DIY Popsicles

This morning I made popsicles for the kids to enjoy!

My family loves fresh fruit. When it comes to peaches, I purchase as many as I can because it typically takes a while for them to soften up. 

"Typical" flew out the window this past weekend. When I picked up my online grocery order, the peaches were already incredibly soft. We had too many to eat in one sitting. By this morning, they looked baaaaaad. I had a lot of peaches that needed to be used or thrown out RIGHT NOW. 

Not one to throw out useful fruit, I told the girls that we would slice them with bananas for breakfast. You should have seen Giraffe's face! haha

As luck would have it, I was online around that time and noticed that one of my packages from Amazon had been left in the mailbox yesterday. It was my new popsicle kit! :) My plans shifted immediately from using the peaches for breakfast, to using them to break in my new pop molds! :) It was so fun I just have to share!

Since we were already going to pair peaches with bananas, I decided to keep that the same. A quick look in the cupboard confirmed that we still had apricot jello from last November. (I add it to my cranberry sauce.) The three flavors seemed compatible enough, so I sliced up the peaches and bananas. You can tell how ripe they already were.

This is not a pretty picture. haha I assure you, though, that the smell was heavenly! I quickly mashed the peaches and bananas. You can see that I smashed some pretty well and left others in bigger chunks. I figured that the chunks would help with the texture. The idea behind mashing them was to help the flavor and juices incorporate when mixed with the jello.

I only used one cup of water with the jello mix, heating it in my tea pot. Once the mix was dissolved into the water, I added it to the fruit and mixed it together. This is what the mixture looks like after the jello was added. Again, I am aware that it is not a pretty sight. Please excuse that.

Filling the molds was very easy. I chose a wide-mouthed spoon (pictured above) and simply dripped the mix in. I was careful to include extra portions of the soupy part so there would be plenty of that 'popsicle' mouth-feel. All that was left to do was pop them into the freezer and wait! :) 

Who are we kidding? Waiting is the hardest part for both of the kids! haha

This is where I tell you that we took the little bit of fruit/jello mix that remained and used it to top Cheerios for breakfast. That was met with rave reviews in the form of silence. Both little mouths were busy munching! :) My little Koala said afterward that it was the 'yummiest thing I ever eat'. haha

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*** Note: It has been around six hours and I just checked the peach/apricot/banana pops. They are stiffening up but are still too soft to come out of the mold smoothly in one piece. I assume that if I had placed an extra cup of water or juice to accompany the jello/fruit mix, they would have been frozen solid by now. Since I already know what they taste like, I can confirm that they will be well worth the wait! :)

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Update: We ended up waiting until the next day to eat the popsicles. By then, they were ROCK SOLID!!! haha I ran a little bit of hot water over the plastic casing and they slipped right out. They were not only beautiful... they were DELICIOUS! :) The apricot flavor lends itself nicely as the perfect compliment to the peach flavor. The bananas had not browned or decomposed at all. They were these soft, beautifully preserved, fresh chunks. Oh my word, it was SO good! I highly recommend these treats!

What We've Planted (Updated)

I am just going to copy/paste the list of what we intended to plant and mark where we are on each item. :) That will be the easiest way to let you know what is in my garden. 


Tomato Varieties
Early Girl                                                                            _ MANY! :)
Steakhouse                                                                         _ Several!! :)
Big Rainbow                                                                        _ Several!
Sunrise Bumblebee                                                              _ Several@
Mirabelle Blanche                                                                 _ One... but iffy
Red Cherry                                                                          _Several!
Brandywine                                                                         _Yes, YUM!!
Beefsteak                                                                            _ At least one
Abe Lincoln                                                                         _ Many
Chocolate Cherry - - NEW ADDITION to this list!     _ One :)
White Cherry  -  - - NEW ADDITION!                      _ One :)   


Squash
Spaghetti Squash                                                                 _Needs resewn
Dark Green Zucchini Squash                                                 _ Three kinds!
"Big Max" Pumpkin (supposedly huge *and* edible)                _ One
Small Sugar Pumpkin                                                            _None yet

Melons
Congo Watermelon (Supposed to be huge!)                            _Need resewn
Hales Best Cantaloupe                                                           _Growing very well!      

