Happy Fall Y'all

Fall in our area is not super cold and leaves do not usually fall.  But, it is cooler and we are enjoying a reprieve from temperatures in the 80s, 90s, and 100 that we have endured for the past four months! The plants seem to enjoy cooler temperatures, too! We have also had a lot of extra rain this year, so that has helped everything bloom and grow lush foliage. Although we are not wearing sweat shirts and scarves yet, we are enjoying pumpkins and another beautiful season in 2015! 

A friend invited me to a "Do It Herself" workshop at Home Depot. We made these great pumpkin planters. Two of the workshop attendees won a completed project to take home.  My name was drawn! Woo hoo!

Here I am with my prize, and below is the pumpkin planter in our courtyard beside the front door. 

Happy Fall Y'all!! 

Homegrown Watermelon

We were really excited to find a watermelon plant coming up in our garden. We suspect that the plant came up from some old seeds "planted" from last year's watermelon plant which never produced a full-grown watermelon but did have a couple of "duds" that rotted on the vine. We watched the vine get bigger and longer and 3-4 watermelons grow slowly during the summer months. However, only 2 of the watermelons reached a big size, although only one of those two was edible. They were a variety of watermelon that stays small to begin with. So, we picked the watermelons, and here are a few photos of the one we actually ate.

I was reading a promotional newsletter for the company of natural foods called "Braggs", and they had something interesting to say about watermelons. Here is what it says: "Watermelons are mostly water --about 92% --but this refreshing fruit is soaked in nutrients. Each juicy bite has significant levels of vitamins A, B6, and C, Antioxidants, Amino acids, and lots of lycopene. Watermelon washes retained toxins and debris out of the bladder without side-effects!  . . .  It opens the urinary system like a hydrant." Paul C. Bragg, ND, PhD. www.bragg.com.

I love what Dr. Bragg says about watermelon opening up the urinary system like a hydrant. It definitely has some great health benefits! We have been eating lots of watermelon this summer, so hopefully we are toxin-free!

Isaac tests his strength with the watermelon from our garden.

Here is the comparison between a store-bought watermelon (full-size) and our little
sugar baby watermelon from our garden. 

It was not the best watermelon really, but it was still fun to eat since it was from our own backyard garden. 
The edges were pink but the center was a deep pink.

I made homemade fig jam

We have a fig tree in our back yard, and it has been producing lots of figs this summer! They are huge, too, and really sweet!  We have eaten a lot of them, and given bags of them away to friends. The birds and squirrels and (??) have gotten to pick, peck, and eat their fair share of them, too!

 We just recently got a bunch of rain, so the figs that were green on the tree suddenly all got ripe at the same time. So, I decided to make a pile of them into Homemade Fig Jam!

 Aren't they pretty!?

 There are bunches of them, and more to come!  I need to look up some more fig recipes!

I have never made jam before, so I had to follow the directions on the Sure Jell Pectin package.  First I washed the jars, because they have to be sterilized. I found out after I washed these five, that I would need four more, so I boiled those additional four in a pot of water briefly. They were brand new, so I think that was enough to sterilize them.

 I measured 5 cups of Figs. I followed the directions on the Sure Jell package instructions for making Cooked Fruit Jam.

I put these in a pot and started to boil them.  I had a problem, yes, I am going to show you a picture. This was my first time to make jam of any kind, so I was kind of learning as I went. The pot started to boil over, and made a rather yucky, sticky mess. I had to pull it off the burner right away. This caused a little smoke too. Exciting !!  NOT!  I was so busy trying to deal with the boiled over pot situation, that I forgot to take a picture of the figs in the pot. So, the next step was to take the fig mixture and ladle it into into the jars. See the recipe on your Sure Jell package for specific measurements of water/sugar/lemon juice/figs.

 Next, I wiped the tops and sides of each jar off and put the lids on them and screwed them on tight. Then I put them in the big black canning pot. The jars were completely submerged in the water. Then I boiled them for 10 minutes in the canning pot.

 Here are the 9 jars of Homemade Fig Jam I made today!  I have not tasted it yet, but I can't wait to see how it turned out!

 This will taste great on a thick slice of Homemade Honey Whole Wheat Bread! I think I'll get started making some of that next!

Furry Family Members

Do you have pets? Well, then you will totally love this post! Here is our herd of cats! They are a mother cat and her three kittens. We adopted Romeo, who had a twin sister named Juliet who we did not adopt, because she had already found another home. When we took Romeo home, we let him spend time both outside and inside. He would climb the huge live oak tree in our back yard all the time, and brought us "gifts" of rats from the right-of-way at the end of our cul-de-sac. He would spend time with the neighbor's big orange male cat, and they would both act territorial at times. We were so thrilled with the lifestyle we were giving our little male kitty --freedom to be outside and lots of cozy lap time inside. When the seasons changed, and spring time was in the air, we noticed Romeo out in the street with some other cats. 

