Hail!
My garden this morning:
My garden this evening:
(can you see the huge dent in my plastic cloches?-Second from the right folded completely in.)
Crazy! Guess the weather had to make up for not snowing in June…
garden sewing project
Baby blanket?
Wedding dress?
Nope! This was something important:
My garden boxes need a cover.
My boxes are 20 feet long, and so is the row cover. But that doesn’t included ends…I needed about 10 more feet for that.
My poor sewing machine obliged:
Please forgive the dirt, little buddy.
Today is…Tuesday July 12 2011
Galoot crashed early in the morning—right after breakfast:
Giant and Ettin started the day singing the alphabet song and reading stories (seriously, I think kids pretty much teach themselves!):
I encouraged Giant to look through our Nature Experiment book, and he found an neat experiment about seeds:
So we had a Gospel lesson on how faith grows like a seed:
And read stories about growing seeds—like Jack and the Beanstalk:
However, instead of doing the seed experiment my boys were so excited to have a friend over that they simply played:
‘Cause boys just gotta be boys sometimes!
Strawberry Ice-Cream
Start with a large bowl full of beautiful fresh strawberries from your garden:
Bask in the ruby red richness:
Give them a wash (to get the dirt off, since you’re not worried about pesticides from your own garden), and measure out a cup of tipped and sliced berries:
Add a 1/2 cup sugar:
Add 1 cup whole milk (we only drink the “good” stuff at our house—skim is for sissies!)
And 1 cup whipping cream. Mmmmmmmm:
…give it a buzz (or put it in a blender)
…until it pinks up and you find a texture you like:
Pour the mix into the ice-cream maker, while little fingers wait eagerly for drips:
Make sure you give those cute fingers something sweet to mop up:
Transfer from ice-cream canister to freezer storage canister (I usually use something plastic, but the mason jar was handy tonight):
—You know your strawberry ice-cream is fresh when the pips in the ice-cream are still green:
Serve with a fresh sun-warmed strawberry:
…or two. And feel free to enjoy this ice-cream in small bites with an elegant spoon:
…or with a straw:
…or shove the bowl fully over your shnoz and lick every last drop:
Because you know you’ll want to!
Recipe:
Strawberry Ice-Cream (Makes about 4 cups of very creamy ice-cream)
1 c sliced berries
1/2 c sugar
1 c whole milk
1 c whipping cream
pinch salt (optional)
Blend up ingredients (just enough to get a good consistency, try to avoid turning the whipping cream into butter). Add to ice-cream maker using your ice-cream maker’s instructions (we have a little one with a canister we keep in the freezer—I love it!). Serve with sun-warmed garden berries and you’ll feel like royalty…even while you are licking the bowl out with your tongue!
Today is…Monday July 13 2011
We started the day with a Gospel Message, and discussed ways Teancum and Moroni and Helaman fortified their people against an attack:
Not a well thought out Gospel Lesson. In fact, I only just realized that this chapter contains the middle names of all my sons. Writing this blog, at first I thought that the Gospel Lesson could have been so much better had I tied it in to the Nature Learning Activity, finding a scripture about how “God made grains for man” (see below) and so forth.
However, sometimes I find it’s better to just do something than not. Or, as a quote I love states: “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.”—And that is the sad mantra of my life. Actually, I like it! It quells the perfectionist tendencies in me and helps me keep what’s important in view. And then, when I look back on the day to make sense of it all, because I made the effort to stick some imperfect Gospel learning in there I am struck again by the awe inspiring words describing three mighty men (after which we have named our sons), working together to fortify their people against destruction. Exactly what I would have my sons work together and strive for—strengthening up each other and those around them, placing strongholds and fortifications against the Destroyer.
And I have the awesome privilege of being their mother. I am so thankful for the patient (and repetitive) teaching of a loving Heavenly Father who teaches me as I try to teach others.
Giant read up on some Nature studies while I reconciled our budget:
After lunch and little ones were sleeping, we learned about Grains:
And we even tried grinding our own flour!:
Okay, not really a big and unusual event in our house. In fact, until I started having issues with my Retsel (and then Retsel’s customer service), we’d grind flour pretty much every week.
But this activity had a picture of a mortar and pestle.
And that was cool.
Giant grabbed the mortar and pestle off the oven where it is kept, ecstatic to have an excuse to play with it:
That took a LOT of work!
We celebrated with some whole wheat buns:
Then I brought up laundry and a robot.
We played around with attaching a button touch sensor to the bot:
Okay, what Giant really wanted to make was a race care with four wheels that could break apart and have guys fix it again.
I didn’t know how to do that.
I didn’t really know how to put on a touch sensor.
But Giant like that idea too, so we went with it.
The boys had a great time making the robot go and stop and go and stop (after DaddyBear helped us figure out the right way to code it):
(Why do I really want to put a dog costume on that bot? …Tomorrow!)
And yes Galoot was madly trying to eat the robot the whole time we were showing it off to Daddy:
