I'll have to plan better for this next year.

What have we been eating? Early on - spinach, lettuce and peas. And last year's collards. Lots of herbs - I'm especially using a lot of parsley, chives and basil. And oregano. I've picked about 3 sungolds and a handful of raspberries. Just yesterday picked the first small handful of green beans. I may be most excited about my leeks! I have been hearing about schwester's great Texas leek patch but the first time I grew them they just got huge, made flowers and died. These ones, though are doing what I expected - making little side-babies that look like they'll just become part of a self-perpetuating leek patch. I threw a few into a potato and green pepper medley I made last night (cooked in foil on the grill). My only regret is not growing them much, much earlier. They were so good.

Other things in the garden: those 8 or so pepper plants (yellow and red bell and banana), about 4 varieties of tomato (nothing exciting - Early Girl, Better Boy, Pink Girl, Lemon Boy, Sungold), some okra, a few hills of squash/zuke, onions (that didn't get very big - I'm going to let them be and see what they do), New Kuroda carrots.

Oh, and I did plant 5 blueberry bushes this spring. Three were very cheap from some booster club, and two were pricier ones from Southern States. One of the SS ones is dying so I plan to return it. (Second fruit I've bought from SS that has died - I had a asian pear tree that actually did a similar thing - leaves that blacken and fall off, etc, til the whole thing is dead).

We leave for Michigan on Monday, so it'll be fun to see what's going on when we get back! Ripe tomatoes perhaps?

What a little nap will do

Dialogue between Ruby and myself, shortly after she woke up from a nap.

Ruby: "I think it's beautiful."

Me: "What."

Ruby: "The whole world."

Sport Ruby

A couple of weeks ago Ruby and I went to Tar Heel Town, which is a play area set up for kids during home football games. This day was UNC's spring football game and I think all of the spring sports had home games too, so the university was trying to get a big festive weekend together. Tar Heel Town was not well attended even though it was a much bigger version than usual with even more bouncy play stations, so we pretty much had the run of the place. She got to experience a multitude of sports, often with extensive one-on-one instruction from the attendant. To boot, they had free biscuits, cotton candy, snow cones, and swag - it was like being Michael Jackson in Neverland, but no monkey. Here's some photos.

One of many trips down the slide.

Learning the finer points of lacrosse.

Then on to the field and firing into the net - GOAL!

Break for some face painting...

and some cotton candy!

Shooting some hoops (this comes naturally to her of course).

A couple whacks at a ball suspended by blowing air.

The wind up...

and she brings the heat!

Wrapping it up with her friend Sophia.

In Like a Lion!

Another blast of winter snow this morning kept me and Ruby home while Kirsten had an abbreviated work day.

Morning

Looking down Bradley

Williams Circle

Backyard

Blooms from the yard (and stir-crazy child)

A lovely day

Daran may have mentioned this already, but January 20, 2009 was a great day. Besides the obvious (new president) we also received our first snow of the season. This kept all 3 of us home to relax and enjoy the snow, while also staying glued to the TV as much as we could. Ruby was more interested in counting her books than she was in Doris Kearns Goodwin's commentary, but hey, she's only 4.

Graffiti

2 garden posts to behold!

Oh no! Blogger remembers when you started a post, and hence my last year's "dark side" garden post is stuck down there below Daran's "Ruby snow" post. Check it out if you wish.

In the meantime, some gardening has been happening. I planted lettuce, spinach and pea seeds this past weekend, which was beautiful.

Also, my coveted neomerica plant bloomed. I should include a picture but that will have to wait.

Facebook killed the Blogger Star

El blogo here has been hibernating all winter long and I think the culprit is Facebook. Our chief writer has taken up the the Facebook thing and she's not been heard from since. Seems every woman in her thirties started a Facebook page last year. Here are a few photos to get us back in the blogging game!

