GOOD GARDENING MAKES UP FOR CRUMMY FIDDLE HEADS!!

The fiddle heads that I finally collected tasted awful. I hated them! Tom and Erin liked the first few and Thomas actually ate quite a few before he realized they weren't that great! I don't know why they tasted so good when I was a kid????

So, although this has been a week where I haven't felt so great, I've manage to still get a little gardening done. On the easy side I picked a few more beans from the plants on my window sill and now I'm up to 235 grams. I also thinned out my tomato and pepper seedlings that I started a couple weeks ago. I will still have to thin some more of the peppers and the impatiens when they get bigger. WOW, I just found out through spell check that I've always been wrong when I spelled it "impatients!" You learn something new everyday!

On the more difficult side, I was able to spend 2 or 3 hours working outside in my garden. I had dug a wide trench a week or so ago in order to do my pared down version of double digging. Yesterday I was able to add a couple of inches of decayed wood chips to the bottom and then made a good mix of peat moss, cow manure and the original soil to fill the rest in. I spent quite a bit of time mixing it all together. I plan to plant my carrots, beets and possibly swiss chard there and hope for the best. I have this nagging feeling that I will be extra disappointed when they don't grow well. Maybe reverse psychology will work. If I'm sure that nothing will grow maybe I'll be surprised when it's successful??? Reverse psychology seems to be working at least a bit when it comes to my migraines. Did I mention that I could be getting a migraine any minute now? If I keep saying that maybe I won't get one...oops that's being a bit too positive, maybe I should just say that I don't hold out much hope of this reverse psychology thing working! Well, at least if I'm a bit negative and skeptical of my new gardening bed, I won't be so disappointed if it fails to grow anything.

Anyhoo, I am quite proud of my new bed it's all fluffy and fertile looking! When I work so hard at something it gives me a very satisfied feeling. I hope to get out there today and work a bit more but it's supposed to be quite hot. Erin said it may get up to 80 degrees! EEK!

SARAH THE ARTIST

Sarah loves to take pictures and I get to see the world through her eyes. Anyone can take a picture of a beautiful flower but it takes a real artist to see beauty in what others perceive as ugly

SARAH'S BUGS

....and because one of Sarah's favorite photography subjects are bugs...

MORE FROM SARAH

This is a battle that Sarah captured on film. A spider and ant fighting over the body of a dead comrade. Eventually the ant gives up and lets the spider have his friend.

SO MUCH TO DO, SO LITTLE TIME...

I usually go on the computer first thing in the morning. If I feel the energy and the motivation I start to form a list of things that I want to do that day. At the end of the day it's nice to have that tired but satisfied feeling of a day filled with activity. I think now that I've had so many days where I don't feel well enough to do anything, I appreciate it all the more. I try to ignore the nagging feeling that I may never be able to do as much as I used to. I find sometimes I'm nagged by the fact that I don't have as much motivation anymore either. Sometimes this lack of motivation is due to not feeling well and sometimes it's due to being so out of shape compared to what I was.

So the funny aspect to all this is that I come up with this list that is a mile long, expecting that I will be able to do at least a half mile of it, only to accomplish an inch. It seems to be the story of our household. A story that we've learned to get a chuckle from. Just the other day we were laughing at the fact that we were discussing whether it took Tom two years or three to build the new closet in our bedroom. I figured in order to match that time frame, I would need to take my time at putting all our stuff back into the new closet! I'm not sure if it took me one or two months! It's not that we don't keep busy. Tom especially. He is a person who constantly needs to be doing something. I think it's really a function of our expectations. Once we had kids we didn't factor in the idea that we needed to spend time doing things with them. Of course we would not miss their childhood for anything. However, some where in the back of our minds we still think we can get as much done as in our pre child days. I think the reason that we are able to laugh about it is the fact that we still are able to get an incredible amount done. When I look at the "barn" (AKA shed) Tom built last year, as well as, the potting shed he helped Thomas build I am amazed that he was able to accomplish that along with the usual family vacations and just hanging out around here with the family. Oh yeah, and that little thing called a full time job! The amount that I accomplish is much less than Tom but I think I can give myself credit for the fact that I end up doing at least some things because it takes a lot of time to run a household...or at least in the way that I want to run it. I place a lot of value in being involved with my kids. I only have this time once. I know that we will all look back and be happy with how our lives went.

FIDDLE HEADS

Well, I think I'm going to do it! I'm going to harvest some fiddle heads this year! I used to pick and eat fiddle heads as a child and I'd love to have them again. Fiddle heads are unfurled ferns. They taste good boiled with a little bit of butter.

Unfortunately, there are some potentially toxic aspects.... I've done quite a bit of researching and also some plain old searching! When I was young someone else told me where to find fiddle heads and I always just went back to the same place to pick them. I knew what they looked like but as an adult I wasn't sure if there were similar looking fiddle heads that weren't edible.

