Motherly sayings

"Son, I don't think it's good for the umbrella to hammer on it." Good grief. I never knew I'd have to SAY that.

What to say when we awaken in jail?

This is so random, but I got such a huge kick out of this thread on Facebook, that I wanted to post it in my blog.  Here is the scenario: "If you & I woke up in jail together...using only FOUR words...what would you say to me?"

Here are some of my favorite responses, in no particular order:

No kids! No kids!

My name is JULIO. (That was an "in" joke.)

I don't believe it.

Next time, pants on.

What will Matt think?

We are so screwed.

Dang! We had Fun!

We got some sleep!!

Your lawyer, or mine?

I told you so!

Bring anything to read?

This is your fault.

Awww man, not again.

Thanks for the help.

Fancy meeting you here.

Is that my blood?

What did you do?

Don't tell my husband!

Let's do it again!

You come here often?

Parsley Pesto

Hi to all my loyal fans!  I wanted you both to know that I tried my Fabulous Pesto tonight with the herbs I had on hand and it turned out great.  My basil in the garden had not been happy about some 30's-ish lows last month, so I only had a tad of that for my pesto.  I had a bit of cilantro and TONS of parsley.  It was vibrantly green and yummy on our bean thread pasta.  By the time you put parmesan, pine nuts and garlic on anything it would taste great.

How much are 16 caterpillars worth?

Today's garden yield included 2 cherry tomatoes, over 6 pounds of Manderin oranges and 16 juicy caterpillars.  Since early November when I did a big seed catalog order, I've been keeping track of my garden expenses and yields.  My little spreadsheet includes expenses of seeds, plants, pots and stakes totally $73.49.  I didn't include wages for our work or expenses of watering because they were too hard to quantify and, hey, its a labor of love.  My yields record all the garden produce I've harvested since November 1: chard, lettuce, eggplants, tomatoes, herbs, lemons, oranges, lima beans, black-eyed peas, pomegranates, radishes, potatoes, and butternut squash.  Assigning values to each produce item, trying to be comparable to organic produce at the store, my yield so far is about $156.  But today's yield included 16 little green caterpillars eating my turnip greens.  How much are they worth?  How will I fit them into the equation?

I plucked them off.  They are now residing in a jar with greens from turnips and from a nearby radish, which wasn't infested with the caterpillars.  I'm setting it up as a preschool science experiment.  Do you think the caterpillars will selectively eat the turnip greens in the jar?  Or had they just not noticed my lovely radishes?  Oh!  Gotta add the radish and baby turnip to the yield totals!

Ok, my science mind is starved by motherhood.  I got out some old equations to work on the caterpillar density.  I know that 16 caterpillars might not sound that remarkable to you, but they were found in my little container garden.  One pot of lonely turnips, the pot being about 12 inches in diameter.  Feel free to check my math...  That is a radius of 6 inches.  The surface area of the pot is pi*r*r = 113.1 square inches.  That's 0.15 caterpillars per square inch, or 20.4 caterpillars per square foot.  Gosh, if I had an acre of turnips, they'd have 887,397 caterpillars on them!  That feels like a caterpillar plague of Biblical proportions in my little pot!

Wonderful worm castings!

It has been a while since I've tended to our worm bin in a substantial way.  We just keep them in a plastic tote in the garage.  A month or so ago I'd moved all the contents over to one side of the bin and started adding the new bedding and new kitchen scraps on the other side.  This gives the worms a chance to migrate out of the older bedding and scraps and into the new, easing but not eliminating the sorting of worms.  Today was harvest day from the old side.  In addition to finding a happy, healthy worm population with plenty of egg sacks, I harvested about 2 gallons (I'm estimating from my 5 gallon bucket) of fresh worm castings.  These went directly onto our sugar snap peas that are happily blooming.  Nothing like digging around in worm poop to really make your day.  Elizabeth, you said that it is pretty sad when good limas make your day.  Is worm poop sadder?  But it was really rich worm poop!  I'm linking an image from RedWormComposting.com so you can  see what I mean about the egg sacks.

The best lima beans of my life

Months ago I planted some lima beans from the dried bulk bin.  Unfortunately only one of them grew well.  The one that took, grew pretty well.  Today I harvested all 11 pods since they looked mature.  I've never grown limas before so don't really know.  Did you know the pod is fuzzy?  I did a cursory Google search today to see how to prepare them.  My distracted search with DD tugging on me didn't net much useful information.  I took a pod to DS's preschool and polled the teachers.  Although no one had cooked a fresh lima bean before, the consensus seemed to be to shuck them and boil/steam the beans as one would fresh peas.  So this evening the kids and I shucked the limas, yielding a whopping 1.25 ounces of beans (an average of about 2 beans per pod).  I put them in a pan with a tiny bit of water and simmered the beans until soft.  They were the best lima beans we've ever eaten.  I must grow them again!  And in a better location to get a better yield.  I also think that next time I'll put the dry beans in a wet paper towel before planting to start them sprouting.

The Holiday of Horrors

It has been a while since I've posted.  You know how the whirlwind of the holidays can get ahead of you.  And it still is ahead of me, but I've got to share this.  We've just experienced what I shall refer to in years to come as "The Holiday of Horrors."  I'll post the very abbreviated version.

On 12/26 we drove to Arizona to visit family.  On 12/27 my 92 year old Grandfather got a stomach bug and was hospitalized.  On 12/28 DS got bug, spent 2 days on the sofa and didn't stop throwing up until 1/2.  On 12/29 my Mom got bug.  On 12/30 Grandfather died.  On 1/1 I got the bug.  On 1/2 we drove back home to California without emesis or excrement soiling the new (used) minivan.  On 1/3 DS and I were still on the sofa due to the bug.  On 1/4 DD got it.  So far, only DH has escaped unscathed.  I sure hope we are done with it.  Today DS went back to school and DH went back to work, so we are pretending we are back to normal.