Family Fun

A Peppery Thanksgiving Thought

~ McArtor ~ 6 Comments
My Pepper Guard Dog

A couple week ago I pulled out the last of the pepper plants in our community garden plot.  I collected several pounds of small to medium-sized, but crisp and tasty bell, banana and cubanelle peppers.  It took a little creativity to use all these peppers.  I made pepper and cheese casserole,  Italian turkey sausage with sauted peppers and onions, tortilla chicken soup with peppers, and roasted peppers marinated in garlic and  extra virgin olive oil.  I blanched, then froze about eight cups of chopped peppers.  Finally, I took a grocery bagful of peppers to our local food bank.   I am happy to say that we did not waste our last crop of peppers!

Here is my peppery Thanksgiving Day thought….just like my peppers, I do not want to waste  the gifts, big or small that God gives to me.  In God’s economy a grateful heart grows and produces more fruit.

May we all give thanks and celebrate the blessings in our lives this Thanksgiving holiday.    Have a safe and joyful Thanksgiving Day!   (and enjoy the leftovers!)

Saving Fall Leaves for the Garden

~ McArtor ~ 2 Comments

The wind swirls and scoops up leaves from the neighborhood and dumps them into our tiny front yard.  The yard is covered with brown leaves when  the only tree in it,  a Bradford Pear, still has its green leaves.  Every fall we collect at least 4 tall bags of  these extra leaves.

We are grateful for the extra leaves because we save them for our garden plot.  We keep our compost healthy by adding the extra leaves to our compost bin. The brown carbon rich leaves balance the green nitrogen rich kitchen waste in our composter.  We add a dense layer of  minerals and nutrients to our garden plot by mulching the garden soil with the leaves.   We provide winter protection for tender plants in our garden by surrounding them with the leaves.  When our fig tree was smaller,  we protected it from the cold winter winds by covering it with  leaves and a  burlap blanket.

My son jumping into a pile of our extra leaves.

This fall, gathering and chopping our leaves became easier due to our new  electric leaf blowing-vacuum- mulchinator.  We do not have a grass lawn in our front yard, but perennials and bushes.  It is tedious to comb out the leaves from our Nandina, Hydrangea and Azalea bushes and flower beds.  Instead of raking the leaves into piles and chopping them with a lawn mower, we gently vacuumed up the leaves and created mulch at the same time.  Our new garden toy is gentle on our plants and saves time.  Fantastic!

We did not vacuum up all the leaves immediately.  We saved some for my son and dog.  My son likes jumping from our front door steps into a mound of leaves then pretending he is a bird sleeping  in a nest.    My dog likes to catch, in his mouth, bunches of leaves tossed up in the air.

How do you collect and use or play in your fall leaves ?

Our Little Garden Helper

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Cutting String and Tomato Vines
Tangled in Tomato Vines

My five year old son surprised us this past sunny Saturday when he eagerly followed our instructions and  helped us cut up and compost our tomato plants.  Often our son does not want to do the garden jobs we ask him to do.  He prefers to create his own jobs.  Here is a list of my son’s top 10 favorite garden jobs:

1.  Hold the hose and water the plants, dirt, fence and sky.

2.  Dig holes in the dirt and bury treasures or plant cut flowers.

3.  Throw the inedible fruit into the compost bin and stir it.

4.  Place or slam rocks around the garden beds.

5.  Plant sunflower seeds and sit under his tall sunflower umbrellas.

6.  Hit the sunflower  heads with sticks and watch the seeds fall.

7.  Create a web fence for the garden beds by twisting and weaving string through sticks he staked around the bed.

8.  Find bugs, worms and butterflies.

9.  Cut something!

10. Throw something!

What are your little helpers’ favorite garden jobs?

The Unexpected Sprouts

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A clear blue sky, crisp cool air, warm sunshine plus adventure equals a perfect Saturday in autumn.  We headed for our garden plot this afternoon but had a few diversions before arriving there.    We stopped at a pet store and a fall festival.  We went to the pet store to purchase biscuits for our dog and my son discovered a playful kitten.  My son slipped a thin metal wire through the kitten’s cage.  The cat flipped, batted, jumped and kicked at the bunch of cardboard strips hanging at the wire’s tip.  My son roared in laughter.  He did not want to leave the pet store.  We redirected  him with hope of a hayride at our community garden site.    The Howard County Conservancy was full of activities for its fall festival.   We bumped through rolling fields and woods on a hayride pulled by a tractor with wheels taller than my son.   A master gardener at the compost demo gave my son a bunch of pink and blue balloons.  My son slurped honey from a straw and chatted about bees with a woman from the Howard County Beekeepers Association.  We listened to steel pounding on steel as a blacksmith hammered a hot orange metal rod into a fork after heating it in a coal fire stoked by large bellows.  My son said the banging was his favorite.   While my husband and son lingered and asked questions  in the blacksmith shop,  I finally visited our garden plot.

 

Turnip Seedling

 

Our plot is still producing tomatoes, peppers and beans.  I picked two grocery bags full of red and green tomatoes and peppers.  I pulled out and composted three tomato plants that had toppled to the ground.  Our fall plantings sprouted!  Radish, turnip, spinach and lettuce seedlings  now sprinkle the brown earth in unplanned patterns of curving rows, circles, clumps, pairs and triples.  Some extra seeds must have dropped from my hand during planting.  Many seedlings will need to be pulled out to allow more space for underground growth.

Those unexpected sprouts remind me of our day.   Unexpected adventure and fun popped up despite my plans.  Thank you God, for your goodness and for dropping some extra seeds outside my rows of plans.