Today's Little Harvest

Here's my little harvest from today:

I'm thinking of pickling the green beans.  Seems like it'd be a nice little something to put in a salad.

I'm getting lots of little cherry and grape tomatoes already.  I think I'm going to make a tomato and goat cheese tart with dinner tomorrow.  Yum.

I took my fancy new camera out into the garden today and took some pictures of the tomatoes developing.  There's something about discovering then watching the fruits and veggies in the garden develop; it's an exercise in hope and expectation.

A huge Cherokee purple.  This will turn pink/purple when ripe.  If I were to pick this today, it would be big enough that I could barely balance it in one hand

Brandywines, plugging away.  They're about the size of my fist right now, but they can reach two pounds each.

Sweet millions, which are prolific and grow in bunches.

Mortgage lifters.

I think I might need some more tomato recipes. :)

Cayenne peppers.

What is up with my zucchini?  I have never had any luck with zucchini, for a reason I cannot figure out.  But this is the weirdest thing--it's like they said, "Oh, I give up.  I'll go ahead and turn yellow and die.  Oh, nevermind.  I'll go ahead and grow and get green and fat."  So the tip is the size of the original little veggie on the plant, which in my garden usually turns yellow and falls off, except this time it didn't.  Somehow, it just kept growing, with the remainder of the zucchini evidently ignoring the fact that it has a completely undersized nose to it.  Weird.
*UPDATE* I had vine borers.  Nasty, nasty vine borers.  Goodbye, zukes. :(

Chives with pretty purple flowers.

We were out of town for five days and came back to find that the cucumber has doubled in size and climbed the trellis I was going to return because it was too small.

Tiny cucumber forming.

Well, that's all, folks.  My regular (or irregular, as the case may be) garden update.  :)

Maybe More Than Just Good Friends...

Silly faces!

The other day, we had a play date with our friends, Saber and Emry, and their mom, Leti.  These cute boys are just the same ages as Noah and Jane, so we've been good friends for a couple of years now.  Among other things, they're in the same Mother's Day Out classes.

Nathan likes to tease our kids about who they're going to marry when they grow up, and recently, when he asks Jane, she says she's going to marry Emry.  "Well, you're going to have to ask Mrs. Leti if that's okay," he says.  "Okay," she replies, because that seems perfectly reasonable.

So I told Leti about this, and she turned to Jane and said, "Jane, do you have something you need to ask me?" "Can I marry Emry?"  "Well, why do you want to marry him?"  "Because he calls me Bow." "What?" "He calls me Bow." "Okay, well, anyway, I guess we'd better go ask him!"  So off ran Jane to ask Emry to marry her.

"Emry, will you marry me?"
"No thanks.  But I like your bows!"

Ha!  Oh well.  Best to wait a few years, Janey Beth.  And maybe let the boy ask you.

Quirky Kids

The other day, Noah said that when he grows up, he will invent a robot that can freeze things in one second, and it will scoop up ice cream ingredients, freeze them into ice cream, and poop it out.

Jane makes up songs about whatever is happening right in front of her.  "Ooooh, I'm going to the store with my Mommy!  And Clara is in the seat next to me!  And then we'll go pick up Noah from school!  Doo doo doo!"

I wonder what Clara's thinking here.  Maybe, "Oh gosh.  What sort of childhood am I in for with these two?"

On second thought, she probably doesn't need any help making things interesting.

Among the Flowers

My Clara had a nice time among the yarn flowers I'm making for Jane's blanket.

A sweet afternoon activity.

Janey's First Ponytail

The other day, Janey Beth got her very first ponytail.  Her hair is just barely long enough!

 I think she's just a teeny bit cute.

 So far, she's pretty tolerant of my doing her hair.

 And afterwards, she danced!

 Twirl, twirl, twirl.

 Spin, spin, spin.

Being a three-year-old girly girl is sweet fun!

I love my girl!

Tap Shoes

Once upon a time,

I took tap dance lessons.

 I was about four or five at the time.

I loved how girly dance was and thought it was really fun, except that the little girl in front of me would always accidentally kick my shins when kicking backwards.  I still remember that I was too shy to say anything about it.

 It was a combination tap and ballet class, with one following the other.

One day, when I came out to the room where all the moms waited, I said, "My feet are killing me!" and all the mothers laughed.  Now, of course, I know they were laughing at how cute it was to see a little girl using a grown-up expression, but at the time, I thought they were laughing at me.  It made me feel profoundly embarrassed and conspicuous, and I told my mom I wanted to quit dance classes.  I insisted, and she couldn't get the reason out of me.  I was too mortified to tell her.

