A Weekend of Celebrations!

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We had our home school graduation celebration on Saturday, and a bridal shower on Sunday. So it was filled with good times with friends.

Our home school group has about 60 families and is very active. It has been a wonderful thing in our lives. Even though Michael is not a graduate of either the high school or middle school groups, there was no way we were going to miss joining in the celebration!





A really wonderful message was given by the already graduated son of some dear friends of ours.





And live music was part of the service as well.









Afterwards we went to a party for one of the graduates who is very special to our hearts. We used our lazy sabbath Saturday to make her a card while we kicked back and watched a movie. I am not into scrapbooking - too smart to get into something that I know good and well would be addictive LOL - but those little decorations are perfect for making cards.





I took an image from the internet and faded it out, then printed it up for the inside of the card. We really had a good time making it and it was nice to make it more personal.





At the party, where we ate, chatted, and played Guesstures and Taboo, I asked if there was anything I could do to help the next day at the bridal shower and my friend, who was planning it, asked if I could come up with some games.





Well, I love games, so I spent some time on the internet and found a few.

One that is not really a game, but close, and very helpful to the bride-to-be, is to buy thank you cards for the bride. Hand out the envelopes to each party-attender and have them address the envelopes. These are put into a drawing, and the winner gets a prize. In this case a quick-start basil planting kit. The envelopes and cards are then presented to the bride so that she will not have to find addresses as she is already swamped with things to do planning for the wedding. Nifty, huh?

Turned out a friend and I wore the same shoes.





In this game you hand out pens, hardback books, and paper. You have everyone sign the bottom right corner without telling them why. Then you announce that as a gift to the bride they will all draw a picture of how beautiful she will look on her wedding day.

As the groans begin to grow, put the book and paper on your head and demonstrate that this is how it will be done. They enjoyed this and the bride got some silly mementos.





Played a game where you sat everyone in a circle, put a few gifts out amongst them, and read a wedding story that had a lot of "right" and "left" throughout. Each time the words were read, the gifts had to be passed in that direction. At the end, whomever had the gift got to keep it. In retrospect, I think there should be one gift for every 3 or 4 players. I did not have enough going around to keep everyone busy passing, with only 3 in about 20 players.

I had a few other games we did not end up playing, but it was good to have extras. The last one was to dress up the bride. Armed with newspaper, tin foil, tissue, tape and scissors, four teams each took up the mission to design one of the following: skirt, bodice, sleeves, and headpiece.













After 15 minutes it was time to dress the bride.

















Beauty hurts.





You may now place the ring on Mr Right's finger.





The happy couple!









Look at the detail of that heart headpiece. I completely missed that until now.





Will the real Mr Right please stand up?





Fun! Off to sewing class again today. Then we'll spend time with friends, then Boy Scouts tonight. Long day.

Faith

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The Birds and the Bees

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We got most everything done on our list last week, but for spraying, again. That will be this morning. Coming back up from picking cherries I chanced upon a VERY busy bumblebee and spent several minutes trying desperately to get him in focus before he zipped off. However, he barely stayed in one spot longer than 2 or 3 seconds, so I was sorely disappointed.





And we found a nest in the kiwi arbor of robins' eggs. I looked at a chart one time of how long it takes bird eggs to hatch and leave the nest. I was amazed. Some are out of the nest in only 3 days! I just tried to find the link but was unable to.





Cherry picking was fun. These are only bush cherries. They are like a mild sour cherry. They did not ripen all at once, so we are going to go pick more today. We also got rained out and had to hide under the bushes for a while, picking the inside.





















Here is the fungus that gets the cherries; Brown Rot. I had to rip out all the sand cherries I had put in years ago. They were so susceptible to brown rot that the entire bushes were a pile of mold. These are not so bad. We just lose a small percentage.





The grapes we will not be able to eat this year, due to spraying. But they sure LOOK great! LOL





The van before:





And getting clean. The car was almost unrecognizable afterwards. LOL





And the exterior windows sure look a lot better! They were pretty gross.





The potatoes are out of control! I've not been getting boards up, and the straw is barely hanging on. One of them has started to flower. I think the rest of the potatoes will go in the ground. I just need a bigger garden plot.





I like to keep my salad fixings all made up. We came up and put together salads worthy of the finest restaurants!