It became very quickly apparent that Romeo was not  boy cat. He/She was frolicking with another cat in the street. Romeo must have really been "Juliet", because in a few months after the love fest in the street "he" had kittens. We did not plan to have kittens ever, and we should have had her spayed sooner, but since she was "male" in our minds we were not in any rush to take care of that surgery. We planned to do it with in a year of adopting him/her. It was too late to do anything about it once we realized our gender mistake. We felt bad to add more cats to the world when there are so many in shelters and in need of homes.  But what happened, happened. So Romeo (yes we kept her name, because by that point it was stuck) had four kittens, but one died shortly after birth. The other three kittens did great and were soo cute! Tommy was the only male kitten, and he had two beautiful sisters --Callie and Fluffy. I knew from the first time I saw Fluffy that I wanted to keep her. She is such a beautiful and unique looking cat and has the sweetest, most gentle personality. I just fell in love with her immediately. Callie and Tommy were up for adoption for several weeks, and some people wanted to come see them or think about adopting one or both of them, but something kept not working out. So, by the time they were a couple months old, we were much too attached to them all to think of giving them up or taking them to a shelter. So, we decided at that point to keep them. They have been such a wonderful part of our family, and we love them so much! They each have fun personalities and are very loving and playful.  

Tommy and Romeo share a sunny afternoon nap. The back of the love seat in the living room is a
favorite place to curl up and sleep for all the cats. Sometimes they are territorial and
only one is in "the spot" but usually Romeo makes room for any of her kittens. 

Tommy basking in the sun on the living room floor.

Yes, that look in Romeo's eyes is guilt. Clean laundry. She knows better . . . naughty Romeo!

A rare photo with all four cats in one spot!  

Callie checking out the view from Isaac's window.

Callie watching birds and squirrels out the back door.

Fluffy loves to perch up high on the ledge by the front door. She sometimes does some racing back and forth in the house and then does a flying leap up onto the ledge!  Then she gets this wild look in her eye and does it all over again! It's hilarious!! 

Tommy is chillin' out! 

Cozy nap time for Fluffy on the back of the couch. This is her favorite spot to sleep!

Romeo is as soft as she looks. Her fur feels like silk! 

Who says pressure washing isn't fun?

Can pressure washing the sidewalk in front of our house be fun? Of course!

Jason's sidewalk art! 

I drew the heart, which is mostly washed away! Who knew the pressure washer could be so much fun!?

Isaac is always eager to help Daddy in the yard! 

Time to get back to work ! 

The Ants Go Marching Two by . . .

It's incredible how fast crumbs accumulate under the couch cushions. We just recently started upping the frequency that we clean out that hidden area. It all started when we were watching TV and noticed something crawling and even nipping at our leg. We looked down and it was an ant, then another, and then we saw a little line of them marching in from the bottom corner of the back door.  We have never had ants inside our house before, and so this was definitely worrisome. I vacuumed them up right away, but then a few days later we saw them again, and this time Jason sprayed ant spray outside the back door to discourage them from coming inside.

This past Sunday, we saw some more ants, and did the same thing. Vacuum them up and spray the ant poison outside. On Monday, I was leaving the house to go to the gym, when I saw my neighbor on her porch and her son climbing in their hibiscus bush, which was strange, since he's a college student and doesn't "play" in the yard. I said hi and asked them what was going on. I thought it might be a stray puppy or kitten they were trying to get out from behind the bush. They said they were having problems with ants. Well, it was good to know that we weren't the only ones with ants in the house. We chatted about how they must be trying to find water in this extreme heat and drought conditions we have been having. And I told them they were not alone in this situation, and we had been exterminating our own little congress of ants. 

So, now that we know these little critters can get into our house, we are taking even more precautions to try to dissuade them from wanting to come in. Today I was babysitting three young children who came to play with my son. And they were all eating chips and cookies in the living room. I was following them around trying to keep the crumbs under control, and planning my "as-soon-as-they-leave-i'm-vacuuming" plan of action to hopefully stop this ant problem from going to the next level. It seems like it could be like an iceberg situation, where you see 10 ants, but there are 100 more hidden somewhere in the "nest".  Yikes!!! I sure hope they haven't built a nest yet.  I think those ants we have vacuumed up were just the search party out prospecting. Maybe their recent demise will stop any plans for real estate expansion project. We can only hope . . . and keep the vacuum plugged in.