Wordless Tuesday: Snow White's Revenge

Garden FAIL

 Okay, this garden is the worst I've ever done. I got two beans from the entire thing! I thought you may like to laugh at my failed attempt. :) Behold: my future compost!





These are dead corn stalks with bare bean vines wrapped around them. The whole garden pretty much looks like this.

 



 



The marigolds did well, at least.





Francis did his job. No rabbits, no birds. Francis is perfect.



Kid-Friendly Recipe: Whiny Bread

Whiny Bread was originally going to be called Double-Berry Banana Bread, but Thing #1, my sweet daughter Rebecca (bless her) inspired me.

Rebecca loves to cook. She especially likes to make muffins. One day, she decides: This is the day I WILL make muffins. So, she bugs me. And when I say 'bug', I mean every five minutes: "Hey, Mom. Can we make muffins?" Every time, she says it like the idea just came to her, like she's just spouting off some stray thought.

Well, I caved.

I was going to make banana bread (because bananas were 25 cents a pound at Wal Mart and, well, I had a lot of bananas) but I had these frozen blueberries. I needed freezer space, I didn't have anything else in mind for those blueberries, so in they went. I replaced some of my mashed bananas with thawed blueberries. (I still have bananas on hand. Oh well.)

Note: Adding blueberries to banana bread batter makes it less pretty:

That's a lot of batter, I know. I froze some of it for later. (Bananas don't last forever.) I also added some dried cranberries and of course chocolate chips. Chocolate is a must.

So, the oven is preheating and I'm scooping batter into the muffin tin when Rebecca asks, "Mom, can we take a bath?"

At this point, I'm counting to an insanely high number before responding. She hasn't even eaten a muffin yet and she's already asking for something else?!

"Sure, honey. After muffins."

I continue to scoop batter and she goes off to play with her little brother. Pretty soon, the muffins are baking and Rebecca is missing.

She's a big girl. She probably went to play with toys.

Nope.

She runs back into the kitchen stark. Naked.

The muffins are in the oven. I can't give her a bath right this second. When I tell her this, she cries. I don't know why, but watching her melt down over a gentle "not now" is funny. (I know, I'm terrible.) Rebecca slumps to the floor, whining about how she wants to take a bath. You'd think I just told her she can never bathe again.

And so, Whiny Bread was born:

It's even the right color. And it has a soothing ingredient to mend a broken heart: chocolate.

Hmm... maybe I should call them Sanity Muffins.

Three Sisters Garden: Two Months Later

Earlier, I blogged about my Three Sisters Garden. Well, I'm pleased to announce that it has produced food!

 Cue heavenly concourses of angels.

This is an updated picture of my garden. Please excuse the weeds. We (finally) got some rain, so I haven't been outside in some time. This is mostly corn stalks with pole beans growing up them.

That, friends, is future corn.

And I think these are kernels without a husk. Weird.

Outside, Around My House

These are just some pictures I took in the spring. I like to look back to them during the scorching hot summer months to remind myself it's not always this bad.

Azaleas grow better than most weeds here in Tallahassee.

They're everywhere, but you only really notice them during the one month they're in bloom.

Ah, pollen season.

My three year old calls this the church angel because her hands are together like she's praying.

Some volunteers by the deck.

This is Francis. He watches over my garden and makes sure the birds and squirrels stay away. (I'm sure the dog fur I put around the garden helps, too.)

Grandma's Garden

My grandma is an amazing gardener. She lives in central Florida and grows just about anything. She's a big inspiration for me with my gardening. We went to visit my grandparents not too long ago and I took a bunch of pictures.
        

Container gardening at it's finest. Grandma will use anything as a

planter: old bathtubs, barrels, water drums, you name it. 

I love this little pond they made. There are some fish and

the little pile of rocks in the back sometimes has water trickling out from it.

More containers. Tomatoes and herbs, mostly.

These are in Grandma's little greenhouse.

Please take as many kumquats as you want!

Grandma makes really good kumquat preserves.

She has a Three Sisters Garden of her own.

(Hers is so much better than mine.)

My Three Sisters Garden

 I'm growing some veggies and a few flowers in my yard. I like growing things. I love the smell of the dirt and how thirsty plants suck up all the water on a hot day. Baby green leaves shooting up out of the ground are just so beautiful. And the really great thing about growing vegetables is: you get to eat them!

So this spring, I planted a garden. Not just any garden. I planted a Three Sisters Garden. This is a Native American tradition, I think. Basically, you plant corn, then some pole beans and squash. The beans put nitrogen into the soil, the corn gives the beans something to climb, and the squash provides ground cover, which keeps out the weeds.

Marigolds keep the bugs away.

 I planted the corn first to give it a head start, then planted the beans and squash.

The newspaper isn't pretty, but it cuts down on weeds.

Baby squash plants. Took about 2 weeks to get this big from seed.

So yes, the writer lives outside the words in her brain. :) I don't spend much time outside, but I try to get out every couple of days to water and weed my little garden.