The asparagus forest. You can't see the forest for the spears?









If you've never smelled fig leaves, they are so uniquely scented. I visited my folks and their fig tree yesterday. It too had not fared well this winter. Just one of those years...





Laying out the string to mark where the new locations for the posts on the greenhouse will be.





I am really not looking forward to digging those out and moving them. One of those chores that I'll have to force myself to do.

Oh, yes. Our list for today:

DONE - Finish mowing goat pen
DONE - Mow around compost bins
DONE - One hour work on rocks
DONE - Pick more cherries
DONE - Pick more peas
DONE - Pick more strawberries
DONE - Pinch runners
DONE - Clean off patio
DONE - Put away sprouting stuff
DONE - Water lettuce
DONE - Plant more lettuce
DONE - Cover lettuce box with wire
- Re-pot houseplants
DONE - Prune/Tie grapes
DONE - Spray grapes
DONE - Tie up blackberries
DONE - Spray fence lines


~Faith

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How to Rid Your House of Fruit Flies

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There is a simple fruit fly trap you can put together with household items in about 5 minutes. Usually in a day, you will have trapped all the fruit flies in your home, provided you put other lures in the fridge, out of range.









Put an inch of water in the bottom of a quart canning jar.
Add about a 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar. The purpose is to draw them to the smell.
Put in a drop or two of dish soap to break surface tension and make them unable to walk on water.

Tape together and trim a cone shape to drop into the top of your jar. This funnels them down into the jar, but gives them little room for escape. Make sure there are no gaps between the paper and the neck of the jar. If so, you can add tape.

This is a lifesaver skill!

Faith

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Mowers, Hay Bales and Sunburns.

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Despite it being mostly cloudy yesterday, I've got a good sunburn on my kneecaps. That's because I spent about 4 or 5 hours on the riding mower.

Usually I take the push mower and Michael takes the riding mower, but trying to baby my knee, we switched. I wore a sleeveless, knee-length dress, and I'm sporting a sunburn to match.

Not quite done. At the end, I had Michael do the mowing around the wild blackberries at the base of the hill, since he know the rocks better than I do there, and I took over pushing the mower over the paddock. The horses don't eat it down very much since they have relieved themselves in there a lot, and the gate is too small to fit the riding mower through.

That was a lesson to the both of us yesterday. We have three gates, one to the paddock and two to the goat pasture, too narrow for the riding mower, even though they are 4' gates. I think we have a 52" mower deck. All new gates will somehow be wider to save time later.

Spraying kept getting put off due to incoming showers, that seemed to not materialize.

We took a walk into the neighbor's meadow filled with freshly rolled hay bales.





















A self portrait.





On our list for today:

DONE - Bible study www.torahclass.com Genesis lesson #26
DONE - prayer time
DONE - cook eggs in a hat for Michael
DONE - morning animal chores
DONE - straighten house up
DONE - take unused seedlings and peat pots to compost
DONE - spray off front and back porches
DONE - vacuum out van
DONE - wash van
*RAIN- spray fungicide grapes
*RAIN- spray RoundUp along goat, paddock and horse pasture fences
DONE - pick bush cherries
DONE - weed herb and flower beds
DONE - work on rocks for an hour
DONE - finish mowing paddock
DONE - mow part of goat pasture
DONE - wash exterior house windows
DONE - mark out adjusted post placement for greenhouse
- re-pot houseplants
DONE - run errands
DONE - visit mom and dad
DONE - pick up clippings
DONE - prepare meals for shabbat rest day

Taking bets on how much we get done! LOL

Faith

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With Baited Breath..... Really.

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Yeah, this smells like bait. Here is the single troip (Sea Monkey) that survived the hatch. Wonder if he'd taste good boiled and served with melted butter....?





Went outside to spray and Michael's cat, who has been demoted to an outdoor cat due to the hair factor, was lounging with some sort of tag afixed to her fur.





I feel like I live in a toxic soup.... But at least we will get food from the garden this year.








Here is the worst vine with the black rot. See how the spores are even in the vines, not just the leaves. I am doing the best I can to spray in between the rain showers, but we are getting so many of them...





We finished planting the cutting flower bed. Not too many, but it's only our first effort on this place. That lowest bed is succession planted sunflowers, then cosmos and annual 'babies breath'. At the end of it and a little of the row above are marigolds and daisies which I will transplant into the vegetable garden to encourage good insects.





