Spring Saturday

Spring is here to stay in central Texas and there was no way we could stay inside on such a gorgeous day!

Let's go already Mama!

We spent the morning going to our favorite garden store, Natural Gardener.  Even though my lemon tree is awash with blooms and my mint has grown back, we needed some more green to add to the patio.  Problem is we have a lot of shade, so we needed to chat with the folks at NG to find the right plants.  We got some really beautiful plants to pot and I am really excited to see how they grow.

While we were there at Natural Gardener, we spent some time visiting with the goats and chickens.  Billa loves visiting with the chickens and we got a cute video of her talking to the chickens with Daddy.

After we dropped Daddy off at work, Billa and I headed to Lowe's to get some additional planters and then to Target to grab a few other things.  Our Target recently expanded it's gorcery area, and there was a giant cow statue out in front of the store.  Billa was so excited, it's not even funny.  Here we are posing with the cow and mooing.

We capped off of our Saturday with a family dinner since Michael's dad was in town.  We went to Guero's and enjoyed enchiladas, tacos, and margaritas while visiting with Auntie Cait, Auntie 'Chele and Uncle Kevin, and Zeydi.  Before we knew it, it was time to go home.

Today we are cleaning house and finishing up our planting.  I'll be sure to post some pictures of the patio when it's done!

Cheers,
Kelly

Harvest Time!

Our friends are away this week and before they left, they reminded me to check the garden. I stopped by a couple of days later and wowsa! Talk about a harvest!

I've been collecting serrano peppers for some time, so in addition to yet another harvest of serranos (I've probably harvested like 50 so far, no joke!) I was able to harvest some of my tomatoes:

I'm growing two varieties...one is a cherry variety that produces orange and yellow 'maters, and the other is a grape variety that makes traditional red ones.

Our black beans:

Apparently, you let them dry in the husk so that when you hull them, they're already dried and preserved.

And more peppers:

The only bell pepper is in the background on the right...can you see it?  Told you it was warped looking!

I've also been able to harvest some green beans, which were mighty tasty and we've gotten one lonely warped looking bell pepper.  The corn box produced some ears that we were able to eat at Michael and Hayden's joint birthday party, and we are currently on track for more tomatoes, more peppers, and soon, we'll have watermelons, carrots, onions, and potatoes!  I can't wait!

Cheers,
Kelly

One of These Things is Not Like the Other...

The garden has been going CRAZY.  The first weekend in April it was nothing but empty and sad looking garden boxes, now they're so overgrown it's hard to get at the produce it's producing!

Five more serranos (after the initial harvest!) and one lonely golden grape tomato...yum!

We've gotten lots of serrano peppers and I'm excited, because I have a whole slew of things I want to make with them.  I already made salsa and cornbread it was delicious.  Our tomatoes should be ready for picking soon, and I harvested some of our green beans.  I didn't get a picture of them though.  I had them in my purse in a baggie for a few days and then one day at work I discovered them there and decided they would be the perfect compliment to my baked chicken and basmati rice.  I felt like the little red hen for a moment there.  I also felt a bit selfish about not sharing them with my family, but more are on the way and will need to be harvested this weekend.

In sadder news, I will not be getting any lemons this year.  AGAIN.  My poor tree has been battered by the winds whipping around the corner of my third floor apartment balcony and no amount of moving it or trying to protect it helped.  I keep telling my husband that we should now buy a house so that I can actually plant the thing in the ground, but he just looks at me like I'm crazy.  That's not the ONLY reason to buy a house, but it's a compelling pro, right?  I keep thinking I might give it to someone to plant in their yard, but it takes a lot of TLC to raise a citrus in this area, so it can't be just ANYONE.  Not to mention I have been constantly fighting off scale insects which I can't just pawn off on someone.  I do have scruples, people.

If anything, I can at least take comfort that my gardening efforts are much more "fruitful" than they were last year...

Until later,
Kelly

Gardening Update!

Despite the forecast rain for the weekend, Billa and I headed out to the La Casa Della Marino to check on our garden boxes.  If you'll remember, this is what they looked like when we began this journey a little over three weeks ago:

This is what they look like now:

Pretty awesome, right? Right?  We are very excited by the amount of growth we've achieved in four weeks.  Let me take you on a tour of our garden.

