*deep breath*

I know I am a month late, but we finally had the last of our family over for the holidays. It was so wonderful to see all of them, and I love having family in the house, but now we start looking to remove the Christmas decorations. I am sure the neighbors love still seeing the Christmas lights and decorations in the yard, hopefully they will be down by Feb.

Pooka had a nice little garden haul again this year. I know Santa brought her some seeds as well as we got her a few seeds for her birthday. Santa brought her some new watermelon seeds, purple cauliflower, some new sweet peppers and ground cherries. I think Santa decided to try outside the box to see what Pooka would think. We on the other hand got her some sparkle violet pepper seeds, some black and white flowers she had asked for, and a few new herbs to try.

Her new canning apron

One of Pooka's aunts made this for her for her birthday. Her own customized canning apron. Pooka loved it and has asked when we will be canning next. She loves wearing apron's to help cook, Aunt J is very talented, and I have loved her work for years. This one just screamed Pooka. I am glad someone can help a Pooka with her more artistic side. Aunt J also gave Pooka a new aloe plant that was divided of Aunt J's one that she has had for years. Pooka has since declared the old one mine and she has her own now.

Stuff for in the garden

Pooka also recieved a craft kit of things she could make for the garden including bird houses (that i am sure will be fairy houses), a bird feeder and a wind chime. I see a day outside building and a couple more painting. Pooka was always a hands on girl. Add to that her love of Plants vs. Zombies. Now this may seem rather random for her, but we are a tad off group, and she loves watching plants do things to kill the zombies, so when I saw a peashooter lawn ornament, I knew it had to go in her garden somewhere.

Wow...

Pooka got a more scientific looking root viewer this year. However, the bigger suprise here is that Pooka got a banana plant. You read that right, a banana plant. I will admit, I got nervous when her friend K's mom texted me and said "Please don't be mad at what the kids picked out. It said why grown normal when you can grow the exotic. My kids says if it works, they want one too" That made me nervous for about 30 seconds and then I decided they knew a Pooka well. The thing promises to grow huge in like 3 months, so we are waiting just a bit to start this one so it can move outside quickly. I don't know if it is suppose to live more than one year, but it is probably going into a pot for now.

More plants

Pooka finally got her first hydroponic set from her grandparents this year. I will admit we are all starting to look at it with a "We should start that for salads". Add to it the little fairy garden I can see her doing and keeping in her room, especially with the multi-colored rocks.

Dragon Plant

Pooka's Aunt B gave her a drgaon plant to grow. The leaves are going to be black, and Pooka's first comment was "I get to grow dragons,." We told her we doubt it, but more than one of her aunts or uncles said "If anyone could do it, it would be that one." Although Daddy has said she can only get a dragon if it breathes fire or ice and flies, so no petco lizard dragons for her.

Root beer

The last thing Pooka got that I want to share is that she got her own root beer brewing kit. She is so excited to try this one, but I told her its a Daddy-Pooka project since Daddy got a beer brewing kit. This should be a good thing for the two of them to do together, and Pooka loves root beer thanks to her grandmother, so at least this way I will know what is in it, and really Pooka loves making everything herself, from weaving herself some hand warmers to brewing root beer. I swear that child would be happy if we moved to the middle of nowhere, got some critters and never went into the real world again. No we would have to go back in the world, we need to go to the book store, someone has her mothers love of books.

Almost gone

Over the summer, we harvested the garlic. And the garlic was good. Daddy said more than once we would never need to buy garlic again. I laughed at him and Pooka wanted to see what other colors we could grow. All told, we pulled in 102 bulbs of garlic weighing in at 121.5 oz. Not a bad haul considering our investment. Our garage smelled of garlic for months as it hung out their drying.

The largest garlic harvest of multiples

Fast forward to late December and the weather got colder, I knew our garlic supply was getting smaller, but the joy and ease of "Oh, I need some garlic, let me go grab one" was way too easy. However as the weather started going to that "let's try sub-zero." Daddy and I decided to bring in the last of the garlic. What you see below is the last lb of garlic. I will admit that having barely made it to Jan I was sad since it meant we would probably have to buy the grocery store stuff for a few months. Pooka actually said "NO, I don't want grocery store garlic, it tastes funny." 

The last of the garlic

Moral of this story, plant more garlic. Let us hope next year's harvest does better.

Saving Pooka Seeds

When we got what we call a Pooka tomato, I decided to try to save the seeds. They were very prolific if a tad small, but we had a ton for one little plant. Pooka just wanted to have a tomato named after her, and I figured we may as well try with these than with anything else.

