Problem solving

"Give me a five here on my foot", said the kid in the tree...






Oh, also? Those boys took apart a washing machine and a dryer, almost completely by themselves. And then? They partly reassembled them.


{yes one is in the dryer}

Garden of Summer-past

Goodbye garden. Hello garden-blogging fail.



I'm equal parts thrilled and cringing that October is almost here.

This is my very favorite time of year. Running through crunchy leaves, sipping spiced cider, listening to my chickens sing as they scratch up the last of Summer's bugs, tidying up the garden in perfect hazy afternoon light, hearing combines chewing through the fields surrounding us, constantly sampling bits of whatever is going on or coming off our overworked dehydrator, tripping over the produce that spills out of our entryway and into our home... The whole season is one great big sensory experience, and I love it.

Cringing because, well, these glorious weeks are so fleeting.

And here it is, yes, almost October.


{not snow - cattail seeds}

And I have failed to blog about... anything and everything. But the garden? I barely mentioned it three times. That makes me cringe too. Seedlings in eggshells, harvesting peas, and voluptuous eggplants. That was it.

I did the writing in my head.

Here are handful of abbreviated posts that never made it to press:

1. I neglected far too much of our garden the previous year. The perfect solution to that is obviously to add another fifty square feet and five NDSU home garden variety trials. The observing, learning, comparing, tasting, and ownership the kids had of their trials was a beautiful thing. I wholeheartedly recommend this program to my North Dakota friends!

2. Our pole bean tee-pee was magnificent. I've never grown pole beans before. I underestimated them. It was shocking how the tee-pee went from bare to covered to unrecognizable (in a matter of fourteen days) as the beans went beyond crazy. The cats loved that thing, far too much. They even left offerings exactly in the middle of it. So weird.





3. The younger boy planted sixteen watermelon plants. See variety trials above. See oppressed overworked dehydrator above.



4. Apples! Finally these trees produced enough to justify using the word harvest. And harvest we did. We waited four and a half years for this.


{maybe that one had a bug?}

5. I cannot imagine fall without winter squash. A whole long shelf full. Every one of my seeds rotted in the ground this Spring, and I was irrationally upset about it. Yeah, I know I can get winter squash at the grocery store or the Farmer's Market. It just isn't the same. Then I found a volunteer something among the sunflowers that looked suspiciously gourd-like. Sweet happy day when I realized it was, in fact, winter squash. God does answer insignificant little prayers.

Game on

Nothing says true love like:

Someone searching Asia for a meaningful, plastic, made-in-China souvenir gift for his wife. 'Cause Lord knows you can't get stuff like that around here. Even better, he had previously (repeatedly) told me not to purchase said item because of all it's redeeming plastic junk qualities. He settled for a chocolate candy bar instead. It had intriguing Chinese script on the wrapper which made it extra cool.


Nothing says irony (no, not ironing) like:

That fantastic plastic made-in-China itemapparently not for sale in China. Being a "piece of junk" is actually it's most endearing characteristic (I swear I'm not being sarcastic for once), which is why it has held a place of honor on my Amazon wish list for so long. You know how this ends, right? My sweet husband showed up with an empty Hershey's wrapper, because it would have melted on the way home anyway.

Or maybe a cow...

Maybe, just maybe, a cow would be more entertaining than a donkey?





Fun facts:
1. Objects may be closer than they appear. Like, dangerously so.
2. I didn't realize fact number one soon enough.
3. I learned fact number two after I discovered that someone had drooled on me. A lot.
4. Slobbering cows drool like they mean it. And then some.
5. If I could borrow this critter and park it outside my friend Deanna's house to slime up her kitchen window... I totally would.

Paper chain

There was this paper chain. In the kitchen. It was fairly long. Not anything impressive like military-deployment long (one of the reasons we waited to have kids). But still, it was far more days than we had ever been away from each other (beyond military life).

It was a count-down, and there was more than a week still left on the chain.



