Cabbage Worms!!!!

During my last farm report I mentioned some difficulty with my poor holy (and not the divine kind) Broccoli plants. Well we had a crack of sunshine today and both David and I popped out for a stroll around the beds. The herbs..good. The peas are now loaded with budding pea pods. The tomatoes..still be droopy but I saw blossoms as did I on the pepper plants. The brussel sprout plant is huge but the broccoli...


HAS WORMS!!! vast quantities of little green wiggly things. In all of my 5 years of gardening vegetables in the backyard I have never had bug problems. Sure I have seen the odd tomato worm but never ever something to this extent. My guess is the little suckers came with the little plant and have now put the entire garden section into jeopardy.

Now the difficulty-I was not raised organic. My garden has largely been organic because nothing has ever tried to invade it. My first instinct was to go dig in my shed and see what hardcore bug killing chemicals I could find (stuff is in there from years ago). I paused...I breathed...I don't want to go off half-crazy and not think this through. I could give up on broccoli this year...I could find some more natural way.

I searched the web. They said neem spray...a light bulb went off in my brain. I have neem oil in my house. I was told last year when we were invaded with the big lice infestation that it would help keep them from moving in again. I pulled out the bottle that has sat in the cupboard since and took it out to have a trial on the plants. neem oil, peppermint oil and water. T sprayed two test plants and am going to wait and see if 1. the worms die and 2. the plants die. If I gain victory over the evil beasts I will spray some more. If not..I need advice!!

helppppp!

Bejewled Jeans for Girls With Short Legs

Grace my 8 year old is afflicted with short legs. I am always rolling up her pants (It would just be wasteful to cut them off as she will grow right?). This morning we had an epiphany-instead of cuffing her jeans we rolled them up once and then pinned them with friendship safety pins. Grace makes these pins like crazy and sells them for 25 cents to her friends at school. Although the regular kind can be used we prefer the all brass safety pins as they don't have the loop at the end to deal with and can be unbent and rebent much more easily.

I think I will baste around the top of the cuff for more stability and then commission Grace to make more pins for fun.





Another My Creative Space brought to you by Kootoyoo

The Farm Report

Weeding the herb garden of new toadstools (too much rain and not enough sun)

The raised beds

The Peas have gone crazy in this weather. The shorter plants at the end are a different variety of peas.

If all of the pea blossoms turn into pods we will have a bumper crop this year. Does anyone know if you blanch peas before freezing them?

The onions and leeks are growing quite nicely. The brussel sprout plant has grown a bit but the broccoli is not doing as well.

My sad little broccoli-Something has been snacking on the leaves.

The tomatoes are going yellow with water logged dirt. The peppers seem OK but not growing very fast. Along one end of the bed I have plopped in some mixed greens (I figure if we are going to have cool weather i might as well give in and grow cool weather plants). At the other end is calendula an edible flower. Mine come up volunteer from year to year in nice oranges and yellows.

Zucchini sprout with its first real leaf. This is surrounded by green beans (bush variety).

I replanted the corn today as my first planting didn't sprout. I think the seeds were old. I talked to my aunt and she said my grandfather did not plant corn until June 1st. The green starts you can see are zinnias, nasturtiums (I hope these trail down the wall as summer gets going) and sunflowers around the fence line.

Raspberries ready to grow and ripen when the sun decides to appear.

Below are pictures of flowers and plants bursting forth and happy in our rainy May weather.

Family Doings-

David and I went for a walk yesterday with camera-I am working with a group of ladies on a neighborhood newspaper project and volunteered to take some neighborhood stock photos to have in ready for any stories we might write. Along the way I tried out some extra just for fun pictures that came out quite nicely.













David made a few loaves of bread: challah and his home developed artisan bread.








Grace did a bit of doodling on the white boards.



Speaking of white boards--We love white boards in the house. I am a math teacher, David is an computer engineer and Grace likes to draw. As a result we do a lot of jotting down of ideas. The urge to do so on a larger scale has made us junkies for the easy availability of white boards. White boards are expensive but we found an inexpensive alternative that works great-Shower board. They come in 4 by 8 foot sheets in the paneling area of the big box hardware store (Home Depot for us). We have a friend who installed two big sheets on his sliding closet doors. We cut ours into 2 foot by 2 foot squares. I carry these to my classrooms, Kids who visit my house draw on them, and David and I brainstorm on them.

Always Write Down Pattern Adaptions As You Do Them

So sock one looks beautiful-see picture in previous post. Sock two-not so much. My daughter compared it to a sock for a goat. So one might wonder how I could get such a nice looking baby sock while free styling adaptions to an adult patter the first time and then go so wrong on the second sock..well my dear chickadees it is because I did not write my changes down!! I then had to remember what I did the first time. Apparently my memory failed. I now will rip out (in knitters language this is, I hear called frogging?? Does anyone know why?)...I will knit another sock and keep track of the numbers this time. Wish me luck!

My Creative Space: The Sock Saga Continues

I got all of my beads out last week. I sorted...I looked for inspiration. I even ordered some books. I then moved them back into my Sewing room and pulled out my little size 0 knitting needles and cast on 36 stitches in an attempt to recreate the adult sized socks I made for Grace (Daughter age 8) in a smaller size for my grandson (age 2). I knitted (see the post before the creamed peas and potatoes report) running out of my left over yarn just before the toe. On Tuesday my grandson and I took a trip to the knitting store and I found a lovely blue to finish off his planned but now obviously too small socks. While at the store Grant picked out some yarn for my next pair of socks. he chose a red, white and blue self striping yarn. Now...if I can just work out how to do the math to get socks that are not too big and not too small but just right.

I just spent the evening looking at all of the creative space posts on Kootoyoo's blog. A great feat as there are so many cool ones and I spend ages looking around and linking some up on my favorites list.

New Peas and Potatoes with Cream

This is stuff from my childhood. My grandma made them occasionally in the spring. Today I visited my local Wednesday farmers market with my 8 year old daughter and her school for a field trip.
While there I made my own purchases as well as helped to herd the kiddies from market to fountain and then another fountain (in the pouring rain I might add).


Purchased: Rhubarb for more crumble, sugar snap peas, shelling peas, new red potatoes, sage plant, oregano plant, lemon cucumber plant, one sesame cookie to share with my adult daughter who also came along and one french style cookie (Meghan said she found them all over the bakeries while in Paris a few years ago) that is a sandwich meringue cookies, filled with flavored cream (none of us can remember what it is called).

The recipe-
So this evening I boiled the tiny little potatoes while I shelled the peas. I added the peas to the water after shelling and then when the potatoes were soft I drained the two now together in the pot. Popped the two into a small bowl and then I poured in a little bit of whipping cream (we are cream deprived in the U.S. so if I were in the UK it would have been double cream). I added a lot of fresh ground pepper and salt and voila....a trip back to my childhood. Fresh new potatoes and peas with cream.

Sorry-we all ate them before pictures could be taken You will have to settle for children and river gazing.