What to do with swiss chard

Last year I was the kale lady.

This year someone tilled all my kale seedlings up. In his defense, he did get rid of the weeds too. The weeds needed to go. The kale was an unfortunate victim in this ongoing saga of proper communication that we have going on around here.

Apparently.

On the other hand, most of the swiss chard survived the horror-filled early Spring tilling event. Lucky me!

Now what the heck do you do with swiss chard?

I've never grown it before. It just looked so pretty in the Seed Savers Exchange catalog that I couldn't help myself. The garden porn got me again. I'm helpless when it comes to that stuff, I swear.

Especially when it's a certified organic heirloom variety.

Somebody shoot me.



Anyway, not to worry about it going to waste. Chickens to the rescue, of course!

There I stood, courageous, with chard in hand, mere moments before the pack of starving raptors descended upon me. They look so innocent, but believe me, they are not. Just ask my mother-in-law.



Okay, I'm kidding. Except not the part about my mother-in-law (bless her heart, as she would say).

Just look at that adorable fuzzy butt!



Since you're dying to know, my shirt says, "plastic bags blow", which is something that I believe with my whole heart.



You would never guess it, but I had two jalapenos in my pocket during this feeding frenzy. Jalapenos have better luck in my pockets than eggs do, especially when they've been forgotten for several days.

Don't give me that look.



I really wish I had a couple sheep to mow my lawn. These birds just aren't getting very far with it.

And actually, I do plan to eat some of this chard myself. I'll let you know how it goes.

Worldwide Photo Walk

Saturday I took part in the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk.

Honestly, I was a bit nervous as I drove there, but I've been working hard on my courage. I've taken my camera to the grocery store, not only once, but twice. I no longer care, at all, what people think when I grab my faithful camera and jump up on a chair, or lie flat on the ground to get the shot. And that is a really huge achievement for me. Perhaps it also means I'm old? I've practiced (I have a very large trash can), and learned (and still have so much more to learn). But as I stepped out of my car after the nearly two hour drive, I put my chin up and grinned, because I knew I could knock that photographic ball out of the park.

At least, I was going to try.

The Photo Walk turned out to be a very good thing. I met some fun people, got my shoes soaking wet, took some pictures... but the very best thing? I spent nearly an entire day off on an adventure that was all my own.

It was refreshing. It was exactly what I needed.

Here are some of my favorite photographs from the walk. I need to submit one for judging. I'm almost sure which one it will be.

Go ahead and confuse me. Which one do you like best, and why?







This one lends itself well to black & white. Lots of contrast.



I'm loving the texture of the out of focus fence in the background on this one.



And this... is just so very dreamy.







And yes, yes I am obsessed with shallow depth of field, thankyouverymuch.

Simple beauty

My kids are young.

We don't have a television. Although to be fully honest, we do sometimes watch movies on our laptop. The world hasn't yet told my babies what to believe. I am aware this will soon change, but for now I'm allowing myself to completely enjoy it.

Our home is on acres and acres of untamed goodness that we never tire of exploring.

And, as you already know, we are easily entertained. Yes, very much so.

This spring, like many boys, mine gave me dandelion bouquets. Then, when I was too busy to cut them myself, they brought lilacs into the house and asked for a vase. It was wonderful!

And then, in mid June, I smiled when they found beauty in this...


{that is not a color cast around the edges, these are actually fringed with an almost iridescent purple)

"Oh, you brought me some grass! It's so pretty, I love it!"

"NO Mommy, it's flowers. You need to put them in a vase with water or they will die."

I gently explained that they had, in fact, picked some amazingly beautiful grass, and that I had a tiny vase that would be perfect. Satisfied, and proud of themselves, they marched back out the door to their other world.

Just don't ask me about the vase.

Excuses that rock

Well, here I am.

I'm late getting my self-portrait up this week. I have excuses because, you know, it's really not my fault.

And my picture just really isn't that cool this week. Ah well, can't win every time, I guess. It could have been better, but I didn't want you all to think that I truly am a monkey. Even though I am. See, I smashed my knee against the corner of our corn burner (who put that thing there?), so I was slightly crippled. It was instantly purple. My knee.



Right.

You want to hear my other excuses?

I know you do.

1. I was busy modifying an old diaper bag my most favorite faithful little backpack ever, converting it into a camera bag. I hand-stitched a double layer lining of an old towel that I should have thrown out years ago terry cloth for padding and covered that lining with super soft flannel. I am not a seamstress. At all. By some miracle, it turned out amazing. I am a rock star!

