Category: mostly unimportant

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Garden Update: 07.26.19

I did…so much stuff today…

I kinda buzzed through my lawn care work last week before heading off to Smoky Mountain NP (more on that next time), so I had some catch-up (ketchup?) work to do today. Thankfully, the weather has been pretty mild, so things could have been work for the amount of stuff I had to do…

Firstly, I finally dug up the carrots. We ended up with a overfilled ice cream bucket full of them, and many of them were a pretty substantial size. Others, however, were ridiculously small for how long they were in the ground. Right now, I’m not sure how “worth it” carrots are for next year: we got quite a few of them, but they were planted months ago and took up space that could have gone to other things. We’ll just have to see how they taste, I suppose…

The green beans are about done, too. Brooke has canned around 20 pints of beans this year, which is similar to our usual haul. We’ve also given away some and eaten them fresh, so as usual, the green beans have done wonders for us.

But yeah, they’re not filling as well as they did a few weeks ago, so we may pick a few more here and there, but we’ll probably let them finish up.

The peppers are still growing very, very slowly, so I’m not optimistic on their chances. We’ll keep working on it, but I don’t think I’ve seen any flowers on them yet. Ah well…

I also weeded some of the second plot. Brooke planted some flowers that needed some TLC, so I worked through them first. The black beans she planted are also looking great, but aren’t flowering yet, either. The cucumbers came on pretty quick and we picked two of those the other day. Calvin’s excited!

After that, I tied up the tomatoes. They’ve started producing finally, but we’ve only had a few ripen for us.

We’ve got some volunteer grape tomatoes growing in another plot that we’ve been going after, though we’re still waiting for them to come on strong. We’ve only had, maybe, 10 or 15 of those tomatoes mature.

Other than the ‘maters, everything else is still doing it’s thing. The pole beans are growing quite a bit, but no beans yet. The blackberries produced a few two weeks ago, but we only got a handful (still more than usual…). The strawberries are probably done for the year, but they’ve been putting their shoots out and they’re continuing to proliferate.

The peaches are the real story of the summer, though. A few weeks ago, they started to turn, so Brooke coated them with kaolin clay and I kept hitting them with neem oil, both of which should be relatively bee-safe. Then, we picked a few and tried them out and they were pretty good! Again, this is the first time we’d actually gotten to try some, because the Japanese beetles consistently get them, so we were pretty happy to actually get some.

While I was gone at Smoky Mountains, Brooke picked a bundle of them! Again, the flavor was pretty good, but she found them to be a little “mealy” and difficult to extract from the pit (“clingstone” peaches?), but overall, pretty good.

Well, over the past few days, the beetles have gained a foothold… I’ll probably continue to apply neem oil for a little longer, but we’re thinking the peaches are probably done for now.

Still, we got our peaches, so I’m satisfied!

That’s it for now. The next update will probably involve a metric ton of tomatoes, if all goes well!

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Blizzkrieg 2019

Early last week, they started forecasting snow for this weekend, but depending on which site you looked at or which day you checked, the estimate varied from 2 to 10 inches. Thankfully, most forecasts thought the bad weather would hit on Friday rather than Thursday, making it more likely it would head into the weekend, therefore not disrupting work or school.

It turned out that a Winter Storm Warning went into effect at noon on Friday. With everything heading in, Calvin’s school (and mine…) were called at noon and Meg’s at 1:00. Brooke new the bad weather was coming and “battened down the hatches” at work, so she was ready to come home a little early, too. I went ahead and hit up the Y before picking up Calvin so I wouldn’t feel the need to run on Saturday.

The snow started right around noon on Friday…and kept going…and going…and going… We had maybe 4 inches late-afternoon on Friday before settling in for the night. By morning, we had 8 inches on the ground.

And it kept going from there.

About mid-morning, Meg and Calvin were invited over to a friend’s house to sled and make snowmen. With the depth of the snow, I wasn’t sure how sledding would go, but they packed it down well enough to get a few good runs in. Otherwise, the temperature was in the low-30s, so they still had fun just messing around.