This is what we call the "Shade Box" or "Cool Weather Box."  It's called this because it does not receive full sun all day long due to a two story house on the other side of the fence.  Anyone who has visited Texas in the summertime knows how brutal the sun can be in these parts, so having a partly shaded bed for some full sun plants is actually not a bad thing.  In this box, we have planted onions (white and red), carrots, spinach, Bibb lettuce, romaine lettuce, blue adirondack potatoes, white russett potatoes, black beans, pole beans, and strawberries.  The strawberries are the blank spot.  We got these strawberry root things for about a buck, so we figure since they're not coming up, we didn't lose out on too much.  I transplanted some of my lettuce to some of the blank spot since I overplanted them a bit.  Oops. I'll probably leave the rest of the strawberries though and see if anything comes up. 

This box is our "Full Sun Box" or "Hot Box."  We have Moon & Star watermelons in the back, with tomatoes and tomatillos in the middle, and serrano and bell peppers along the front.  I'm super excited about the tomatillos; you have to get two plants in order to make baby tomatillos and I got two different kinds.  One of them makes PURPLE tomatillos and the other regular green ones.  On a side note, anyone know the proper plural spelling for tomatillo?  Is it like tomato, where you add an 'es' or do you just add an 's'?  I'm going to go with the 's' for now.

And this is the Corn Box.  It's pretty straightforward.

This is my lemon tree.  It's not doing so well right now, because the wind keeps blowing off leaves and blossoms and now I am worried it has something else going on because the leaves are beginning to yellow.  I need to contact the folk at Natural Gardener and find out what I need to do to resuscitate it, otherwise, I may not have any lemons this summer and that will make me super sad, considering how long I've been waiting to get some from it!

So there's our gardening update.  It's so much fun to see everything grow and Billa loves helping us water.  I can't wait until we actually start getting produce so that we can cook and eat the fruits of our labors.

Until next time,
Kelly & the Gang

Kitties, Weddings and Gardening, Oh My!

We had another one of those "I need a weekend from the weekend" kind of weekends.

Friday evening we got our new kitty, Snack. She's petite, gray, adorable, and such a little snuggle muffin. She's very talkative, however and we discovered that she has no problem talking to you about ANYTHING. Not very shy, that one. And yes, we're keeping the name.  So far, our favorite nicknames are Kitty (Billa's), Snack Attack (Michael's), and Snicker Snack (mine).  She is also a very good sport because Billa likes to carry her everywhere and not very gracefully at that.  She constantly worries that Snack is not well fed and watered, and she tries to rectify this by spoon feeding the cat kibbles and water. 

What? 

Saturday morning we all got up early and took over a bunch of stuff to the Marino house for the neighborhood wide garage sale. We got rid of a ton of stuff and made $175 profit. Not bad for our first garage sale ever! The neighborhood association is having another one in October and we are looking forward to culling a bunch of stuff then. Part of our profits went towards buying a trike for Billa; the Marino's neighbors were selling a Radio Flyer trike which I snapped up for $10. I met a mom at the park recently (and ran into her again on Sunday, how crazy is that!?) and she had highly recommended it. It's the perfect size for Billa and she LOVES it.

After the garage sale, we all went out to Tres Amigos for lunch to celebrate and then Michael's mom came and picked up Sybilla for Gigi Slumber Party Fun.  Michael and I had a wedding to attend and we were really looking forward to a night out.  I have to say, we've been to a lot of weddings, and while we think ours is one of the best, Andy and Nadine's wedding was ah-MAZE-ing! The bride outdid herself in creating a simple, whimsical, and warm atmosphere and the weather was just perfect. The event was held at the Hummingbird House which is apparently owned by the folks at the Great Outdoors. Nadine is Indonesian, so part of the ceremony included a traditional Indonesian egg-stomping ritual. The bride and groom each stomp on an egg and then clean off each other's feet. I'm not sure what it's supposed to symbolize honestly, but it was very cool and very funny to watch.  

Andy is an old friend of ours from Michael's Winedale days and does a lot of improv comedy around town–he's a super funny guy and so nice to boot!  And of course, Nadine is just a dear too.

Andy and Nadine are both very funny people and there was no shortage of love and laughter at this wedding. I also loved many of the personal touches that they incorporated into the wedding, like the name tags, the stuffed animals from their childhood, and board games on all the tables. We had so much fun catching up with all of Michael's Winedale family that we eventually moved the party to a bar by UT until almost 1 in the morning. Or maybe later, I can't remember really, because I'd had a few too many tequila sunrises mixed by the really hot Italian bartender. Another perk of this wedding? Meeting new people, like the gal who teaches dance lessons for couples and is a big theatre dork/food junkie like we are. Heck yes! Dance lessons and dinner parties, here we come!

Clockwise from left: Each guest stamped their fingerprint on the tree (which was hand drawn by the bride) and signed their name on their fingerprint.  Talk about an unusual guest book!  All around the grounds you'd find random stuffed animals paired together and the tables had board games on them for folks to play with.  The bride and groom opted for cake balls in lieu of the traditional wedding cake (no, I didn't do them).  Nadine made name tags for all the guests that also included two or three talking points–it was so much fun to see what people had and it really helped start some great conversations!

Unfortunately, Michael had to work Sunday morning, so I slept in and nursed my little self-induced headache before Billa arrived back home.  We went out and picked up kitty stuff and shopped, then came home for a nap, before we all went as a family to Natural Gardener to look at plants and then grocery shop, before wrapping things up with dinner at our neighbor's house. George and Maho used to live across the hall from us, now they live across the courtyard from us. Maho cooked the most amazing seafood pasta I have ever had, with shrimp, salmon, and bay scallops. She also made a delicious chocolate sformato for dessert that was to die for.

Billa enjoys some airtime on the tree swing at Natural Gardener

What's so funny, guys?

Why these old billy goats, that's what!  The goat in front kept bleating at Billa and Michael, as if he were an old man yelling at them.  The other one just sat in back and chewed his cud quietly.  I love how goats are like old men!

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend spent with friends and family and nothing but laughter and good times. And even though we are exhausted and left desiring some additional vacation time, we'd do it all again in a heartbeat if it left us this happy and contented.

Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend,

Kelly, Michael, Sybilla, and introducing Snack

Easter Weekend Recap

Where to start...well, how about Friday?

I took Friday off because I desperately needed a day off (working from home while sick with a cold/bronchitis does not count!) and because daycare was closed.  I left work a little early on Thursday so that I could go and watch Billa hunt for candy with her classmates at daycare.  They opted not to stuff the candy in eggs and instead threw it all over the lawn and the kids had a blast hunting for it.  Daycare Lady had made paper bunny ears for each of them and the kids were so stinking cute running around with their buckets and these paper ears!

Billa and her friend Justin pick up some candy.

The kids played with some soccer balls after the candy hunt; the weather on Thursday afternoon was PERFECT!

We're definitely a football family, as opposed to a soccer family!  Billa kept carrying the ball instead of kicking it and would jump on top of it as pictured above.

Good Friday was better than good; it was great!  The Marino family had done some garden boxes the previous year and wanted us to help them again this year.  They are letting us use some of their backyard space to plant our own stuff (although most of it will be identical to what the Marino's are planting) and so we spent all day digging in the dirt, putting together garden boxes, taking a trip to Lowe's and spending some good ol' fashioned quality time with our families.

Taking a snack break

Daddy shows off his gardening handy work

We didn't get a chance to do much planting on Friday since building the boxes took all day, so Billa and I went back over on Saturday to finish up (Daddy had to work, boo).  We also went to the Easter egg hunt at the capitol building, which was ok.  There was no hunt involved at all!  They just spread eggs all over a 20'x20' space and then let the kids swarm all over them, picking them up.  The candy wasn't even that great either.  Billa hunted in the 0-3 age group and I was shocked to find bubble gum in some of the eggs she picked up!  Looks like someone mixed up some of the eggs for the older kids!

Billa eating her cupcake that she decorated.  For some reason, she decided that it was better to eat out of Mommy's hand like she was a bird.

Before the hunt started

After the hunt started (which lasted all of 30 seconds)

There was also a cupcake decorating station, a fishing booth, face painting and some other activities for the kids, but we didn't really participate in much because Baby Hayden was not happy about his nap schedule being thrown off.  All the kids passed out in the car on the way home, so we took the time to drive to Natural Gardener and pick up the rest of our planting.  By the way, if you've never been to Natural Gardener, you need to go.  It is one of the coolest nurseries I have ever been to!  The kids woke up when we got there, so we got our plants and headed back home.

We finished up our planting and then Sybilla and I raced home about 5:45 to meet up with Michael so that we could go have dinner with his mom.  We had a lovely evening with Gigi and Papa Carl and Riley the Beagle.  Gigi had given Billa all sorts of fun goodies in her basket, including a light up wand that looked like an Easter lightsaber, which is Billa's. favorite. toy. EVER.  Seriously, all the way home she kept flicking it on and off and waving it everywhere.  Fortunately, she did not take it to bed.

Sunday, we went to brunch at my parent's house and enjoyed homemade waffles and bacon.  Afterward, we watched the Princess and the Frog before doing an Easter egg hunt in the yard.  Billa had a blast hunting for eggs and running around the yard. We got a couple of bluebonnet pictures which are out en masse this year thanks to some much needed rain we got in the fall. By the time we took off at 3, Billa was wiped out. She promptly passed out in the car and slept the whole way home. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Boppa, Papa, Uncle Phil, and Paul (an ald family friend that comes to just about every holiday with my family).

Homemade sour cream waffles...yum!

Billa shares some waffles with Boppa

It's egg huntin' time!

Even Achilles got in on the action

My favorite egg picture

Mommy and Billa whiling away the hour by conferring with the flowers

All said and done, we had a great weekend and I am feeling so happy right now.  I was so delighted to spend so much time with family doing simple things like gardening and visiting.  I have to admit, I didn't even think about baking, blogging, or anything because I was so exhausted each day.  Exhausted, but happy.  It's definitely springtime!

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!

Love,
the Guerra Family

Vision Check

Do you see what I see?

No?  How about now?  Can you see it now?

Still no?  Then this should do the trick:

That, my friends, is the promise of something sweet (and tangy)...homemade lemon ice box pie, lemon sorbet, lemonade, and lemon iced tea.  Spring is on it's way!

Behold the fruits of summer!

I love tomatoes. Growing up on a small farm, every year my father would plant a large garden and a multitude of plant boxes. We had broccoli, carrots, potatoes, corn, green beans, even pumpkins one year when my brother decided it would be fun (not so fun afterall when they literally took over our back yard). And of course, tomatoes.

Dad would plant several of them and when they were at their peak, we’d be on the receiving end of anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds of the things! My brothers and I would run through the garden and snatch them off the vine and eat them like apples. It was like eating sunshine; sweet and tangy and warm.

It’s been years since I had the pleasure of eating a tomato straight off the vine, plucked at it’s plumpest and the flesh sprinkled with a dash of salt. I magically obtained two plants this year: a beefsteak from my mother and a persimmon variety for Earth Day from work. I set to work and planted them. And after much watering, tending, cursing, staking, fertilizing and the occasional replanting, I was finally granted the reward for my work.

The reason behind the occasional replanting

This, my friends, are the results of my hard work. Two tomatoes. I was hoping for more of a bumper crop but the heat of summer has taken its toll. Still, I am proud of my yield.

The bumper crop of 2009

My other plants are faring as well as can be as well. I have more oregano than I know what to do with and while my lemon tree took some abuse early in the year that prevented it from further blooming, it has grown lush and green. My persimmon tomato has yet to yield anything, but with any luck and a little tender loving care, I just might possibly get some tomatoes out of it yet.

While it cost me more to grow my own tomatoes, there is a certain sense of satisfaction and pride that comes with being able to see the fruits of one’s labor. With any luck, my lessons learned from this summer in planting will serve me well for next year and in the years to come when Sybilla is older and we can plant together.

Until next time,