This poor old blog. I actually really miss it. I'm not sure where to start so I'm just going to upload some pictures and go from there and try to do a little catch up. 

Last Christmas my mom gave me a fun carrot peeler.  She learned how to make veggie bouquets at Relief Society, then became veggie connoisseur to me and the granddaughters during our family Christmas party.  She gave us a fun tutorial, then slipped in the secret peeler into our Christmas stash.

I often feel like Easter doesn't get enough attention, so we are hitting it early this year.  I was very excited when I saw this Easter Countdown.  It is a full 30 days!  We started it late and so will finish just after LDS General Conference, which seemed appropriate and a good prep for hearing the Prophets words.

My mother-in-law gave us a mitten tree for Christmas.   Since mitten weather is nearly over (thank goodness) we used it to hang our Easter tags.  Every day me and the kids take down a tag and learn about all the different titles of Jesus Christ.  So far we have covered his birth, Jehovah, and Messiah.  After our study, the tag goes into our HUGE Easter Basket exploding with life and springtime energy and life.

 This is our new reading corner for the kids.  Lots of times baby Giddy brings me the sheepskin rug to snuggle him up while I rock him in the big rocker.  He is such a cuddly stinker and I love it!

This coat rack no longer accepts stinky shoes in the bottom.  It is now dedicated to a rotation of library books.  It has helped keep things manageable, in view, and USED.  Here's Giddy reading the Easter book we just checked out from the library.


  Our Nature Basket is lined with moss and filled with eggs, seashells, and our favorite Butterfly in a Jar.  The kids love to pick up the shells and listen for the ocean!

 I'm starting to feel like my homey Bunny doesn't fit in around here.  I wish you could see the butterfly in the jar better.  When you tap the lid, he flutters around and amazes all my little friends at Church Primary.
 My kids were slightly disappointed that the eggs had no treats.  One day they may just be surprised to find something inside.


Tonight we are learning about Jesus as Creator and will be starting our Easter Hill with Wheat Grass.  Thank you wizard mother at Chocolate on my Cranium!

One of my goals in 2012 was to lessen the garden waste due to end of summer burnout.  Are you familiar with this?  You have buckets and buckets of corn and you take the time to pick it, haul it, shuck it (*ahem, this taken a few days in years past) and by the time you're ready to process it for the freezer it's starchy and gross.

In July, I spent 2 weeks to find the perfect shade of aquamarine for the farm.  Red, White, & Aquamarine--kind of Americana with a twist.  I priced a high quality paint, swept in during a one a year rebate, then brought it home with big plans to freshen up some outbuildings once the kids started back in school.

But the thing is, once the kids started back in school the garden was unloading harvest after harvest upon us.  It was a frenzy.  So the bucket still sits in the garage, and August, September, and October I was in the kitchen canning garden produce!

Here are a few long overdue (I don't think I updated much about our own garden last year) pictures from Our 2012 Garden.
Prepare to do the scroll dance.

Here the 3 sisters near harvest time.  This bed we planted sugar-pie pumpkin which are the perfect size for steaming, pureeing, then freezing for pumpkin muffins throughout the year.

I feel quite passionate about providing fun creative avenues for the kids to play in the garden setting.  I was enamored with the idea of a labyrinth (labyrinths are different than a maze! I won't elaborate to spare the boring details) so I found a pattern I liked and roughly shaped it out with flour.  Then we added new compost to the pattern and planted in that. 


 Here's the Labyrinth shortly after planting.  Eventually I laid down layers of cardboard in the paths to suppress weeds and it did a great job!  I planted a hybrid corn called Optimum Sweet because it is a very tall corn (and more importantly, a very sweet corn).



This shows the teepee a little better, along with my best garden helper last year, Gideon.  He loved to be outside with me while I worked in the garden.


Blurry!


