A sad sink hole

Today the plumber came to install my new sink. All was wonderful until he showed me that the new sink wouldn't quite fit in the old hole. Almost but not quite. See the gap in the back of the sink?

So I called everyone I could think of and finally tracked down a contractor who could come and cut off a little less than 1/4" of formica off of the back of the hole. Hopefully the plumber can come back and finish up my sink. Before supper. Before my company arrives to stay in my house for two nights. Before I have to wash everything in the laundry room sink.

UPDATE: I have my sink! The contractor widened the hole but then the plumber couldn't come back that day. So he came at 8:30 am today and finished it up. Hurrah!

Saturday's events

Forgot to blog this last week. This is turtle bread. The kids got such a big kick out of this that I think we'll be making insect bread this week.

Saturday we went to the Farmer's market and amazingly they still had pie cherries. So Aaron and Deborah pitted them for me and we had fresh cherry pie for dessert.

Beautiful, aren't they? I've always thought that they look like rubies.

Then later on Saturday, we went blueberry picking with another family for church.

We picked 17 pounds.

Making the rough places smooth

My subcontractor is working on the paths through the woods. Several of them have low spots that gather water in the winter and prevent me from getting all the way to the back of the property when I am cross country skiing. So with the new tractor, I'm getting my paths worked on.

Garden update

My dh used his tractor today to get rid of the tree that almost fell on our garden. It took less than 5 minutes to move that tree out of the way. Amazing!

And on the garden front, here is a shot of our corn. We planted the corn nearer to the camera about 2 weeks after the taller corn, hoping to extend the sweet corn season.

Here are the green beans in all their glory. We picked 20 pounds of beans on Thursday.

We also tore out the peas and my dh tilled it up. We're going to plant a row of green beans and a row of peas and hope that they ripen before frost hits. We're hoping to get a last shot of peas and beans before the winter sets in.

Hail Caesar!

Today we studied Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus and made Roman wreathes. Below is my picture...

... and the one that the children prefer.

A bit of Roman art

We have about 2 weeks of science and history lessons to finish up from last year's school. So we bit the bullet and stayed home today and worked on school lessons. We're studying the Romans in history and today the lesson was on Roman architecture and roads. So we made "mosiacs".

Nathan's beloved chicken:
Stephen's spaceship and planet:
Aaron's parrot:
And Deborah's flowers (who wanted me to take her picture as well as that of her mosaic).

And the Loons ..... lose again

This evening we went to another Loons game. This time we were with Aaron's and Stephen's ball team. We sat on the lawn section. But we didn't really sit all the time. We went and played at the playground behind the lawn section several times. And got popcorn and soda and a pretzel. A fun time was had by all. Nathan almost caught a foul ball and Stephen got on the Jumbotron two times and the rest of us one time. About the only bad thing was that the Loons lost.

The playground floor is made of recycled tires and is really spongy to walk on. And since we are the Great Lake Loons, they made a map with the Great Lakes on it.

And we got to take a picture with the team mascot, Lou E. Loon.

The fruits of the garden

Because of the rain on Saturday, we couldn't pick green beans. So we had to pick green beans on Sunday. We usually try not to do too much work on Sunday but as the green beans didn't stop growing on Sunday, we had to pick them. We picked 15 pounds. I canned them on Monday and got 20 quarts.

A hunting we will go!

We had a friend over today and she wanted to help us pick wild raspberries. So since I had so many helpers, I brought the camera. It was a beautiful morning, sunny and not too hot. Just perfect for picking.


Here's our friend enjoying the picking.

Here's Stephen not quite as enthusiastic. This has been his 3rd time in the woods picking.

We probably got about 4 cups of wild raspberries today. It has been a good year for them. I also took some pictures of the wildflowers appearing this week.

This is a blurry picture of a Spotted Touch Me Not.

I think this is a Tall Bellflower.

This is my dh's favorite wildflower - the Cardinal flower.

This is a Turk's Cap Lily.

I'm pretty sure that this is Swamp Milkweed.

And this is one of the Lobelia family but I'm not sure which one since my wildflower books tell me that there many kinds of Blue Lobelias but they only show a picture of one kind of them.

And someone's sharp eyes found this snake amidst the uprooted roots of a fallen maple.

A rain day finally!

Finally we had a rainy Saturday. This is the first one since April. So my dh decided to finish the shelf project in the garage. This is how things looked before we started. You can see the corner of the other shelf he made back in April. Then the weather turned nice and we were outside all the time.

Nathan enjoyed sitting on the top of my upright freezer.

My dh attaching the vertical supports.

The finished support structure for the shelves.

And the finished project. Hurray!

Saved by a foot (or less)

We had a huge wind storm last night. We were eating inside and it started to rain. I sent Nathan out to the porch to pick up some produce gathering baskets that I didn't want to get wet. He looked out to the garden and then yelled, "Look at that!" I thought for sure that he had seen a tornado, but what he had seen was a tree fall.


And it almost landed on the grapes and asparagus in our garden.


I am so glad it didn't land on the corn. It would have taken it all out.

And on an unrelated note, here is Deborah showing off her cereal face made out of dried sour cherries and dried bing cherries.

Work, work, work

No pictures today. In the last couple of days, I've been freezing peas, canning green beans (which I will take pictures of later I promise), picking raspberries, freezing pie cherries, feeding the family, and trying to stay on top of zucchini and summer squash. I think I'll have to start the big zucchini bread baking extravaganza soon.

Plus I spared you pictures of the older boys and I mucking out the fryers' coop. What a nasty job. We've already decided that next year, they get a different kind of coop. One that doesn't need litter and one that we can put out in the meadow. We had one fryer die for an unknown reason and we weighed it before burying it. 9 pounds! These are big birds.

We've had another week of gorgeous weather, lots of sun and not too much heat. So once again for another week the inside projects are put on hold.

Green beans and cabinets

Today is my planning day. Well, it started out as my planning day and turned into my getting new cabinets day, green bean canning day, finish sorting clothes day, and a little bit of planning day.

We had two cabinets fixed and two new ones installed. This is over the "pennisula" in our kitchen. Note: First batch of green beans is done.

The second is in our laundry room/bathroom.