I dub thee, Brasperries

Since Big Bro was a toddler we have loved picking wild black raspberries every summer from bushes found in our yard. Typically we didn't find that many berries so we would just eat them as we found them. 

Lil Sis also loves the taste of wild black raspberries so the tradition has continued. This year, we discovered two large black raspberry bushes that had gone unnoticed. Or maybe they just were never there before this year.

We went out one cool and rainy July night and started picking berries and putting them into our jar. The kids likened the sound of dropping their berries into the empty jar to Little Sal in Blueberries for Sal "kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk."

We picked and picked to get 4 cups worth thinking that would be enough for jam.

After looking at the actual recipe turns out 10 cups were required. We picked another 3 cups a couple days later. My good friend contributed a few more cups gathered from her own yard and we were able to make a delicious batch of blackberry, I mean black raspberry jam. After all of us making that linguistic mistake countless times I dubbed them officially "Brasperries."

The jam was amazing. A welcomed change from our usual strawberry jam.

The Bear House

One of the joys of parenthood is sharing things you loved as a child. When I was little I loved my bear house. I saved all the furniture and the Bears themselves. Some came from Germany, some were Sylvanian Families.

I was going to wait until Lil Sis' birthday, but decided to bring them out one dreary winter day while Big Bro was at Kindergaten. It was so fun to watch her unpack it all and start to play.

Slippery Slope

I loved a few Nintendo Game Boy games when I was a little girl, namely Duck Tales, Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Tom and Jerry. I played them nonstop from the ages of 10 to 12, then I was done and had my cousin sell my 1991 Game Boy in France where she lived and could get a good price.

When my husband and I were first dating he was really into video games. After a childhood where his father refused him any gaming systems, my husband went game-crazy in college buying every possible system from Atari to XBox. I accepted video games as a fact of modern life when dating a young adult male. My husband and his friends loved "shoot 'em up games," but the only one I would play was a music and rythme game called Space Channel 5. I was really great at it though.

As we grew up more and more, video games were less and less a part of our lives.  I didn't miss it. I enjoyed having evenings going out to restaurants, taking walks, and playing the board games that replaced the video ones. Occasionally we would play video games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero which were fun since they were rythme and music, plus they were group oriented. After Big Bro was born the video games really faded away. Six months later we moved to a new house and the game systems were never even unpacked.

It was a 6 year era free from the clutter of game consoles, cartridges and tangled wires. Ahhhh.

Now Big Bro is 6 and discovered Pokémon. It started slowly with a couple cards given to him by a friend on the bus. Then it was a small pack of Pokémon cards and a card holder for his birthday. Then my husband came home with packages of cards and the boards so they could play for real. Then Big Bro was rummaging in a closet and found the Pokémon Puzzle League game cartridge for Nintendo 64. Next thing we know, the Nintendo 64 is set up and both my kids are battling with Pokémon and Nintendo franchise characters.

"Can we play a video game?" Lil Sis (now 4) asks. "I love video games!"

"Can we play Pokémon?" Big Bro asks. "Dr. Mario?"

Usually my husband is in charge when they play for 10 or 15 minutes. When I'm in charge it devolves into fights over who is Pikachu and "stop attacking me!!" Even though that's the whole point of the freaking game. 

Grrr. I hate video games.

"They will only be allowed to play Pokémon, right?" I ask my husband. "It's a slippery slope."

A slippery slope indeed.

Make peace with your past. History has a tendency to repeat itself. Those darn video games are circling back around again.

Works of Art -Lil Sis Edition

Lil Sis is now a preschooler. She absolutely loves school and is sad when it's not a school day. Like her brother, she is becoming an artist. Here are some of her drawings so far.

Early October 2015: Lil Sis and mommy. 

I'm the blue upside-down person and you can very clearly see Lil Sis with her pixie cut on the left. She's very proud of her pixie cut.

October 2015: Daddy Giant, herself, a tracing of Baby Cheetah

I helped a bit...drawing legs on the two people and coloring baby cheetah yellow at her request, but the rest is her.

October 31, 2015: a portrait of her aunt who is pregnant and her son. They are swinging.

November 14, 2015: Lil Sis' "P-ata because it's made of Ps.

February 29, 2016: illustration for a story she wrote "A Silly-badilly Story"

February 29, 2016: Trash Man and Recycling man from her original "A Silly-badilly Story"

Watercolor painted deer

March 2, 2016

I remember struggling to teach Big Bro how to use water colors. Lil Sis picked it up well and fast!