So that was the end of dancing for me--at least until high school, when I rediscovered it enough to love show choirs.  And college would have been a lot less fun without swing dancing and Sing Alliance.

 

 I sincerely doubt that sort of shyness and mortification will ever be a problem for this girl, though.  She has a whole lot of spunk, this one.

(By the way, I don't know what I'm going to do when that pixie hair grows out.)

And she loved wearing my old tap shoes, which my mom found while going through some old boxes.

Here she's doing her flamingo, which they do in her ballet class.

I just had to document the cuteness.

Ridiculously Awesome Gift

 For Mother's Day, Nathan gave me a ridiculously awesome gift.  He gave me a DSLR camera.  Now, for several years, I've been talking about how I'd like to get one someday, but I've not been in a rush, because they're expensive and I also figured I just don't have the time to learn about aperture and ISO and whatnot.  But I guess Nathan thought it was time!  It was really so sweet of him, and I was very touched.  And now, whenever I have a bit of spare time here and there, I'm learning the ins and outs of my camera.

This is the very first photo I snapped.  Pretty good, especially since I didn't do anything special.  Auto mode does a pretty good job--better than my phone, anyway!

 Noah was a willing subject.

 (Does anyone else think their kids look their most adorable when they are sleeping?)

 I love that boy.  Sometimes I can still see vestiges of his precious little toddler face in his five-year-old big kid face.

Has anyone else considered the strange aspects of digital cameras being so prevalent in our culture?  Our kids will have more thoroughly documented lives than probably any generation before them.  Food for thought.

Anyway, I'm so excited!  I definitely have a steep learning curve, but I'll be playing around with my new toy, I'm sure, and posting the results. 

Ticklish Clara!

Ticklish Clara from Lauren Benesh on Vimeo.

Garden Update

It's 9:30, and the kids are all asleep.  Here's a list of the many things I could/should be doing right now:

1. Blogging about my garden (check!)
2. Blogging about Jane's birthday or updates on the kids
3. Cleaning the kitchen
4. Crocheting Jane's neverending blanket
5. Finishing my book for book club (almost done!)
6. Cleaning out a set of cabinets to collect stuff for next Saturday's garage sale
7. Working out 
8. Resting (something I'm sure all mommies of several small children don't do enough of)

I have to say, not many of those things are unpleasant!  With three little children, my days are very full, usually of things that fall into the "necessary" category.  Fridays are refreshing because by the time they get here, I am so ready to have a day full of things that are on my list but are all more or less pleasant--that's a blessing. Anyway, since today was a special day in my summer garden, I'm here writing about that.

The reason today was good was because, voila, I harvested our first little tomatoes:

Now, I don't think I told you all what happened to all my lovely heirloom seedlings.  Well, we had some painters come in one day, so I set my seedlings outside to get them out of harm's way and ended up putting them directly into it in the form of too much sunshine.  Although I had been hardening them off a bit, they weren't ready for all that heat, and they dried up and withered away, never to recover.  I was pretty upset about it, considering all the care I had put into those dang seedlings for nearly two months.  But eventually I threw my hands up and went and bought plants.  I did end up getting a variety of heirlooms I think I'll be happy with.  Not so much disease resistance as the first selections, but in the end, I decided that I was having more trouble with overwatering than disease.  And so far, the pests are more or less leaving them alone, save one plant that's being pestered by caterpillars. Even my Brandywines already have fruit on them, and they never fruited all summer long last year!  I really hope I get some of those beauties.  I also have a Cherokee Purple, my trusty Husky Cherry Red, a Sweet Million (pictured) and a Sweet 100, a Mortgage Lifter (the name has a wonderful story behind it), and maybe one or two others.  I had really been hoping for some paste tomatoes, more color variety, or something interesting like red currant tomatoes, but it just didn't work out.  Oh well.  Maybe next year.  I think the variety of beefsteaks to cherries will be good, especially compared to last year.

My zucchini are starting to produce, as well as my cayenne peppers. (I'll have some to eat with my tomatoes, if all goes well! Last year, they matured at different times.)  And the herbs are doing well.  I even planted a tiny okra plant because I learned that they are related to hibiscus and have nice flowers.  Well, my plant is stunted or something, because it's about to keel over from the size of this one okra that's growing on it--so funny!  It's definitely not in there anymore in hopes that it'll beautify the garden, that's for sure!

All in all, things are going well.  Looking forward to more and more goodies coming our way from alongside our driveway....