I Love Rainy Afternoons

There is nothing better, in my opinion, than having the respite of a cool rainy afternoon in the middle of an otherwise hot and sunny week. I know my garden and my lawn love it, but I do too. We tend to give ourselves permission to sit still and spend a nice long time reading or doing some other indoor activity when the skies darken and the rains come. I love that the girls' first instinct is to grab a book.

The Case for a Creator

We just got done watching Lee Strobel's "The Case for a Creator". We got it from Netflix because--let's face it--I can manage to sit down and watch a movie with the girls for 60 minutes, but tackling the whole book that this movie is based on is just not going to happen any time soon. I just have too many books on backlog right now, and I'm in the middle of "The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature". Sigh. THAT will take me FOREVER to finish, but it's my goal.

But do not fear, this post is not about Strobel's compelling arguments that suggest intelligent design based on laws and coded structures found in our universe and cellular biology. Rather, this post is about a funny response Belle had to one of the illustrations about chance and genetic coding.

It is a somewhat hackneyed illustration made by those against intelligent design. It suggests that even a room full of monkeys typing, if given enough time (as the argument goes in this case, billions of years), would be able to turn out a literary masterpiece like Shakespeare's Hamlet or Tolstoy's War and Peace thanks to Madam Chance.

Instantly my quick thinking Belle said loudly in a protesting tone, "That's impossible!! They would all be dead!!".

*Snort*

Summer Fun, 2010

Here are some friends of the girls that we got to spend some time with this weekend. Amanda's mom was kind enough to extend the offer of a pool party...and we ladies got to chat for a nice, long time.

Aren't they cute?

And a bit weird...

Striiiiiiiiing Beans

After I had my garden all planted, my Dad gave me a couple extra bean plants that he had and wasn't going to plant. I think he said they were some Italian variety that yielded really long beans (yes, I initially thought he may be pulling my leg...but I figured time would tell). Well, these two bean plants along with my pole beans have taken FOREVER to yield mature plants...so I committed gardening sin number 4: I stopped checking for beans for a whole week or so. After all, I had been out there daily...digging through my acorn squash vines that had taken over the homes of my "Italian" beans, seeking for these long beans that I had been told are hard to find because "they are so long they look like the stems of your plant". I had seen a HUGE purple flower or two, so I knew they had to be there...I just couldn't find one. Not one.

Well, as you can see from the picture, I found them yesterday. The one closest to the ruler is what I think is the optimal size. The others are...um...a bit overgrown and inedible. But of course, I had to get a picture. :)

A Couple Giggles

There were a couple things that really made me giggle this weekend. I thought I'd share them, simply because my weekend has been pretty blech otherwise. You gotta focus on the positive, ya know?

I've been talking to the girls about courtship and dating, and some of the differences between the two. It's not a topic that we spend much time on, but occasionally something will come up and I take the opportunity to just talk with them. Well, apparently what we talk about ends up as fodder for their imaginary play with each other and their friends. I overheard one of the girls' friends say, "Oh, I have the most wonderful news! We are being boarded!", to which Moo graciously corrected "courted...we are being courted...not boarded"...and they were off and running with their pretend scenario. It was all I could do to keep from snorting. Moo thought it was pretty funny too, but for Belle and her little friend's sake, she held it together.

The other funny moment came when my folks and Grandma came over for dinner. We were discussing health, supplements and vaccines, and my Grandma said "ya know, there is a new flu that they are talking about down in Texas. The heiney flu...there is even a vaccine shot for it and everything...". As is often the case with my Gram, I had to sift and sort through the information she gave me to decode this tidbit she was sharing about the "heiney" flu. (We are frequently kept on our toes as my Grandma has been speaking in code for a very LONG time--lots of pronouns and adjectives and very few proper names are ever used in her stories. I learned long ago that someone could be called "the big one", "the little one" and "that one" all in the same story...and it is just up to the unsuspecting listener to figure it out.) Back to the heiney flu. It suddenly came to me...I envisioned dozens of little old ladies and little old men, staring at the cable news station ticker as the headlines passed across the bottom of the screen...and what would H1N1 look like? HiNi--Heiny flu. Classic.