March 18, 2016: Daddy at work in his office

First cucumbers ever

Turns out that some of the plants that I thought were zucchini are actually cucumbers! This is big because I have NEVER grown a successful cucumber plant. I guess the mounding that the guy at (the now defunct) Grand Isle Nursery suggested worked!

I prefer European cucumbers for eating, so the kids and I turned these beauties into quick and easy refrigerator pickles. 

Boil vinegar, sugar, salt, pickle spices (a mix from Healthy Living Market), cool, pour over cucumber slices, and leave in the fridge undisturbed for 3 days. They are delicious (but strong). Big Bro still likes them, he loves pickles. Another fun first for our garden. 

Boom & Bust

Peach trees bloom every other year unless you take the time to thin the flowers so the tree doesn't experience boom and bust years. This is what I learned from the people at Hackett's Orchard, but they were talking about apples.

This year I should have thinned the blossoms to prevent the boom/bust cycle. I failed to do it though. I was only thinking about crop yields, not the tree itself. I was ok with having a year off from peaches. 

This year's crop was bigger than it was 2 years ago. The branches were so heavy with fruit that they bowed toward the ground and the whole tree (both of them) began to lean. My father-in-law tied them up with stakes. I held my breath that the peaches would ripen before an overburdened branch broke. The idea of building a crutch to help hold up particular branches came to mind, but never materialized.

On Monday the kids and I picked some peaches. After at least a week of checking them each day, many of them were ready. We filled our basket, then went inside to get a bigger container. When we returned one of the branches was snapped. Was I just unobservant the first time or had the branch snapped during those few minutes away? Sadness.

So the kids and I went to work and made up songs like "we've got to pick, pick, pick the peaches...to protect our trees!" And repeat.

We got a huge haul, an entire red wagon full. There are a few chicken eggs hanging out on top of the small collander too.

I read that most trees can heal themselves, and sealants cause more harm than good. There was nothing to do for the tree but saw off the broken branch and hope the tree survives.

Bottom line: don't be lazy or greedy, thin those peach blossoms! 

Canned Patience & Practice

August brings the bounty of the harvest. The pears are starting to come in, the peaches too. And this year was an especially bumper crop of both. 

Now comes the task of processing so we might actually enjoy all the bounty. With the pears I have time because even though many have been picked, they will still take weeks before they spoil.

The peaches, on the other hand, do not ripen on your counter, they must ripen on the branch to achieve the best flavor. No surprise then, you have to consume or preserve them quickly. 

I'm still pretty new to canning and preserving so the night before I started canning I read up on the process for canning peach halves in water or ultra lift syrup. I was feeling pretty good about how the next morning would go. 

In the morning the kids both washed the jars, Big Bro rinsed them, filled them with fresh water and put them in the canner. 

I started halving and peeling peaches. 

The kids were done washing and still eager to help so I tried to have them twist apart the peach halves. It was too difficult, but thankfully they went to the living room to entertain themselves. They're getting better at that.I placed the cut peaches in a water and lemon juice mixture to prevent browning. I filled the bowl and maxed out all the space. My jars were warming in the canner, the ultra light syrup was cooking.

Then I looked at the lids. Crap. The only lids I had were wide mouth and all the jars that were so nicely warmed in the water were small mouth, save one. Despite my prep I still goofed.

I found some wide mouth jars and got them cleaned and warmed. The next problem was the jar filling. Peach halves have to be arranged pit cavity side down in the jar. Hot packed peaches are slippery and it took some effort to get them all the right way. Then there's the filling the jar with syrup to the right level, getting the air bubbles out, wiping the top, closing it up, then putting it in the canner. Somehow I tipped a jar while trying to get the bubbles out. Hot peaches and syrup splattered on the floor. Lil Sis came in and laughed, "Mommy, you're standing in peaches!"

I pressed on, but by now I had been canning for over an hour and the kids were starting to fight over who had which activity book, which color crayon, and even whether the illustrated sea urchins and other creatures were boys or girls. "Make at least one a boy??? Oh please!" Begged Big Bro. "Noo!" Shouted Lil Sis.

My counter top still overflowed with peaches and there are hundreds more in the basement. My canning effort up to now only yielded 2 quarts and one pint of halved peaches. One of the jars hadn't even sealed so we would have to eat it in the next week or so. Seriously peaches, I love your sweet taste, but this was the pits.