Pooka tomatoes

A search of the interwebs lead us here, to pretty solid directions on how to do this. In two separate batches (a couple weeks apart), we scooped out the inner part of tomato and let it sit in some water on the counter for a few bit. Now, this is probably the nastiest part, and Pooka wanted no part of it after they grew furry (and they are suppose to)

Getting ready to ferment

 Once the seeds had the correct level of nasty, we strained them from the water. Now, this was rather gross, but we did rinse them off while they were in the strainer. It was much better and Pooka was once again interested.

This is post rinsing off.

 Once we thought they were mostly dry, we placed them on a cloth washcloth (I had heard that paper towels tend to stick) and found a very unused corner to let them sit for a couple of weeks to completely dry out.

And now we have seeds

Once they were dry, I packaged them in a small envelope and placed them with the seeds. Pooka wants to see if she can begin growing her own tomato again. I am just hoping they grow at all. We will have to wait and see.

Oops, Again

It seems I did it again. School started, people were busy and the blog fell by the wayside. Christmas came and went, and suddenly I start looking at seeds and organizing the seeds in general and I went... Oh, I should probably check the blog.

I am hoping in the coming days, to get back to posting (at least during the school year) 2-3 times a week. Maybe it will even be about what we are doing that week (a shock I know).

So here is me, saying Oops, sorry about that. Life is well, life sometimes, and if you blink, you miss it.

Humming bird feeder

Quite a while back, like mid summer, I took the kids out to spend some gift cards and their allowance. Now, most of the money was gift cards that I had held onto since Christmas for a "Special treat" day. I like the kids to have a day to just go out and browse without too much pressure so spending their money is fun and its a great way to cure the mid-summer "I'm bored."

On this day, Pooka had been asking for a humming bird feeder. I refused to buy one because she had a garden. I figured what did we need with another thing to maintain and that she would forget about. Boy was I wrong.

Pooka's hummingbird feeder

Pooka is nothing if not determined. She wanted a hummingbird feeder, and asked if she could use her money.  I told her it was her money, she could do what she wanted with it, but I had veto power. I wouldn't veto this. Pooka bought this little hummingbird feeder with her gift cards. I made the food from a recipe online. I figured it couldn't be that hard to make. We filled the feeder and hung it by some of the tomato plants.

Her humming bird feeder in place

Yet again, I was wrong. The clear food didn't work as well, since it was still there a couple of weeks later. I will admit when I am wrong so we broke down and bought a bottle of the concentrate. That was gone in a couple of days. It worked like a charm and there were so many things that ate from it. I know I saw a few butterflies and some bees, and it helped Pooka finally see her hummingbird. Hopefully Pooka learned from this that sometimes things are better when you buy them than when they are given to you. 

Sunflowers down, sunflowers down.

This is a little story about how you should be careful what you think about. A few weeks ago I was thinking random thoughts while doing something else, and I said to myself, "Gee, maybe planting the sunflower seeds straight in the ground is the way to go. We have not had a single sunflower fall over this year."

A few days later, another one of windy, blustery storms came through. The next day I walked outside to collect some Chinese 5 color peppers and I saw this outside. 

And everyone hit the ground

As usual, none of the stems broke. One small set of roots pulled slightly out, but not by much, and with the fact the ground was so saturated with water, we were pretty sure we could just push it back down and it would be fine. 

Hi fence, how are you

Some of the sunflowers were laying on the neighbor's fence. Fortunately, they are very nice people and were understanding. They had a few of their own plants go falling over in the storm. The sunflowers themselves seemed in decent shape, even if they were a bit droopy. A day or 2 later (after we bought some more poles) we were able to stand most of them back up. In a day or two I will post the 1st of the month pictures for October, and you can see how we supported them for what little remains of the growing season.

Visitor to the Pollinator garden

Pooka was outside one morning with me waiting for Brother's bus to come. I will say I am still not digging the whole bus thing, but that is not the important part of the story. While I am watching a corner full of kids, Pooka yells "Mommy, Mommy look what I found." Once all the kids are on the bus, I came up and took a look. I didn't see it at first, but Pooka saw something on her milkweed. 

Do you see what Pooka sees?

Well, once I was convinced to get closer and I saw our little friend and went for the camera. Turns out she had a little monarch caterpillar hanging out on the milk weed. I did kneel in the wet grass to take this picture, but Pooka had a new friend in her pollinator garden.  Pooka was so happy her pollinator garden was attracting some new friends. Pooka kept tails on this little guy for a couple of days before he wandered off. She did tell me she saw a hummingbird a few days ago, but it was gone before I got the camera. Hopefully for her this is a sign that more "friends" have found her little garden and are content.

Hello Caterpillar.