Here was another addition last summer.  We took cattle panels and bent them.  They act as a support to peas, beans, while shading the cooler crops like spinach, salad, and broccoli.  Here it is pretty early on when our peas were starting to take off.
 Prior to a weedfest, my little orphan child in the hoophouse.
  A little later we got some mulch down to help with the weeds.  This is my favorite picture of Leif in the garden.
 I strung lights around the opening, it was so magical at night!  But darnit it didn't last with garden sprinklers hitting it 3 times a week!  Baby + Baby Rake = Happiness.


At the mouth of the hoophouse is the sandbox.  I wanted to clean it up a bit and bought lots of wooden alphabet letters, sea shells, and glass coins.  Here's my two blondies having fun!
This is my favorite picture of the hoophouse.  I took some old sheets to keep the shade coming.  Boy did we have a HOT summer.  

Also, did you know it takes about 8 hours to shell enough peas for a big pot of creamy potatoes and peas?  I had so many, and they were so intensive to shell, that we did have much go to waste in the pea department :(


After trying to grow a plethora of items in this top tier, I finally broke down in July and just planted the drought tolerant Portulaca flowers.  They filled it up nicely and could handle the HEAT.


Tomato guy!


We planted a cover crop of Clover after harvesting fava beans.  They will enrich the soil, suppress weeds, and provide happiness for our bees in the spring. 


The Mister of the House was cute.  I would stack a box of completed jars and ask him to take them downstairs, but instead he kept stacking them in the piano room.  He wanted to keep seeing our progress and take a picture when we were done.  

Although I know there are many awesome woman who canned more produce than I did, I was happy with the progress we made.  We still have lots of food preserved and it is serving our family well.



 Sadness = roasting peppers and garlic for a tomato sauce, only to ruin the entire HUGE patch with too much parsley for the garden.  Lame!

 The pears came to Idaho with me and my mom helped me put them up.  Thanks mom!


Green tomato relish, peach jam (sweetened with honey), and peaches!


I love this jar of salsa with a mashed avocado and fresh cilantro.  Also good on it's own!

Here's our parting shot.  We took some trimmed branches and made an arch leading from the garden/yard to the "farm" area.  I love it!  Looking from the farm into the garden. Stay out chickens!

Back in the 80's when I was a mutt, my parents loaded everyone up and took us to Oregon and Northern California.  It was such a stark contrast to my Idaho and it's own form of beauty.  Luscious, deep, and bursting with life, I fell in love first with the city parks in Oregon.  I remember everyone having lunch in a park in Medford, Oregon, marveling at a bicyle world that I could only dream of as a gutter rider on Apache Avenue.  Hilly parks with paved trails, including bridges for bicycles!  All of this on top of tennis courts, basketball courts, and lots of playground equipment.

It was a trip never to forget, especially because just as we were descending into Redwood Country I got sick and huddled over a barf mug for an entire day.   I up-chucked twelve times.  Twelve times! With each disgusting release of my stomach, I added a tally mark in my head and felt my martyr status grow.

Yet...and yet! I was lost in a marvelous world of trees unfathomable in size.  By day two, I was cured, and happily scurried into the intended frame as viewed by my mother and her silver Minolta camera, capturing everything on Kodak.

And so it was with great anticipation, that I scoured the internet to find a Redwood Grove the little Olsen's could visit on a recent trip to the Sierra Nevada Region of California.  Even in the heart of winter, it did not disappoint.  So we have the Olsen's meet Calaveras Big Trees State Park.


We stayed at Angels Camp, the site of an old gold-miners camp during the Gold Rush.  I checked the weather report for Angels Camp, noted a high of 61 for the day, then promptly tucked away our winter boots.  My little clothes-horse Isaac, the only one with multiple jacket options, was downgraded to his red jacket.  

We drove the short 20 miles to Big Trees Park (near Arnold, California) and found ourselves with snow-packed trails, garnering me the mother of the year award as my little man slowly froze throughout the day.



Fortunately, hats and mittens were in our car still.  Here's Isaac after he inherited mom's mittens and hat.