I ended up turning my second batch of cut peaches into purée and froze it into popsicles.

Maybe this weekend I will try again.

The Baby Bird Rescue

It was a little past 6:00 when the kids and I went out after dinner to play until their dad got home. Within minutes he arrived, grabbed a plate of food and hung out with us on the front lawn near the big blue spruce. When he went to return his plate to the kitchen he suddenly noticed a little bird on the ground. It had arrived out of nowhere.

Thankfully he found it before our dog Pepper did. We located the nest up in the blue spruce. It was perhaps 15 feet up and sheltered by many branches on the way up making it impossible for us to get the chick back into the nest. The mother, a mourning dove, didn't show any outward signs of distress that her baby went missing.

A quick look online told us to build a nest and affix it to the tree so, just maybe, the mother bird would still take care of it.

I picked it up in a towel and my husband placed it in a yogurt container he had stapled to the tree and filled with soft wood chips.

But it was cold and we had nothing to feed it. The chick still seemed doomed. So I kept looking online hoping for a better solution.

Then I came across a page on wildlife rehabilitation published by the Mount Mansfield Veterinary Hospital (http://www.underhillvet.net/wildlife-rehabilitation/). Incredibly, it shared contact information for a number of wildlife rehabilitators and even said what types of animals they cared for from songbirds to foxes and raccoons. There was even one who specializes in doves: jackpot.

The first rescuer I called just went to voicemail. The rescuer #2 picked up but was out to dinner in New Hampshire on her vacation. She gave me the number of rescuer #3 which also led to a voicemail dead end. I called rescuer #2 back and she told me to put the chick in a box and bring it in the house to keep it warm until rescuer #3 called back.

In the meantime, during our bedtime routine with the kids, Rescuer #1 called. I sent her photos of the chick and she confirmed that it was a very young chick who would have to be fed with a tube down its throat. She figured the chick would be ok until morning as its mother likely fed it all day long until about 6:00 PM when it must have tumbled out of the nest. I arranged to meet her that night to hand off the chick.

I drove with the radio off and the car warmed for the sake of the chick, which was now snuggled warmly in its makeshift nest with it's tiny back moving up and down with its breath.

Then under the light of a street lamp near the dumpsters at the highway exit gas station the chick drop was made. 

The rescuer will do her best to keep the little chick warm and fed until it can return back to the blue spruce pine tree in front of our house. Keep your fingers crossed. 

Adult mourning dove

Image source: Wikipedia 

The summer of zucchini

This year's garden was wholly my effort, with some planting help from the kids. It was a quick effort because doing things with two kids running around and making demands isn't easy.

In some ways it's one of our best gardens. I used Green Mountain Coffee burlap coffee bean bags as mulch (you can get them for free at their factories). Therefore, for once, the weeds are actually under control.

Then again, not all of the space we typically use was planted. Also many of our seeds were old eg. the sweet peas didn't do much of anything. We picked maybe two dozen of them to eat as impromptu snacks.

This year I planted cilantro which grew quickly from seed and tastes delicious. It's a nice addition. There's basil too, also from seed, but it's getting shaded out by the tomatoes, whoops.

We've had a decent crop of tomatoes so far. Here is the latest collection sitting on my window to fully ripen.

I have shied away from planting zucchini in the past because I know what a monster it is. Zucchinis typically take over gardens and your neighbor then tries to pawn two foot-long giant vegetables off on you.

From FB:

This year I went for it anyway. I planted a few seeds and I think I have three plants now. It's hard to tell because they are so sprawling and prickly! I don't like touching them.

The zucchinis themselves are sneaky little buggers, hiding among the prickly stalks disguising their full-size.

Do you see the two zucchinis in this picture?

So when you have prolific zucchini plants what do you do? Zucchini bread of course!

I have documented all my garden firsts on this blog so here is the latest. This morning I made zucchini muffins. The kids were playing happily and independently for most of the time while I grated the zucchini and mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately...

...then mixed it all together.

The kids joined me to butter the muffin tins…

...and of course for the eating part. They are delicious!

Have you made fresh zucchini muffins or bread? Here is the recipe we used: 

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/zucchini_muffins/

A few days later we tried Zuccini brownies too: http://www.texanerin.com/2013/08/chocolate-zucchini-brownies.html#_a5y_p=3859621