Beautiful skies. I love spring skies in the south.









The neighbor was working hard to rake and bale the meadow next door before the next burst arrived.





And we finally planted beans around the corn, for our three sisters planting. Had to do a little weeding first.





We also planted radishes, parsnips, carrots, and turnips between other crops.

We have been home a lot this week. Swim team for Michael's home school is over for summer, we simply FORGOT to look at the clock and missed his Boy Scout meeting. Our usual Friday get together is not happening this week as everyone has something else going. But we had a really wonderful time at our usual home group last night. A dear family is going to come by and help us put in the pool liner next week, so we need to pick a day. And we got some help financially. We don't even usually have to ask, we just go about our days. It seems the Lord always puts it on someone's heart to help us when we need it, without even asking. So Michael, who used to be quite frightened about what would happen to us, no longer feels that way. He told me that he has seen that God takes care of us, even when things look scary.

Yup, Michael. I am discovering the same thing.

Faith

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A Great Sewing Tip for Newbies - the Black Widow

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Yesterday we had our sewing meeting. The teacher, our dear friend who took a much-needed vacation, had left and put me in charge. HA! But fortunately, with instructions that turned out to be a lot of sitting around a table with friends, just cutting and taping!

She buys patterns then makes them last a long time by transferring them to poster board, labeled, and hanging them, so they last forever with re-use. We had a pattern that she wanted transferred to paper, in all the sizes so she could help us make whatever size we needed.

The bodice pattern came in 10 sizes, from 8 to 26, and each size had an option of B, C, or D cup. So with 30 patterns to cut out all together - poster board was out of the question. Instead we were given copies to tape together and cut out.

I wish I'd have remembered my camera for you to see the mad chaos that ensued with hands speeding along, "Oooops! I need tape again!" and paper flying everywhere, but you'll have to just see some of the aftermath that I took this morning.





I did buy my own poster board so I can have a permanent pattern for myself. I imagine I will be needing to make several bodices over the years, and this pattern is a good basic one to elaborate on.

Here's half of the stuff we cart back and forth to the sewing meeting every Tuesday morning.





While loading up for sewing, Michael had to UNLOAD again the van, which is always in a perpetual state of gobs of stuff going in and out of it. We had these bags of lawn clippings in there for a day and a half. Michael was loading them into the wheelbarrow to haul them down to the compost pile when he noticed he'd been picking up a black widow spider along with them! Bad news.





I knew there was a reason for this tiny little bat!





Oops. Didn't quite get a dead on shot...





Isn't this photo sweet? One of my friends at sewing meeting misses her dad very much. She often wears his old shirts of which she kept a few after he passed a couple of years ago. She had a small photo of her mom and dad from 1955 which she hopes to put into an 8 by 10. So I took it home, since I am blessed with a very nice camera, and took a close-up for cropping and sending in. It would be better with some touchups, but I ran out of time yesterday.





All of our herb seeds are coming up now. These are the last of the ones we are starting in peat pots. The seeds were so tiny I did not want to direct sow and lose in all the weeds. So we have German Chamomile, Greek Oregano, Summer Savory, Winter Savory, Caribe Cilantro, Lemon Balm, Lemon Catnip, Broadleaf Sage, Anise, and Fernleaf Dill. I really wanted licorice, but it was out of stock everywhere I shopped for seed. Here's the dill.





Our indoor/outdoor lettuce experiment. We hoped the trays would grow indoors, but even though this house is very bright, it's still not enough for growing without the plants stretching for the windows. So they are outside now. These are my two that are doing the best, can't think of what they are called.





And most of the rest.





And some leftover celery that I have no idea what will happen, but we're going to keep watering it and see.





And this salad is so good in the summer. Healthy, light, refreshing, sweet, and makes a meal if need be. I know you've all made this before, but I thought I put out a reminder in case you'd not made it in a while.





Jello Waldorf Salad

1 large tart apple
1.5 cups chopped celery
1 cup shredded carrots
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Mix them up in a bowl, and pour over them one large box of prepared, quick-set orange or peach jello; just enough to cover. Chill and enjoy.

Now that it's gone, I've got to make something else.

Faith

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