Rocketry Expo Performance, 2010

Just for Fun

(subtitle: "What to do when you find yourself with time on your hands, but don't want to go out in the garden, mop another floor, sit down to do math with your children, ask for another chore to be done, and generally don't feel like being productive." By Allison Wonderland)

Flowers, 2010

Just last year, my friend Anna gave me a bunch of flowers from her flower garden. Not only that, she came over and planted nearly every one of them! Dozens and dozens of plantings have grown and bloomed this year, turning my boring landscaping into one with a rich and varied palette of color. Thanks again, Anna!

Garden Delights, 2010

Before:

Now:

Our lonely stalk (or two) of corn:

Spaghetti Squash:

I dunno...I think this is Spaghetti Squash too.
It's a jungle out there, and hard to figure out what is where.

These are our pole beans. Our bush beans have already yielded a bunch of green goodness, and now these are starting to produce yummy beans. Perfect timing (on accident). I love it when a plan comes together...

Give me a week, and we will be inundated with tomatoes! I can't wait!

I planted Sunflowers this year--just because. This SF Gardening method has really given me the freedom to experiment, and plant a little of this and a little of that...just to see what happens. In Moo's hand is a flower from one of our acorn squash plants. It is an Italian delicacy to dredge these in egg and flour and quickly fry them in oil. Yum, yum, yum!

An up-close view of one of the squash flowers, complete with a very happy bee.

I have to figure out how to pickle these banana peppers to make them like the ones I get on my sandwiches at Subway.

No garden is complete without basil. Period.

Look at my itty-bitty cabbage...

...and my teeny-tiny brussel sprouts! So cute!

Planting, tending and harvesting my garden is the highlight of my summer. I totally understand why the Scriptures make clear that things began for the human race long ago in a garden. I mean, yes...for food. Duh. But I think that there is a bigger lesson--a very timely lesson, perhaps--to be had about that life in Eden. Whether one believes in a literal translation of those first chapters in Genesis or not, I think that almost anyone with spiritual insight would admit that we have lost a great deal of our connection to that garden...to the God given earth and its rich, life-giving resources. (Ascending soap box) In a time when oil is blackening the waters and beaches around the Gulf of Mexico and we find ourselves poisoned and/or sickened by our fast-food-prepackaged-antibiotic-hormone injected-pesticide laced-high fructose diet...well, call me crazy...but I think we ought to regroup and ask some tough questions and look to make some changes. (Stepping down off soap box)

So, for our little family, we are enjoying our humble little garden and rejoicing in the fruit that it bears. I am enjoying watching the beautiful process of transformation from seed to harvest. I'm enjoying how things make sense in the garden. I am enjoying that there is a simplicity of life to be had there. Not easy...but simple. It is good.

You Know it's Been a Long Day When...

Code Will Have to Do

This post will have to be in code, as the time has come to consider the embarrassment my blog posts may possibly bring to certain maturing members of my family.

It's official. I bought an unnamed young lady a certain necessary undergarment yesterday. Sniff.

When I was in 5th grade, and worried that I would never, ever have the need to get such an item...I was given the coveted undergarment by a friend--Lisa Holish, in fact--and I was amazed that she would be willing to part with it. But part with it she did, and I wore that thing out. Mind you, I wore it out without having anything to...ahem...fill it. I just was so excited to be wearing it...I'm pretty sure I slept in it...just to feel grown up.

So I'm having one of my first critical 'circle of life' moments as I go through this time with a certain unnamed little girl...who seems to be not so much of a little girl with each passing day. I will not cry...I will not cry...crud. Okay...I will not cry for long...

Preserving the Harvest, 2010

This is the first year that I am attempting to preserve vegetables from my garden. Up until now I have been too intimidated by the process, and I also had a hard time with the self-control aspect of not gobbling up all the produce as it ripened! But today, I found myself wondering how in the world we were going to eat all the beans, swiss chard and beets that needed to be picked NOW...and then I thought, "duh, I can freeze it". This kind of preserving doesn't intimidate me...it's just the idea of canning that I have to learn more about before my tomatoes start yielding way more than we can slice, dice and stew per day. But freezing? No problem. It did take all morning, but now we are set with about 4 quarts of beans, 2 quarts of beets and 4 quarts of swiss chard...and that is just for now! I'll give it a couple days, and there will be more to come...and my pole beans haven't even started to bear fruit yet. I'm so excited about my garden this year, and it is in large part to whole-heartedly embracing Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening techniques.





This top shelf of my freezer filled with green goodness redeems the bottom shelf stacked with a couple frozen pizzas and General Tsao's chicken wings! ;)