A Sunny Day, A Wet Yard

So after all the rain we've been having today was a nice sunny day.  I took LK and LT outside to enjoy the sunshine.  LK noticed that the lilacs are in bloom and went over to investigate.  I love the smell of lilacs.  Aren't they pretty?

There is a lot of standing water around after the rain.  Luckily LK didn't head straight for it as he is prone to do.

Instead he headed up to the train tracks to collect some rocks.



He brought this one to show me and he wanted me to take a picture of it.

Then he headed back up to tracks to gather more rocks.

But he stopped in the long grass and called me over to check out a lady bug.  Can you spot it?

Then we went to check out the garden.  It was very wet and there was water running through it.

I have a feeling it will be a few days before I can get in there and do some work.  But we will continue to enjoy the sun.

Garden Journal

 Over at Small Things Ginny has started a garden link-up and I thought I would join in (late as usual).  I definitely need some motivation and accountability to keep up with all the garden work I have waiting for me.  There is not much happening in the garden yet here in Saskatchewan but there is still a lot to do to get ready for the garden season.

 

My rhubarb is growing well though and will soon be ready to eat.  (Yes, Jax decided he needed to be in the picture too!)

Here I have some chives growing nicely.  Every year my mom gives me some chive plants and I usually manage to kill them (or hubby cultivates them) before the year is out.  Finally, this year they survived and came back on their own.  Yeah!

These are some tomato seedlings in my kitchen window that I started on Apr. 16, 2012.  They came up on Apr. 23, 2012 and are doing well.

Yesterday was nice and I did some planting with the girls.  Star wanted to grow some flowers so we planted some marigolds. I also started some parsley, dill, and basil.

Sky planted some marigolds as well and then she was kind enough to push LT in the stroller to keep her happy as we finished up.

 These little yellow flowers seem to pop up all over the yard with no help from me ;).

LK is very happy to pick them and lovingly offers them to me. 

What a sweet gift given with a big smile!

How does your garden grow?

A Weekly Update : New Chicks, Dandylions, and Doll Houses

Well it's been awhile again since I posted anything here on this blog.  Time seems to fly by these days.  I am going to try and do a weekly update so as to record some of the activities that happen each week.  Hopefully it will motivate me to spend some time with the kiddos and take some pictures.

This week we got some chicks that my father-in-law and his wife hatched for us.  New chicks are always so cute and fun.  The girls as always enjoyed holding them.  LK was very excited to see them but it was a challenge to keep him from too rough with them.

Sky holding a chick. 

Star with a chick.

Chicks

It has been really rainy here is Sask. My garden is just a huge puddle.  We did have one nice day this week though so we bought some flowers and were able to plant them in our flower bed by the house.

The girls planting flowers.

Of course LK has to help too!

We also did some dandelion picking on that nice day.  As you can see we have no shortage of them.

And what did we do on all the rainy days?  Well, I will admit that some TV watching did happen.  But then Star asked Dad to bring home some boxes from work so that they could make doll houses in the basement.

Sky with her dolls and doll house.



Star going into her doll house.

So that is a few things that we did this past week.  We also managed to brand the calves this weekend as it was too wet for seeding.  It was a little mucky in the corrals but luckily we didn't get rained on too much.  How was your week?

Freezing Corn

Well I have been busy the last little while trying to preserve some of the stuff from the garden.  I have shredded and frozen zucchini, made applesauce and chopped apples to freeze, picked tomatoes and put them in the basement (still have to can some of them), and I froze some corn.  Now I had never attempted to freeze corn before as we usually eat most of it fresh and the idea of cutting all the corn off the ears seemed like a lot of work.  However after reading this post at Heavenly Homemakers and checking out this post at Amy's Finer Things I decided to give it a try.

One of the things that made this easier was using an electric knife.  Now I have an electric knife but rarely use it except to cut fresh bread (it cuts fresh bread really nice without squishing the loaf) so I wouldn't have thought to use it if Amy hadn't mentioned it.  It made cutting the corn off the cob really simple and it didn't take any effort at all.  I also used a bundt cake pan and held the corn cob on the part that makes the hole in the cake and then when I cut off the corn it all fell into the cake pan.

So the process was pretty simple.  I picked and shucked the corn.  Then I placed the ears of corn a few at time into a pot of boiling water for three minutes.  Once the three minutes was up I transferred them to a sink full of ice water to stop the cooking process.  I then cut the corn off the cob and packed it into ziploc bags and froze them. Mmmm, now we will be able to enjoy home grown corn for a while to come.

Now if you are wondering how I did this all with a 7 month old baby, I will share (because when I read other blogs I always wonder how they manage to do all they do with young children).  While I was picking and shucking the corn I had LK in the backpack (which I mention in this post).  Then I brought him into the kitchen and gave him a pot and a wooden spoon to play with, which kept him busy for a while.  I had to pause the process partway through to nurse him and then I put him down for a nap.   That meant I could finish up in peace. 

Back to School

Today was the girls first day back to school.  My six year old was very excited to start grade two.  My eight year old was not as excited but she still seemed okay with going back.  She is in grade four this year.  I cannot believe how quickly this time goes.  Here are pictures I took of them this morning as we waited for the bus.

In other news we are enjoying fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob from the garden  field of weeds. Seriously, it is amazing I get anything from the garden you literally have to search through the weeds to find the plants.  But we are definately enjoying the fresh vegetables.  Home grown tomatoes are so much better than store bought ones.  I do have more than we can eat so I will have to can or freeze some this week.  I also have a bunch of apples that I picked from my father-in-laws tree that I am slowly dealing with (freezing, eating, and baking).

My son is getting more mobile (still not actually crawling, but he moves around a lot) and he loves attention, so he keeps me pretty busy as well.  With school starting I look forward to having more of routine and hopefully I will find time to fit in some exercise.

