Today was a brighter day. The sun came out and P and I rushed out for a walk around the fields. That was just what we needed. We came in refreshed and started in on our projects. She is still working on coloring and cut outs.I, however, started something new.
I am using every last bit of that animal print, some scraps, and some non scrap (gasp) fabrics. It feels good to have the scrap bin under control so that I feel like I can use larger pieces of fabric. The whole little quilt is planned around the animal print.I bet you are on the edge of your seat waiting to see how it will look! I know I am.
Late Summer Prairie
Our late summer walks through the prairie are pretty these days.
I like the way there are different things blooming throughout the summer.
Some flowers make big patches of color while others, like this flax, are more subtle.
The big blue stem grows very tall. This grass is over eight feet.
We do feel the coming of fall in the air.
What end of summer things are you enjoying?
End of Summer Calm
We have settled into an end of summer calmness. D is settled into his dorm. M is working on his summer homework. P and I are taking walks and enjoying the wonderful end of summer weather.
She loves to play in the sandy back road. I am enjoying that our afternoons can be relaxed. When school starts we will be more scheduled and running about to after school activities.
The umbrella is for "just in case." It is good to be prepared.
A Day at the Fair
I love fair week!I like the community effort that goes into making it happen.
I like looking at all of the entries and knowing so many of the people who made and grew things to enter.
I enjoy the festive colors.
I enjoy the animals and knowing many of the kids who raised them.
I like the variety of sights and activities.
I enjoy seeing people I have not seen during the summer.
I enjoy the activity that brings so many people together to support their community.
I love the fair but I am glad it is only one week in the year!
Picking Flowers
August always gets to be very busy around here. Much of our garden bounty is ready to harvest in August. We spend a lot of time picking, preparing, and preserving food. Sometimes we forget to slow down and enjoy the beauty around us. I am glad I have P to remind me of that. She picks a little bouquet of flowers EVERY time we go to the garden. Luckily she has a long row of flowers to choose from each time. 
I like growing things such as fruit trees, raspberries, and rhubarb that come back every year. We are getting our first peaches this year from trees that we planted. 
We also get fruit from pear and apple trees that were planted long before we moved here.
This is the time when I start to think about what I want to do differently in the garden next year. What new things do I want to plant? I think about which grew easily and which things are easiest to preserve etc. First on the garden list for next year - picking flowers.
Weekend Projects
After three weekends away from our gardens I spent a little weekend time catching up. There is a lot of weeding to do but at least parts of the gardens are pretty.
We already have a few pumpkins ready for harvest. As soon as those apples are ripe I'll start making pumpkin muffins again!
A friend and I toured the University of Michigan with the traveling Barbie camper. See my photos here and more about this fun photo project here.
We also worked on the playhouse project. We now have a foundation. A search in the barn yielded EXACTLY the right number of cinder blocks!
Our weekend was a mixture of work and play. 
What are your weekend projects?
Gulf Coast Trip
We have returned from a trip to the Mississippi gulf coast.
We stayed in a rental house on a narrow strip of land between the bayou and the gulf.
It was a week of family fun. Me, my sisters, and our families - fourteen people in one house. We ate lots of Michigan blueberries (twenty four pounds) picked the morning we left here.
There was a ferry trip to Ship Island.
We also explored the beach area near our rental house. 
In the heat of the day we entertained ourselves with jigsaw puzzles, hula hoops,
Rummikub, chess, anagrams, dictionary,
and lots of different card games.
You can find more photos of our trip here.
Buckets of Berries
It finally came. The day we have been eagerly awaiting finally came - opening day at the local blueberry farm!! We went early, as usual, to beat the crowds.
We quickly strapped on our buckets and started picking.
We filled our buckets and came home to start our blueberry feast. We have been eating them by the handful, putting them on cereal, making peanut butter and blueberry sandwiches, baking them, and even freezing some. I think we'll be picking again soon!
Mini Vacation
The weather was just wonderful today! Sunny, not too hot, and the wind seems to have blown the mosquitoes away! It was a great day for a mini vacation - in the back yard! 
Of course, Miss Petunia came prepared with all the essentials for a fun time under the plum tree.
I brought a book to read too!
Take out dinner, books, markers, paper, crayons, a magic wand, and a pink umbrella - just in case - THIS is summer relaxation!What have you done for a mini vacation this summer?
How to Make Gardening Fun - lessons learned from a four year old
Sometimes I feel like our garden gets overwhelming. The weeds get out of control, some of the plants don't "keep" in the garden and you have to keep up with picking every day. It is great to have fresh food from the garden every day for supper but the extra time for harvest and processing to keep for the winter can get to be drudgery.
Just look at all those weeds! The about to give up pea plants are in the back of the photo below. In the foreground there are parsnips, carrots, and beets. There are a few more rows to my right. This is one of five garden spaces that we have this year.
Here are Little Miss P's tips to make gardening fun:1. Wear tights to the garden so the bugs don't bite your legs.2. Plant picking flowers so that you don't get in trouble for picking flowers in the yard.3. Take good care of your flowers. You have to dust them with garden dirt and then fluff them with a bit of grass.
4. Use the proper kitchen utensils. This makes the pea shelling REALLY fun. Make sure you have a spoon that is just the right size for ONE pea so that snacking while you work is enjoyable.
5. Plant pink food. It is always fun to have pink food on your plate. Beets are fun because they also turn rice and noodles pink when they are on your plate together.
(I think I weeded most of that light pink variety out thinking they were the radishes that we planted with the beets to mark the row. I pulled a "radish" the other day that I thought I had missed. I bit into it and--- it was a beet. Too bad.)
Back Yard Smores
Yesterday was another beautiful day. We weeded in the overgrown vegetable garden and harvested LOTS of peas and a few beets.For dinner we fixed a pasta dish that included peas and beet greens and served it with cooked beets. Delicious.After dinner we baked graham crackers from the dough D made earlier in the day. The crackers turned out great.
We had a happy end to a busy day. B came home from Maine in time for dinner and we all enjoyed smores from our homemade graham crackers and the marshmallows we made earlier in the week.
Renovations
We have been working on renovating our old farm house since we moved here more than twenty years ago. It is a slow process. We try to fit in the house projects as we go along with the rest of our lives, but when the weather is nice we do spend much more time outside working in the yard and gardens. Sometimes, we feel a sense of urgency and can get through a project more quickly.D has taken on one of those projects this summer. We noticed in the spring that the outhouse was leaning much more than it used to. Should we let it continue to lean and then fall over or should we take action? What would we use it for? Why do we need an old outhouse?Not wanting to watch it fall, we decided to take action. It would make a fun playhouse for P but we need to get it fixed up quickly so that she can use it before she gets too old to be interested.
D spent the day yesterday shoveling out sand and straw from the inside and jacking up the low side so it is mostly level.
We will have to give it a foundation and a floor, reverse the door to swing out, spruce it up with paint, and make it cheery inside. I think maybe some pink curtains will be in order. It is nice to see enthusiasm for this project!M and I were busy in the yard yesterday too. We were renovating in the gardens-dividing plants and weeding.After a full day of hard work we rewarded ourselves with a quick stop at the A & W drive-in for floats and then went to the lake to cool off.
It was a great day.
Summer Break Recharge
We have been enjoying summer break for two weeks now. We like having some time with no deadlines and not much scheduled. Summer is a time for recharging. Each of us can do his or her own thing.
We have time to do things at a slow pace and choose our own agenda. D has refurbished the bike he bought for M at the rummage sale and now they can both ride at the same time. D uses my old (30+ years) bike on the left.
B has been at a two week woodworking class in Maine. I am eager to see the project he has been working on. The rest of us have been sleeping in and recharging our batteries.We have been playing a lot of games too. Badminton, rummikub, cards, anagrams, matchbox cars, soap bubbles, swings, coloring...
We have also been working a bit to recharge the freezer.
P has really been enjoying the green peas. She pretty much eats them as fast as she can shell them.So far, the basement freezer contains 15 strawberry rhubarb pie fillings, 7 jars of strawberry jam, 8 bags of green peas, and 3 bags of strawberry sauce for shortcake. I think that is a good start on food preservation for next winter.
I am still trying to find a little time for some needlework.What do you do to recharge?
Pink Means Nightie
The birthday girl and graduate got some lovely handmade gifts and cards so I thought I'd share a taste.P got this adorable little mushroom house from my sister Millie. She used the pattern from The Little House by the Sea. The house is the perfect neighbor to this house all of the little woodland creatures and fairies will be quite at home!
My other sister sent her the most perfectly pink card! and a little quilt that P has squirreled away in her room somewhere for one of her little friends. And that little beaded bracelet was made by Tracy, B's sister. Pink and perfect!
D got some creative handmade cards for his graduation. My sister, Glenell, made the card on the left along with some hand stitched thank you notes that he has in his room. The paper cut card on the right was made by my friend besomom. She also made P this cute bookmark which is currently being used as a blanket for a little princess doll.
We love all the hand made goodies that remind us of their makers.
Celebrations
We had lots to celebrate over the weekend.
The flurry of activity included class night on Friday with awards and scholarship presentations, the Chelsea House Orchestra graduation party for the ten seniors in the group, and the graduation ceremony on Sunday. We had lots of visiting with family and friends.P also had her fourth birthday on Saturday. We have been spreading the celebration over several days. Saturday morning she had birthday blueberry pie and a few presents. She "shared" the graduation party Saturday evening with her brother. The kids did a super rendition of "Happy Birthday" for her from the stage and there was cake!!! She thinks the party was for her!
It was such a busy weekend I hardly got any photos! So, this is what you get.I am glad things are calming down.I have some projects I need to work on and I would like to fix the spider web tutorial for you.I also have something really special from Calamity Kim to share with you.Not to mention that the garden is practically overgrown with weeds.What is keeping you busy these days?
Stash Busting Crew Socks - or Bench Monday Socks
New socks on a Monday can only mean one thing, modeling the new socks while standing on a bench. I got up this morning, put on my new socks Adele dropped off yesterday in a surprise visit, dragged out one of the new chairs I bought at the preschool garage sale, and took some photos.
The ground in the garden is very soft. Luckily I managed to stay on the chair for the timer count down.
The socks are quick crew socks in K2, P2 ribbing. The yarn is Trekking XXL from my stash. They were an easy knit for hectic days. And, again, Adele did a super job of matching stripes all the way to the toe! Thanks.After the photo shoot I thought I had killed three birds with one shot as they say.1. Photos of the socks for the blog.2. Self portrait of the dayI3. The Bench Monday shot of the week.Well, P really likes Mondays. This is the conversation from last night.me: "Do you know what tomorrow is?"P: "no."me: "Monday, what do we do on Mondays?"P: "Take pictures of ourselves standing on things."yeah, it's what we do.Soooooo, this is what happened when P got up.
She stole my shot. You only get to have one photo a week in the Bench Monday group.So. She got the Bench Monday photo and I got my photo shoot for the blog.I hope you all had a great Monday
Tending the Gardens
The boys are off at the Alma Highland Festival this weekend. I think the House Orchestra has five shows plus the parade! M was also running in the 5K race there this morning. I am sure they will be tired when they get home. Since the weather was so nice and we knew the boys would be away, we worked last evening getting the black beans and corn planted. It goes fairly quickly with three planters. B picks up these planters at garage sales. The area at the far end of the garden is the black bean area. These rows are the heirloom corn.
P loves to help too.
This morning after dropping the the boys at school at the crack of dawn B did a lot of weeding in the fenced garden. This evening we planted some sunflowers. P did a little cake and brownie making too.
We pulled a big bag of radishes that were marking rows of carrots, parsnips, and beets. P and I are the only ones in the family who eat radishes so we shared most of them with the neighbor who will juice them. I have also read that you can pickle radishes. We may try that with the next batch just for fun.Our lettuce is off to a good start and the first of our peas are flowering.
How does your garden grow?
42 Pounds
D's college choices this spring were University of Michigan, Oberlin, and Cornell. He visited and liked all three schools. Cornell was a favorite for all of us but was just not affordable. The University of Michigan gave him a good scholarship so he will be staying close to home for college. He will live in the dorm but will only be a half hour away.
I always thought he was pretty brilliant. But, you know, I'm his mother. I guess some colleges thought he was smart too. Over the course of a year he got forty two pounds of college recruiting mail. Yea, he saved it. We weighed it. We're weird like that. We are a family of data collectors. We weigh our garden harvest. We just can't help ourselves. Some of the brochures had really interesting pictures and nice papers. I saved a big box of them for crafty projects.With all the information that is available on the internet now I am not sure that sending out so much stuff in the mail is a good method of student recruitment. Many of the letters and brochures were never opened. D could tell that many colleges outsourced the recruiting materials to the same marketing firms as many of the mailings followed the same format. After the applications were submitted we used much of the mailings for starting fires in the stove this winter.
We opted not to order the terribly overpriced graduation announcements or invitations from the company suggested by the high school. (nor any of the other graduation souvenirs in the catalog.) So, I think you can see where I'm going with this... I made D's graduation announcements out of the college recruiting brochures. I "fussy cut" to get splashes of color, texture, and bits of interesting things. No one will know that they are from college brochures unless they are blog readers, but they make me happy.
I am glad that I didn't have very many to make.
More Morels
This seems to really be the week for morels! We have picked several times and had another mushroom feast last night!
Today P and I went out again and found even more that had sprouted since yesterday.
P is good at hunting and picking them.
I think we need to look up some more recipes.
Mother's Day Lunch
P's preschool class worked for three weeks preparing for our Mother's Day lunch yesterday. They chopped onions, shredded turkey, grated carrots and cheese, and mixed muffins for our lunch. The tables were set by the children before the moms arrived. We had a three course lunch served by our children. The first course was our choice of broccoli cheese soup or applesauce. Next was a choice of turkey salad croissant or kid kabob served with a muffin and fruit tower.
Dessert was a lovely flower in a pot. The children made the cookie flowers yesterday morning. The flowers were served in a cup of ice cream with chocolate sauce.
The children had also made lovely gifts for the moms. The vases were made by gluing tissue paper circles onto a vase and then mod podging the whole thing. They gave us each a lovely flower for our vase when we arrived.The husband of one of the teachers took photos of each mother and child and had them printed and returned with them before the end of the lunch.
I enjoyed listening to the songs they had prepared and also visiting with the other moms and children. The children were so proud of all the work they put into the event. It was a wonderful lunch and I didn't have to lift a finger!I hope you have a great Mother's Day weekend!