2. I escaped the house leaving a Grandma in charge (and a mostly intact yard), and ran far far away to the big city (not the BIG city) where I participated in the 2010 Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk. It rocked.

3. I had to babysit a chameleon named Igor and a bearded dragon named Crusty Rusty. Igor has an attitude. He rocks.



4. My cockerel little baby rooster went missing, but he finally showed up today. I found him sitting on a wood pile in the barn like he had never been gone. Perhaps we will eat him after all... and then I will find out if the axe my parents gave me for Chrismas rocks.

5. There is a six foot deep moat entirely surrounding our home. It makes me wish we had a dragon. A big one, with an attitude like Igor's. And a draw-bridge. That would rock, because leaping over the moat is getting old in a hurry.



6. We have a mess. A really, really big one. Including piles of rocks.



The end.

An afternoon

She hears her brothers whooping and crashing around the backyard, as they alternately giggle in joyful play and then moments later try to kill one another.

Brothers. What a mysterious relationship they have.

Hearing them is simply too much to bear and so she howls to join them.

A multitude of honey bees are hovering along the ground, hypnotized by the sweet clover flowers. I dare not set her free.

So she swings.


{happy restraint}

I give her a bouquet of clover flowers, the stems just right for little hands to hold tight, the white flowers so soft for little lips to kiss. The bees won't bother, they're much too busy down below.

She wants to see chickens. She loves chickens. Off to the barn we go.

This pretty lady, she was interested in us for a little while, just until she was sure we didn't come bearing gifts. Edible gifts.



Maybe we should have brought the clover flowers with.

You Capture - "Black and White"

Communicating

It was the kind of moment that stops you completely, makes the squeaky wheels in your head spin backwards, and leaves you in absolute confusion. Did I, perhaps, not hear the question correctly over the kid noise saturating the room?

"Do your flowers on the front step need to be watered?"

Seriously, there are no flowers on our front steps. So the reasonable thing to do, obviously, was to reply with the correction to his inquiry.

"Ummm... the back step?".

"No. The flowers on the front step."



You see the beautiful flowers on our makeshift front steps? Yeah, me too.

So I said it, plain and clear, in a way that left no room for any gender communication error. I said it exactly the way it was.

"There are no flowers on the front steps."

It earned me a look. The dear-wife-you-are-a-raving-lunatic look.

{sigh}

He pointed out the kitchen window, in the direction of the windmill across the driveway. "Your flowers in those pots on the steps. Right there."

Duh.



Apparently, the front steps are still the front steps, even when they have been hauled across the driveway and parked beside a mound of dirt, across from an even bigger pile of little rocks. They are still the front steps even if they are closer to the barn than the house. I imagine they would still be our front steps if they were in the middle of the pasture or somewhere out in the back forty.

Glad we got that straight.



"Yes, I do need to water my flowers, the ones that are on the front step, and I'll do it later."

Perfect water

One week ago, we were at the BIG lake, and having an awful lot of fun!



All three of my boys love tubing, but it was the littlest one that would have been happy to ride that thing non-stop the entire day.



Apparently the Milkweed Longhorn beetles were having a great time too, and I suppose I should apologize for putting them on the blog. Not sure what came over me. They were pretty. Yeah, that's it. And I've never used a telephoto lens as a macro before. It was novel.

Okay...

The sun was hot out on our friends' boat, perfectly bright and hot. We stopped to play in the water. The boys sat with just their feet in, and so did I.

It was enough for us.



But it was our fearless nutty Bean that went for a dip there with her Daddy, in the deep deep water.



The sun was so bright I couldn't see the display on the back of my camera. I shoot with my histogram up so I can check my exposure occasionally. Shooting blind like I was, I was sure of only one thing in this world and that was that as a photographer, "I suck!".

It was the icing on my day's cake when we got back to our tent and I saw that I had actually nailed my exposure on almost every single shot. Being fully aware that I am my worse critic, I was thrilled with what I got.

I also learned to trust my spf 50 sunblock.

Honestly, could that water not be more perfect?


{being fearless and loving to splash is a great combination}

I cooked my toes on the sunshine-heated boat seats to get this shot. It was totally worth it.



That's my self-portrait for the week. The proof that I was there.

(I was pleasantly surprised to find that my husband did actually take some pictures of me and my littlest boy riding on the tube. I had no clue because he took my glasses away. Because if they end up at the bottom of a lake then I am in some serious trouble.)

Anyone else posting a self-portrait is welcome to share on non-linky weeks by adding your url to the comments below.