Gymnastics

Having a balance beam in our backyard is so nice! Especially if it is a double purpose one, with deck railing as a secondary function :p

 

Blueberries and More

 

Our blueberries are doing really well, the bushes are covered with bunches like these. I love it!

 

Veggies are doing well too, the tomato plants are getting bigger every day. Apart from the two which didn't make it for no clear reason.

 

Sylvia gave me these flowers for mother's day. They love the sunny days.

 

I didn't plant these daisies, they volunteered. I love them anyway.

 

The best news?! After I went to dairy day, I felt so naked without a camera that I decided to get myself a point and shoot to tide me over till I could get a new DSLR. I didn't need top of the line, but I wanted something NOW and I have been wanting a light and quick camera anyway for when the SLR is too big and unwieldy.

 

The Nikon Coolpix L810 was on sale, and I fell in love with the 26 x optical zoom, so that was my final choice. I am a proud owner of a new camera! Looking forward to getting to know it and experimenting with all the settings.

 

U Turn!

Remember my upside down tomato? Well, it doesn't quite agree with this whole standing on its head plan, and is doing its best to explain that to me in single syllable words.

 

Words like 'U Turn' and 'I don't think so!'

Its main stem is soooooooo going up again, it declared that growing upside down just isn't natural for a tomato!

I am very curious to see what will happen.

 

Meanwhile, my other container tomatoes are happily growing right side up and have beautiful blossoms. I can't wait for our first harvest!

 

Dairy Day

Did I mention that my camera is broken? Just checking...

Anyway, today we had a fun day which included 'dairy day' at our local food coop. This is a day that many vendors have booths with samples to try out their products. Tons of cheeses, many yogurts, a variety of ice cream (including Ben and Jerry's!) and strawberry short cake.

 

There was face painting, and my children's favorite story teller. He is here every year, and also sometimes performs on local farmer's markets.

I wish I had good pictures, but I only have the ones I made with my crappy phone camera.

 

Naturally there was the traditional hayride and much fun was had by all. We had to leave in time to get the girls to a party, otherwise we would have stayed much longer.

 

I wish I could say I did lots of gardening at home, but I have to admit that it was just WAY too hot and sunny for gardening and I escaped in the air conditioned car to run errands instead.

Found a nice love seat for the television room (After we got DVDs out of storage, I had found out that one chair and many children is not always ideal to watch television) and a new desk chair for the computer room (how do my kids ALWAYS manage to lose wheels from those chairs???)

Ran a bunch more errands and then went home where I enlisted the kids to get the love seat into the house. When we finally got it into the computer room, it somehow had only three legs, instead of the four ones I was SURE it had when we bought it. That was weird. The mystery was solved when Erik went back to the car and found the last leg, phew. My plan B was to use a brick instead of a leg, a method which successfully has been used before in our house. 

 

I am happy that I finally can buy furniture for the house without worrying about having to move soon, or how it would look in our staged rooms. Of course, the downside of not having the house on the market is that it is ... well... a mess seems a good description.

Only two more school days left and then it's finally VACATION!!!!! I can't wait!

Lovely Day!

You will have to pretend that these pictures have anything to do with the subject, even if they don't.

The bad news is that my dear Nikon SLR seems to have shutter release issues in such a way that I think it is over...

The good news is that that means I can shop for a NEW camera, which will be nice. I used this Nikon many years almost continuously, so I feel I got my money's worth from it for sure.

Anyway, today was awesome. I attended some retirement event at Sylvia's school which included ice cream and socializing with other moms.

We went home, picked up some kids and went to the thrift store to find a variety of good buys. Including a cool new skirt, I have been wearing tons of skirts this summer, so always nice to have an extra one.
Sylvia found a nice doll, Erik got a bunch of books, Dawn acquired some new clothes, and Jane got a present for a friend. Very productive thrift store visit.

 

Another stop at home followed by our very first visit to storage place after we decided not to sell the house after all. Which means that the kids can get their stuff back into the house (yes, we really needed more clutter, thank you very much)

Getting into the storage facility was an interesting exercise in failing computer technology, and at the end she said 'FINE! I'll just let you in and you guys hope it works NEXT time!' That was after half an hour of many tries to get our key card to work.

They selected four boxes to take home, and were happy to see everything that was in there. Including My Neighbor Totoro, to the utter annoyance of Erik, who thinks Sylvia shouldn't watch it 24/7 since that interferes with HIS movie watching!

