Homegrown Thoughts

Tuesday, July 1, 2008 - Nature coming out my ears

I’m not really an outdoors person. During summer, I greatly prefer the air-conditioned indoors. I have had a few interesting encounters with the natural world in the last couple of days, though.

Sunday night when we came home from church, there was an interesting addition to the neighborhood. A hawk had landed in our next door neighbor’s yard and it had *something*. The hawk seemed to have no fear and was kind of glaring at the cars that drove by, probably just daring them to try to take its treasure. It had some prey and it wasn’t going to share. Several neighbors came outside to watch. It was kind of funny because rarely are so many of us outside at the same time. One had a camera, a couple of us brought out our binoculars. We couldn’t figure out what it was eating, though. We could just see it tearing out clumps of something white and throwing it all over the grass. Hawks are not neat eaters, it seems. We were pretty sure it was fur and hoped it wasn’t a kitten or something! It seemed like too much white to be any of the rabbits I’ve seen in the area. We were all fascinated and a little grossed out at the same time. Yes, I know, it’s the circle of life and all, but this was a pretty aggressive ‘tearing limb from limb’ session we were witnessing here. Eventually we decided we’d seen enough and left it to finish its meal without an audience.

The next day I got brave and inspected the leftover carnage. It wasn’t fur. It was feathers. Lots and lots of white feathers. From the length of what was left, I’m guessing it was a pigeon/mourning dove. We have quite a lot around here and the feathers were pretty large. I didn’t see any bones, just feathers and some other unidentifiable inner body part that I tried NOT to look at. So it seems the hawk’s prey was not much smaller than he was!

Yesterday we needed to go to the post office and I decided to make a stop on our way back. We’ve searched for a geocache at this park once before and failed. So I thought I’d let the kids play at the park for awhile and search for it again. We got a little more brave and ventured further into the woods where I’m certain it’s hidden. My GPS was only giving me an accuracy range of 21 feet at best, so we were looking in a little wider area. I found many places that would be awesome locations to hide a cache, but none of them hid the one I was looking for. I finally had to give up because I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. The final tally was 7 mosquito bites (although I think one might actually be a spider bite as it’s on my knuckle and my finger is swollen today). Those were all on me. The boys had NONE. I am not kidding when I say I’m a mosquito magnet. For some reason they just love me, even when they aren’t biting anybody else. I feel so honored (not). We again found some of the tiny frogs that are in the grass between the pond and the woods. They are so adorable. I think they are called cricket frogs. This is because of the sound they make, but I really thought they were crickets at first, they are so small. It’s fun to hold them and they are very cool to the touch. I thought about getting a couple to keep as pets but I did some research and it seems they only live a few months and like to eat *gulp* crickets!! I’m not dealing with crickets, no-siree. So we’ll just go visit the frogs in their natural habitat instead. And next time we go I will try to remember to take my camera!

Today I went out and harvested more raspberries from the back 40. Actually, we don’t have a back 40. We have a regular ol’ suburban back yard. I’ve written about my raspberry bushes before. They actually were volunteers that snuck under the fence from our neighbor’s yard. I decided to go with the flow and have made a little patch for them. It’s about 2.5 x 5 feet. I am amazed at the amount of berries I’m getting already this year. They’re very early and there are tons of them. For the last week I’ve been getting a good cup to cup and a half of berries every day. I didn’t get any yesterday so I got a ton today. This is my harvest from this morning shown in a 3 cup container:

Keep in mind that anything I purposely plant dies almost immediately. But volunteer raspberries…they thrive.

Oh, I almost forgot. We have also discovered that we have a mulberry tree. Actually the neighbor behind us does, but the tree is on the fence line and a good portion of it hangs over our property. This tree has never had fruit until this year. It’s making up for lost time. I read that people don’t like to plant female mulberry trees because they make such a mess with the fruit. I can attest to this fact now! There are mulberries everywhere. It’s like a mulberry carpet in part of our yard. The part where the swingset and shed are. Mulberries stain. My children play on the swingset. One of them walked all over the carpet after coming inside. Do you see where I’m going here? I have some carpet cleaning to do.

Nature and I…we have quite the interesting dance going on here.

Technorati Tags: nature, fruit, frogs, geocaching, hawk, raspberries, mulberries

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - Butterscotch Cream Cheese Blondie-type Bars

Posted in Home Arts

I came across this recipe awhile back and couldn’t wait to try it out. Warning: This stuff is addictive! This makes a lot of bars and unless you want to gain 10 lbs., it’s probably best to share. I don't, but you should. :-) These are very rich - FIVE eggs in this one. This is one of my new favorite recipes. Let me know if you try them!

I found the original recipe at Bake or Break and added notes from my own experience below.

Butterscotch Cream Cheese Swirl Bars

Cream Cheese Filling

In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add egg and beat well. Add flour and combine. Set aside.

Bars

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 12″x 18″jelly roll pan.

In a medium saucepan, melt butterscotch chips and butter over low heat, stirring occasionally until smooth. Alternatively, you can melt them in the microwave. Remove from heat and beat in brown sugar. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, to butterscotch/butter mixture. Add vanilla extract. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat until well combined. Stir in nuts, if used. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Drop the cream cheese filling by teaspoonfuls over the batter. With a small knife, swirl into the batter. Bake 25-30 minutes or until a pick inserted into center comes out with moist crumbs attached. Cool to room temperature before cutting into bars.

Makes 24 3-inch bars.

Technorati Tags: recipe, bars, dessert

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Saturday, June 14, 2008 - Another brilliant idea of mine

Posted in General

Okay, I have no idea how to do this myself, but *somebody* needs to do it.

Here's the deal. I don't like veggies. Never have, most likely never will. I have some exceptions - fresh green beans, sweet corn, potatoes, carrots in some forms...I think that covers them all. Other than that elite group, no thanks on the veggies, I'll pass.

I do realize that veggies are good for me. I realize I should eat veggies. But I'm also a 5 year old child and I just can't force myself to eat something I don't like. The ol' gag reflex kicks in and that's really not pleasant for anyone.

So, this is my idea. I think they should create hybrid vegetables. Cross the healthy (not so yummy) veggies with (very yummy) chocolate! I know, I know, it's genius. Chocolate is one food that I will eat in nearly any form or preparation, and I do so on a very frequent basis. Milk chocolate, white chocolate...I don't discriminate, I love it all. LOVE it.

I'm sure it can be done. They make hybrid roses to make them bigger, brighter, more aromatic - even into trees!. They mix different fruits to make new ones - aren't tangelo's a mix of tangerines and oranges?

Just imagine. Chocolate flavored broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, lettuce (did you notice that lettuce was NOT on my list of veggies I'll eat?), spinach, radishes, peas, various beans...all of them! Not only would I eat them, I'm sure most kids who balk at them now would gobble them up. No more arguments over eating your veggies. Well, that might be a little optimistic, but the arguments would at least be different. "No Johnny, you may not have any more spinach. You've eaten quite enough already!"

Since I'm unable to pull this off myself, I invite those who are able to work on this little project of mine. Just cross the veggies with cocoa bean...bushes? trees? vines? Whatever, just get to work on it. Whoever pulls this off will be a hero to many a mother and child. Including me. So snap, snap, get to work! We're counting on you!

Technorati Tags: food, vegetables, chocolate

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008 - Convention Recap

Posted in Homegrown Schooling

Obviously, we also survived day 2 of the convention. It wasn’t as much fun as the first day for me, but I was getting exhausted. It tires me out to be around a lot of people and action for extended periods of time. The main vendor halls were even hotter than the day before. They really need to come up with a solution for that - it’s the same problem every year. Having a couple of big fans for each gym just doesn’t cut it. They just blow the hot air around. It’s not conducive to shopping and buying, that’s for sure! On the up side, the classrooms where the sessions were held were very well air-conditioned this year, which was an improvement over last year when I believe the a/c was at least partially broken in that area of the building.

Our purchases on this day included Beer’s Victor Journey Through the Bible, which we got from Rainbow Resource. We managed to make purchases from them both days. :-) We also purchased Snap Circuits, Jr. from R & D. I would have liked to link to the product at their site, but their site needs some navigational help. Sorry, it’s the website designer in me, but if people can’t find what they want on your site…they can’t buy it! Ending that tangent now.

Anyway…the boys are having tons of fun with the Snap Circuit set and I’m having to limit them to just a couple/few projects a day or they’ll be done with it before 2 weeks have passed. They’re already asking for a larger set. They now know more about how electricity works at ages 9 and 7 than I do at *ahem, enter OLD age here*.

We attended more sessions by My Father’s World, split up for some family meeting and “Bringing Your Child to Christ and Keeping Them There” sessions.

I guess my plan for this year is to plan more. My husband would like to have a better idea of what we are doing and hear less about all I wanted to do and didn’t get done. He thinks actually planning out what we’re going to do in advance would be helpful. That may seem pretty obvious to most, but I, especially last year, did not really plan ahead. I just grabbed whatever we were working on and we did the next thing. If it was going well, we’d do a little more. If it wasn’t going so well, we’d do a little less. Then I’d just track what we did after the fact. I’m also very eclectic and use many different things, so I don’t have anything already made up that tells me when to do what. Which I like, by the way. I don’t like the pressure of having to do such and such by a certain date or feel I’m ‘behind’ and have to catch up to…whatever it is I'm supposedly catching up to. Is it a race and I'm losing? I’m not sure!

So, this will be a challenge for me, especially as this is the first year I’ll be schooling both boys ‘officially’. I did almost everything orally with my younger one last year, but this year he will have to have some tangible work for his portfolio to be reviewed, so it should be interesting. He’s not a ’sit down and do it on paper’ kind of a kid. I’ll have to be sure I record our oral schooling or it’ll look like we did nothing. I think I can teach both kids from the same materials in a couple of subjects, so that should help.

Let’s see…I guess that’s about it for the convention and the motivation it stirred. I’m trying to finish up my summer school plans this week so we can get back to in on Monday. We’ve had a long break considering we school year round. It’s always so hard to get back into the groove after a break! I make the workload lighter in the summer, but I think it’s best for us if we keep doing something.

Technorati Tags: homeschooling, convention, curriculum

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Friday, June 6, 2008 - One day down, one more to go

Posted in Homegrown Schooling

Just a quick note tonight (ha! Am I capable of being quick? We shall see…). Today was the first day of our state homeschooling convention. After being up in the night herding the family down to the basement for a tornado warning and then shuttling the kids to their grandparents early this morning so we could go to said convention, I was not all that alert this morning. I about fell asleep during Zan Tyler’s morning Keynote, and I’m pretty sure that is not a comment on Zan’s speaking abilities. She is so cute! I did manage to wake up a bit later in the day and very much enjoyed the sessions by Todd Wilson of FamilyMan Ministries. So much so that I attended 3 in a row. And that was not just because they were held in the sanctuary where there were padded pews and air conditioning. Partly, but not completely. :-) He had a lot of good things to say and he is quite the funny guy. Great combo in my book.

Apparently we have to leave at the crack of dawn again tomorrow morning to make it in time for the start of the conference. It’s even more fun to find parking on Saturday than it is on Friday due to the extra folks that come who weren’t there the day before. So it’s a good idea to get there on time or a bit early. I’m glad we only live a few miles away. Have I mentioned that I’m not a morning person? Like, not at all.

I did purchase some curriculum I needed today. I got the next level of Math-U-See (check!) and we’re trying A Reason for Spelling for both boys this year (check! check!). So they’re taken care of. I’m not sure I really need anything else, so I might be good for the coming year. Although my husband is now thinking we should consider using a ‘program’ that has lesson plans laid out for me. My Father’s World, in particular, but I’m also going to look at Heart of Dakota on the recommendation of my friend, Heather. I’m not convinced that this is what we need (I’m very eclectic at heart), but I’m trying to stay open to the idea since I do want to do what’s best for our kids and I realize that might mean that I’ll have to adapt to a new way of doing things. Or not. We’ll see. :-)

I guess this is as quick as I can be. Not too bad for me, really. I really need to write about my adventures of the day following the Great Geocaching Disaster of ‘08, but that’ll have to wait for another time. I would like to state for the record, however, that after receiving assistance from a fellow homeschooling geocacher, we were able to go back and find the first cache we looked for. It’s amazing how much easier it is to find when you know what you’re looking for! Thanks Randy (and Vickie)!!

I’m off to bed. The morning will be here all too soon.

Technorati Tags: homeschool, conventions, curriculum

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