One of the big things on my layoff to-do list (along with getting a new job) has been to paint the garage. Well it is done! A power-washer and paint sprayer made it a one day job, and a sale at Sherwin-Williams made it cheap. We have been busy and the food coming from the garden has made it even more busy. You can check out some of that chaos here.
Last night we made a batch of pickles up. We have had 20lbs. of cucumbers so far this year and we had to do something with them. We did some spears, but mainly slices. We had some extra room in the second batch so we did a quart of zucchini and one of yellow squash. Three pints went into the fridge but we are supposed to wait at least five days before eating them. I think I can put the canning things away for a week or so. Pickles were a good excuse to see what we have in the way of jars and lids.
And so it begins…
We got our first red tomatoes today. This week I decided to try and track how much our garden produced. We have been eating green beans for a couple weeks now, so I will estimate those. All I know is that we are going to have lots of tomatoes, and eggplants (we have already eaten about 15 of those) and peppers, and who knows what else.
Time to get the pressure canner out.
We started the month with three weddings in two weeks and for the past couple weeks we went to K-Zoo to visit family/friends and then went camping. Plus there have been lots of vegetables (and weeds) to harvest from the garden.
If you are in Kalamazoo the AirZoo is awesome and free. This was my first time since they redid it and I was very impressed.
So the World Cup has come and gone again. This year it seemed like more people in the US payed attention than last time. I sure hope that this trend continues. Over the past month I have watched a ton of soccer and had the time to think about how alien the game is to those of us in the USA. I feel that between the timing and all the diving will keep pro soccer on the back burner.
The timing of the sport is wacko. Counting up it totally foreign. We have to first know that they play for 90 minutes and then subtract the time on the clock from 90 to figure out how much time is left. Americans don’t want to know how much time has elapsed, we want to know how much is left until we can go get food and use the bathroom. To make matters worse there aren’t any commercial breaks so if you don’t have a DVR you have to hold it. There is a halftime at 45 minutes. Stoppage time does get added on at the half and end because the clock never stops. It gets totally confusing to play until 47 minutes, stop for halftime and then reset the clock to 45. This makes no sense to Americans.
Another reason is diving. To Americans this is not viewed as unsportsmanlike or fair. Seeing people constantly fall down clutching their knee my appeal to those in the English Premier League and other European Leagues, but not here in the US.
Low scoring and long games don’t help either, but fakers and weird timing make this game unfriendly in the US.
A while ago I decided that we needed to paddle a good chunk of the Huron River this summer. Yesterday we spent most of the day on the river. We started at US-23/Whitmore Lake Road up in Brighton and paddled all the way to Whitewood Lake in the Dexter-Pinckney area. We had a great time and got a chance to visit the Locks on our way by their house. The kids were fine on our 5 hour trip, we made a couple stops for leg stretching and using the bathroom.
Well, I have finished my first week of being laid off. So far it has been crazy busy! I have actually been off work for two weeks, but the first one was vacation. We had three weddings in those two weeks, one of which I was in so it was pretty hectic. There was also some family in town, adding to the chaos.
Most of the applying stuff is taken care of, or at least as taken care of as I can at this point. It is great being able to spend so much time with the family. We have been going crazy with the gardens too. This week we thinned the beets and carrots, and got our first green beans and potatoes.
Last year we decided that our yard didn’t have enough room for all the stuff we wanted to plant, and still have some yard. We decided to get the garden at my parents house back in shape. This year it has expanded (to about 60′x60′)and we are growing more densely.
Our first change was to move our bean production to our home garden. Beans require too regular picking to keep up with when the garden is a half hour away. We added potatoes this year (4 varieties-including blue), so far they seem to be doing great. In the past (before I can remember) my folks had problems with potato bugs. We will see how it works out. We are doing almost all our tomatoes at home because of tomato worms. We haven’t had problems at home, but they decimated the plants at my folks. We have also planted two quarts of onion sets one yellow and one red. The potatoes and onions are so reassuring to see after planting seeds for the other stuff. It is nice to see foot tall plants.
Another cool thing we are trying is the 3 Sisters method of co-planting beans, corn, and squash in mounds. Right now they look like dirt moguls on flat ground with small corn shoots coming out of the top.
We spent the afternoon yesterday mostly weeding. I also planted a third phase on carrots. Phase 2 is just peeking out and phase 1 are a few inches tall and also got weeded over the weekend.
We have just done a switch-a-roo and have moved over to a new system. There are still some tweaks that may need to be done. If you haven’t already done so you should update you bookmarks or RSS feeds.
So we have been hard at work in the garden this year. Both the garden at home and the annex garden at my parents are going strong. We added a bunch of space and veggies this year. We got our first pea pods this week and are loving them. The kids like to graze on them so I have to fight to get some for myself.
We got a ton of seedlings planted. Twenty some tomato plants, eight eggplants, 21 basil seedlings plus brussel sprouts, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. Most of that was at our home gardens. I also got much of it mulched with leaves and newspaper.
At the annex garden we did a ton of weeding this week and put more dirt on the potatoes!
Cookin