 

Time to make it over to a neighboring town where they have a balloon festival going on this weekend! We got ourselves ice cream, and then found a spot on a golf course to watch the hot air balloons taking off. We try to do this every year, it is one of our traditions. (Insert Fiddler on the Roof music)

 

Quick stop at Kmart to find a black wig (don't ask, it's not for me :p) Guess what? They don't have many wigs when it's not Halloween. As in zero, nada, nothing, no way wig!

The store attendant did send us to a local comics store though, where we did not find wigs, but we did find many other shiny things (inluding a bumper sticker saying 'Inconceivable!') so we were not unhappy anyway.

 

Time to pick up Jane from her 8th grade dance, and then we went home, where Dawn gave henna tattoos to the three younguns. Erik and Kate played a game of chess, even although I tried to get them into bed already.

It was such a lovely low-key day and I hope the other days of the weekend will be just as awesome. 

Container Gardening

Even although I have a 'real' veggie garden now, I am also enjoying some container gardening, just because I can. I have three tomato plants right next to each other in such a way that we can walk out onto our deck and pick fresh tomatoes. Will be heaven! One of them is blooming now, so it won't be long before it starts producing.

 

Now that the house is mine, I want to make a formal herb garden, but it will take some time to think about it, design it and implement it, and I am too impatient to wait for it. So for now I am putting some herbs in containers, which has a number of advantages
 1. Convenience, since the deck is so close to the kitchen;
 2. Efficiency, since there is less weeding to be done;
 3. The herb planter just looks good and makes me feel very organized.

 

Kate planted this planter, mostly with herbs we got from our local farmer's market. Rosemary, lavender, anise, and parsley. How perfect!

It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea...

For years I have seen advertisements for 'upside down' tomato planters, with lusciously green leaves, tons of tomatoes and glowing descriptions about perfection achieved. I knew that my life would reach new heights if only I would own one of those upside down tomato planters. Yes, I know how to pursue my happiness in effective ways.

My goal for this summer was to FINALLY get one of them, which sounded quite easy. We all know I could just go to the garden center or Kmart and get one for a few dollars. First stop was our garden center where they had them, but they were $15 a piece! That is crazy I said, and I told myself that I would get it much cheaper at our local big box stores. Or could google how to make one myself. In my spare time, you know.

Over the next week, I visited Kmart "No, we didn't get any in this year.", Walmart "Hmmmm, no I don't think we have any", Home Depot "I think we had some but we seem to be out.", and many other places. NO ONE had an upside down tomato planter! I briefly considered making my own, but sanity quickly prevailed and I sheepishly returned to the nursery where I surreptitiously put it in my basket and paid the required fifteen darned dollars.

Next step: filling it with tomato plant and soil. Should be easy, eh? Not like any of those descriptions ever said 'You will go through many tomato plants and learn exciting new swear words if you try this project.'. If all those people in the advertisements could do it, so could I! I found out the hard way that truth in advertizing is not always to be expected.

First I realized quickly that to fill it, I had to put it down somewhere. With the tomato plant upside down in it. Oh. That makes it kind of hard to put it down without breaking it! I could kind of half put it down, and fill it, but the darned thing got amazingly heavy. And heavier. And then even heavier!!!

 I was so happy when I finally had it filled, things looked good and I hung it on its hook (which was an interesting strength exercise in itself and required a stepladder and many power words)

Then I realized I forgot to put on the 'lid' and thought hmmm, maybe I should add that, since it might be necessary. I took it down, half dropped it, put on the lid (by now I was so totally turned of by this whole upside down tomato project) and wrestled it on its hook again. I proudly stepped back and wanted to bask in the glory of a task well done.

 

Until I noticed... that the stem was broken.

Oh noes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All that work! All for nothing? This wasn't supposed to happen!!!

I actually left it this way for a few days while I took many deep breaths and bitched to my friends about the complications of upside down gardening. They humored you by pretending to be empathetic, but I bet they really were laughing at me behind my back!

Got a new tomato plant, devised a plan B which involved two chairs as holders while I filled the darned planter. I had to empty the whole thing before I could start all over, since the design doesn't allow you to just replace the seedling.

 

I made a big mess, used some new choice words, but eventually I had my tomato seedling planted upside down.

It'd better grow LOTSA tomatoes!

And I will be more careful in believing glowing advertisements :p

How NOT to Use a Slinky....

Erik got a new slinky. And found a sure way how NOT to use it...

 

Yes, he did it to himself and needed Jane to rescue him... Slinkies are so dangerous!

As are jumping ropes. Just ask Kate what happened when she was using her as a helicopter/war hammer, closed her eyes, jumped around, ducked, and hit herself on the head with the wooden end piece...

The joys of blonde kids!

Kayaking

When I was a young girl, my parents had a boat, and spring, summer and fall, every weekend, we would anchor the boat in some remote location. It was a motor boat, not super big, but big enough for sleeping and eating and it even had a kitchen and a toilet. I spent my weekends and vacations on the water from the time I was a baby until I left the house many moons later.

 

Their first boat was called the Ronoscar, combining the names of my two elder brothers. I have noticed that a lot of boat owners go for combo names like that. When I was born, my father didn't really want to change the name of the boat, so he made sure that my name fit in with the boat. He decided on naming me Karen, so the only change he had to make to the boat name was turning it into Ronoskar. How convenient! I was barely weeks old when I made my first trip on the water .

 

For years they wanted a bigger boat, but money and other issues made it hard to make the decision to upgrade. Eventually they made the jump to a bigger boat (resulting in the only EVER summer vacation I did NOT spend on the water, but instead at a camping on the coast of France, so still close to the water). Their decision making for this new boat had been so hard and had taken so much time and anxiety that they decided to ditch the children's name and call it the 'De Twijfelaar' instead, which is loosely translated as 'The Doubter' or 'The Indecisive'

 

One of the places we liked to go had a blue heron rookery. We usually were anchored reasonably close to it, and we could either row past in a row boat, or hike over land to reach it. I spent many hours observing the rookery, the coming and going of the birds, the incredible noise generated, and just enjoying the specialness of seeing the birth place of so many young herons. Yeah, there wasn't much else to do when our boat was anchored in the middle of nowhere, one can only sit and read for so long till one wants to go out and explore the great outdoors.

When a local park and rec department advertised for a kayaking trip, and included a blue heron rookery in their write up I perked up. So many years have gone by, but I still can distinctly remember the sights and the shrieks and the awesomeness of the high nests. I called my friend and said 'You really want to go on a kayaking trip, right? Great! I found us one!' and we signed up.

Well, the trip was great, but the rookery was a slight disappointment. Look at the next picture and you can kinda see a nest in the top of that tree. Which is a good description of this particular rookery. We saw a bunch of nests, and I could feel the blue heron energy, but I could also see and tell that it had not been used for a while.

 

Our guide told us that the rookery was empty last year, and this year there is no sign of activity either. Too bad! Would have been cool to see a rookery again. Hmmm, maybe I should do some research and find out whether there is an active rookery nearby. In my spare time or so...

Even although there were no herons, I saw another big bird suddenly alight from the trees. Its wing span was huge, and I couldn't identify it immediately , but our guide recognized it as a bald eagle.

Wow! That is at least as cool as a rookery, so I happily peddled over to where the eagle had landed and where it allowed us to make many pictures of it. It is a juvenile, most likely from last year, since it doesn't have the distinctive baldishness yet. I loved seeing it and it just ignored us and pretended we were not there at all.

 

There still were a lot of signs of tropical storm Irene hitting Vermont last year. The shorelines looked pretty ravaged at places and there were containers and other things just stuck in unexpected locations.

 

I spent so many hours on the water as a kid, on motor boats, sail boats, row boats, kayaks, even windsurfing. All the good memories came flooding back by spending a couple of hours on this lake and river. It was a lovely and pleasant afternoon.

 

Today we did another kayaking trip, but this one included rapids, so I didn't want to take my camera with me. You'll have to live vicariously through my description.

 

In the description the rapids weren't very impressive (class 2) and it turned out they indeed were very do-able and way fun. The right amount of action for a bit of a thrill, but never more than a few splashes and you would emerge on the other side of the rapids and go like 'I wish I could do that again!'

 

We got dropped off just upstream of a bunch of rapids and a tiny waterfall, so the action started almost right away. After a few rapids like that, the river got calmer and the rest of the way we enjoyed the current propelling us, occasionally meeting somewhat rougher water and being happy about being out in a kayak on a gorgeous and hot day.

 

We saw a few goose families with gooselings, a duck with ducklings (have to see whether I can figure out which type of duck it was, it had a red head, definitely not a mallard), some crows, a lot of red winged black birds, and many birds I couldn't identify. Maybe I should add birding to my priorities. In my spare time, right.

 

We noticed a Little Tykes toddler slide stuck on one of the banks, and many other signs of Irene.

 

Both kayaking trips were great, and have reconnected me with the water. Now that I know the local kayaking rental place, I might do this more often. I just loved it.

The Whole Clan

 

They have grown a bit.

 

Some day I'll update the picture at the top of the blog. I just put it on my 'List of Things To Do: URGENT!'. I am not even going to tell which item number it is.