Brooke and I drove out to their house twice, so we got to head around town a bit. Odell was fine, but our street was…bad. Thankfully, the Forester handled it like a champ, though it did struggle in our alley a bit. The slush in the intersections was difficult to get started in if you were moving slowly, and we ran into a few drivers that caused us to come to a complete stop. The second time around, we drove in from the northern end of the alley, and that was the better call. We also ended up helping to push a few cars, getting them moving again.

After coming home, we did lunch and rested a bit before going back out later.

Eventually, we clocked at least 12 inches in the alley, though it continued to snow more as it went along. I don’t know the official tally, but when I looked out the window a bit ago, my driveway was covered….again… I wouldn’t be surprised if we had over 13 inches.

Anyway, the kids went outside again later in the afternoon, so I watched them from the window while playing on the Switch. Much warmer that way… 🙂

The last time Brooke and I saw this much snow, we lived in Iowa. The crazy thing is, we apparently recorded 10.7 inches that day in early February, so this was more by a substantial amount. Granted, the snow drifts up in Iowa were considerably taller than anything we had here, but still.

Hopefully we’ll get more sledding in tomorrow! Who knows if they’ll have school on Monday – probably depends on how many rural roads get cleared tomorrow. Regardless, we had fun today! The kids loved the ridiculous amount of snow!

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New Year, New You II

So, this post gets a “II” because, technically, I already used that post title back in January, 2016, and frankly, I’m too lazy to come up with anything more clever…so it’s a sequel.

To be fair, it’s probably worth an update, 3 years later. Back then, we had just picked up the bicycle trainer in hopes that we would use it. We actually did use it a fair amount that year, and a little the winter after. But then I started running quite a bit more and didn’t use it at all last year. These past few seasons, we’ve set it up downstairs, but Brooke only uses it periodically, mostly because it’s cold and boring down there. Brooke found that, earlier in the Fall, she’d stay on the bike longer if she had a magazine available to read while she was doing it, but for the last month with the holidays, it’s been harder and harder to get down there.

Today, we renewed our YMCA membership. Summer 2015 was the last time we used it, back when we thought Meg would do summer camp (note: she hated it). We let it lapse and haven’t looked back, but recently, in an effort to get some more exercise in, we opted to renew it because they run a sign-up deal in January like many other gyms do. Mostly, Brooke’s thinking that she’s more likely to get some exercise in if we set up a routine where the whole family goes: Brooke and I go to work out and the kids get to play in the ball pit play pen area they’ve got set up on the main floor. For my part, though i get plenty of jogging in (more on that in a moment), I’d still like to get more upper-body workouts in, so this gives me an excuse to go a few times a week to lift some weights.

Anyway, Brooke will probably check out some of the organized workouts for adults, and we’re still investigating if the kids are interested in any sessions. We may spring for swimming lessons before this summer, but we haven’t decided quite yet. At the very least, as Calvin is aging out of preschool, he’ll be home this summer and it’ll be a lot easier for me to keep up my jogging if I can drop him off at the Y while I work out or jog on the treadmill.

Speaking of jogging, the picture above is from yesterday when the weather was 63 F. On January 7th. In Missouri.

No, climate change totally isn’t real. Obviously.

I slowed down over the break, but was able to pick it up a bit in the last week. I’m trying to stick to a 20 mi per week average, but in an effort to “catch up,” I pushed it a little more this week.

Anyway, the temperature was awesome and I got to run in the afternoon, which usually goes better for me. I started out with a 7:22/mi average early on, which was a good 20 sec/mi faster than I ran last week, so that already felt great. I kept pushing it as fast as I could, slowing down a little bit toward the end, but still maintaining a 7:26/mi average over 6.2 mi (10k). In the end, I did it in 46:28 min, which is utterly spectacular for me.

Did I say I ran in a T-shirt and shorts? In early January? In Missouri? Seriously.

After I ran, I grilled some brats and hot dogs. Because it was 63 F. In early January. In Missouri.

And they were delicious.

…after I put them on the grill for a few minutes longer because it got dark and it was hard to tell…because…it’s early January…

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Treats!

This is the second year I’ve tried my hand at making some Christmas “cookies.”  I always call them “cookies,” but there’s really no baking involved.  Still, these are treats that my Mom used to make when we were growing up, but when we were gone for college, she slowed down on her cookie making, largely because we weren’t around to help eat them.

Regardless, I missed them and I wanted my kids to get the same treatment, so I started to make them last year when I had off for Christmas break.  Thus, here we go again.

The ones pictured up top are almond bark-covered Oreos.  I also put some peanut butter between Ritz crackers and dipped those, as well.  The fun part about making both of them is that it can be challenging to figure out which is which, as they’re about the same size and shape.  

I actually dipped Oreos and pretzels a few years ago back in St. Louis, but ended up burning the almond bark by trying to microwave it.  I just couldn’t figure out the right settings to melt the chocolate without having to stir it every 30 seconds.  Then last year, I tried it using a double boiler method and believe you me, it works wonders.  I suppose it takes a little longer than it does in the microwave, but I have yet to burn anything, so I figure it’s worth it.  I used the double boiler for just about everything I made this year.

The holly candy (above) is corn flakes, marshmallow, corn syrup and green food coloring.  It isn’t too terribly hard to make, though getting the shape right can be a little tough.  I think I did a better job this year of mixing everything, so the candy held together a bit better rather than falling apart a flake at a time.

The chocolate-covered rice krispie treats are also a favorite of mine, though I always forget that they aren’t technically rice krispie treats, in the traditional sense.  Sure, they’ve got most of the hallmark ingredients (like, you know, rice krispies…), but they lack marshmallows, which ends up leaving them a bit drier.  The topping, though, mixes chocolate and butterscotch chips together (also in the double boiler).

This was my first year trying to make chow mein noodle candy.  These are similar to what Brooke’s family has (haystacks), but my family always put marshmallows in there.  I ended up adding a few extra noodles to the mix, as I thought they looked a bit over-marshmallow-y (sure, that’s a word…), so we’ll see in the finished product whether I got the mix right.  I haven’t tried them yet.  Brooke had me make some her way, but we’ll save those for next weekend when we head to Hannibal.

Anyway, it doesn’t take all that much time to make them and I certainly like eating them.  If anything, the cleanup takes longer than the “making” part takes. 

Meg’s been eyeing these treats for a few days now and I haven’t let her have any.  I’m terrible. 🙂

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Christmastime is Here!

So, it’s Finals Week at school and I’m procrastinating in my grading by posting pictures of this past weekend.  Just sayin’.

I put up the Christmas lights the Sunday after Thanksgiving (in the rain, I might add…), but we didn’t turn them on until late last week when it was closer to actually being December.  This weekend after we got the tree, I put the LED “flicker” candles in the windows.  Every year, I love seeing them up in the attic windows…

We got our tree this past weekend, again under threat of bad weather.  Calvin was actually feeling a bit sick, so we made him go with us, but he stayed in the car.  Brooke thought we should try and get a straighter tree this year rather than buy a new tree stand (last year’s tree had some “issues” staying upright…), and the tree lot we tend to go to keeps their best ones pre-cut and covered for easy browsing.  Meg and Brooke picked the one they liked the best (a Fraser Fir this year) and we hauled it off on the Forester.

By the time we got home, Calvin was feeling a little better.  He and Meg hung out for a bit while we waited for the tree to dry off from the rain (again…it’s Precipitation City here in Missouri this year…).  After a bit of unloading, I carried the tree in and put the new Christmas lights on it that Brooke picked up on sale at the end of last season.  These are bigger “bulb”-style lights, but they’re really just a plastic cover around a small LED.  Still, they look nice!  The kids helped out with hanging the ornaments…and then we had to rearrange the ornaments after they only hung them in the very front and below the 4′ line of the tree…  

In the end, it turned out pretty good!  The tree’s about 8′ tall, so the star doesn’t quite fit in the bay window perfectly.  We pulled it out a little bit, but it still looks great from the street outside.

This year also saw the addition of a new tree upstairs, also a pick-up from a sale at the end of last Christmas.  It’s a 4′ fake tree the kids can keep upstairs to put some of their ornaments on.  We actually put it up Thanksgiving weekend to tide Brooke over until it was time to put up the real thing.

We’ve got most of our presents purchased this year already and Brooke’s been busy with the wrapping.  She took care of Christmas cards before Thanksgiving for the first time ever, but as I’m in the throes of Finals, I won’t be addressing them until this weekend at the earliest.  Still, I think we’re ahead of most folks this season!  Since we’ve had at least 5 snowfalls this year (including a small one this morning…), it’s felt like Christmas for weeks now, even though it’s only December 4th.

The house at least looks more like Christmas now, too!

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Garden Update: Late-September

So, being honest for a moment: I put these pictures in here earlier in October and forgot about it.  I’m a little late, but the garden hasn’t changed all that much in the last week, so oh well: it is what it is.

Aaaaannnyway, we’ve mostly shut down the garden for the year.  At this point, I’m still going out a few times a week to grab cherry tomatoes for Meg’s and my lunches during the week.  There are some full-size tomatoes still coming on, and we’ve still got peppers out there, but we’re only going out there when we feel like it, or when we need something for some reason.

Brooke picked the popcorn.  We got some this year, but nowhere near what we got two years ago.  She noticed a squirrel attempting to carry an ear up one of our maple trees a few weeks ago, so we know various pests also went after them.  Still, we got something, so it could have been worse.  The bean plot has some of last year’s straw bales on it to try and limit the growth of weeds, but other than that, we’re leaving that entire plot alone now.

The tomato and pepper plots are still moving, to a limited degree.  Somehow, earlier last week, we ended up with 80+ F temperatures before it started getting cooler.  The low tonight is supposed to be 38 F, so we’ve had a big swing in the last week!  We’ve also had some rain, so I should probably mow…er…sometime…

Earlier in October, Brooke picked as much as she could handle and ended up with quite a few tomatoes.  She’s pretty sure she’s canned over 20 pints thus far, though she put these tomatoes pictured here in the freezer until she’s ready to process them.  She expects that she can hit 30 pints by the time it’s all said and done, but the “official” count remains to be seen.

Our pepper crop ended up being pretty solid this year!  We didn’t get many traditional bell peppers, but the peppers we ended up with were still relatively mild and tasty.  

She ended up canning them after roasting them outside on the grill.  The roasting process was straightforward outside and provided the “real estate” to do all of them at one time.  Brooke brought them in and cut them all up and put them in small jars in the fridge.  I’m not entirely sure what she’s going to do with them, but I suspect they’d be good in a chili or on a pizza.  We’ll see!

Lastly, aside from the popcorn in the middle, here’s the soup bean and “pole bean” haul from this year.  Not a ton on any of their counts, but still: more than we had before.  We will definitely go with pole beans next year, but we haven’t decided whether to go with a more “prolific” variety, or whether we need to just add more arms to the teepee and get more plants going.  With regards to the soup beans, we knew going in that we weren’t planting as many as last year (we’ve still got some), but it just feels wrong to not plant them, so here we are.  We got something.  That’s what matters.

This post probably closes out this year’s garden posts for awhile!  I may do another wrap-up later after the sweet potatoes come up, but that doesn’t usually happen until we get closer to the freezing point (which is tonight…incidentally…who knows…silly Missouri weather…).  We had a good run in 2018!

Update (10/16/18): Rather than starting a whole new post about this, I figured I’d add a few pictures from yesterday.  Our first frost hit last night (a low of 29 F), so we picked the rest of the tomatoes and peppers that were out.

The tomatoes weren’t in the best of shape, but I got almost a “car wash bucket” out of them.  I’ll be sad to see the cherry tomatoes go this season, as I’ve been eating them in my lunch twice a week, but I suppose all good things must come to an end…

The peppers were in better shape, overall.  Lots of big ones and little ones out there.  Brooke’s going to freeze these after she slices and dices them and we’ll use them in chili, on pizzas, etc. I think our pepper haul was shockingly good this year, though I guess I can’t say for certain whether we got more than last year or not (I suspect so…).

Sometime in the next few days, Brooke will dig up the sweet potatoes.  That’ll close out the garden for 2018 for good!

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My Legs Hurt

Ouch…

I went for a “long run” today, as the rest of the family were elsewhere and the weather was passable for part of a weekend (it’s snowing in KC right now…seriously…April in Missouri…).  I was hoping I could make it the full 13.1 mi today, but settled for breaching the “double digit” line for the first time.  I ran around much of Marshall, which is almost required when the town isn’t all that large, but I still only hit the 10 mi mark when I was within a block of our house on the return trip.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon laying on the couch watching the Cardinals game, and as of now, it sure feels like I pushed those leg muscles to their limits.  I wouldn’t say it “hurts,” per se, but I feel my legs every time I stand up and move from room to room.  I’m interested to see what tomorrow brings…

I suppose I’ll need to step it up more slowly, but the next few weeks will get more convoluted due to various meetings and work.  Once we’re clear of school, I should have more time for these longer runs (and they’ll probably need to be in the mornings…I ordered a hat to keep my bald head from burning if I run in intense sun…).  Based on the time I put in today, I suspect that I’m on track to do a half-marathon in under 2 hours, and honestly, I think I could have finished it off today, but it probably wouldn’t have felt all that great tomorrow (or Monday, for that matter…).  Assuming I can keep on schedule, I’m pretty confident I can achieve a respectable time by October.

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A Welcome Thaw

They live!

I’ve been meaning to post something for a bit, but with the weather we’ve had these past few weeks, we haven’t done all that much! In the past month, we had a few nights in the -10 F range and at least a week where we didn’t go above freezing. Last Tuesday, school was cancelled for Meg because we weren’t expected to get above 10 F, and apparently waiting for a bus when it’s -3 F in the morning isn’t ideal…

Anyway, this past week, temperatures started getting up into the 40 F range for once, getting rid of the snow we had last week…  Yesterday, we made it into the 50s (though I was on campus working with a Science Olympiad competition we were running, so I didn’t get to really enjoy the weather all that much), and today, we’re in the mid-60s.  Not bad for late-January!

We’ve been keeping an eye on the bees throughout this process, as they don’t survive well when it’s below 0 F for extended periods of time.  Generally, as long as you’ve got enough bees in a hive, they can surround the queen and flap their wings enough to keep everyone warm and survive.  We had some much colder days this winter than last winter, though, so we weren’t sure how they’d handle it.

Based on the picture above, they did just fine!  Brooke got in and put in a solid feeder “cake” sort of thing to get them through the rest of winter (at least, most of the way there) and she pulled off the super to keep them concentrated in the lower portions of the hive.  They’re pretty active on a day like today, so hopefully they don’t burn through the rest of their food supply thinking it’s Spring (hint: it isn’t).

Better late than never, right?

In other news, in keeping with this blog’s need to post everything garden-related possible, here are some popcorn ears Brooke finally picked.  Because, you know…it’s January.

Not that long ago!

Like I said, we had some snow last week on Martin Luther King Day when both kids were off school, so it was the perfect time for Calvin to go sledding for the first time.  Again, it hasn’t gotten than cold the past few years and, incidentally, we haven’t had enough snow for sledding since we first moved here, so Calvin hasn’t been old enough to enjoy it yet.

He took to it like a champ. 🙂

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So, About That New ‘Star Trek’ Show…

 We’re now three episodes into Star Trek: Discovery, the first new Star Trek TV property since Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air in 2005.  I’m really enjoying what I’ve seen so far, but wanted to record a few thoughts about it for posterity’s sake:

  1. The writers/producers were really playing up the whole “increased diversity” angle with regards to the cast and, boy howdy, were they right.  It’s uncommon to see any middle-aged white males in any given shot, though they certainly exist.  This is a pretty stark leap from previous outings in the series, and a welcome one.  Gene Roddenberry was adamant that his crew be constructed of a diverse group of people in the original series, complete with an alien, a Russian, an Asian American man and an African American woman, something unheard of in television of the time.  This Star Trek for a new generation has done a good job keeping up with that tradition, but I feel like the characters, overall, just feel more diverse than anything on TV now, even in today’s society where we’re more conscious of such things.
  2. The acting, overall, was really good out of the gate.  I’ve gone back to DS9, Voyager and Enterprise over the years and, ooooooooh, that acting in the early seasons was uniformly bad.  Honestly, for some characters, the acting never really improved even by the series’ end…especially in Star Trek: Enterprise.  All of these actors seem really solid, though.
  3. The writing is really good.  I’ve heard people complain about the first two episodes, but as others have also mentioned, it’s hard to sell the character of Michael Burnham and all the baggage that comes with her without that two-episode introduction.  Could that information been delivered as exposition or some re-cap?  Yes?  But would it have been good?  Nope.  It would have sold her character short, as well as her relationships and the way the rest of the crew of the Discovery is reacting to her presence.  So yes, they could have just started with the third episode, but the first two adds stakes to the world and a richness we wouldn’t have had otherwise.  CBS did screw up in only showing the first episode on broadcast and the second episode on its streaming service, All Access, as just watching that first episode does no one any favors…
  4. The production values are still really good, despite this show being relegated to a streaming-only service (more on that later).  It still looks pretty CGI-ish, though, so I long for the days when Star Trek still used real ship models.  Still, that ain’t happening, so this is the best we’ll get.  It all looks pretty good, though.
  5. I’m not a fan of having to spend $6/mo on another streaming service just for this show.  But.  I feel it’s necessary to put my money where my mouth is and support its presence.  I could probably expand on this in a completely separate post, but a show like Discovery wouldn’t survive on broadcast CBS.  Would it survive on Showtime, where ratings don’t have to be as big of a deal?  Maybe?  But then I’d have to pay for that, too, because I don’t have cable TV (and Showtime is $9/mo).  Would I like it to be on Netflix instead?  Absolutely!  But CBS owns the TV rights to Star Trek: Netflix doesn’t.  So it has to appear on a CBS property.  So unless Discovery is going to be shown on the Smithsonian Channel (another thing I wouldn’t have access to…), this is likely the only reasonable option in the streaming age.
  6. The bridge sets are too big.  They look bigger than the bridges on TNG, and this show is a prequel to the original series, after supposedly establishing that on Star Trek: Enterprise, the ship should feel like a “submarine” because it’s still early in interstellar travel.
  7. Along those lines, what’s with the hologram-style communications?!  Use your viewscreen, dammit.  This isn’t Star Wars!

We only get 15 episodes out of this first season and I think it’s off to a pretty compelling start.  Let’s hope CBS doesn’t have unrealistic expectations for this property, so it has room to breathe and grow in the streaming-only space!

Live long and prosper.

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A Note on Honey and the Bees That Make It

Cutting off comb!

We took around 12 frames to Hannibal over the July 4th Weekend to extract some honey!  Ultimately, the process took a few hours and was mostly carried out in the garage in order to keep bees from homing in on their wares and coming to reclaim it.

This was the first time we’d extracted our own stuff (though we combined ours with 6 or 8 frames of Mark’s stock), so I grabbed a few pictures of the process, as we had multiple questions across Instagram and Facebook asking how this all worked.

The extractor.

After Brooke used her sweet serrated knife up above to scrape off the wax cappings on the frames, they were put in an extractor 4-at-a-time.  Basically, the extractor is a metal barrel with a hand crank that acts as a centrifuge.  The honey is pulled out using centrifugal force and it drops down to the bottom of the barrel.  A spigot is down there to allow for draining into another bucket after filtration, as there’s a lot of extra “stuff” in there we don’t want (i.e. wax, dead bees, etc.).

After all of this was done, we ended up with around 6 gallons of honey, which was far more than we were expecting!

Well…that’s odd…

Anyway, remember the new hive?  Well, Brooke didn’t put frames in it last weekend after we got back.  So, she got in there today and we found out the bees have been kinda busy!

So busy, they made new comb in the empty spaces where the frames used to be…

Seriously. That isn’t supposed to happen in a week.

There isn’t a great solution to this, as the new comb had honey and brood in it.  Brooke ended up shaving off the comb into the super on top, then putting a “queen excluder” above the super (to, obviously, prevent the queen from crossing the barrier), and then put a new super on top of the hive.

The crazy thing is that this is the new hive that’s only about 3 months old.  Apparently, they’re doing fine!  Doing some crazy stuff, but still doing fine!