While we waited for the school bus I told one of the boys to rip a link off the chain.

He was sufficiently confused.

"Did we forget one?"

This is supposed to be an end-of-day activity.



Little Miss Destructo had no hesitation in breaking our own rule and ripping a few links off. Over the last nine days we had to re-tape several unauthorized removals back on. I have also had to extract one cat's tail from the door (pretty sure it, the tail - not the door, is broken), rescue a boy's formerly elaborate half-dismantled Lego creation, confiscate a broom (don't ask), and clean up the remains of 52 (yep, fifty two, I counted) over-ripe apples that were used as bouncy balls indoors... all courtesy of The Unstoppable Bean.


{the princess shirt kills me}

Then a fight broke out. Someone grabbed a link out of someone else's hand, or took one out of turn, or I really have no idea. You know, the usual. The princess was the one left crying, however, which is unusual.

It's hard to feel too sorry for her when she's usually the one wrecking everyth... well, nevermind.

"Boys. BOYS! What does it mean if the whole chain is gone!?"



1/160th of a blurry second, apparently, and they got it.

Daddy was coming home early!

From the surprises-don't-ever-go-over-so-well even if they're fantastic ones, I-don't-know-how-to-express-myself face...



to the really-Mom-you're-not-joking, wanting-to-believe, guarded smile...



Really?

Ummmm.... yes.



The only bad news was his surprise early return left me no time to borrow a donkey.

I guess there's always next time.

Clearing my conscience

My husband was in China a month ago, and I gave his side of our bed to a cat. It wasn't premeditated. I wasn't even certain the spur-of-the-moment kitty acquisition was actually happening until my dear friend put the kitten in my car and my confused kids said "What?". It might have been appropriate to wonder what my husband would say, since we already had a herd of one indoor and three outdoor cats. Then I remembered that I am the crazy cat lady, and my groom was well aware of that when he married me.

As it turns out, I had no need to worry. I was about to pull off my best yet "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" moment. Not that I try to make it a habit or anything. See, as we were on Facetime attempting to gently break it to him that we had brought a new animal home in his absence, he jumped ahead of my words and assumed it was a large animal that eats grass. A donkey.

He was so relieved that it was only a cat.

Excuse me while I high-five myself in the mirror...



Paw-lee looks an awful lot like Bad Kitty, but with extra toes on her gigantic adorable feet. However, if the tragic events leading up to the cat re-homing incident had a title, it would definitely be Bad Doggie.


The roller coaster of emotions was rattling at top speed.

My own kids were angry and in shocked disbelief that I had executed our Red Rooster while they slept the night before. Despite my 20 minute top-of-my-lungs sobbing under the stars I was nowhere near finished grieving. It may have been Game Over but that doesn't mean it wasn't horribly upsetting or that I didn't love that ornery rooster dearly.

My friend's family was reeling from the violent death of two of their other kittens from the week before, which had followed yet another one, which had followed the inexcusable death of their sweet beloved Momma cat just days after her babies were born. Bad, bad doggie.

Now that the remaining one is ours, I feel so guilty that I wasn't more strongly insistent on taking a time-share of bottle feeding that batch of kittens when they were tiny.

For the record, The Old Nichols Farm has officially reached it's quota of cats.

For the record, we're in love.



My husband is in China again, and I think it would be pretty darn funny to borrow someone's ass (the four-legged kind) and park it in my corral just to mess with him when he gets home.

Hello 10th

Hello Kitty. Hello breakfast strawberry.


Hello schoolwork.


Hello snakeskin!


Hello Paw-lee!


Uh. Hello mess.


Hello sensory experience. (are you annoyed with the hello stuff yet?)


BUSTED! Caught shopping in Daddy's stuff.


Hello 14-inch circumference eggplant! (can't help myself - I tried, and anyway, Hello Kitty started it)


Helllllllooooo broody Mimi!


Hello "why am I missing a pic?" Hello whatever.

Hello linky: