Memorial Day and May memories

Today is Memorial Day. As I said in a post from several years ago, I find it very odd that it's celebrated with cookouts and picnics here. In Canada, we only have Remembrance Day, not both Memorial Day and Veteran's Day (which is the same day as Remembrance Day). We don't "celebrate" Remembrance Day; we commemorate it with buying fund-raising poppies from veterans, and having parades and ceremonies in honor of all vets, living and dead. It's a somber occasion when we express our gratitude for those who have fought, and died, defending our country and the values it stands for. Hot dogs and barbecue? Not so much.

Tangentially, bagpipes are always played at these ceremonies. Maybe that's why I associate bagpipes with sadness and have never liked them. Or maybe it's just because bagpipes sound like someone is trying to kill a noisy exotic feline...which is also sad.

And because we're still talking sad here, I have a list of what other things were sad in May:

1) My aunt, my mother's only sister, died. My uncle, her husband, passed away only last summer, so my poor cousins have lost both parents in a span of less than a year. My aunt also died only two and a half years after my mom did. Mom was only 72 when she passed away, so my aunt, being the younger sibling couldn't have been any older than 72. As my sister pointed out, this does not bode well for women in the Fung (Mom's last name) side of the family.

I'll miss my aunt; she was the best cook in the family, with my mom a close second. But, she was in poor health, so at least she's not suffering any more.

2) My sister left for home after a 3.5 week visit with us. It was so nice having her around to chat with, to keep us all company, and to work on craft projects that I start and never get around to finishing. :}

I'll have this to display at Christmas! 

3) A rejection, albeit a nice enough one, from an agent on my birthday. Ouch.

4) The asparagus haven't been doing well. My sister only got a tiny bit to eat during her visit.

5) My favorite dermatologist, and a good friend, is closing his office in our town. I'm happy for him, but sad for me.

So, you may be wondering (or not), whether there was any not-sad news for May? Well, I had an amazing time at the SCBWI Conference. I'm still alive (always terrific news as far as I'm concerned), and I still have a wonderful life overall. Silver lining, people; look for it. ;)

I hope your May has been nice. Anything really good happen to you? I want to hear about it!

Next month may be crazy for me, though, hopefully, it'll be the last crazy month for a while. I start Susanna Hill's Making Picture Book Magic class (which everyone, and I mean everyone, tells me is phenomenal!), Mira Reisberg's Illustrating Children's Picture Books class, and am participating in Shannon Abercrombie's 100 Days of Summer Writing Challenge. These are on top of my regular writing for my sci-fi critique group, the 12x12 Challenge picture book writing, and finishing up the middle-grade novel I'm writing for the Institute of Children's Literature advanced course. Plus, there's still homeschooling and baking (lots of baking!) to be done on a regular basis. Well, I'm exhausted and your eyes are probably glazed over, if you made it this far, so I'll wish you lovely last week of May.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Get ready to be inundated

Because it's always feast or famine, people!

No, sorry; it's actually because I tend to put things off and then throw everything into the pot...or the blog post.

So, let's rush through our Vancouver trip. Luckily for you, unlike some of my friends who are good about taking a million photos each time they go on vacation, I think we (the kids, hubby, and I) took a total of maybe 30 pictures. And I'm not sharing all of them - you'll be grateful to know that, for example, I'm not sharing the photo of the dead caterpillar ds#1 found in his salad or his stunning photos of various slugs they found while hiking.

Speaking of hiking, no trip to Vancouver is complete without a trek to Lynn Headwaters in North Vancouver:

Now that ds#1 is feeling more confident with birding by ear (and is really good with IDing by sight), we're doing more and more birding outings.  We went to Whytecliff Park, which we hadn't been to in years, and were rewarded with lovely views and some unusual birds.

Hubby likes to bring the boys to wholesome places for birding too (click to see larger photo):

That place (Wreck Beach, in case anyone wants to know) is pretty gorgeous though:

We also went to check out my mom's headstone at her grave site.  My sister and I helped our dad order the tombstone back in November. It arrived in February when I was already back home, so this was the first time I've seen it.  Dad wrote out the Chinese characters that they used to make lettering with.  I think it looks pretty nice.  And I think it's pretty generous of dad, who is an atheist, to honor mom, who was Catholic, by putting religious symbols on the stone.

Besides Lynn Headwaters, a trip to Vancouver would not be complete without eating authentic Chinese food...and lots of it.  My kids have gotten really fond of chicken feet now, so we order it at every dim sum:

This next item was a first for the boys (and hubby) - and a warning to the squeamish: you might want to skip down to the garden photos - care to guess what it is?

If you guessed "duck tongue", you are absolutely right!  Most older cultures still adhere to the "waste not, want not" ideal.

The funky thing is that inside of a duck tongue is some sort of bone or cartilage which makes the tongue stiff.  Consider this is your anatomy lesson for the day.  Traveling is very enlightening. 

We're back home now, in not-as-exotic southern Indiana.  But, we have fresh food back home, so even if we don't have anything unusual, it is all tasty.  Here's hubby between the broccoli and corn:

And what was hubby doing with a pitchfork, besides posing as model for an American Gothic revival? Digging potatoes, of course!

A few more random garden photos...summer squash that got too big while we were away in Vancouver enjoying the duck tongue:

More corn because we can never get enough:

The frisee, gone to seed...but look at how pretty the flowers are!

Not as pretty as the frisee flowers, but lovely in its own way is the asparagus forest:

Hubby put our indoor banana tree out in the garden where it's been enjoying the killer heat and humidity. I'm glad something is.

Aren't the cherry tomatoes adorable?

Well, enough of my babbling for one post. I plan to post shorter, less gross posts more regularly.  (Was that confusing to use less and more within 2 words of each other?)

If I've not already visited your blog, tell me about your vacation/summer/garden, and I'll swing by for a look-see!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random thoughts just coz I can

Hubby was at a dinner at a professional conference this past spring, and white asparagus was served. Someone wondered what it was, and someone else confidently replied that it was parsnips. Dh refrained from going WTF? because it was a professional conference after all. LOL! No, really, he's just generally tactful; the yin to my yang. I am known for many things, but being tactful and diplomatic is not one of them.

Anyway, hubby told the person who first asked that those were white asparagus, and that we grow them. Whereupon someone else wondered if white asparagus was a different variety. I'm here to dispel that notion just like dh did that evening. White asparagus is just asparagus grown covered so that it doesn't get to photosynthesize. People who grow frisee do the same thing to them because whiter frisee is less bitter. See the white spears in front of the others? Those were covered by leaves before they were picked.

I won't even bother with a clever segue, but want to thank Robin (who writes the wonderful Rurification blog) for encouraging me to make cheese. She recommended the kits from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company so I got one and made mozzarella twice already! There were one or two mistakes in the instructions, but overall, it was a great experience and fairly easy. This was the stage where the curd formed and I cut it with a knife.

And here it is, done!  Ta-da!  Very tasty it is too.

Third random thought: we have a black snake that has decided it likes to keep company with our tools in the shed.  Great.  Don't get me wrong; I love snakes.  I just prefer to know where they are in proximity to me and that they aren't dangling over my head.  I don't like things above my head and I don't like it when people walk behind me.  Oh wait, this isn't a random thoughts post after all.  This is a post about Teresa's irrational phobias!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

How does our garden grow?

Before I get into blathering about our garden, I want to give a shout-out to Product Body's fantastic Giveaway! Head over to The Soap Bar blog to find out how to enter; Joanna's products are incredible! You can thank me later.  ;)

Thinking about the nursery rhyme leads me to suspect that Mary wasn't the one being contrary; it was probably the garden pests who were contrary!  (Unless, of course, you take it as the political allegory that it is and from the view point of Elizabeth I, Mary was rather contrary; but I hate talking politics.)

