Fastidious: excessively particular, critical, or demanding

Along with the new school year, a new principal, and a new curriculum, I am also getting a new classroom. You would think that I would be more concerned about the new Language Arts Enhancement class I will be teaching in addition to regular Language Arts, but no; it's all about color and walls.

In an effort to dress up my classroom, I have various blue and red patterned cloth swagged around the top of my classroom walls. I think it's fun and the star/solar system pattern works in nicely with our team's name: Stars.

My new classroom had two walls painted a very nice sea green; let me emphasize that correctly--a VERY NICE sea green. But sea green with a stars and stripes color scheme? I don't think so. I seriously lost sleep over the very thought.

The next morning I stopped by Home Depot for some color samples before heading to school to pack up books. On my way home for lunch, I picked up a nice light blue and with some help from a friend (Thanks Kristine!) I got a first coat on. Later that evening, the second coat went up and I was done for the week. It was my last week of summer vacation and I committed to stay away from school until my first contract day. Did I have a lot of work to do on curriculum? You bet! Did I do anything about it? No Way! But, my classroom will look great!

So here's the question: Does the title fit?

Oh where oh where have my dominoes gone?

No, I haven't lost my marbles, just the dominoes. My sister recently came to visit with my niece and nephew. They spent one night with me before we all headed down to her in-laws for the week. I don't have many kid toys--my collection includes one toy truck--so my sister pulled out the dominoes since they play with those at home, too. It was all good. My niece shared them with the cats hiding underneath the couch and made lines of them on the window seal. After the kids went down, my sister gathered them all up and put them away.

Later in the week, we ended up stopping by my house for dinner to break up the drive home from the beach. They pulled out the dominoes and had fun scattering them about. We ate quickly so we could be back for bed time.

The visit ended and I came back home where there were a few, but only a few, dominoes scattered around the house. I picked up a couple and went to put them in box, but the box was empty. Where were the dominoes? I looked under the couch where the cats had been hiding. I looked behind the chair where my niece had hidden once. I couldn't find them anywhere.

I continued on with my chores which included remaking the bed in the sewing room. There I saw this:
My niece had put the majority of the dominoes into the wooded basket (a gift from my brother and sister-in-law) and put it under the sewing desk.
The irony is that they were in the same place I found my missing box. From now on, I think I'm going to look under the sewing desk when I can't find something.

Pictastory: Cat in a Box

My cats are pretty silly which is a good thing considering how often I have to take cat hair out of my eye or clean up a hairball off the carpet. One of their antics is that they love getting into boxes, bags, baskets, anything that is small and confined. I bought them cute little cat tents and fluffy liners for boxes, but they seem to prefer the straight up box and one that's not intended for them. Most recently, Sambo decided to hang out in the empty pint jar box while I was working on tomatoes. Here's Savvy in a bag:

Sambo and Savvy hanging out in baskets:
And Sambo, hiding out in an empty water bottle box with the plastic still on.Thank goodness for the laughs!

Beans, Tomates, and Peaches

Between the two gardens I "sat" for I was able to pick enough beans to can almost two dozen pints. Now I know that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but for my first time canning by myself, I'm satisfied. I grew up helping my mom can doing things like snapping beans, pealing and cutting pears and peaches, juicing tomatoes, etc. What I didn't help with was the actual processing part. So when I got ready to can this summer, I had no problem with this part:
I watched Jane Eyre while I snapped beans. It brought back many childhood memories. When I got to this part:I was glued to the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I did everything it said to. I started out with a small pressure cooker which holds three pints, but eventually made it to my large one that will hold seven pints. I had never used the large pressure cooker before and was a little nervous about it. Eventually, however I made it here:

I did have almost 5 pints NOT seal which was discouraging, but my rate of success did increase as I went along.

After the beans, I also juiced tomatoes to make juice and canned some whole ones for sauces. Through Freecycle, I picked up a juicer that had hardly been used. I couldn't believe my luck. I first used it to de-seed raspberries (see picture), but later used it to juice the tomatoes. I keep trying to get a water bath canner or a steam canner on Freecycle as well, but no luck yet. I was able to borrow a water bath canner until I can find one in my price range (i.e. free).
Next I canned peaches with my sister and her mother-in-law. My goal was to do those on my own also, but whose to argue when people want to help.

My next project is pears which are currently sitting in my fridge for the recommended time. My goal is to take them out of the fridge to let them ripen so that they are ready to can on Labor Day. Good luck to me on that one.

At the end of it all, no matter how many jars seal or don't seal (by the way, everything I've water bathed has sealed), I've learned something new this summer. It's exciting, refreshing, and a great boost to my self-esteem. If I can can beans, I can take on a new batch of 7th graders, right?

Farm Sitting Part 5: Garden Fresh Produce

You might wonder how a suburbanized girl like myself ended up farm sitting. I met the family originally through church. The wife played the organ for our services and I led the singing so we got to know each other. I knew they planted a large garden every year partly because I had gone over and picked green tomatoes right before the frost hit last year and let them ripen on my counter. They didn't all make it, but I had tomatoes for a while.

Last January, I was really wishing for spring and growing things and missing my own garden space. The previous year I had planted two tomato plants at another family's house and had enjoyed fresh tomatoes and some beans, but I wanted more this year. I called this other family up and asked if I could help them with their garden in exchange for some space to grow my own things. I wanted to be able to work as much as I wanted the produce. I missed planting lots of different things and seeing them all grow. My initial plan was just to see if they would let me have a small section to plant whatever I wanted, but it was easier just to help them with everything and share in the produce. They plant fifty-foot rows of tomatoes, beans, corn, squashes and potatoes.

Towards the end of May, I went over and helped plant a row of tomatoes and one of squash. We also did for rows of beans--two bush, two pole. The last thing we did that day was plan two rows of potatoes. It was nice to know more got done because I was there. Since then I have gone over and weeded, replanted tomatoes, and helped set up the trellis for the pole beans.

As part of the bargain, I agreed to watch the farm while they were out of town, which wasn't going to be often. They are actually going to be gone again, but my sister and her kids are going to be down visiting so it wouldn't work.

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the garden, but I took a few while I was there. I spent a good part of Thursday picking beans, raspberries, and weeding potatoes. Here's a picture of the beans. We planted the bush beans next to the pole beans so that once the bush beans were done, we could pull them out and get at the pole beans a little more easily. The pole beans weren't on, but there were enough bush beans for me to do my first bit of canning (that's for another post).


As it is such a large garden and only two busy people working on it regularly (I would have gone over more, but I was gone for three weeks of the summer), the potatoes got rather over run with weeds. Most of what you see in the first picture are weeds. While these two are not before and after pictures, they give you an idea of how many weeds I pulled. I think there were eight rows of potatoes and two of them were weeded. I weeded maybe a third of the others. It was rather tricky because I had to make sure I wasn't pulling up the plants. Even after learning to recognize which were weeds and which were potato plants, I had to start at the top of the weed and follow it to its base to make sure I was pulling the right plant. After I accidentally broke off a branch of potato plant while trying to extricate a particularly large weed, I stopped. I should have taken a picture of the pile of weeds.

The part I didn't weed:

The part I did:
As I mentioned, I spent most of the day Thursday working in the garden. I had prepared a lunch, but forgot it at home. I didn't feel comfortable raiding their kitchen, but I didn't want to go home. The wife had mentioned I could try some of the new potatoes, so I looked for some in the newly weeded section. I had already picked beans and raspberries, so I had those. I added some swiss chard to the lot and went in to prepare lunch. I fried up the potatoes, steamed the chard and washed some beans and raspberries. It was one of the best lunches I'd had for a while.

Farm Sitting Part 4: Cats and Dogs

Cats and dogs are as natural to a farm as cows, chickens, and pigs. Farms are large enough to allow a dog lots of space and the barns provide mice for the cats. This farm was no exception. The first three animals I fed were Ramses, the cat, and the two dogs--Davy and Terry. Ramses actually belonged to the couple's daughter away at collage. He decided to be my particular friend and followed me around sitting in the shade of the beans while I picked them and licked my arm while I dangled my feet in the swimming pool. He even challenged Davy once when Davy came over to be loved. He still liked me even after I stepped on his foot because he was so close to me. Here's Ramses:



Terry is an old dog who has to have his food soaked in water. (No picture of Terry, unfortunately) Ramses and Terry were fed in the garage and Davy got his food outside. I quickly learned the reason for this. I suppose this was the first benign mistake I made. After having fed all three, I must have gone back in side to get something (goat milk maybe) and Ramses was meowing like he was hungry. I realized that both Terry's and Ramses' food were gone and rather too quickly. Davy! I re-fed the cat and dog and kept the door closed so Davy wouldn't get at it. I learned to shut Terry and Ramses in the garage for a while so that Terry would actually eat his food before Davy could get in there. This was especially true at the evening feeding since all three got shut in the garage overnight. I even started putting Ramses food on top of the freezer so that he had food even when Davy was in there. Here's Davy lounging on the grass while I did the chores.

Ramses wasn't the only cat, however. A wild mama had adopted the red barn as her home (probably because they fed her) and had babies there. I'm not sure even the owners know exactly how many cats call the barn home. I knew there were at least three, but I never got a good enough look at the ones I saw to know if there were more. They would hide under the barn, watching me warily as I approached to feed them and the chickens. As soon as I was too close, they hid their faces. It's a good thing I have a excellent zoom feature on my camera, or I may not have been able to take a decent picture. Here are two of the cats hiding under the barn.