monthly non-adventure post, july edition.

another month of pandemic life has come and gone. things are still sort of opened, but now cases are back on the increase, so no one knows what to make of anything anymore. it’s madness. but somehow, the month still managed to fly by, maybe because we are used to it at this point.

all the fireworks were canceled, but on our way home from florida, all those many months ago, derek picked up some explosives in south carolina, so we invited a few friends over, blew up things. turns out, we didn’t need any of the fancy stuff from south carolina, all the kids wanted were the colorful smoke bombs, some random things one friend brought from publix, and glow sticks. the glow sticks were the big hit.

in garden news. it’s been a strange strange year. i only managed to get one broccoli to grow actual flowers, out of about 8 broccoli and brussel sprout plants. i gave up eventually and plucked them and let the chickens eat the leaves. my carrots got some sort of blight, so i picked the ones that didn’t and also fed those to the chickens. my sunflowers are fantastic, even though i don’t get much sun, but they are leaning waaaaaaay over, trying to get that tiny bit of sun. butternut squash has been my bumper crop, taking over the entire garden. and we’ve had a decent amount of yellow squash and cucumber, but only a couple zucchini have escaped the clutches of woodland creatures and made it to adulthood.

now lets talk about my tomatoes and peppers. the plants look amazing. like green. full foliage. lovely. but one variety literally just got flowers within the last few days (i’m writing this on august 7th). the others have some green tomatoes, but only four romas have turned red at this point. four. it’s august. it’s all so strange. anyways. enough talk. here’s some pics.

ok. and now for some very random miscellany.

we scored a new marble puzzle game at mckay’s used book store that hazel loves. i’ve had my eye on it for months on amazon, but it was like $50. it was $7 at mckay. we also found out that the gas station less than a mile from our house has a pump your own syrup slush puppie machine. i feel strongly about slush puppies as the best slushed beverage of them all, so it was worth risking getting covid to have one. and we when we stopped to deliver some fourth of july cupcakes to the grandlidboms, we stayed for a short outdoor social distancing picnic.

i’ve been working on a pair of minecraft quilts for isaac and hazel, and i let them both decide their final layout. hazel took it very seriously. also. hazel and anna are now into makeup. yep. and have i mentioned lately that i LOVE our new to us couch. i get a little annoyed that it’s always in disarray, but it’s perfect for our fam.

my friend heather gifted us a trio of banana costumes. i couldn’t get isaac to wear one, but ruby was <del>glad</del> forced to fill in. for christmas, anna got an art supply binder. she wanted it. and i got it. and then she said it wasn’t what she thought and i could give it to goodwill. except it was $27. and brand new. anyhow. i convinced her to give it another go, and she did, which required the rainbow ordering of her 72 colored pencils. and lastly, before our trip to lenoir/nc mountains, we had to clean up the camper. it had been sitting awhile, and it was quite an undertaking.

also in july. a tooth was lost. a giant pile of chocolate chip cookies was baked. (after a long baking hiatus for some reason). and now that restaurants are open at half capacity, we have been to our favorite mexican place a couple of times, for a return to normalcy and excessive chip consumption.

also. in a desperate attempt to get my sew-jo back, i made an epic unicorn pillow. i’ll post about that later. but here’s the in progress, fabric pull, design plan photo….

onto the chickens. they are fully moved into their new coop. they don’t need the heat lamp anymore. they aren’t all that friendly, because we didn’t handle them enough probably. but they are growing fast and becoming really pretty. and they are fans of eating my garden failures.

and lastly. a july compilation of ruby-ness. after a week of dirty hikes, waterfall frolicking, and camper life, ruby was in need of a bath, so it was all hands on deck. the girls to help scrub. and the boy to take photos. 🙂 and now she is fresh and clean again. and very snuggleable.