High Water

March in Michigan was beautiful. Warm and sunny and it got me itching for a camp weekend. I had to wait (and wait and wait) until May to make the first trip up.

Robin has accepted a full-time position at a winery in Oregon, so I used her impeding absence as an excuse to take off for an overnight stay. No kids, no dudes, just the two of us. 

Our camp is on the Muskegan River, so we expected some flooding. There was water on the road for about 100 feet leading to the driveway.

It wasn't really a problem because the water was just a few inches deep.

Notice my new, green Sloggers? I'm so fashionable.

 The driveway was completely dry, so we didn't have to haul our stuff on through the water.

The river bank last fall had about an eight foot drop to the water, but on this weekend it was up over the bank and about half way up the yard.

Again,it was not a problem for us. We had great company and cold beer. What more could you ask for?

We weren't sure if the water would be too high to turn on the gas, so we planned a cook-free dinner.

 

This was the most delicious meal ever. Throw in some cribbage and we were happy girls.

We really lucked out, because the water didn't get to the fire pit. We ended the day with this:

Perfect night.

The Garden Begins

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. -Alfred Austin


I've got nothing left in me lately. I'm not sure how to get through the next hour, except to just get through the next hour.
Tonight, when maybe I should have been doing a million other things, I went to the garden. It has healing powers I cannot explain.

Let me start at the beginning.

After multiple recommendations, I ordered from High Mowing .  It was so, so hard not to order one of everything. I excitedly texted an ambitious list to Hubs of all the beautiful vegetables I was going to grow. He responded with a gentle reminder of my limited garden space. Boo. Someday I'm going to till up half the backyard and garden myself silly.

But for now, I had to restrain myself. I settled on the following list:

De Cicco Broccoli

Necoras F1 Hybrid Carrot

Improved Rainbow Mix Chard

Luscious F1 Hybrid Corn

Purple Glazer Garlic

Lacinato Dinosaur Kale

Siskiyou Sweet Walla Walla Onion

Costata Romanesco Zucchini

Honey Nut Mini-Butternut

Green Finger Cucumber

Kentucky Wonder Pole Bean

Sugar Snap Pea        

I tried to pick things that we often buy and reminded myself that we can still have all of the other veggies, I just have to buy the other stuff from the farmer's market. Man, you can grow anything in Michigan! Well, almost anything.

My cousin is a horticulturist, so I asked her for advice about getting my seeds started. When she offered to take my seeds and start them I was thrilled. Obviously, she is awesome.


Seeds safely in her hands, I have been able to focus my energy on chickens and readying the garden beds. More on the chickens later.


Last fall, for once in my life, I didn't let my end of the season laziness get the better of me. I actually tucked my beds in with a layer of chopped leaves and then a layer of straw.

I pealed back the layer to find rich, wet soil. It seems a little too wet, but we've had a ton of rain lately so lets just blame it on the rain, yeah yeah.

I got a text message from my cousin saying that my starts had been delivered to my house. I got home to discover a problem.

That's 9 flats total, including 3 flats of Swiss chard. We like Swiss chard, but what the hell are we going to do with 3 flats? I only have three 4x16 beds and one will be full of tomatoes, so yeah, I have a problem.

I called several people trying to give plants away with little success. I can't just pitch them into the compost pile, because that would be murder.I'm still working on finding homes for all my orphans.

I really wanted to try the Three Sisters planting method this year, but discovered problem #2. No corn. My cousin asked me to remind her what seeds I had because all the plants got moved around in her greenhouse and she wasn't sure. I guess she missed the corn. It's not really a big deal, we can buy some from the local greenhouse.

On this night of soul feeding, I planted broccoli, carrots and cucumbers.

I left space for some nasturtium around the broccoli. My mantra while I garden is, "I will not overfill my beds. I will not overfill my beds. I will not overfill my beds."

At the start, the beds seem so empty and I always want to squeeze in *just one more* start. Then, by the middle of summer, I have an over-packed, amazon forest of a garden bed.

I hope my girls will love gardening and be able to find the same joy in it that I do.

 

Chateau Cluck Cluck

I had a dream last night that Hubs and I bought an old farmhouse and were moving in with the chickens and two little lambs. Please don't burst my bubble by reminding me farm life is actually a ton of work and not the enchanted life I imagine.

Hubs is lucky  I have a full-time job, because otherwise  would be farming-up the back yard to an unrecognizable state.

Thankfully, my township has OK'd a few backyard chickens. The ladies have been growing feathers in our garage since Easter and today we picked up their super fancy coop!

The ladies weren't terribly impressed when I carried them out to look at Chateau Cluck Cluck. What the hell? This place is awesome and you are gonna love it, chickys!

Tootsie and Lovie thought it was so cool.

The chicks are still in their tub with the heat light, but they'll be ready to make the move soon. We let them loose in the confines of the fenced in garden for the first time. They act like they don't want me around, but as soon as they were out in the real world, they stuck close to me! I guess they are teen-aged chicks?

 From the top, clockwise:Lily, Tressa, Lucy & Tinker Bell
 They are really getting beautiful with their feathers coming in.

Here's my wanna-be farmgirl:

Here's how my day started:

She almost looks like a tiny baby again!

Mission Impossible-wait no, totally possible

I talked about it before, my grocery budget/meal planning/feeding my family well Mission. I want to show you what makes it work for me.

The first thing I do is make a meal plan for the week. There are a few things that steer my choices.
Is this Hubs' work week? Because I'm basically a single parent all week and holy moly, you know that means meals have to be make-ahead or super, super easy.  And seriously, props to all the parents who go it alone, because how the hell do they do it? I think it's a blessing for everyone involved that I am a part of a parenting TEAM and not left to my own devices.
If Hubs is off work, then the sky is the limit. Remember, my man is a killer in the kitchen.

What's in season? I'm not making anything that requires fresh tomatoes in the winter. Why? Because they taste like Styrofoam and it's a waste of money.  My local Meijer does a pretty good job in the produce department, but there are just some things I can't do.

What do I already have on hand? I love to stock my pantry and freezer. This year we filled our freezer with 1/4 of a grass fed cow and 1/2 of a pig that was raised without hormones or anti-biotics. We've also made several trips to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's for staples. Both stores are about an hour from us, so when we go, we stock up.

We try so, so hard to eat whole foods and make as much as we can from scratch. We fall short of that goal often enough, but we both also work full time and are trying to keep up with two little kids. Ok, whatever-we do the best we can.

One of my most useful Christmas gifts from this year:

 This chalkboard hangs in my kitchen and announces to anyone who walks in what's on the menu for the week. My mom likes to look at it and then "drop by" on nights we're eating her favs.

After the menu is planned, the grocery list is compiled. I keep recipes on hand and lots of cookbooks. I love cookbooks and my bookshelf can prove it. Hubs considered having my head examined because of all the cookbooks I buy, but I got a handle on the problem by way of the internet and all of her glorious, free recipes! We have to folders in the kitchen- one is our go-to favs and the other is a stack of recipes I want to try. The latter gets cleaned out every once in a while because sometime our tastes change before I get to a recipe that sounded perfect when I saw it.

OK, so I pull out the recipes and cookbooks for that week's menu and make my grocery list from them.

I swear this method is the only way were are ever able to stay on our grocery budget AND don't end up ordering  take-out at 6:45 because we don't know what's for dinner and it's too late to start it anyway.

Call me an ass if you want to, but almost everything that comes out of our kitchen is better than any restaurant. So, the only benefit to eating out is having someone else do all the work and  the clean up (ummmm, maybe it is worth it?)

I like to use my chalkboard as an opportunity to talk to people about how awesome we are. We have inspired others to make a meal plan and obviously their lives are better for knowing us. Duh, because we are awesome.

Even at my level of awesome, I love to read and talk about how other people to make it work-you know recipes, ideas-anything that is awesome.

Speaking of awesome:

She's no baby

Tootsie is just like her momma. She wakes up early, ready for the day. The two of us enjoy breakfast together while Lovie and Hubs sleep away the morning.

We babysat our neighbors' baby boy this week for a couple of hours. I'll tell you what, there is nothing like a baby to put your "baby" into perspective. My little Tootsie is getting so big, it hurts my heart just a little.

When Tootsie was born, Lovie was younger than Tootsie is now. What the hell were we thinking having babies so close together? Who cares now, cuz it is the best.

The girls were wild for the baby. I had to play guard the whole time, or I think they would have mauled the poor kid.

Lovie said over and over, "I need to hug him."  When I picked him up, she dragged a chair from the table over because, "I need to see him."

She's such an awesome big sister. While I was trying to put the baby to sleep, she sang Twinkle Twinkle to him so soflty.

Then the girls played with the blanket and boppy. Tootsie would cover Lovie up and say, "Night baby." It was so stinkin' cute.

So, it's official. My baby is not a baby anymore. For crying out loud, why did it take a baby for me to see it? Look at her grown-up hair-do!

And her version of the morning newspaper and "coffee".

Another benefit of watching that sweet little boy was the realization that two kids is enough for me. Don't tell Hubs, he gets a little puffed-up when he's right.


“I take it not only a day at a time, but a moment at a time, and keep it at that pace. If you can be happy right now, then you’ll always be happy, because it’s always in the now.” ~Willie Nelson

Full

We are at the bunny tail end of an epic Easter weekend. Ha!

I left work early on Friday and have been running since.

We started with the egg dyeing. I decided to make homemade color this year. I used onion skins, blueberries and cherries.

 I boiled each for a few minutes in water with a splash of vinegar.

Then I strained it into jars.

Left to Right: blueberry, onion skin, cherry

Hubs and the girls used crayons on the eggs first.

I swear my kids is a genius. Look close, Lovie said, "it's eyes and a nose and a mouf!"

We left the eggs in the dye all day.

After a quick trip to visit Papa,(emphasis on quick-a three year old and an 18 month old are not exactly the most calming hospital visitors) we made a trip to the farm supply store.

Here are the newest members of our household:

Peep peep!

My mom brought my nieces and nephew over to meet the ladies. Jane, Lola and Lovie named them. From L to R: Lucy-named by Jane    Tinker Bell-named by Lovie  Lily-named by Jane   Tressa-named by Lola

They are the most exciting thing to happen to Lovie since a robin made a nest and laid eggs in out garage window last spring.

After chicken naming, the kids played and reminded me why cousins are awesome.

Again the garden, oh the garden, it heals my soul.My garden beds are full of promise. Hope springs eternal, man.

Hubs re-installed by rain barrel. this time up on cinder blocks so I can get my watering can under the spigot.

Saturday night ended late after an evening with new friends, cold beer and the best damn pizza in town- homemade by Hubs.

Today started early, I had to get the casserole in the oven for brunch at my brother's house. Aunt Jody's Breakfast is the holiday favorite around here.

The Easter Bunny left some treats for Lovie and Tootsie.

Does anybody else think Easter has gotten a little crazy? It's like Christmas with the gifts! Bunny brought a flashlight, bubbles and a little candy for my girls. I think it is enough.

He (she?) did hide our eggs for us, though. Onion skin on top, cherries in the middle (kind of a bust) and blueberries on the bottom.

Chocolate buzz for breakfast? Yes, please.

Then the hunt was on:

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and enjoyed your family as much as I did.