Thursday, May 31, 2012

This week...

This is actually from the last two weeks...

 Baby chickies are now relocated to the chicken coop, but confined to this large dog crate, because, well, full grown chickens are not so nice to little babies all the time.  The term pecking order did come from chickens.  In this photo they are enjoying some fresh air.
Our friend lent Isaac the first Harry Potter book, and we are delving straight in.  Here my dear boy has his tiger stripes on his cheeks, isn't he sweet?  They are always sweet when they're sleeping. ;-)
 We've had TWO luna moth sightings at our back door.  We now know that luna moths only live for 7 days, and have two generation cycles in our area, so if we are lucky, we may get another chance in 7 to 9 weeks.  Both moths were boys, as you can tell by their bushier antenna.  Who knew?
 Discovered what the inside of a bleeding heart bloom looks like.
 Getting back into smoothie making.
 The boys gave their little sister lots of flowers.  She wasn't so sure about this, but she just looks so stinking cute.  Mmmm I just want to nibble those cheeks of hers.
Had our first bird (ever that I've seen) in our bird bath, and a beautiful one at that.  I haven't had a chance to look it up, but it is lovely there with those pink flowers and Buddha near by.

So that was our week (or two...), and next week we get to go camping!  Hope your week was just as lovely.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

First Harvest

Aren't they beautiful? Other than all the green ones Coby has been eating, this is our first bounty to come from the garden this season (oh and the chives).  There is something so rewarding about growing your own food. The satisfaction of planting and growing and finally harvesting.  These berries were a year in the making, since I planted the bushes last year and then nipped all the buds so it would produce runners and grow stronger roots.
These berries are looooong gone, I could barely snap the photo, but there are many many more coming (assuming I can keep Coby away from them before they ripen), and I hope enough that we can preserve some.  Oh, I dream of a day when we have a large enough garden to grow and freeze or can food to last us through the winter months.  I am borrowing this book from a friend, Preserving Summer's Bounty and it's excellent.  I'm so looking forward to trying my hand at canning. I did get two whole stocks of rhubarb (oh, see another harvest I'm forgetting) so maybe a little strawberry rhubarb jam is in order.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

::sigh::

 Well, I had envisioned keeping up with my blog better.  Trying to make daily entries, posting our going ons, the crafts I am working on, the garden and growing homestead and just keeping family and friends up to date with our lives.  I wonder how many blog entries there are out there like this? I've been meaning to blog, but....

 But, I've been having some set backs.  The first one: I prefer to write at night, but I have a little girl who will not sleep with out mama laying next to her.  I do have a laptop, and could theoretically write in bed, but it is older than dirt and will no longer acknowledge our wireless connection.  Not being very technically savvy, I'm not sure how to fix this other than to buy a a new laptop which just isn't in the budget.

 The next issue: I have no way to store photos.  The laptop has no more memory left, the new (to me) desk top was handed down from Sam's work when they up-graded his computer, but all the programing wasn't cleared and I can't save any photos to the desk top.  We got an external hard drive, but are having technical difficulties with that. I know I can up load directly to my blog, but then I have to go through all the photos daily (this computer is very slow with up loading photo on the view finder), and I just don't have that much time (something about two active little boys and a new babe).  Oh, the list could go on and on.

 I am working on it though!  Or more accurately, I'm asking those around me who know more about this to help me.  So, while someday I hope to be able to write daily, and include beautiful photos (from the new camera I so badly want and with photoshop editing), for now I will try to just write and add a photo here and there.  And I will keep dreaming about the blog I hope to one day create.  I will stop procrastinating on this blog simply because I can't do it exactly the way I want.