Here's to a good school year for everyone: children, parents and teachers.

Raspberries!

Raspberries are one of my favorite summer fruits.  I have a bunch of raspberry plants in the garden (you may have to wade through a jungle of weeds to find them but they are there).  We have been enjoying eating as many fresh raspberries as we can (Mmmmm raspberries on cereal, raspberries on toast, raspberries on ice cream, raspberries on yogurt, just a bowl of raspberries with a touch of sugar mmmmm!).

What we can't eat fresh we have been freezing.  Either as whole raspberries to eat throughout the winter or as freezer jam.  I have never really gotten into canning and preserving as it seems like a lot of work and I am a little intimidated by it.  However making freezer jam is really simple.

You start by washing your berries.

Then you crush them up.  I just use my potato masher for this.  This is a good job for the kids to do although if they get a little vigorous you may end up with raspberry splatters all over (ask me how I know).

Then you mix together sugar and pectin in a bowl.  As you can see I use Bernardin freezer jam pectin.  This is about $2.20 at my grocery store.  Follow the directions on the package for the amount of fruit and sugar to use.

Then you add your crushed berries to the sugar and pectin and mix well (my package says to stir for 3 minutes).

All that is left to do is pour the jam into any freezer safe container, let set for 30 minutes, and then store in the fridge for up to 3 weeks or the freezer for 6 months.  I just use old glass jars to store my jam in; taking care not to fill them too full so there is room for expansion.

Planting Some Plants

It has been cool and rainy here so I haven't been able to get into my large vegetable garden.  However today the rain let up enough to let me and girls plant a few planters and the flower bed by my back door.  A while back we visited the green house and I let the girls pick out a few flowers to plant.  Here is my youngest daughter with the pot that she planted.  She picked out a geranium and some petunias to plant (And yes that is a pail of sprouted potatoes in the background.  They are to be planted in the garden if it ever dries up.)

We also put a few plants into the flower bed.  We planted 4 cherry tomato plants (which should be good to snack on in the summer), some marigolds and petunias, and some parsley and basil.  Here is my oldest daughter in front of the flower bed.  It looks pretty bare now but if everything grows well it will soon fill in. All the wire fencing is to discourage the cats and chickens from digging in my flower bed.

So I accomplished a little bit today and spent some time with the girls.  Hopefully the weather will smarten up and we can get some more garden planted.

Planting Garden

Well this past week I finally got a little bit of garden planted.  I planted this 4 ft x 8 ft box using the square foot garden method. I have a large garden area but the soil is very heavy clay so last year I built a couple of boxes and added some purchased soil.  It seemed to work pretty well although shortly after planting the cows got out and had to investigate it.  They caused quite a bit of damage.  Hopefully that doesn't happen this year.  In this box I planted 8 squares of peas, 8 squares of carrots, 4 squares of beets, 2 squares of spinach, 2 squares of lettuce, 2 squares of beans, 2 squares of radishes, and 4 squares of onions.  So that is a lot of garden in a little space.  We will see how it grows this year.  I have a lot more I want to plant but it is supposed to rain most of this weekend.  So when the weather gets nice again I will be busy.

My Weekly Goal

This week for my weekly goal I am going to try to keep a food diary.  I will track my water intake, vitamins, and food.  I am going to continue to try and drink 4 bottles of water a day, drink only one pop a week, and just try to reduce the amount of food I am eating while increasing my intake of fruits and veggies.  So we will see how that goes.

On the homemaking front I need to go through the girls clothes and bring out their summer clothes.  Any spare time I have this week I want to spend in the garden.  So I want to focus on just the basics in the house, keeping it clean so it doesn't end up completely ignored while I spend time outside.

Tomato Seedlings

Remember the tomato seeds I started here.  This is what they look like now.

Yesterday I transplanted some of the plants that were growing two to a pot.  I also added more dirt around all the plants.  Tomatoes are one of the few plants that will grow roots all along their stems so adding some more dirt will encourage more root growth.  In Saskatchewan we are about two to three weeks away from planting these outside still.  I will let them get used their new homes and grow some more roots and in about a week I will start taking them outside for a while each day to harden them off.  Then they should be ready to plant in a couple of weeks.  With the nice weather we are finally having I can't wait to get into the garden.

Starting Seeds

Today I started some tomato seeds.  Every year I plant a bit of a garden.  My ambition is always higher in the spring and I plant a bunch of stuff.  Then summer comes and I would rather spend my time at the pool than weeding the garden.  Last summer the weeds took over my garden and most of what did grow was eaten by grasshoppers.  However, I did have lot's of tomatoes, corn, and some peas.  So it was still worth it.  Hopefully I  will do a little better at keeping it weeded this year.  Tomatoes are one of my favorite things to grow as they are fairly simple to grow and a homegrown tomato tastes so much better than a store bought one.  There is just no comparison.  In Saskatchewn you have to start your tomato seeds indoors because of the short growing season.  It is easy to do and saves me some money since I don't have to buy them as bedding plants.  I don't start many seeds indoors because you do have to have some space with good light to grow them but having tomatoes in the garden is a must.  I planted early girl and centenial rocket which are both bred to be early (which again is good in Saskatchewan's short growing season) and also some cherry tomatoes which are great to snack on.

When the girls came home from school we planted some flower and herbs in clay pots we had decorated.  This was a great activity to do with them.  Kids love planting things and watching them grow.  I hope to have them grow their own little garden this summer.  So we will see how that goes.  I am also thinking of having them make their own garden journal.  I got this idea from Frugal Family Fun (which is great blog by the way and has great kids activities.)  I think I may just use a notebook instead of a binder but cutting the pictures out from the seed catalog is a great idea.