Cruciferous Veggies
Snow Crown Cauliflower                                                        _ Yes! :)
Waltham Broccoli                                                                  _ Yes!!
Cherry Belle Radish                                                 _ On our 2nd sewing!
Golden Acre Cabbage                                                            _ Not yet
Red Acre Cabbage                                                                 _ Yes, yay! 

Carrots
Tendersweet                                                                         _ Sewing soon!

Peppers
Sweet Emerald Giant (green bell pepper)                                _ Yes!
Sweet California Wonder (mixed colors)                                  _ Yes! Doing well!

Cucumbers
Tendergreen                                                                         _ Yes!
Muncher                                                                               _ Yes!
Straight Eight                                                                       _ Yes!
Slicing                                                                 _ Yes!
Beans
Top Crop Bush Beans (long green beans for snapping)             _Germinating

Lettuce
Black Seeded Simpson                                                          _Yes!
Ariana                                                                                 _ Yes!
Summer Bibb                                                                       _ Yes!
Red Romaine                                                                       _ Yes, yay!!
Romaine (green) - - NEW ADDITION!                                     _ Yes!

Spinach
Bloomsdale                                                                          _ Yes!
Giant Noble                                                                          _ Yes!!
New Zealand                                                                        _ Yes!

Basil
Sweet (green)                                                                       _ Yes!
Purple                                                                                   _ Yes!

Parsley
Curly Leaf                                                                            _ Yes!! :) 

Celery
Tango (green stalk)                                                                _ Yes!!

There you have it! Somewhere around 40 types of veggies and fruits are or will be in my bales and buckets, so far! :) I still have around half of the bales empty and waiting for me to add to them! Woooo hooooo!!! :) I am praying *so* hard for a great bounty from all of this love and effort! :) :) 

Wee Green Things :)

Here is a quick update on where we are with our little garden so far. I hope you enjoy it! :)

In the picture immediately above and below this one, you will see 18 of my 20 bales for this year. :) They are in two double rows. I did not realize that it is not advised to pair them touching until it was too late. You can also see that my bales are REALLY decomposing! :) The conditioning process, combined with the excessive rain this year, has allowed them to really process very well! 

You can also see in the picture immediately above this one that I used some of last year's old and already well-decomposed straw for an additional planting space. The wheel of the wagon is broken and we don't use it. I thought that repurposing it was better than getting rid of it. :) 

What you cannot see very well in either picture, is that all of the bales along the front are chalk full of tomatoes plants!! I grew all but a couple of these from seeds in my own living room this year! I am SO excited about that!

This is our old planter, purchased back in the mid 2000's. Over the years, it has grown tomatoes and strawberries.

Right now, it is home to several different varieties of spinach. It looks like not many have come up and that I will need to thin out the ones which have come up too close together.

Giraffe sprinkled in the seeds for these herself. :) Both girls have been very active and involved in the gardening this year. It is one of my favorite things to teach them! I believe that a passion for gardening will ensure that both girls has a solid grasp of her own sustainable future. 

This planter is one which we refer to as a "Papa planter". After my dad passed away in March, my mother had to move. They used these planters for tomatoes and other assorted veggies out on the patio where they lived. 

This planter is filled with a variety of lettuce, in different stages of growing. I will come back to create a comprehensive list again later on when I have time. We are excited to try more flavors than before!

This planter - another "Papa Planter" is the happy home of my cabbage this year. 

Later on, there will be several varieties of both green and red. So far, this is only growing red cabbage.

Red cabbage is another variety which I have never grown before. These are already making me crazy with joy, just to look at their little wee sprout selves!

This Papa planter looks very empty at the moment. What you believe you are looking at here is my cauliflower. 

Again, here we have another plant which we have never previously grown! This baby - like most of the babies in my garden right now - was grown with love and tenderness from a few seeds. 

What you *don't* see right now is that the dirt is full of carefully-planted radish seeds. Granna, my mother, gave us the gift of Cherry Belle radish seeds this spring. We planted, loved on, and have already harvested some gorgeous radish from this planter! We are on sewing two!

 While we are on the topic of radishes, here is a close-up peek of two of the beauties we already harvested. 

We originally pulled the biggest one and were beside ourselves with delight! haha It was both fat and long!! Little Koala squeaked and squealed, exclaiming a thousand praises over it! haha

This little guy is a spur-of-the-moment purchase and addition to our garden. I was not going to do celery again this year. (I had done it two years ago to magnificent results!)

Celery was off of my to-do list because I wasn't sure if it would grow in a bale and I do not feel like growing it in the ground, as I did before. 

Saturday morning, hubs took the girls to the farmers market and video-called me along for the journey (I've been sick). I laid eyes on this little guy and simply *had* to give him a home!

For now, he is in a planter until I decide what I want to do with him. I am sure to find him a permanent residence soon enough.

On to the ugly. No, really. I understand that this is not a pretty garden bed. haha You have to understand that we threw what was left of a bale in there and it has continued to decompose. In fact, at the center of this 'mess' is nearly pure dirt!

From left to right you see green basil, purple basil, and a variety of curled-leaf parsley. These herbs are growing well and I expect to get to use them a lot. :)

This tall little fella is another lettuce. This is the start of two plants, both a variety of romaine lettuce. 

We have already had some of these and let me tell you, they taste really good! :) They were a bit weak after coming home from the farmer's market, so I made sure to put them into a planter with plenty of dirt, water, and tlc.

Last year, we had several varieties of lettuce. This year, we are at least doubling that amount. I cannot wait to keep planting through the year so that we can continue to have fresh food on the table!! :) Seriously, we so deeply enjoy a season rich with fresh produce!

If you have children or at least have a taste for Honey Nut Cheerios, you may recognize what is in this little potted planter. 

Giraffe was excited to see that Cheerios cares about honey bees! I was only too happy to send out for the free packet of wildflower seeds they offer. 

We waited a couple of weeks and the seeds showed up in the mail! (Unlike the butterfly seeds from last year, which never showed up even after we made a complaint.)

Giraffe planted these and has been seeing to it that they stay watered. They have rewarded her by growing. We cannot wait to see what they are!

There were too many seeds for one planter, so she put them into two. :)

This planter looks like it may not have room enough to hold all of the wee little wild flowers!

Have you done this before? I wonder how many colors and varieties to expect. I planted a packet of wildflower seeds when I was a child or teen. They bloomed, taking over an entire row of our flower bed. 

I am starting to think that we should have given these gals their own flower bed, as well. Who knows, maybe in the future I will grow flowers in bales. I know that other SBG's do this! :)

Last but not least, we have this little gem. :) I got Giraffe some sort of little growing garden in a jar for her birthday fun. You cannot tell it anymore, but she had a little mushroom trinket and some other trinket in it. There are layers of dirt, sand and rocks. Chia seeds were placed top. She soaked the entire thing and BOOM! 

It is fun but in the week or so since this picture, the grass continues to grow, grow, grow. She clips it every day or two and gives it to her crabs. You cannot see any of the trinkets and the entire bottom is one huge maze of roots. It makes a great chia garden container but you really cannot call it a fairy garden or whatever it was supposed to be. haha

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OKAY, I have a lot of plants growing in bales which I have not mentioned. I *will* definitely get to those later! For now, my babies and I are going to go outside. I will soak the garden AND the kids. haha I am still quite sick but I honestly think the sunshine is helping. :) I hope everyone is having a good week. Happy planting! Happy gardening! 

Catching Up

We are having a very wet spring this year. This weekend alone should net us around 5" of rain, in addition to the plenteous rain that we have already received. I have some plants outside. Among them are several kinds of lettuce, bush beans (those long green beans for snapping), summer squash, cabbage, spinach, cucumber, watermelon, and radishes. So far, they are all surviving the rain and cold. The two types of cucumber seem to be struggling. We may have to sew in more of those seeds when the weather eventually warms up. 

Meanwhile, our other seedlings are growing away indoors under the grow light. My steakhouse tomatoes are both those about which I am most excited and also the tallest in the bunch! The broccoli and cauliflower are trying to decide whether to struggle or survive. The peppers are teeny-tiny yet, as is the single pumpkin seed we got to germinate. I will try to get more to germinate later. 

Here is a closer picture of the larger plants. I should have taken them after tending to them today. I added soil to some of the cups that needed it and gave them all a good watering. We missed watering one day and some of them began to droop drastically. They've been to perking up more but I've been especially careful with them since. 

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In other news, time is still moving along without my dad. It is not surprising how often he comes up in daily life. There hasn't been a day so far where we do not think about him a hundred times or long to contact him. 

I was flying the kite the other day and the intensity of memories of flying kite with my dad about knocked me down. That same day, we were eating the bright yellow flowers off of those small plants like my dad showed me to do when I was a kid. I was introducing this to my own kids. Giraffe asked if the purple ones were edible. That quickly, I was ready to call my dad and check. Losing him has shown me with great clarity just how often he was in my thoughts even before he passed. He was an enormous part of my life even when I didn't get to see him or be with him enough. I do not think that I will ever stop regretting the spans of time when I did not visit him.

There are still things that I would love to do with him and with my kids. I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that my children only got such a small fraction of years to be alive at the same time as him. I had goals for my family, to which he was essential. I wanted the girls to learn to fish with Papa at hand. I wanted them to stand by and watch him work on a vehicle, asking a thousand questions he'd patiently answer. 

Dad would say he was never one to support feminism but I would have to disagree ever so slightly. He always maintained that his daughters were better than ten sons. He wanted us to have the knowledge and ability to take care of ourselves, no matter what. He didn't want us to take garbage from anyone. He liked to teach us the things that he was doing. He loved to work with his hands and delighted when we worked with ours. There was nothing he deemed 'man's work' that we were not allowed to learn. He knew our worth even when we individually did not. 

I remember one time, crying to him about the fact that I did not feel like I am as good a mother as I want to be. He sounded completely exasperated when he replied that every one of us had said this to him at one time or another. Dad said that he wished that we would *never* feel this way because if we could see it through his eyes, we would know what a great job we are doing. He was always, always *so* proud of us. I am going to miss that forever!!
 

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Anyway... I could stay on this thread forever. I want to think and talk about my dad a lot. It is one way that I keep him with me... especially when I cannot wrap my mind and heart around the enormity of the fact that he is gone. Sometimes, I get the idea that people want us to move on...want us to begin life all over again with strength and purpose. 

I need to make it clear that I have not lost my strength. I have not lost my purpose. I was told since he passed that I was a weak person. It was said in passing and was not meant to harm me. Still, I took umbrage. I am not weak! I have been through a lot. (Have not we all?) I've been through things which changed how my mind works, yes. I struggle with anxiety, yes. I struggle with a life full of fear, which is something my dad never wanted for me.

The thing about struggle is that you cannot be weak through it. There are plenty of days where I felt or feel down for the count but I never am *truly* down for the count. Struggling with anxiety and triggers from trauma doesn't mean I am weak. It means that I am pretty flipping strong. It means that I don't just go about a 'normal' day. It means that I fight for (and earn) every minute some days. Maybe it does seem weak-minded that I have to really fight to do something terribly simple but if you lived on the inside, you'd see that the opposite is true.

I've recently realized that I have overcome nearly all of the birth trauma which kept me captive for over a decade. I am also making progress on the traumas that I went through last year. I know how to recognize triggers and how to fight against them. I have won a *huge* battle in my mind in the area of negative self-image. I used to be down on myself constantly. I know how to fight that now, too.

So, if you read these blogs and think what a pitiful mess I am, please think again. I am a mess, sure, but I am also a fighter. I fight darn hard and I win a little bit more every day. My dad was proud of me for that. My dad *is* proud of me for that.