Friday, June 19, 2009

Chuckle for the day!

For those who don't know, I have two boys, who will be turning 8 and 3 in October. Life is an adventure with them, that's for sure!

This evening I was making grilled cheese sandwiches for them for supper, and the younger one was standing outside the baby gate (yes, we still keep one up at the kitchen entrance to discourage him from going in, though it's got its drawbacks--- he climbs over it anyway, and several times now he's turned off the refrigerator by turning the temperature control to zero... once to the tune of almost everything in the fridge and freezer!).

A little backstory, so that you understand better:

Older brother, Squid by nickname, has a bit of a problem recognizing social no-no's. As his first-grade teacher, the therapist and the school principal would all tell you, he hasn't a bad bone in his body. But he cannot seem to grasp what is okay social behavior. For example, even though he has been told multiple times that I do not like my tummy touched, he will come up while I am nursing his younger brother and give me a kiss or a blow-belly on my exposed tummy. He has been given incident reports several times for giving a kindergartener a kiss on the cheek. And at the beginning of the school year, he licked a young black boy on the cheek while they were riding on the bus. (He told me later that he thought the boy looked like chocolate, so he licked him to see if he was! This is probably politically incorrect of me, but I almost died laughing later in private!)

Squid asked if he could have soda with his dinner, and I said no, but that he could have juice. Delighted, he danced away from the kitchen and I turned back to cooking. A moment later I looked up to see him still dancing, but this time with his foot inserted into his intended drinking cup. I scolded him and told him he won't be able to drink from that cup now, and told him to bring it to me.

The baby (yes, he's too old, really, to be called that, but he IS my baby) asked, "Why?"

I answered, "Because it's dirty now. Bring the cup here!" This last directed to Squid, who had instead put the cup on the table.

"Why?" from the baby.

"Because it was on his foot, and our feet are dirty," I told him. He just looked at me with wide eyes, and I thought I should really explain that better, so I elaborated, "We walk everywhere with our feet, and our feet get dirty, so when he put the cup on his foot, that made the cup dirty with germs."

Still nothing but a wide-eyed stare from the baby. So jokingly, I asked, "Have I confused you?"

Another moment of silent staring... and then he turned away, saying, "Yesh...."

*lol* Kids.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Crazy Gardener Dance

Yippee!!

I am delighted to report that my basil and tomato seeds--- the ones purchased from Valdemart, the ones which were planted over a month ago but never came up--- have finally sprouted!!

*drumroll, please*

There are four lemon basil sprouts in one pot, and in another pot there are two (unknown variety) tomato sprouts and one lemon basil sprout. I had to look online to confirm that they were tomato and basil sprouts, instead of weeds. *lol* The third pot, which was planted with lemon basil seeds as well, still has shown no sign of life. <_< Oh, well.

Normally I'd know what type of tomato seeds I planted, but the packet of seeds from which this came was a variety pack, with five different types of tomatoes claimed on the back of the envelope... and only ten seeds total. So I'm clueless as to whether the two which have sprouted are even the same variety as each other!

I was disgusted with these two packets "failing" to sprout, so when I transplanted last (on June 11), I replanted my "greenhouse" (very tiny one, roughly 3"x6"!) with yellow pear tomato seeds... and there are at least eleven of those sprouting as of this morning! So I'm going to have yellow pear tomatoes coming out my ears again this year, just as I did the first year I had a garden here! Hopefully I'll also have at least one other type of tomato, but since I love yellow pears, I'll not complain!

See ya in a few days, I hope!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Transplanting time!

This morning I got up to get my older boy off to school--- his last day of first grade! Normally I would go back to bed afterward, especially since I went to bed at 3am (yikes!), but I glanced at my garden as I was going back into the house, and realized I really needed to get my corn and popcorn into the ground, not to mention my tomatoes and squash! So I grabbed my wood-hauling gloves and headed back outside.

In an hour I had transplanted my yellow pear tomatoes (four of them altogether, although they were two to a pot and transplanted that way), 20 corn plants and a total of 47 popcorn plants!

Okay, I have to explain that, don't I?

I love growing popcorn even more than I love eating it, if that's possible! I have such neat memories of my dad wringing the dried popcorn kernels from the cob, and last year I finally tried growing my own. I found the popcorn seeds from Ed Hume's collection--- only place I could find them (it was later in the season).

Well, I went away for a bit before finishing this blog, and I've got my squashes planted as well. Off to start some more squashes I don't already have, plus possibly some lettuce mix, carrots and radishes, and maybe some more tomatoes. I might directly sow the lettuce mix among the strawberries, which were transplanted two years ago, a thinning from a neighbor's strawberry patch (I've already picked a pint, with at least that much more ripening soon!).

I'd love to have some pumpkins growing, but my hubby has been adamantly against pumpkins ever since the first year we were married, when I had my first garden of pumpkins take over the backyard! *lol* I think I'll sneak 'em in next year!