Winter certainly has made its mark this year! After what seems like the gradual disappearance of serious cold or snow the last few years, this year has been one of the coldest on record (in most of the US). While it's been kind of annoying to deal with we did have the good fortune of having a little snow storm on January 20th, which shut down public works and schools. It was the first significant snowfall for Ruby and we enjoyed sledding, snowman building, snow angels, and lots of fun with neighborhood kids. But best of all, we were home to watch Barack Obama Day! It was great.

Snow angel on the deck

Clearing snow

Mom and Ruby in the falling snow

Ruby's first Santa meeting

In the garden: the dark side

The Blogger Star is BACK!!!

I wrote the following post many months ago, soonafter my previous post about the garden. I guess I never finished it, or wasn't sure I liked it. Anyway, Daran found it and said I should post it. So, here it is:

_____

There's two sides to every story, right?

Sure, I mentioned a few garden failures in the previous post - nasty fuzzy cucumbers, non-blooming hydrangea paniculata. Life is rough. But here's what you really need to know about gardening here at my 'stead:

1. Mosquitoes prevent any fun from happening at all. Most of my gardening experiences involve mosquitoes assaulting me (and whomever dares join me) at just about any time of day, but mostly of course in the evening when the sun's gone down and you're most eager to get out and see what's what out there.

2. I grossly understated the deer problem. Especially after last year's drought, the deer have gotten smarter and cattier. Several crops of things (beans, peppers, 'maters) were severely delayed and some things (squash and zucchini) never made any headway at all due to the deer. Constant frustration. And they're now - in late OCTOBER for cryin' out loud - chomping up my non-blooming hydrangea. Talk about adding insult to injury.

3. Rabbits.

4. Peppers which I raised from seed and allowed to have 24/7 lamplight as seedlings, in accordance with the advice I read from some bozo I read on GardenWeb. Plants aren't mean to have 24/7 light, but I was feeling lazy and experimental. Those pepper plants (I think) were the ones that grew a bunch of quarter sized peppers. Really useful.

5. Raspberry bushes which, bless their hearts, produced about 14 raspberries per square hectare of bush. I know, it sounded all good in previous posts, and they were good - as in, tasty - but I neglected to mention the fact that they gobbled up tons of good garden space in order to produce no more than a cup total of fruit.

6. Things that flopped over way too much and either broke off or totally blocked the paths: Sungold cherry tomatoes.

7. Fennel that was supposed to be dill, according to Ace Hardware where I bought the plants. Sorry Italian cuisine lovers, but I don't know what to do with fennel.

8. Too many small carrots which I left in the ground all season then insisted to myself on harvesting, peeling, chopping and freezing, despite the fact that for about $0.78 worth of carrots which will only be frozen and then later added to soup, I spent about 3 hours of my time on, meaning those carrots per pound cost, labor-wise, about $500 dollars. Whoever comes over for soup, well, I'm gonna expect some appreciation.

In the garden

It's been a great year for the garden. We've had reasonable temperatures, regular rain and I finally invested in a bottle of "I Must Garden" (repels deer). We even did buy a chest freezer for all the surplus, and it's mighty stocked now. Still, there are areas of the garden that need attention and I'm sure I'll never be totally satisfied with it.

The tomatoes were incredible, and I loved growing yellow ones for a change (Lemon Boy and Golden Girl). I sure like hybrids. Someone will need to convince my to devote more than a tiny percentage of my garden to heirlooms - I just haven't had much luck or production from them.

The green beans (Blue Lake) were also outrageous. The same dang plants produced all summer long. Usually, I (at least intend to) stagger plantings throughout the summer (perhaps 3 different plantings?) so as to keep the production up. But this year my most productive plants were the very first ones that I planted. Every time we'd get a needed rain, the plants would burst forth again with new beans and I picked them up until a few weeks ago.

Cucumbers, not so hot. I planted a bum variety from some hippie outfit - some were good, some were awful - fuzzy, full of huge slimy seeds. I need some good cuke recs.

Other winners - green/sweet peppers, basil, jerusalem artichokes, okra, peaches and even a few raspberries (currently making a fall resurgence)!

Some nice flowers made an entry to the garden this year - pineapple sage, various purple salvias, a very happy light pink mum from Ruth (currently blooming) and of course the swamp sunflowers from mom, also blooming profusely right now. The little orange Mexican cosmos looked great, and my obedience plant bloomed for the first time. My hydrangea paniculata 'tardiva' did not bloom and I discovered that it blooms on new wood and so needs to be pruned. Noted.

So, at this late date, I'm not picking much from the garden. Lots of parsely is left, and so is basil but that won't last long (frost soon). A few hangers-on peppers and the enormous jerusalem artichoke stand needs to be chopped down and dug up (can't wait). It's time to hunker down, spread some compost (and chicken manure!!!) and start planning for next year...

R-U-B-Y

Ruby loves drawing on Daran's little coaching whiteboard but until now it's just been scribbles and drawings. Last week, though, I noticed her working hard on something, crouching over the board on the floor. Minutes later, she came running down the hall, proudly. And proud she should be. Proud, I was.

Milwaukee

Just a short post to say we made the scene at Milwaukee and I'm here to report Milwaukee is a fine town. It's much nicer than I imagined while growing up thinking about the Milwaukee Bucks, the Milwaukee Brewers and the "Miller Brewing Company Milwaukee Wisconsin." We ate lunch first then flitted around some of the downtown neighborhoods before heading over to Miller Vally, where all the company's buildings are. We were too late for a tour but they showed us the ten minute movie and gave a pass to the Miller Inn where they give you a couple beers on the house. We came home and had a quiet night in preparation for probably a wild weekend in Chicago. Mark, Matt and another guy rejoin us this weekend. Pictures!
On a bridge downtown.

Every team in the NBA will make at least one appearance in the Bradley Center (background) each year. This is right downtown where someone (hypothetically like me) could live a couple hundred feet away - pretty cool.

Chris and I collecting our free beers at the Miller Inn. A hostess reports each Miller employee receives 3 free cases per month, sometimes more. I'd like to know the percentage of alcoholics in the monthly application pool.

Finally, we toured some replica caves where they demonstrate the manufacturing process pre electricity. I'm helping with the ice making.

Chicago

Chris and I made it to Chicago today. It was only my second time in the city and I was much more favorably impressed than ten years ago. Maybe it's because ten years ago I'd recently been to Europe and hiked a bunch of really cool cities, and maybe it's because this is my first time back inside a healthy big city since that last time. We didn't even do much but we did hike a lot of it, mainly in and around Lincoln Park.

Walking around Chicago it was impossible not to feel the energy. People are everywhere doing all manner of things - going to work, going to school, moms pushing babies, people in the bars and restaurants, trains whirling above your head, bums working hard. And it's impossible not to feel the history. The buildings have wear and tear on them but they they've been standing for a decades or centuries and appear to be ready for more. I love how there are long rows of houses and families living in places you wouldn't think are houses - every nook and cranny put to practical use. Of course there are plenty of blighted places we didn't see but where we were it was alive and kicking and looking incredible.

Kirsten has a fantasy of living in New York (I've never been) for a few years and I can't fathom it. I have to say I could see myself living in Chicago and enjoying it. Seeing a well functioning city up close made me a little sad to think of what's happened to all the once healthy big cities our country used have. I really wish I could have experience my birthplace of Detroit - once the country's 4th largest city and referred to as the Paris of the West for its architecture - before it's tragic decline. But we'll always have Chicago.

Chris' mom gave us the shocking news that Milwaukee is only about an hour away from here. I had no idea it was so close. So while you poor saps are working tomorrow we are going to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin! Eat your hearts out! I've actually heard good things about Milwaukee. And every bartender we talk with at these bars that serve numerous high quality beers speak longingly about all the beers you can only get in Wisconsin. It's all they can do to keep from breaking down about this beer and that beer...only in Wisconsin my friends. So we'll see.