What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Wow, what happened to summer break?

I know it's over, because our daughter, the teacher, went back to school on Wednesday.  She taught high school science for six years, but after three years of religious formation, she's now teaching high school religion.  Who says religion and science don't mix?   This girl is equally right and left brained, so I know she'll somehow link Atoms and Eve.  

She got all these school supplies for about thirty bucks at Toys R Us.   There's going to be a lot of coloring and pasting in religion class.  

Another sign summer is fading is that our garden, which was hearty in June....

...is now...well...not so hearty.

All we have left are green tomatoes, brown leaves, and several dirty plant tags.  I hope the 'maters ripen, because that gives me an excuse to buy bacon.  'Bacon' is not normally a word we speak in this household.

We had a little mishap in the steamy heat this summer.  My PT Cruiser had a flat tire.  OK, I swiped a curb too close, and the tire sprung a leak.  A really fast one that deflated the tire in about two minutes.  My girl and I were in the Kohl's parking lot, so we didn't have to push the car off the road, thank God.

We did the best we could to change the thing.  Well, the religion teacher worked hard while I took pictures.

We eventually reached the limit of what we could do, then called our Knight in Shining Armor, who took a break from jousting practice to get us back on the road.

I'm grateful to have a man in my life who can fix most anything, and I don't mind calling on him.  If this makes me a weak, dependent, I'd-rather-take-pictures-than-change-a-tire kind of woman....I'm OK with that. 

With the donut tire on the Cruiser, the Knight advised us to head straight home.  We said we'd finish shopping first.   It just made sense.  The car was just sitting there, not driving on the donut.  The Knight just shook his head and galloped off.

My daughter and I had a girl's night this summer as well, where we house-sat for a friend.  We watched Step Mom and ate glorious summer cherries and cleaned the friend's linen closet.  I also did sock curls on my girl's head before she got her hair cut the next day.

Sock curling (not to be confused with Olympic curling) is something I found on Pinterest.  We Googled it to learn more and then laughed our way through the process.

The great thing about the socks is they're soft to sleep on (and they give you a Basset Hound feeling.)  In the morning, we had loose, soft curls.  

Which are now gone, because teachers can't be fiddling with long hair during the school year.  But, boy, did we have fun.  

Another thing that got a summer haircut was our backyard scrub oak.  It had grown higher than the house and was taking over the roof.  It took about five hours to trim it back from this...

...to this.  

I'm thinking our garden will do better next summer, now that the oak isn't blocking the sunlight.  One can always hope.  

One final summer pic.  Here in Florida, there is a strip of land called Merritt Island.  On this magical piece of soil, the best mangoes in the U.S. grow.  In mango season, you can drive along the island and find baskets of mangoes for cheap.  

I have to be careful with mangoes, because I'm allergic to urshiol, the allergen just under the mango skin.  (For that story, click: HERE.)  But, if I scrub well after the peeling process, I'm in mango heaven.  I picked up a few Merritt Island mangoes this week and have been over-dosing on them since.  

Aren't they gorgeous?  I think the snake tempted Eve with a mango.  They flourish in tropical gardens like Paradise (the LOST survivors were always eating mangoes,) and apples can be resisted.  They're OK, but they're not mangoes. 

And, so the summer fades into the school year.  Thanksgiving will be here before we know it.  

Half-baked

We've been baking a lot of cookies lately.  My daughter mails them to friends, and recently, we mailed a box of goodies to a young man in Afghanistan.  After his batch was in the mail, I found these in the oven.

Twenty-four hours after I'd "finished" the cookies and turned the oven off.

I'm blank on what I did, or how this happened.  They're not burned, so I must have put the last balls of dough on the sheet, slid them in the oven...and then turned the oven off.   Why I would do this is beyond me.   If fact, when I first found them, I thought, "who's been baking cookies?"  Because, it was a day later.

I pulled out some cookies from the batch I baked the day before and laid them next to this unbaked - I think, just dried out - batch.

The normal ones look too dark in comparison.   

The oven-dried ones were very crispy, and we ate them anyway, because no cookie goes to waste in this household.  We decided we prefer baked cookies over oven-dried, in case you were considering this method in your own oven. 

I can't figure out what I was thinking when I did this.   I must have been side-tracked by some of the odd little produce we've been getting from our garden. 

This little guy is a double baby carrot.  He looks like a jester cap. 

This is the rest of his family. 

The two in the middle look like they're pulling their knees up to stretch out their backs.  If they weren't so top heavy, I think they'd sit up on the counter ledge.  

In non-oddball food news, we have tomatoes!  

And a new baby butternut squash!  

I'm not showing pictures of him, because I want to protect him.  The last batch of squash were eaten by a pickleworm (from here on called, "he who will not be named.")  I don't want to jinx it. 

In sweet-tooth news, we've been enjoying the efforts of our daughter, who took a cake decorating class in May.  

The only downside to having these delectable homework projects around was that the required icing for class was made with shortening, instead of butter.   It had to be dry as well, to hold up to all the piping.   It looked beautiful, but wasn't tasty.  

So when we ate a cupcake, we scraped the icing into the trash first.   

The Food Channel would be appalled by what goes on in the Ballpark kitchen.  

A Tragic Veggie Tale

I'm sad to report today that our once beautiful veggie garden succumbed to a worm infestation a few days ago, and we lost all of our budding harvest.

The beautiful foliage that looked like this just last week...

...now looks like this.

 

We sprayed with a homemade pesticide, but it just made the thing worse.  

Our once healthy butternuts...

...now look like this...

This looks like a harmless little hole, but it means the worms have dug in and laid eggs.  Every vegetable has holes.  

We have one remaining cucumber, and it looks like this...

The tip of it is brown and shriveled, so I suspect it will not be good, but we're letting it grow...see what it does. 

My husband whacked open a few squash and cucumbers to see how infested they were.  The holes burrowed deep into the flesh, sometimes out the other side.  

We are very sad and discouraged.  Our daughter worked so hard tending to this little patch of earth.  

We're debating what to do.  Is it worth clipping off all the bad growth and hoping for new sprouts?  Or, is the entire garden ruined for good?  If we remove the dying growth, how do we keep worms from attacking again?  Did we spray for bug/worms too late?   WHAT HAPPENED?!

I have no idea what the tomato and watermelon plants will now do.  They did not have any fruit yet, so maybe they will still produce.  I'm afraid the cuke/squash trauma will spread and wipe out any hope of more produce of any kind.  It's heartbreaking to see such ruination. 

I have such an appreciation for farmers.  And, sadly, a new appreciation for pesticides.  

If any gardeners out there have suggestions for us on how to proceed, we would be so grateful.  

Here's hoping God will work His magic on our dying garden.  Only He can resurrect anything. 

The Birth of a Potential Pickle

We have a cucumber in the Ballpark!

A seven-incher that is about drop.  Here's how it looked about ten days ago...

Then, last week...

Here's how it looks today...

Another half inch or so, and it will be ready for some raspberry vinaigrette.  

There's another baby one on its way...

We are amazed and excited!  He's a little prickly right now, but we like his yellow hat.

The broccoli is starting to look like broccoli, producing thick outer leaves that are a precursor to the florets. 

We've harvested about ten green beans!  We generally eat them raw because we only have two bean plants, and they produce about two beans every few days.

I have boiled a few.

But, it hardly seems worth the time and electricity.  I don't see a green bean casserole any time soon.

The watermelon plant is growing nicely, but as of yet, has no flowers.

He's very confident though, keeps reaching out his lacy leaves, trying to leave the nest.  We hope he's just a late bloomer.  We love watermelon, or H20-melon, as our daughter the chem teacher has labeled it. 

Our carrots and tomatoes asked not to be highlighted at this time, as they have not done diddly-do.   I think they're embarrassed.  And a bit shy, not as confident as H20 man.   

The hog/star of the garden so far is the butternut squash.  We have several little gourds in process.

 

I'm very excited about this, because these butternuts will be part of one of my favorite recipes, Squash Pizza.

Our lettuce is doing great too.  

We pluck leaves for garnish, or tucking in wraps.  There's not enough for a salad.  I don't know how many crops we'd have to plant to create an actual meal.

We're surprised every day by what happens in the garden.   While I'm in a doctor's office, or doing laundry, or helping Mom with a shower, or writing, cucumbers and butternuts are drinking in nutrients and sunshine and stretching their skins and changing colors.  It's magical.

Any gardeners out there?  When do you pluck a cucumber?  How can you boost some lazy tomatoes?   And H20-melon?  Inquiring, novice gardeners need to know.

The One Who Makes THINGS Grow

"So neither the one who plants, nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow."    1 Corinthians 3:7

I was reminded of this scripture verse this week as my daughter and I have been watching her vegetable garden bloom.   It's our first food garden here in Florida, and between the squirrels and the sandy soil, we just didn't know what to expect.

Our daughter, a science teacher, is a faithful tender to the small garden she and my husband planted mid-March. 

We've been photographing its progress.

A watermelon bud a month ago

Watermelon buds today

Butternut squash a month ago

Butternut today - you can see the gourd forming

It's amazing to me how the watermelon plants know to form a watermelon, and the butternuts know they are not cucumbers.  My daughter just buried the seeds, added water, and then...here you go - food.

Every morning the plants are taller and greener, and we don't do anything the night before, except go to bed.  The nutrients in the soil feed the roots, and the sun draws up the shoots, and it has nothing to do with us.  We just watch, and marvel. 

At church yesterday, it was First Communion for the second graders.  The children were all spiffed up in little suits and white dresses and shiny shoes.  It hit me that these children were once babies that grew until pretty soon, they were in second grade.

The grandparents in the pews were once second graders.

We all grow taller and older, and we don't have to force it, or work at it.  We just grow.

What a miraculous system.  Watermelons and cucumbers and squash all sprout from tiny, simple seeds and water.  Humankind sprouts in a similar way.  Tiny cells implant in the fertile ground of a womb, and, there you go - people. 

Life is strong and ongoing, and if we just let it be...it grows.  We can certainly assist, but the life force doesn't originate with us.  It is given to us, and all things, freely, by the Master Sower.

If we simply receive and don't thwart the process, we too will bloom.