What I've learned is that I'm looking for Ostrich Ferns. Some people eat other kinds, but the Ostrich Fern is the only one that is completely safe. They have some" distinctive" characteristics. I've learned that they come up in clusters, have a groove in their stem and have a brown papery covering on them. I can remember the brown papery covering very clearly from my childhood.

I've located a good source and have been checking them for the past two weekends. I hope that they taste as good as I remember and I hope that at least someone else in my family likes them too.

BOOK REVIEW OF THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BY EILEEN FLANAGAN

Eileen Flanagan is a Quaker that tries to live her religion. This book is for the religious person, as well as, the not so religious person like me. I never felt as if she was trying to judge me or make me follow her religion. She's truly written for everyone. For me it was a slow read only because it provoked me to really contemplate what she was writing. Every time I sat down to read I came away with a good feeling about life. It seemed as if each paragraph was filled with things that made me really think! A feel good book!

Click here for her blog.

ALWAYS MORE GARDENING TALK

It seems that I never tire of gardening talk. Last weekend I managed to prepare the area where I wanted to plant my peas. Then I gave it a heavy dose of fertilizer. On Monday I was able to spend an hour planting the seeds just before it started to rain. I was so happy all week because I had been able to complete my goal! I think they will be slow to germinate because it's been somewhat cold ever since.

Yesterday I went to the store and bought a 3.8 cubic foot bag of peat moss, a 40 lb bag of pellet lime and ten 40 lb bags of cow manure. By the time I loaded it all onto my cart, I was huffing and puffing. I was sort of hoping that someone would take pity on me and help. I didn't feel like searching someone out to ask them for help. It all weight well over 500 lbs. I could barely push the cart up to the register. Again, I didn't fell like asking for help, I just hoped it would come my way. Nope. I pushed it out to the truck and loaded it in. One time my husband was loading stuff into the truck and two young guys thought they'd help the "old" guy with gray hair. Apparently, everyone figured I was young, healthy and rugged. I surprised myself when I was able to heft the bag of peat moss into the truck. Not only is it bulky, but I think it probably weighs 50 lbs. After driving home, the only thing I unloaded was the pellet lime in case it rained. Everything else is still out there waiting to be unloaded and carted up to the garden. On the way home I stopped at the local yard where you can buy wood chips, decorative rocks, topsoil, etc. I asked about the price for getting a half load of top soil in our truck and was told $15 so we will probably be getting two or three loads this year. As always we will also be buying at least a couple of full loads of wood chips for $25 each.

The green beans that I planted inside are doing great. They have a lot of 1 and 2 inch skinny little beans growing. It's so exciting but I will be happy when they are done. They have tons of little fruit flies or something similar flocking around them. I blame this on the fact that it was dirt that I had left in the pots out on the porch for months last summer/fall. They must have laid eggs in the soil and hatched out once they were inside. Now they are on their second hatching and it's just worse! Well, hopefully it will end up being worth it! Even if I don't get enough beans for a meal, the kids like to eat them raw.

It's much colder this weekend than last but hopefully I will still get out in the garden and get my hands dirty!

GEESE AND MORE GEESE

Last spring I noted that I hardly heard or saw any Canadian Geese flying north for the summer. I wondered where they all were. This year I realized I just wasn't in the right place at the right time. On March 15th I was driving towards Scranton when I saw some geese over head. THOUSANDS OF GEESE!! First I saw one huge flock, then another and another until I realized that the flocks stretched for farther than the eye could see! I only had a chance to look south and not north because I couldn't believe my eyes! Finally all I could make out were tiny black dots in the telltale V format. I'm sure if I had turned and looked north I would have seen the same. As Sarah always says "I love nature!" and "I love living in Pennsylvania!"

SUCH A GOOD DRIVER

Thursday we reached a new milestone. Thomas got his license! He passed with flying colors. Thomas like all teenagers was quite nervous. I hadn't been worried until I got out of the car and the tester got in. Thomas went to drive off and forgot to put it in drive. ROOOAAARRR! The tester's window was open so I tried not to laugh or say out loud "LORDY, this is NOT going to go well!" Thomas told me that he let out a "PHEW!" and calmed himself down and after that everything was perfect. He had been practicing parallel parking in a 22 foot space so he easily pulled into the 24 foot space they provided. I guess once he got it out of park the tester was impressed enough to tell me that Thomas seems to have a good head on his shoulders. The tester said he didn't even mark Thomas off for that his little mistake at the beginning.

So as for Thomas, he now can go anywhere he wants...if it wasn't for the fact that he'd rather stay home. As for me, in June Erin gets her permit and I will have to start all over again. Oh yeah, and soon I will be teaching Thomas to drive a stick shift since we plan to let him drive our pick up to school next year.