An abundance

We watch for these little white flowers every Spring. They tease my husband, but they hold no promises. So many things have to come together in just exactly the right way, for sweet success.

Out here on the windy prairie... growing fruit of any kind is a gamble.

But even if the tree row across the road disappoints us, like it did once again this year, we can still smile because we love this place. We have awesome neighbors. Neighbors with plum trees that actually produce... in abundance.



Two weeks ago it still felt very much like summer. Some of us went a little plum-crazy and picked way more than we could have ever dreamed of using.



Why is it that little gems like this are so hard to stop collecting? Once upon a time when I lived by the ocean, a friend and I went to a u-pick strawberry farm. We gathered an alarming amount of strawberries. Then we had to figure out what to do with all of them.

It must be some kind of primal gatherer survival thing. Must. Have. More.

Good grief, they're right there! If you don't grab that beautifully red, ripe, perfectly round one, no one will!



The Bean said it for all of us, "I-wan-mwa. I-wan-mwa! I-WAN-MWA!!!". I was wearing her, so I wedged us into a mess of plum tree branches so that all by herself, she could choose and grab a good one.

Another one.

A juicy one.

I was glad to have a few tissues stuffed in my pocket.



It was dark there under the thick mess of living and used-up branches.

"Did she just eat the pit? Girl! Honestly."

I took an abundance of out-of-focus pictures of plums... and kids. Plums attacking kids. And kids helplessly eating plums.

We shook the trees to get the ones we couldn't reach.



It worked well.

The sound of plums bouncing off my kid's heads, and the giggling that followed, made me want to shake those trees again and again.



Mmmm...

Smirk

This was a hard one.

There was the "I'm soaking wet and loving it" smirk, and the "blueberry juice all over the lips" happy smirk. We have all kinds of "this is a very cool snake" smirks. Of course there was the "brontosaurus-underwear wedgie" smirk, which although I adore, might not be appropriate material for the blog. The cutest one of them all was the "every square inch of me is splattered with mud and my brothers had nothing to do with it" smirk.

In the end I decided to go with the "yeah Mom, I suppose I'll get on that bus" first day of school nervous smirk.

Just because.



There is a whole lot of smirking going on over at I Heart Faces.

Garden on steroids

The recipe called for eight medium potatoes.

I'm not a cold cereal fan, or a toast fan, and I've grown rather tired of eggs. I'm more of a random-leftovers-for-breakfast kind of girl, and a big batch of soup was on my mind. Soup to last me the week... for breakfast of course.

Soup. It's that time of year.

I knew what I would find when I dug into that potato bed, because my niece had peeked underneath it with me the weekend before. Just for fun. And our mouths had dropped open. And our eyes had bugged out of our heads. Because as you may or may not know, a garden in an old cattle corral is a garden on steroids.

As I headed out there I figured two potatoes would be more than I needed.

Yes, only two.



Whatever you do, please don't ask about my zucchini.

The cost

You Capture this week is "photographer's choice". I don't understand how that is a theme. But, whatever, it's Beth's deal so she can do what she wants. It will be fun to see what everyone comes up with.

Photographer's choice? Consider yourself warned.

Okay, I'm teasing and I promise my photo isn't graphic. Promise!

I had some business to take care of on Saturday. My oldest boy wanted to assist, which made the job even more entertaining. Things started off in our usual fashion as it took us nearly an hour to round up the items we needed.

First, a rake. The tines on the one in the barn weren't wide enough for the job. Since it was obvious that the boys had stolen the other one, I sent the kid searching our yard. Our yard is big. BIG.

Meanwhile I looked for the block of wood I used last year. It wasn't in the barn. It wasn't behind the barn. It wasn't anywhere. I started searching our woodpile for a suitable replacement, but couldn't find one that met my strict criteria. I am so hard to please.

The kid had gotten distracted and was hypnotized by a water hose.

As I stood there bemoaning the fact that my perfect old chopping block was gone forever, the little rooster crowed honked, which caused me to burst into laughter... until I realized I was an idiot. Why hadn't I locked him up the night before? I needed him too.

Aw, heck.

From the front corner of the barn to the back, around the lean and back in the front of the barn, me after Honk the whole way. This interested the kid so he joined in the chase. My memory fails me at this point as I don't recall where I finally nabbed him. I do remember the kid laughing.

I decided one of these blocks of wood was going to have to work, but I now had a hormonal adolescent rooster in my hands. The kid didn't want to hold him. I needed my hands free. Into the dog house Honk went.

"HONK"

There was the missing rake beside the dog house which is also in the barn. It had been there the whole time.

My shiny, new, gleaming, expensive, sharp, forged steel head, unbreakable handle, lightweight, evenly balanced axe has gone missing. How is it possible to lose an axe? If anyone can, well, apparently it's me. I grabbed the awkward, double-sided, four foot long wooden handled, hefty old blood spattered axe. Honestly.

{Cue the theme from Mission Impossible here}

I am woman, hear me roar.

A lost-and-found rake, replacement block of wood, barely tolerable axe, and annoying rooster.

Use your imagination.

Or not.

Did I mention I had the camera on the tripod, all set up and ready to go?



No roosters were harmed in the making of this photo.

It's like picking home grown vegetables, except... not.

Honestly, although it makes for a humorous story, taking his life was not something I took lightly.

I was able to thank him for his life, knowing he had a real one. Honk did not grow up under a heat lamp, but under the warm wing of a loving hen. He spent his days scratching and singing out in the sun, interacting with the social order of the flock... so different from the lives of store-bought chickens. In taking his life, I was mindfully aware of what my food really cost. You're welcome to read more of my thoughts on this topic HERE.


You Capture - "Photographer's choice"

Versatile dog house

Sooner or later, I knew it was going to happen.

I found a handsome cat sitting on an egg in a doghouse.

This cat.



The egg was a beautiful big warm brown thing.

Did he lay it? Was he babysitting? Perhaps paying penance for all the times he has punched hens while he waits, grumpy, for his breakfast in the morning? Or maybe he was just using it as a heating pad?

We prefer multi-use items around here, and the dog house doesn't disappoint. It has a thick blanket of straw with an obvious cat-shaped depression. All it takes is a scrap of wood across the door to make a great rooster isolation chamber. My little rebels Nickel and Cheddar have a bad habit of leaving their eggs there, but not at the same time. Oh, no no no no. Two hens in the dog house at once is a very bad thing, you can hear them clear back at the house. And sometimes, sometimes just for fun, even when it isn't forty below zero, the dog house contains a cat warmer.

Do you have a cat warmer?

We do.

We have multi-purpose animals as well.



Yes I'm posting old pictures. I'm flustered and frustrated because the old camera is front-focusing, just enough to really screw everything up. I've suspected it for a few weeks but I've been in denial. I'm really really good at that. I was in denial about the Bean until a full day after she'd been born. Or possibly longer.

What's that? There are pink shoes in my house?

I'm going to try cleaning the camera's sensor. All by myself. Yes, I'm terrified, thanks for asking. I might need an adult beverage to calm my nerves first.

I may never post another photograph online again. Perhaps no one will notice.

It is the camera body, not the lenses. I was fairly certain of this because of a little experiment I did the other day with a tape measure and a dragonfly. I didn't need the dragonfly, but I was glad it came to the party because a dragonfly can only make your day better.

I have no idea if it was a boy or a girl. I don't suppose it matters.



That was the only shot that was even close. Don't ask how many I took.

It takes real talent to hold your camera steady for a focus test when a five ton hippopotamus formerly named "big dumb cat" is bumping up against you.



But all I really know is my camera has crapped out on me and my cat laid an egg in the dog house.

Lord have mercy on us all.

It's a boy

Of the four that survived, two went to school.

Two stayed home. One of them hatched yesterday. One hatched today.

Hatched. I can't imagine that's the proper term for it. Emerged?

Whatever.



It's crazy stuff. Their bodies get broken down and rearranged.

Remember these?



Rearranged.

And yes, it's definitely a boy.



It's easy to tell, you just have to know where to look.

No, not there.

Here.



The two black spots along the veins in the hind wings are scent glands. No question about it, he's a boy.

And he can fly.



Unless something got him already, he's on his way to Mexico right now. It's quite a journey. He's not likely to make it. But he might.

The one that hatched emerged today was a girl. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of her.

The Bean wanted to hold it, so I restrained her and gently set it on the back of her hand. Her laughter turned to dismay when it suddenly flew up and landed on her head.

She would have squashed it if I had released my grip on her to reach for my camera. You'll just have to trust me, the whole package was pretty darn cute.

She's headed to Mexico now too. Not my Bean. The butterfly.

Tucked in

When the situation is so desperate that I resort to working in the garden by tractor light for nearly two hours, tucking the most delicate of my precious things in for the night with blankets...



but I'm tripping over pumpkins and squash so my husband grabs a really long extension cord to give me even more light...



so I can cut these beautiful things loose and toss them over to him while the fog rolls in...



of course it's a sign that the next morning we will discover that the forecast was wrong, and there is not a bit of frost to be found anywhere.

You Capture - "Signs"