All sorts of things conspire to make your garden a failure: rabbits, voles, aphids, caterpillars, chipmunks, and, yes, even birds.  They blithely nibble on your plants and berries, snipping off and killing young shoots before they have a chance to realize their dreams of becoming a full-blown plant.  The garden is a sad, rough place to raise a seedling.

Still, we persist, year after year.  Or hubby persists, and the kids and I help to nurse his eternal optimism.

So to answer "how does our garden grow", I thought I'd show some photos of the progress.  I think I took these photos Tuesday morning (June 7th).  These are by no means all of our garden beds.  Some are still empty (well, maybe just one or two are), and some I just didn't take close-ups of (example, cucumbers, squash, grapes).

A sweeping view of the south garden, outside of the main fenced garden. Our dilapidated chicken tractor is at the left-hand side. Hubby fixed it now though, so I'll have to show a photo of his handiwork some other time.

Looking inside our main fenced garden...it's hard to take in all 27 beds in there at once:

The bib lettuce, co-existing with the frisee:

The lettuce, nearly bolting, with some beets in the foreground, not quite big enough yet. Interspersed are dill that keep self-seeding in our garden.

Speaking of self-seeding, here's a volunteer lamb's quarters:

The cabbages are doing beautifully...

In fact, dh used one for cole slaw:

...but the broccoli is just getting started:

One day soon, we'll get some peas:

More frisee, cohabiting with the celery this time:

The asparagus are still going strong, amazingly:

as are our garlic, which won't be ready for harvest for another month:

Our strawberries are pretty much done:

But other things are just getting started, such as eggplants:

and sweet potatoes:

Regular potatoes:

Lima beans:

Peppers:

Tomatoes:

And green onions - front - (this is the half bed inside the main garden, and not the six beds outside the fenced area) and basil - back:

Dh made some yummy meals again. This was a faux gyros with brown rice instead of pita, and our tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes (since our tomatoes haven't ripen yet).  Complete with my homemade Greek yogurt and homegrown asparagus:

This was just using up some left over dilly new potatoes.  Dh made a homefries sort of concoction, topping it with one of our eggs.

We're actually low on eggs right now.  The heat shut most of the chickens down, and one hen went broody so she's not laying.  *&^% freeloaders.  We might have to dispatch with this current group and get a bunch of new ones.  Unfortunately, ds#1 is rather attached to one of the hens, Licorice...actually most of the hens except for Four of Five...so we may have to keep them for longer.  I never knew he was quite so sentimental. 

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

I know why Elmer Fudd hates Bugs Bunny

There's a curse on our garden, and its name is Rabbit.

I thought hubby was going to cry.  He planted 6.5 beds of onions and when they were tender little sprouts, rabbits went through the beds outside of the fenced part of the garden and systematically nipped off the stems of each one.

You can picture it: the *&^% critter nipped off one, went "YUCK!" and dropped it, then moved on to the next, nipped that, went "YUCK!" and dropped it, and so on down the line.  It's like the scene in Chicken Run where Rocky fell into every single pie, except you sub in rabbit for Rocky, and decimated onion for pies.  And it's not funny.

Here's one example of an onion that never recovered.  You can see the part still in the ground at the tip of the circle hoe.

Luckily, some were hardy enough to come back.  You can see the nipped part and the healthy part in this photo:

But before you think it's all drama in the garden, we do get some chuckles out of it...e.g. this funky clover-shaped strawberry!  Sight gags never fail to elicit some laughs.

After you finish laughing, you can try drooling. ;)  I'm so grateful hubby is a good cook!  Here's a sardine penne with sun-dried tomatoes and green beans, served with a salad in a sun-dried tomato vinaigrette.  Except for the sardines and the penne, everything came from our garden.

This meal features less stuff from our garden (only the dill, the asparagus, and the celery in the crab cakes are grown by us).  But it's oh-so-good, nonetheless: crab cakes, dilly new potatoes, and asparagus in a light butter sauce.

And speaking of tasty stuff, hubby is addicted to Vegemite.  We just ordered two 400g jars from Simply Australian.  I have to wonder how many non-Aussies are buying huge jars of Vegemite??

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams