Summertime Pics, vol.3 -- Berry Pickin'

We spent the morning picking blueberries with Sherry, Isaac, Asher & Jodie at Reed Valley Orchard. They have pick-your-own prices, as well as pre-picked berries and all manner of yummy jams & spreads inside. (I'm dying to try the pumpkin butter.) We spent about an hour amidst the bushes, enjoying the sunshine and the peacefulness of being outside.

As relaxing as it sounds (and it was), I have a new respect for folks who grow and pick produce for a living. This hearty berry crop didn't just spring up overnight, like green beans or squash. These bushes took several years to reach full bearing potential, and must be covered with fine mesh to keep snacking birds away. (This grove of bushes was grown inside a huge mesh tent.) And after the bushes fruit, someone has to pick the gorgeous berries, and this takes a little longer than picking a squash.

I don't say this to complain; it just bring the price of food a bit more into perspective. I realized that when I go to Krogers, or even to the farmers' market, I tend to get a little judgmental and dissatisfied with the prices. "Why does a pint of blueberries cost so much?" After sweating in the sun for an hour picking berries, I began to wonder why they don't cost more. And it became more apparent at the register -- you save $2 a quart picking your own. No question, it was worth it.

We ended up with almost a gallon of blueberries (picked by us), a quart of blackberries (pre-picked), and a jar of pear preserves that Sherry highly recommended. Plans for the fruit include a batch of jam and at least one pie. Sherry was telling me how to freeze them, but I didn't pay much attention -- I'm fairly sure none will make it that far.

Miranda assesses the crop. At first, she didn't distinguish between green and blue berries, but after a while she would come up to me with a handful of gorgeous ripe berries. (I don't want to know how many she ate on the sly.)
Sherry displays her harvest.

Isaac and Miranda take a well-deserved rest in the shade. Ah, the life of the preschooler.

Praying, I guess.

Early summer garden update

12 tomatoes, 3 okra, 13 peppers, 2 watermelon, 3 pumpkins, 32 runner beans, 2 artichokes, 1 eggplant, 1 squash, 1 zucchini, 1 acorn squash, 1 butternut squash, 1 cantaloupe, 6 cucumbers, 18 marigolds, 18 nasturtiums, 2 fennel, 1 cilantro, 2 parsley, 1 chervil, and 6 basil...

Filthiness is Next to Godliness

This I believe to be the truth, especially in the spring.

On Tuesday, our friend Julius helped me to edge our front flower beds. We had too much coffee, too many doughnuts, too big a lunch at the Meadowthorpe cafe, and a great time in general. The sun was shining and the air was mild, and Miranda enjoyed helping us work (when she wasn't digging for worms and using her sidewalk chalk).

Miranda oversees the placement of the edging.

When I applied her sunscreen, I thought, "She's going to get absolutely filthy." And she did!

The semi-finished flower bed. I'll post pictures of the final draft tomorrow.

more gardening with Wunchie

Miranda has been helping me with our flats of flower seedlings. I really don't know what I'm doing, but I suppose we'll learn together. Here she's helping me fill shotglasses with water, to soak the seeds overnight before planting. (This facilitates germination.)

Miranda really got the hang of spraying the seedlings to moisten the soil.

I'll post some pics when the first growth emerges!

701 Golfview Drive -- I miss you

Sounds strange, I know. Here I am in a beautiful house that's twice as big as the old one, lovely new kitchen, lovely fenced back yard, lovely neighborhood, and yet there are still things I miss about our home on Golfview Drive.

• I miss how easy it was to feel in touch with the neighborhood while actually in the house. The kitchen window looked right out onto the side street, so I could see everyone walking by (and open up the window and say hello). The front windows offered a view of Golfview Drive and whomever was cruising by at the time.


• The corner lot made it a central location. Whenever we were working on the flower bed, the herb bed or the vegetable garden, we could say hello to folks going by.


• I miss our great mailman, who was so kind to John and always had news about folks in the neighborhood.


• I miss our old bedroom. I love the color -- a deep russet red -- and how cozy the color made me feel. I especially miss the view from our bedroom window. We'd constructed a mini-ecosystem in that section of the yard, so we could see the vegetable garden, the trumpet vine, the honeysuckle, the rock garden, and 2 bird feeders from our window. I'd planted a flowering crabapple just outside the window, and its leaves, flowers, and fruit were lovely to behold. It also drew cardinals and mockingbirds. I also planted a mock orange just outside the window, whose sweet scent was a gift on summer evenings. And we could watch the progress of the daylilies that I'd planted underneath the window.