While much of the summer lushness is gone in winter, I found visiting Calaveras Big Trees State Park in January to be almost perfect.  We practically had the entire trail to ourselves (North Grove Trail) and the combination of green foliage and red trees against a plain white canvas was visually delightful.



White, Green, Brownish-Red.  Downright perfect if you ask me.

This grove is interspersed with pines and cedar, as you can see in the foreground.

The North Grove Trail was a flat 1.5 mile loop that had 26 stops narrated by the park booklet available for 50 cents.  It truly was teaching a lesson about the history of the grove, and inspiring visitors to be better protectors of wild places. 

There was an irony, as I found myself most excited for photo ops at the places where these trees were exploited most.   Here's a few examples:




 Near the end of the loop you come to this carved tunnel.  Such a fun photo op right?  This was carved in the 1880's after Yosemite (somewhat close) had carved a similar tunnel and was stealing tourism traffic away from Calaveras.  You can find these sorts of things all over different groves in Northern California.  It is now illegal to do this to these protected trees.



The exploited trees in the grove did meet my needs of curiosity and my pretenses of being a scientist.  Well just how big is it around? (Well step on it, we chopped it down!)  Well, just how tall are they? (We harvested it's bark, come take a look!)  Could you live in it, drive through it, or walk through it? (You bet, we hacked a clearing right through the center!).

With our stopping and learning at each new avenue, it became clear how much kids are sponges.  You have to be careful! They lack maturity to find balance.  Soon I could hear statements like: "Why would they do that to the Mother Tree? Why are people so mean? People are so bad!" until there was a reassurance that the Mother Tree was perhaps content in teaching a lesson, and how there was much excitement and goodness all around.  

Here's some more pictures of our visit.  We stayed about 2 hours, and the kids reactions were exactly what I was hoping for.  Amazement! Magic! Wonder!


Prepare to crank your neck up a lot.  Here's The Mister with sunburst and wonder.


 There's four of us at differing depths of this fallen tree.  Can you find us all?
 Here I am inside the same tree, now I'm looking out to the clan.






 Here is Isaac standing by the plackard showing a picture from this spot 100+ years ago.  Notice the background as dad films brother and sister making their way through the long tunnel.

Below, is a fuller angle of this fallen "Father-of-the-Forest".


These big trees were often named after famous people in the 1800's.  This tree was named "Abraham Lincoln" just after his martyrdom in 1865.  In honor of Abe's #1 fan (Herm-Daddy) and one of the BEST movies of 2012, we though we'd all take a chance to take a picture with ole Abe.




 Starting to get cold.  Hey buddy, we'll go eat some lunch soon!
 Look how he can turn off those waterworks just like that!
 What a handsome boy in his new Christmas coat, mittens, and hat!


Is it legal to put this many pictures on a post!

That's a wrap.  My #1 regret and bit of advice, visit this place with a ball of yarn.  Loop it around one of these trees and cut it.  Place in a jar with some pine needles for a fun memory display.

Adios!

In a movie only a Grandmother could finish, here lies the Olsen kids in 2012.  Tell me with these sights, sounds, you couldn't pretend you were at the beach.  Better yet...ALONE at the beach.

If this shore was 58.6 miles from your home, how often would you go?

The Olsen's biggest, funnest, newest summer project happened around July. It ends up the hole in the backyard, which used to serve as a retention pond prior to city-wide gutters, still has a purpose. For some blessed holy reason, underground spring water flows into it during a few precious summer months. Usually, by the beginning of summer (and the end of spring) it's a soggy mess, but this year? It just kept a flowin' like honey in the Promised Land.

So I'm here to give a shout out to all amateur gardeners. The ones who love the pretty yards in Better Homes & Gardens but then get their water bill, have a newborn, or become temporarily addicted to saving the princess. I want to have a pretty garden, I want self-reliance, but I have always become burned out in July.