Snake Update

He got out of his mess! We got up this morning and he was gone. We were so relieved. Silly, maybe, but our mouse-eating machine is still on duty. Unless he has internal injuries that is. Which, of course, I will never know.

Wordless Wednesday, Not!

I was going to use this picture for my first "Wordless Wednesday" but I could NOT go without saying something!

My son C found this on our back porch this afternoon. It's up high on the screen enclosure. He had crawled from the bottom all the way to the top, where he tried to make a U-turn apparently. No, it's not our pet corn snake! I believe it's the corn snake that we found a couple weeks ago, and turned it loose in our wood pile, which sits just a few feet from where he is seen in this picture. We were hoping he could help with our field mice situation. (We've found 4 mice drowned in the swimming pool in the last several weeks.)

I think this snake is stuck, and I fear for his life. I keep trying to figure out how I can get him out of that tight spot, but don't think I can. I tried really gently, to slide him out of the tight bind. It didn't seem to be working so I stopped. Maybe he can somehow wiggle his way out? (When I was a kid, my step-brother once tied a garter snake in a tight knot in a tree. He was surprised to find out later that the snake had gotten himself free.) He was still there after several hours from when he was discovered, so we'll wait and see if he's still there in the morning.

Tomato Mission

I am on a tomato mission of sorts. Our family absolutely LOVES good, flavorful tomatoes. You know, a tomato that really tastes like a tomato! Well, everybody but C love them. He says he only likes the ones we grew in our garden 3 yrs. ago. They were called Brandywine. Anyway, really good tomatoes are hard to find. And if you do find them, they will cost you your right arm to purchase some. Our local grocery store has heirloom tomatoes, but we have never purchased them before because they're so expensive. Well, today, we bought 3 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, one of each. They were on sale, but they still cost me $8.00!! I almost choked. So, I got to thinking. I need to save some seed from those golden nuggets and grow some myself! So I did some researching tonight online and it doesn't look too hard to do. I see a homeschool project in the works.....

In this picture, B thinks I'm getting a picture of her beautiful flower she found on the weed plant.

Back to tomatoes. We have 3 varieties planted in little pots. I ordered some heirloom tomato seeds online this year. I was upset though, when the variety I really wanted was on back order and still hasn't come in yet! We've had some near-frosts lately, or at least pretty low temperatures, so we keep bringing them in to the garage to keep them warm, just to be safe. Then we cart them back outside. Every time we cart them back and forth, we seem to drop one or two, or three! This last trip I nearly had a heart attack because we had a flat break on us. It was cracked and we didn't realize it until it was too late. I think we may have been able to rescue the seedlings without too much damage. I hope that's the end of the low evening temperatures. Florida isn't supposed to have weather like this!

So, these tomatoes we've planted. I am clueless as to what comes next. You see, we have a friend who is a professional horticulture specialist. He is going to tell us his secret on how to grow prize-winning tomatoes. He's swearing us to secrecy over this. Oh, the suspense is killing me! And he's too funny. He shows up to my hubby's shop every few days to get the "tomato report" and the "blueberry report". He keeps giving us incremental, step-by-step instructions on just what to do. I can't wait for juicy, tasty tomatoes. And I'm hopeful that C will like the ones we grow this year as well. Maybe that's why he liked the Brandywine so much a couple years ago, because they actually tasted so good, and not like the cardboard tasting tomatoes I can find for a decent price in the stores. I tried to buy Brandywine seeds again, but could not find the seeds in the local garden stores. I think produce gardening is a dying art. I haven't done much in my recent past either, so I'm not casting stones here! We had about 3 gardens right after we moved here, but we finally gave up because of poor soil and major pests: both insects and rabbits. Hopefully, we'll have learned a little more this time to make this project worth our while!

The kids can't wait for their favorite part of tomato gardening. One of the websites I looked up tonight about tomatoes stated it this way: "To kill the most destructive, ravenous tomato-eater, the Tomato Horn-worm Caterpillar, put a 10 cent bounty on their heads and turn your kids loose in the garden to hunt them down." My kids LOVE this activity, and search for them with vigor. They argue over who gets to stomp and squish them, when I find the caterpillars. Large smears of green goo in the dirt. Isn't that gross?!?

And here is a picture of the tomatoes as they look today, with their buddy the avocado tree. Before the Tomato Horn-worm infestation begins.

One of "Those" Days

I had one of "those" days today. I've had them before, but it's been a little while since the last one. You thought I was going to say it was horrible, didn't you?!? I've had those kind of days too, but today was of the wonderful "those" days variety. We got a late start because of the stupid time-change our government thinks we need to operate at peak condition. I don't understand that, and they should just leave nature alone, but that's a subject for a different day.

Today was just wonderful. I'm sure that today being a good day was somehow magnified in intensity because of our recent bout with the flu. Those days were NOT good. But, nothing wonderfully exciting or special happened today. We did school work, and the boys did very well and I maintained extra patience. We seem to be getting into a better groove, with less complaining and more listening and stamina on all of our parts. Even B kept herself reasonably busy with her books and projects. She's just a little sponge anyway, soaking it all in! Our neighbor came by the other day and we started discussing our way of "schooling". I explained to him how B, for the most part, does participate in our learning efforts even though she is so young and not even "school age" yet. He commented that B will end up being a genius in the end because she'll learn stuff so well with her frequent exposure. That was kind of funny.

Here I go again; I'm caught up in a rabbit-trail. I was trying to describe to you how well school went. And then how well the kids helped with various things we needed to do around the house. There was even some volunteer activity where that was concerned. The kids did relatively little bickering and got along well together with minimal fuss. That's my kind of day. I made sure to compliment the kids several times on their behaviour. I am hoping that positive praise will bring back more days like this, more often. I can tell you one thing though. Days like these make me feel SO good inside. And it reminds me how much I love being a mom! I'll be sure to come back to this blog post and reread it on those days that aren't so great.

