2 wks ago:

Today:

Weedy, I know, but there’s only so much I can do. What you can’t see is the Irish Spring soap I’ve grated all over the paths because the *^(*&ing deer have been snacking. Snacking on the hot peppers, snacking on the drying beans, snacking on the lettuce (which I couldn’t care less since it’s no longer edible). They also got the hostas last night which is annoying since I really like them but I’m confident they’ll rally – I wish I could see them flower, just once this year.

The trellis system from “the back”. You can kinda see what I’m trying with the Morning Glories – there’s 2 planted at the base of each verticle support (and the angled ones for the cucumbers) and I’m twining them around and up with the hopes of some prettyness once they flower. Cucumbers are doing very well and starting to fruit…

The cucs on the other side are doing well, too, though the fruit is smaller and slower growing (which is fine, they’re for pickling).

See how tall the tomatoes are? That trellis is 6′. I can’t wind anymore once they’re above that so they’ll be doing their own thing – along the braces or flopped over and trailing. They have fruit, though!

These are a paste tomato that I’m hoping to make sauce with. I suspect they cross-pollinated with something nearby because of how big they are. *shrug* We’ll see how they taste.

These are a “cherry”, though they’re larger than I’m accustomed to (which are hybrid cherries, so maybe this is normal). There’s lots of them, and so many more flowers yet!

Lest you worry, the hybrids are fruiting, too…

These are a “saladette”, whatever that means – but they’re supposed to be fantastic roasted. I should have put in better supports for the hybrids – a few have cages, but most are flopping and doing their thing (all over the basil and parsley). At least they keep the weeds down.

Even though the deer snacked on the hot peppers, they’re still looking ok (haven’t flowered yet). The bell peppers are flowering and one even has fruit!

2, hard to see, but present in all their shiny glory.

I’d show you the proliferate set of dragon tongue beans, but they’re low growing and hard to see – I can’t lift and photo at the same time. I’ll be leaving them on the plants until they’re dry and storing them in jars for the winter months. The scarlet runner beans, which don’t have an arbour yet, haven’t any beans either – too warm and maybe too dry, I think. I’ll keep that in mind for next year.

They’re back. They’ve been going after the raspberries again, the hostas are all “free” of flower stalks, and this morning I found they’d snacked on several of my hot pepper plants. I’m annoyed, and worried about a repeat of last year wherein we go away for a weekend and come home to devastation.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to keep my garden safe. Our best, easiest method is the Irish Spring soap (which we have strung up around the tomato trellis and on one of the raspberries – the one they haven’t eaten). I think I need to scratch up the surface of the hanging soaps to release more scent, and I’ll hang up some more before we leave. We’re not due for rain until next week, so perhaps I’ll grate some up and scatter it around the garden paths.

I’m thinking I also need to pray and beseech the Gods for help in steering the deer clear of my garden domain.

I had a follow-up this morning with my dr for some bloodwork I did last week. Awe.some. After stopping horrmonal b/c, my cholesterol has dropped 17mg/dL and is at 178 now (Diabetics are recommended to be lower than 170). My tryglicerides dropped from 90 to 69, HDL went up from 66 to 72, VLDL down from 18 to 14, LDL down from 111 to 92. Awesome. Awesome enough, in fact, that she’s going to let me stop taking my statin for a month to see if my vertigo goes away. If it does, she wants to switch me to Crestor (though I might fight that), if it doesn’t I’ll be seeing an ENT.

My hbA1c went down to 6.9, too (had gone up to 7.1 and anything above 7 annoys me).

I’m super pleased with my results.

Well, I was able to maintain the surprise up until the last minute… mostly. Ken figured out that we were camping (y’know, when I asked him where the last sleeping bag was and could he help me find it?), but not where we were going for the day (Celtic Fling at the PA Renn Fairgrounds).

The unsurprisingly part was the boys and their inability to deal. It was, in kindest terms, a disaster. Therefore, we’re back home now. We arrived, entered, shared a funnel cake, walked around a bit (fighting the whole time with the boys), until we all finally lost it and threw in the towel and fuckit came home.

Discouraged is an understatement. Ken appreciated the effort and said he would have had fun had things gone well. Whether it’s us, or the boys, our parenting or their behaviour, I don’t know.

I won’t be trying something like this again anytime soon. We’re still going to Maine this summer – but think that should go better with less stimulation and noise and less trying to keep them from from touching and breaking things (such as every storefront/booth at the faire).

As Ethan tells us constantly, “You’re Fired!”.

Weight loss. Yeah. June 14th he was down to 35lbs and that’s the absolute lowest he can go. So our summer project is to fatten him up. So far so good since he’s up to 36.8lbs now. Let’s hope we can continue to raise that bar. We’re aiming for 38-42lbs by his birthday (to get back onto his growth curve and a bit above it). That’s 6wks so if we maintain the current rate of gain we’re going to make that, easily. I doubt that, since he gained 1.5lbs the first week and only .3 this past week, but I’m ok with that.

K’s 31 today and we’ve a busy day planned. Special meals, Toy Story 3, paddling pool, freezy-pops…

…hmm, makes it sound like one of the boys is having his birthday, instead of the adult. At least we’ll hope for a happy day for everyone. Tomorrow is K’s *real* surprise birthday “present”, but since it’s a surprise I can’t tell you, right?

Today is Litha, aka the “First day of Summer” (according to the government), aka Midsummer (according to older calendars which make a whole lot more sense), aka Summer Solstice. Also, our anniversary.

I wish you a Happy Solstice and lovely weather to enjoy it with!

The lilies are doing *much* better this year, and I’m surprisingly pleased with their show. Last year they had one bloom per stem, and were pretty but very delicate (the lightest bump and they literally fell apart) and inclined to topple over under their own weight. Nice flowers, but nothing to write home about.

I dumped some extra soil on them last fall, in case they weren’t deep enough, and have left them alone, otherwise. This year they’re slightly less likely to topple over, and the blooms are truely lovely!

So many blooms per stem, more stems in general, and almost a month earlier than last year (granted they were planted in the spring of last year, whoops!).

I love the orange ones, and they draw my eye first, but there’s something about the yellow that’s just so…. lovely.

I’m hoping, sometime, to plant some day lilies at the base of the bed to fill in the gaps and the lower visual range. Perhaps this fall.

E’s school sends out voice mail messages whenever he’s absent or for snow days or any other important message they need to make sure we get. I got one today regarding a new program effective immediately – all children under the age of 18 (regardless of school district) are eligible for breakfast and lunch, daily, free of charge, at one of the schools in our district.

I’m saddened that this is necessary (and have no doubts that it is), and heartened that it’s being done, though I hope it’s a state funded thing and not coming out of our school’s budget (which I’d prefer go to educating children).

This year, since Ken had to go away for the night tonight, we spent yesterday celebrating Father’s Day. The boys and I gave him a new wallet, just like he likes it, complete with photos of the boys in it and a couple dollars for luck. We had some yummy, cinnamon-roll-pancakes for breakfast. Midmorning we took out a wood-working set that let us each paint and assemble a small toy/object (Ken did a plane, I did a bird house, E a bird feeder, V a car). After lunch we let the boys play in a little paddling pool I picked up the other night. I tried to make the day as good for Ken as I could, but the boys were in special form (bad) and it was a rough day. I wish it could have been better. Ken knows, though, how much we love him.

Ken’s got an “important meeting” tomorrow, so he’s driving up to spend the night with his own Dad and coming back tomorrow. Tomorrow is our 7th Anniversary, so we celebrated that a bit early, too, on Friday night. I gave him a double-edge straight razor set with some cologne, aftershave, and shaving soap that I made and was sure to label with copper (the traditional gift for a 7th Anniversary). He loved it, and that felt really good. Ken got me a Flip camera (video) that I’m very happy with and have been taking little videos and figuring it out. It takes better vids than my camera, and starts up faster so I’m more likely to catch the boys doing something cute. They don’t know, I think, yet that it’s a camera so they don’t tend to stop or pose. I don’t know how much those videos will end up online (need to figure out the uploading/software options – which are supposed to be pretty cool), but they’re nice to have since I haven’t been taking as much vid lately as I used to.

First, let me get this out of the way by showing you my current pride:

All fruit are on the Amish Paste plants.

The past month has flown by and I hadn’t realized how much growth the garden has seen, as a whole, until I reviewed the pictures from May 21.

Then:

Now:

(yes, the mint really is 4′ high in the front left end bed)

Then:

Now:

The tomatoes have gone from about 10″ tall to 5′ and are looking really good. The onions I planted in the middle pretty much didn’t happen (a few plants, but barely), so next year I’ll maybe try starting them indoors.

Raspberries Then:

And Now:

The raspberries are full of berries, some of which we’ve already enjoyed. The blackberry is still pretty small, dwarfed by the raspberries (as I am), but it’s growing steadily. The hostas have flower stalks up but not blooms open yet.

The trellis system we have set up for tomatoes and cucumbers has it’s strings, so you get a better idea of the final shape of things…

I’m excited about how it’ll look once the cucs explode (soon, they’ve already started a bit) and the morning glories are right up to the top (they’ve started vining, but pretty low down).

Addendum 6/16/10: First lily blossom opened, and several more on the brink.

Reservations made. We’re planning on spending a week at the beach in Maine this August – taking a day to trip down to Boston and visit the big aquarium for Ethan’s birthday. We’ll be camping, and I’m hoping we can spend a few days building sand castles and a few days investigating tide pools and collecting rocks.

We’re pretty excited. Well, *I* am.

Had a seizure today. More consciousness experienced this time than last, so that’s clinically interesting and distinctly uncomfortable. It’s been a while since the last, so maybe I was due for a reminder of how unpleasant an experience it is (I don’t suggest it).

Thankfully Ken was there and right on the ball (natch) but Ethan saw what happened and, afterward, we taught him how to call Daddy at work if something like that should ever happen again when Ken’s not home.

Wonderful summer storm we’re having right now. Torrential. Just the way I like it.

Things are a bit better. Ken’s still working almost constantly, but it’s the ‘almost’ that makes things bearable.

I finished up (mostly) a couple projects that were hanging over my head, so that feels good (and uncluttered). I made the boys an indoor hopscotch mat (Backyardigans, woo!) that was the original cause of the carpet meltage so the 1st square isn’t there and I’ll need to pick up more fabric transfer sheets to finish up. They like it, despite the number ‘3′ square being upside-down. I also (almost) finished some placemats for the table. I wanted the boys to learn where utensils go and remember having something like that when I was a child. Couldn’t find what I wanted so I made them with some poster board and self-adhesive laminate sheets (which I ran out of, so I only got 2 mats covered). I tried finding digital utensils but nothing worked well so I traced around some of our own. Not the most perfect, but definitely recognizable as *our* utensils. It’s worked beautifully and the boys actually kept their plates in front of them after they finished eating lunch today (instead of pushing their plates away, which they used to do, to my annoyance). They work will dry-erase markers as draw mat’s too, so we may have a dual-purpose item.

We dropped Victor’s nap this week. I may have to murder him.

I think that’s what you’d call it. Y’know, when things are rough and then you make a colossally stupid mistake like ironing something on the carpet and melting a big patch of carpet up/off in the largest room in the house.

The insult being it’ll take the money I’ve been setting aside for the past (almost) 2 years for our Anniversary trip to Ireland next year.

I don’t even think I have the energy to cry, anymore.