The Jam Turned Out Pretty Good

So awhile back I wrote about how I was going to make jam from the dehydrated peaches and "we'll see how it turns out." So this is how it turned out. I just sort of made up the "dried" part of the recipe, so I think the all-peach ones on the right are super-saturated with peach. The ones on the left are strawberry-peach that I made with the leftover strawberries from my date with my daughter Julesie. We actually already opened and ate one of them and they were incredibly delicious. Today I got raspberries on sale and will mash them up as soon as I can get off my bum and make them into fabulous jam.

The Doldrums Tree

That's from The Phantom Tollbooth, the Doldrums. So my friend Jess had a list of all these ideas for kids to do when they're stir crazy during summer. Of course, my children aren't allowed to say they're "bored" because I taught them that bored means "not smart enough to think of something to do." So I've damaged their psyches a little bit. Anyway, I took Jessica's ideas we could do and added some of my own I thought of, plus searched the internet for more and wrote each idea down on a little tag. The orange ones are just for Jules, like "wash doll clothes" and the blue ones are just for Eric, like "transform all the transformers to vehicle mode."

There are a couple rules about the Doldrums tree, such as You have to be in the Doldrums to get to pick something, and Whatever you pick you have to do. The only trouble is that the children want to pick stuff all the time. I'm making dinner and it's supposed to be clean-up time and Jules is all,"can I just pick one thing, ONE THING, from the Doldrums tree?" and I'm like,"No way, squirt, it's clean-up time." Plus I was gone one day and Seth let the children pick something but kept making them pick again because every idea required ADULT PARTICIPATION. Make cookies, take a walk. anyway, I don't mine participating with them unless it's naptime, so it's pretty good so far. If I'd thought of it, I would have put up the list of all the different activity ideas before we taped them all up on the wall.

Sarah's Seventh

Seven years since our little Angel Baby Sarah was born. Every year I make a humongous heart cake for her birthday. I try to decorate it a little different each year.

Someting's Happening in the Garden

Corn. I never grew corn before but Seth's family does all the time so he requested it.










onion- I'm not really onion crazy but my in-laws gave me these onion sets and you do have to have some onions for flavah, so I'll grow these maybe, and then chop them up and freeze or dry them.











peas - I love peas so much. Also they smell pretty growing. Mine are wilt-resistent! So, bonus.











Butternut squash-I saw a recipe where you put butter and brown sugar in the squash and cook it and it made me want to try them. Otherwise I don't like squash, but I know you can make pumpkin-like pies with these if you don't want to eat them straight.








Pumpkins- I love novelties so much, so I got the enormous-competition-size-pumpkin seeds. Wouldn't it be SO COOL if a couple grew on the vine!!! Huge Enormous Pumpkins!!! It's like my dream come true.

So I planted all these seeds in the garden like three weeks ago and nothing has been coming up and nothing has been coming up. So like three days ago I started, duh, praying over the garden which I should have been doing all along, and voila! three days later here come all these crops popping out of the ground. I was so thrilled I called the kids out and made them examine each little sproutling. When Seth got home I made him come right out and examine each little sproutling. It's a pretty good miracle since all I did to prepare the soil was pick out most of the landscape rocks with which it was previously covered, and turned in the "compost" I had made during the whole last year of living in a townhome.

Finally, an Outside Project

We moved literally tons of gravel, plus a couple hundred pounds-worth of curvy pavers and put in this really calm, really good-smelling little bed. Also I planted a peony plant on each side of the window but they're super tiny and you can't see them. Maybe next year. Also we bought our brown paint for the trim there in front. The orange was just so....so ugly. Yes, that's the word I want. Also, offensive. Last Saturday Seth did the gravel bed on the other side of the front door to look like this, too. Maybe I shall plant some beautiful flowers or a tiny midget shrub under the window.