Garden and Life Update

Sweet Friends! Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I must learn to write when it strikes me and set it automatically post.

Anyhoo -- I got the fall garden planted. Lotsa, lotsa tomatoes: 4 roma plants, 3 amish paste, 3 mexico midgets, and 4 cherry romas. I put in 6 sweet peppers, as well, and need to put some garlic out in the midst of the plants. The two spicy pepper plants are still producing fruit, so I left them in. Plus, it rained last night and this morning, nearly an inch worth.  Yeah! It's September!

In other news, the adjustment to full time isn't as hard as I thought. The big downside is that I leave my household chores to Saturday and I still have school work for the weekends. So, for example, last Saturday was very full. Sunday was equally busy, with church in the morning, working all afternoon on school stuff and Fellowship Family in the evening. Ah, well, such is life, I guess.

My sister put together a 101 things to do in 1001 days. I'm quite tempted to join in and put together my own list, but is quite frightening. Well, we'll see what I get to.

School has started, Life is busy

Well, as I expected posting is less now that school has started. I feel at a loss as to what to write about, even though there all sorts of little bits of news: I love my classes, school has started off quite well, I'm tired, my seedlings are HUGE, but its still too hot to plant them out in the garden, I did really good with the weekly home blessings this morning and we put together some fun stuff yesterday.

Part 1: School. 
This really is the bulk of my life these days. Luckily, I love teaching and I love figuring out how to educate my students in a way that is fun for all of us. I haven't implemented full-blown SBG, its more a blend between a more traditional grading system and SBG. The school admin wants to better understand what the impact SBG would have on grades and parental understanding of what the grades mean. I understand that. I might not love the response to SBG, but it works for me. I'll spend this year presented a good case for SBG.

In Logic 2 (8th grade-ish), we started reading Silent Spring. I think this might need its own blog post to describe the great time I'm having with it. We had a wonderful conversation in both classes as we read chapter 1 and part of 2. Carson paints a grim picture in chapter 1 and uses some major emotional language in chapter 2, so I tried to bring that out. We talked about what Carson is trying to convince us of, with the thought towards evaluating that claim after we've seen the book's argument. I love the intelligent conversation we can have! Its amazing the change that just 2 years brings in a child's development. The younger 2 grades, grammar 5 (5th) and grammar 6 (6th) both also went amazingly well. Last year had a rocky start, but with just one year of experience, I'm feel so much  more confident.

Part 2: Garden
The high today is 104'. ARGH!!!! When I figured out the timing for planting my seeds (so that they would be ready to plant out last week of Aug or first week of Sept), I took into account both seed packet times and how long it took in the spring. Nope -- Rachael got that wrong. Sort of a "duh" moment. Early spring is chilly, chilly, even here in Central Texas, and tomatoes and peppers will take what seems like forever to sprout and grow. With this heat, they will grow wonderfully fast, which would be good, except they are outgrowing the seedling containers. The seeds all sprouted in less and a week, and now they are starting to produce little bunches of flowers (the tomatoes, at least). Well, I guess I'll have to plant them out even in this heat and hope for the best. In the meantime, I've pinched off the flowers and I'll transplant to bigger containers this afternoon. Maybe I can put off putting them out another week.

Cayenne Pepper -- Still producing!

The crazy bit is that the cayenne pepper plant is still producing abundantly and I think its only getting water from the septic sprinklers -- I'm not watering it. I picked 20 some odd peppers this morning, and there are more flowers. Plus, all the leaf-footed bugs are gone, I can't find any stink bugs, and even the weeds are chilling out for now. I haven't watered but once a week ago or so; my plan was to let stuff petter out and give the garden a rest for Aug. The neighbors down the street, who I've never gotten over to talk to, completely cleared out their garden at the end of July and haven't planted it yet for the fall. (Maybe they won't, I've never asked.).

On the more poopy side, I usually handle heat fairly well, but lately its been really taking it out of me. But I'm also back working more than ever before, so who knows why I'm so tired. Probably a combination? Just makes for less garden time.

Part 3: Housekeeping.
I talked about my chore schedule rearrangement a few weeks ago, here it is. For two weeks now, I've aimed to do the weekly home blessing on Saturday morning, along with the laundry and other sorts of chores. Its worked quite well; it gets my Saturday off to a decent start and the house is wonderfully clean for Sunday and the start of the week. I still haven't figured out when to grocery shop (I think Thursday after school?) and menu planning is a hit and miss activity (aiming for Sunday afternoon), but things are going well for the most part.

Part 4: Fun Stuff

We know Hank likes high places, and we've put him on top of the TV cabinet a few times to see what he would do. We've discussed how to create a set of "stairs" for him to get up there on his own (and down), and went to the local hardware store to explore the creation of a PVC pipe contraption. I drew it out and we pondered what we needed and started looking at prices and figured out quick that would be $100 and up. So, nix that. Then Hubby had a wonderful idea! We got 2 simple plastic shelving units with 4 shelves each, got several pvc couplings, and put the shelves together so that the shelves alternate going up. We figure if Hank decides he's not interested, we have plenty of places we can use a set of shelves.

I guess the farm is too wet.

So, I notice these guys in the worm farm a few weeks ago (borrowed picture)



In the last week, I've been finding them on the dinning room floor, apparently crawling out of the worm bin. Finally, this morning I went about scouring the internet for an answer. One of the two worm farms is going back to school next week, and I'd rather not have a cleaning lady asking me about these guys she might find on the floor.

Turns out, I'm quite confident about this, that it is a soldier fly larvae, or, perhaps more specifically, a garden soldier fly larvae. All I read is that they are voracious eaters of dead and decaying matter (good for worm farm), don't compete with the worms so much, but like it much wetter than do worms. So, I will go about adding some nice dry material to both farms today. They leave the worm farm to pupate, looking for dryer soil. Alas, my dining room floor doesn't have much soil, I work hard to keep it that way.

I'm gonna have to totally have a 'worm farm ecosystem' lesson this year in either (both?) grammar 6, Life Science, or Logic 2, Biology. Now the creative juices are flowing! We can identify how it works in the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle.... WOOT! I'm excited now!

Purposes and decisions

Warning: Rambling, thinking-out-loud post

I'm in an interesting spot.  My poor blog is due for a post... its been over a week since the last one. Poor neglected blog.  I'm feeling very academic and wanting to write on the thoughts in my  head about school, SBG and my various downfallings and successes as a teacher. I started blogging again back in January with the intention of blogging about my garden and my home. But here I am not interested in posting about my garden, my knitting or my cooking at all. My reading of blogs is leading heavily towards the blogs of teachers and academics with education topic posts. I've been writing a fair bit, but its related to role-playing, school and educational philosophy (and none of it is getting posted at the moment).

I think I need to decide the purpose of my blog. If it is about news and events of life for friends and family, the blog will be inclined towards one particular style of post. But if I want to reflect my many ideas and thoughts on eduction (of which I have many), then the style changes. ARGH!!! Decisions to be made, and my general life inclination is to decide to not decide when its a difficult decision. Say that fast 10 times!

Too many thoughts, too many ideas. My brain is so full right now, its scary. More to come, I promise!

PS. The February Lady Sweater got put on hold while I knit some Christmas gifts for the ladies in my extended family. After the FLS, I hope to knit either Every Way Wrap or 5 Way Cable Wrap. Its another decision to make....


30 minutes later
Update: I'm going to get better at putting labels, make it easy for people to find what they want. If I find that I am posting regularly about teaching once school starts, I'll branch off and start a new blog with some witty name that is dedicated to teaching. As it is, I suspect that my blogging interval will extend greatly once school starts, I've got a busy, busy schedule.

Food production and preservation (and related topics)

Life has been fun this past week. Less than one day after posting about the June 9 rain, it started raining again. Its been slower this time, in the past 18 hours, we've gotten about an inch. Nonetheless, it has cooled everything off quite a bit, and provided a great deal of free water. In addition to the original rain barrel we put out, I added 3 "homer buckets", which filled in the first couple of hours. Just now, I added 3 more plastic containers that are now filling nicely.

The original bucket and a plastic container, positioned to also catch some of the overflow out of the original rain barrel.

A full "homer" bucket on the front stoop.

The second "homer" bucket and the second of three plastic containers.

The third and last plastic container and the third "homer" bucket (full of water).

Forecast says to expect rain for several more days, so it shouldn't be a problem filling these three new plastic containers.

The compost is coming along very nicely. I'm planning to start some seeds this weekend, so I'll start sifting out the fine stuff soon. I'm very excited... the first bin was filled again with fresh grass clippings yesterday (beating the rain by an hour at the most).

All is growing wonderfully in the garden. Any ideas as to what type of gourd this is? It came in a packets of "mixed gourd seed", and I've seen at least 3 types of gourds so far. I'm planning to dry them and maybe I can make some decorations out of them, or sell them for others make decorations for the fall. Hmmm....

I decided to make 1 big bed, instead of 4 small beds. After talking with a friend at school, I realized roto-tilling will be easier and I have more space for planting and I can mix up where I plant stuff more easily. Plus, its fewer cinder blocks! I've got the last nine to purchase and put out, which I think I can do once the rain stops.

The cayenne chili plant is producing prolifically, so I decided to hang and dry them. They are up in the garage, and I add 3 or 4 peppers every few days. Hubby loves spicy food, so its hard to have too many spicy peppers. I've got plans for 2 cayenne plants for the fall.

I've also tried my hand at canning again. The canning of huckleberries worked just fine, it was just that the huckleberry jam wasn't so good. This time, I went for canning salsa. I used the "Better Homes and Gardens" recipe, using more spicy peppers than called for (and fewer sweet peppers). So far, its been a hit with both Hubby and I. I just hope 5 pints will last till the next tomato harvest.

I'm making pizza sauce today, with plans to can it. I'll dedicate a post to that process, when I know the final results. I'm all about figuring it out myself, so I should wait till its all done to know if it was successful or not.

Gosh, rainy days are nice.

Gardening Lessons Learned

Been thinking on these things for a while. I've finally gotten around the writing it all out!

1. don't use newspaper as seed pots. It molds, soaks up way too much water, and falls apart long before the seedlings are ready to be transplanted.

2. I need to learn a lot more about the bugs and other diseases my plants can get infected with. I need to learn which bugs are good and which are not, and get bold enough to squash those who aren't beneficial.

3. I need to be better disciplined about getting seeds started and I need a better idea of Waco weather so I can know when to plant, etc. Then again, it may just me needing patience about living here longer.

4. Canning is hot work. I'll find out if it worth it in the next day. [I just canned huckleberry jam.]

5. If I have ideas of canning, I need to plant determinate varieties of tomatoes. Want lots tomatoes all at once.... Next time around, I plan to plant both interminate and determinate varieties.

6. Hand digging is hard work, and might break your pitch fork. Borrow a roto-tiller when you can.

7. Ollas aren't as spoofy as they seem at first look. Or perhaps I didn't use them right? Anyhoo, they worked great while the weather was mild, but aren't working as great with the hot, hot weather. Soakers might be better.

8. Get those soakers running EVERY morning, can't let the ground dry out or it will take hours to soak the ground again.

I'm sure I'll think of more things that I've learned in 6 months of gardening. and hopefully, I'll learn more in the next 6 months of gardening.