A great week.

This week the kids spent a couple nights with Grandpa and Grandma. I was able to do spend some good time with friends and my sweet husband. Aubin and I hung out and went to a flea market and found some great bargains, Suzanne and I watched some Martha (I haven't seen Martha in years-it was so great) and made facial lotion. I also helped catch a bull calf to band-castrate him. (I may have wrote that incorrectly, I don' quite have the whole bull/calf/castration/steer lingo mastered yet.) And Matheau and I ate at Chipotle, had some Ben & Jerry's and started watching season 6 of 24.



But as always, I love my kids. So when they arrived home we have had fun picking black raspberries, going swimming, working in the garden, and today, Allison volunteered and helped me clean out the hen house.

Fruit.

We have wild black raspberries that are getting ready to pick. Last year I did a horrible job of keeping the area around them cleaned up enough to pick them. This year, since my Dad, brother and Matheau have mowed twice, I have been able to keep an eye on them. They should be ready to start picking this next week.





I ordered some tomato seed from Seed Savers-late-but I could resist. A couple of days ago, I noticed one of the containers I had planted them in was missing some leaves. I didn't really think much about it until a little later, I noticed that a lot of leaves were gone! After a bit of inspection, I found the culprit. I nice fat caterpillar.

A quick stop by the farmers market this week.

Lizzie and I found some fresh chai basil (quite yummy in pesto), yellow squash, mixed lettuce and spinach, a dozen sweet potato starts and a couple of homemade peanut butter cookies for the ride.

Being thrifty.

I have this dilemma, we live on a budget but I like to buy the "good stuff". For example, instead of polyester I like to buy cotton batting. I like handmade and wool/cotton yarns, without all the acrylic. Sometimes the two don't go very well together, but I do have a few tricks to help me survive. For example, for my recent lap quilt project I used cotton batting, but instead of using the entire piece for the quilt, while cutting out the fabric, I made the quilt a wee bit smaller so I could I could make some coasters for wedding gifts and to go with the quilt on the front porch.

Some coasters and a felted potholder for a wedding gift.


Coasters for the front porch.

Hollyhocks.

After showing the photos of sweet pea starts I was thinking about all the hollyhocks I spent hours digging out of my flower beds thinking they were just really big weeds. When we first moved to Mound City I spent a lot of time cleaning up flower beds to put in some of my favorite flowers and herbs. These really huge lettuce looking leaves kept showing up and I would have to take a shovel to get rid of even half of the roots. You can imagine my horror when I found the same leaves in a pot with a price tag of at least $9.00 per plant!!

Since then I half left a few. But just incase you may make the same mistake I've taken some photos of them at various stages. My first ones started blooming just yesterday.

Picnic lunch.

Trying a couple more recipes from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and Apples for Jam. The chicken legs had an orange sauce-yummy. And deviled eggs and fresh bread just make good picnic food.

Without internet.

Well, it has almost been a week and it is going be be a bit longer. :) So, just in case you are wondering, I am collecting about two eggs per day from the girls and they seem to have made the full transition into our hen house and runs. They have even learned to walk (is that the right word to describe hens moving?) quickly when we are moving out into the yard.

Have a great week everyone.