• I miss the things we planted during our time there. The herbs who were 7 years old the month we moved, the japanese honeysuckle and the trumpet vine, the cranesbill in the front bed that grew 1000% during its 6 years, the coral bells (which I got from a professor at Asbury) encircling the birdbath. The mohawk viburnum, whose red berries were the same ones I carried in my wedding bouquet.


• I miss the guest bathroom, which I redecorated southwestern-Texan-adobe. I loved that room.

There are plenty of things that are wonderful about the new house, but that's for another post. Today, I just want to grieve all the things I left at 701 Golfview Drive.

Pics from last year's garden Wunchie

Helping dig the rhubarb bed, which was hard work!

Does this big shovel work any better?

Getting instruction from a friend (and his owner).

At home in the rows.

Sampling a fresh cuke from Three Springs Farm.

A butternut squash from our garden!

Wunchie-sized pumpkin

The Beginning of the End

Well, it's official -- we put the sign in the yard today. And the flyers with the color photos. And the info on the FSBO website. Sigh...

239 Burke: Update

Our inspection went well; we have a few roof, fireplace, and furnace issues to resolve, but no dealbreakers. And if you know our inspector, you realize that's a miracle. (He's done lots of inspections for Communality folks; we call him the Terminator, the Destroyer, the Dream-Crusher...) No, he's just very, very thorough, and we all like him -- he looks out for us.

We've doing the radon test as we speak, and also got an estimate to waterproof the basement. We'll do these things immediately after closing (+/- April 2), then begin moving in. That's all for now.

A change is looming

A bit of context:

In January 2000, during our engagement, Billy and I decided to buy a house. We liked the idea of building equity in a home, of investing in a neighborhood, of having the space to practice hospitality. After a few weeks of searching, we found our present home at 701 Golfview Drive, where we've lived for the past 7 years. Our entire married life has been there; it is where we welcomed Lena, John, and Miranda. It's been our home, and we've been really happy there. And not just our house -- the neighborhood has become our home as well. Playing and gardening with the neighborhood kids, working with the neighborhood association, spending time with the guys up the street at the Golfview House, walking to Buffalo Wild Wings -- so many things have become special to us.

Yet slowly but surely, we have been outgrowing this house. Even with a fabulous design (vaulted ceilings, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a walk-in closet and a laundry room., plus garage!), it's still just over 1000 square feet. When we moved in 7 years ago, it was just the two of us, and our house seemed spacious and welcoming. We had our bedroom with its walk-in closet and private bath (snazzy!), an office, and a guest room and guest bath. It was lovely, and everything seemed to have its proper place, and was easy to keep under control. Now fast-forward 2 1/2 years and add another, non-related adult, and there goes our guest bedroom and bath. Fast forward another 3 years and add an infant, and there goes our office and a large part of our living room. (Although we enclosed an area of the garage to serve as an office, it's not quite the same.) We can still coexist under the same roof, but things are pretty tight. And having guests means one of two unappealing options -- they're on the couch or they're at a hotel.

So, for the past several months we've been looking at houses. We had a contract on one last fall, which fell through due to a slimy and deceptive homeseller. (I'm just saying...) But last week, we signed a contract on this nice home. It's in a neighborhood that I've always loved, just a mile and a half out of downtown and the High Street House. There are mature trees and lots of front porches, and an elementary school and a park and a grocery within a half-mile walk. Its interior is stuck in the 70's, but that's fixed easily enough. It has a nice backyard for Miranda, for a garden, for entertaining and chatting with neighbors. It's twice the size of our present home, with room to expand into the basement if we choose. And I think we'll be really happy there. There will be much grieving as we leave our sweet Golfview home, which I'll probably process here on the blog, but I know God has good things in store for us on Burke Road.

We have our inspection and radon test this week, and will hopefully close around the end of March. I'll keep everyone posted.

Eatin' In (2nd Installment)

We've been trying to eat in for a few weeks now, and it's been interesting. We began by looking more closely at our cupboard, fridge, and freezer, trying to see what's really there. It's actually pretty amazing how we just look past certain things, never really considering them as eatable. But when we change our expectations about what constitutes a meal, it opens up all sorts of options.

We are considering having a weekly menu; our friends the Browns do this and their meals run really smoothly (at least to the outside observer). You know: Monday is soup, Tuesday is italian, Wednesday beans & rice, etc etc. But our schedule is pretty unpredictable; between occasional date nights, occasional night meetings, meals with friends -- how will this really work? Perhaps we'll try it anyway.

One thing we've done twice since beginning is Leftover Night. You know, those bowls covered in foil or nondescript tupperware containers, holding who knows what. Well, as long as you label them with dates (or really, really trust your memory), this meal works surprisingly well. It's fun to sit down to several small bowls of various stuff, perhaps supplemented with a bit of cereal or toast or PBJ squares. We're going to keep this up for sure.

Tonight we're having a recipe for spicy bean dip, hopefully modified to make bean & cheese quesadillas, plus a green salad. Yum!

Eatin' In (1st installment)

Our friend Will Samson set up a contest called the Pantry Challenge, where he asked bloggers how long they could eat from their fridge, freezer and pantry without having to buy anything except bare staples (eggs, sugar, and milk). Although we opted not to participate, we were inspired. So, Billy and I are trying to eat more meals at home, and have them actually be home-cooked. And by meals, we mean things prepared with knives and bowls, and the stove and oven (not the microwave variety), and pots and pans. We're also trying to consistently eat together, at the table, with placemats and napkins and full sets of silverware, and glasses of water and hot tea. This may sound like a no-brainer, but it hasn't been a habit for us. However, having Miranda has made us more aware of the habits and customs we model to her, and the values and virtues we'd like her to absorb. So, here we are in the kitchen and the dining room.

We're realizing you can have meals that are inexpensive, or fast, or healthy. You can usually even have any 2 of these 3 criteria, but it's difficult to accomplish all three at once. So, this blog thread will chronicle our growth in this area. Hopefully we'll showcase some meals, possibly a weekly menu, things like that. If you have any thoughts, advice, recipes, etc, please feel free to comment!

Tonight's dinner was a repeat of last night -- homemade chicken potpie, green salad with apples, pecans, and apple-chili vinagarette, and sugar-free pudding. Miranda enjoyed most of it but also had avocado and kiwi (her new fave). Making the potpie was enlightening. As I prepared to shop, I thought, "OK, I need boneless chicken breasts, frozen veggies, cream of chicken or mushroom soup, and canned biscuits for the topping." But after thinking a bit, I bought a whole chicken for $3.50, and came home and used my one can of veg-all in the cupboard, then cornstarch to thicken the broth after the chicken had boiled, and my staple flour, etc to create the crust. It was inexpensive ($4.09 not counting the staples) and delicious, and made 6-8 generous servings.

However, it was time-consuming and pretty messy. Cooking a whole chicken is easy to begin and laborious to complete (boil it too long, and all these little bones get in the broth and you have to strain it, plus you burn your fingers getting the meat off!). The biscuit dough got flour everywhere, and it took forever to figure out how much cornstarch to use for the gravy. You really begin to admire people who had to do this every day (and had to kill, gut, and pluck the chicken, to boot). It really made us appreciate the relative ease of our lives, and will hopefully keep my whining to a minimum.

We've been at this for about a week, so I'll blog about our earlier meals tomorrow. It's been interesting, and surprisingly tasty!

On bringing nature closer

A few years ago, Billy and I (actually my mom, my sister and I) planted a flowering crabapple tree outside our bedroom window. It's pretty small, and it's probably too close to the house, but it was my hope that it would encourage various birds to light there, enjoying the shelter and food. However, I find that I often forget about it, just seeing it as part of the landscape.

I was brushing my teeth this morning when a flutter of color caught my eye. I glanced out the window and saw one -- two -- three male cardinals in the branches of my little tree, snacking on the fruit and peacably coexisting. For the next few minutes, they flitted in and out of the branches, joined by their mates and a couple of sparrows, while a red-headed woodpecker rat-tat-tatted on the nearby elm. He even discouraged a bushy squirrel from descending the tree; he turned tail and hopped across the garage roof.

Billy brought Miranda to the window, where the red of the cardinals caught her eye and captivated her for a minute or two. Then she banged her miniature pumpkin against the glass, and our friends took flight.