Rain Update

Well, we had 2 1/2 inches of rain from that storm. Our grass will certainly appreciate it. When I woke up in the morning, I looked out across to our neighbor's property, and found several places of standing water, not just the one I could see shining in the moonlight during the night. I got a picture of them, but not all of them show up in the frame of the picture. This is the view from the front of our house, which includes the kids' bedrooms, the office, and the dining room. I am using a new camera here (got it on a close-out special with a large coupon too, so it was pretty cheap. I'm just not sure yet what kind of pictures it takes.) I needed a camera of my own. I've been using one of the boys'.

Anyway, back to the storm. I found out when I got up that the tornado watch for our county had expired (!) and I didn't realize it. I'm always making silly mistakes like this. Could it be because I'm blonde? No, I don't think so. It's because I have so many different things on my mind all the time, that when I hear bits and pieces of the news, I get it put back together in my head, but all wrong! So, I stayed up to protect my family from something they didn't need protection from after all. That's the breaks!

I had to drive in to town to get some things for Ch. We are laying irrigation in our fields, in prep for planting. Well, on the way back home, I saw another Bald Eagle flying above the main road near the park that our homeschool group frequents weekly. It could be the same one our friends, the B's, saw at the park a couple weeks ago. And here is a wonderful picture of a Bald Eagle, sent to me by a friend. The picture was taken by somebody in Montana. But it's too pretty not to share. It definitely helps me feel better after missing my fantastic eagle photo-op the other day. Okay, so I am leaving you with 2 eagle pictures. I couldn't decide which one I liked better.

Rained Out

Well, if you live here locally, you can imagine that Ch's race was indeed rained out. He was pretty upset. He had been so ready: car's gears changed to match the requirements of the track, the weights shifted around appropriately to suit the upcoming track conditions, a new friend ready to come to the track with him, the car washed and mud free. He's had H practicing all week on using his new-fangled stopwatch and marking the times, so he could record his dad's lap times and those of the lead car. The car was even loaded up in the trailer and ready for us to pull out of here today promptly at 2 o'clock.

We were wondering last night if there would be rain trouble. When a weather forecaster on the news predicts 60-80% chance of rain it can mean one of three things. Either they are right on with their predictions, or they have just timed it wrong. The third option is that they missed the mark completely, but that actually doesn't seem to happen much these days thanks to their massive modern computer weather analysis programs. Today, they miscalculated when the rain would hit us. We woke up to tornado watches which included our county. We expected rain to occur starting sometime fairly early in the morning. The race track, a little north of us, said they would call the "rain-out" by 1:00 p.m. if he was going to call it at all. They weren't getting any rain either.

They finally called a cancellation on the race at around 4:15 p.m. and they really needed to. Evidently there was a lot of street flooding there in the area they ended up with so much rain. But I feel like I wasted half of my day, waiting to find out what would happen. I had to keep checking the radar on the computer, and the track's website every so often. I needed to pick up a prescription (a 1/2 hr. drive north of me) and made it there in time before closing, but I've never made it there that late before, and didn't even know when they would close! As it is, I barely made it to the library just 5 min. before closing time. But I'm glad to have the books I requested, since if I don't get them within a few days of them calling that they're in, they will return them to the host library. Invariably, they always come in the very afternoon of the same day I had already visited the library in the morning.

Well, we finally got some rain here at our house. It started raining around 7 p.m. and hasn't really stopped until now. It is pretty late now, after midnight. It let up somewhat a few times, but rained continuously since then. I cannot wait to check the rain gauge to see how much rain we got. It should be quite a bit this time. As I sit here tonight, typing up this blog post, I can look out my front window across to our adjoining neighbor's property, and see a really large spot of water. It's dark outside, but it's actually reflecting the moon light. That's how I know we must have gotten substantial rain because that "lake" has been dry for many months now.

I do worry about our little bitty tomato plants though. They were out in the storm. I didn't think to bring them in for cover but probably should have. They are very small. We started them from seeds. They actually sprouted very well, but may be quite flat now if the rain was too hard on them.

And what am I doing up so late? Insomnia of course, induced by the fact that we are still under tornado watches. It has that kind of effect on me. Ch sleeps like a log and won't even wake up for a security alarm blaring away in his ear. So the burden is on me to hear stuff in the night, like the sound of tornadoes, or kids stumbling around in their sleep, looking for the bathroom. This has happened a few times already in our new house, and it wasn't pretty. Yes, lucky me. The boys both sleep very soundly, just like their dad.

Wormy Conversation

Various statements made by my 4 yr. old, quite the chatterbox tonight, as we checked on the status of our worms:

• Mom, these worms are my friends. I know worm language so I know what they're saying. They tell me that they like my hand a lot. They tell me if they're hungry or not, too.
• They only talk to me during the day. When they're tired at night, they just want to sleep.
• Mom, this worm is a mama and she's getting ready to have her babies. She told me that just now. If you ever find a long, long, worm with a pink, pink round dot, she's having a baby tonight. And that is a good thing because we need more baby worms.
• Mama and Daddy worms don't take care of their babies, because they're scared of the babies. People take care of their kids, but not worm mamas.
• This worm is a school kid. There's lots of school kid worms in here.
• This worm right here is a teenager.
• Worms like to eat lots of rotten fruit that you don't care for. Their favorite rotten fruit is fruit that's been cut up that people won't eat.

I think I learned a few things just now. Some kid philosophy.