Beanstalk Update

Remember this guy? This milk weed of great determination? It started growing in one of our window wells and after it got so tall I didn't have the heart to kill it...WHAT??? Not kill a weed? My Dad is rolling over, I just know it! In July it was roughly 8 feet tall. The window well is three feet deep.

Last night Diana helped me hold the weed up so I could take a photo before I sent it to weed heaven.

As you can see, it only grew about 6 more inches but got very bushy at the top.

It has been laying over from it's own weight for several weeks.

(This was a good thing because then you couldn't see it from the street!)

What have we learned from our experiment?


#1 Weeds are ugly.


#2 Weeds grow faster than flowers.


#3 Weeds only grow so tall. No giants coming down from our beanstalk here! No Fe Fi Fo Fum. Bummer!


#4  And lastly...my family thinks I am a little nuts!

But YOU don't, do you?

Of Monster Cookies and Beanstalks...

Summer is in full swing at the little house on the corner.

Here are a few shots of what has been going on.

Monster cookies!

Britt and Sarah G. wanted to make cookies to take to friends. They used a recipe I got from a friend years ago. Monster cookies are made with no flour. They contain oats, peanut butter, brown sugar, cornsyrup, and lots of M&M's and chocolate chips. They cook into chewy wonderfulness! Miss B got the idea that the recipe wouldn't make many so she doubled it...

As you can see, even my KitchenAide wasn't big enough! They had to use their hands. We were eating those things for a week!

I love the swirly action in this shot!

Sam loved cleaning Britt's hands! (I promise she washed them before continuing!)

Skype!

I have said it before...I am so thankful for Skype!

I love being able to see an hear my daughter so far away! Sarah is currently suffering the heat and humidity of Florence, Italy doing research for her doctoral thesis as well as some for a professor she knows at the University of Toronto. I say "suffering" lightly because while it is indeed  in the 90's with 50% or more humidity levels, she gets to go and visit Michelangelo's David for me...which she did yesterday...jealous!!!!! I also love Skype because I can whip out my camera and torment her by taking her picture and she can see me doing it!

And speaking of Beanstalks...we were weren't we?

This, my friends, is a 2.5 foot deep window well on the south side of our house where, unbeknownst to us, a natural phenomenon has been taking place.

Fee Fi Fo Fum!

I think it is a milkweed or maybe a dandelion out of control, but any day I expect a giant to come lumbering into our house. I guess I had better hide my golden harp, or is it the goose that lays the golden eggs? Either way, I'm hiding them!

This is so unlike me to let this guy keep growing but I can't help myself!

I'll post another picture next week to chart his progress. I am guessing his height is currently about 8 feet!

P.S. These orange Day Lilies came from some starts my Dad gave us 10 years ago! I a so happy to see them every year. It's a beautiful piece of my father, a gift from him that lives on!

Color~

All I can say is...It's about time!!!

We're in a Jam!

What began six years ago as two little twigs from my father's blackberry bushes in Bloomfield, New Mexico have grown into two huge fruit bearing monsters in my back yard! They are thorn less which is heaven sent, and they have been full of berries for three weeks now. Saturday Richard, Rachel, Dee, & I picked for about an hour and filled a huge steel bowl that is two feet in diameter! We washed, drained, measured, smashed, mixed, stirred, and bottled all afternoon and have roughly a year's supply of jam to show for it! There were more berries left over but we ran out of containers so Dee made a huge pie; this after two pies last Saturday! There are more berries to come in the next few days and I already have a dozen quarts of plain berries in our freezer for future smoothies or pies. I cannot believe I am not permanently stained purple after all of this but it has been fun and we are thankful for this bounty. I found myself talking to Dad yesterday after a few hours of jamming and thought I felt him smiling at us!

Dee's Peas

Every year my husband is chomping at the bit to get his garden planted. In March he starts asking, "How soon do you think...?" He planted tomatoes one sunny day in April (the key word being ONE...that's all we got). They were snug in their Walls of Water but he did lose one. Since peas are a colder weather item he got those planted next. He has been watching them like the were his babies and swears they grew an inch this weekend...they probably did! Every year he looks a bit more like an old farmer out there and this shot amused me!