The berry beds are planted!

Working together, James and the twins and I finished planting both the strawberry and blueberry+ beds. The twins worked together to plant all 20 strawberry plants, and then came over to help us get the lingonberries, cranberries and wintergreen into the acid-loving bed where James had already settled the blueberries. I also tucked the garlic chives into their space on Herb Hill, and the "experimental" pomegranate is now settled (hopefully happily) into her corner of the patio. All but the strawberries were carefully mulched in with shredded leaves.

It sure was fun working together this afternoon. And the fun continued as silly songs broke out at the dinner table. Tonight it was my turn to play the agonized straight guy for everyone else's silliness.

Wonderful memories being built here in the red house.

Catching up---kids & family news

We'll start with the youngest this time:
Miriam has really become a teenager/young lady (depending on your interpretation , and her mood)! Where did my little girl go? She's off to a solid start for the school year. Honors Chorus starts early morning practices this month, and will hopefully move into full Chorus rehearsals soon-so that I am only doing the driving one morning per week. Her language of choice is French this year, but only because Russian isn't offered until high school! Miriam continues with her writing, and even enters the occassional contest with some success. I am delighted by her general good judgement (except that she will probably not repeat the tie-dye in the light laundry load experiment!) and willingness to help. The down side of her maturation process is probably the change in her music choices and the optimal listening volumn.

Samuel is very glad to be back in kung fu and drum lessons, after taking two months off this summer, and we're glad he has those outlets for his tremendous energy. He'll be testing for red sash (the belt before black) at the end of this month, with part 2 of the test next month. We have a meeting about the process of planning, completing, and reporting the Eagle Scout project tomorrow night. He'll get a chance to meet several of the District leaders who've been sending emails around trying to figure out how to support him in his quest for the Hornaday medal. Apparently, there has only been one young man to complete this award in the past 20+ years in all of the Baltimore Area Council. Samuel said he wanted to do something unusual/meaningful. The consensus is that this qualifies! His driver personality is keeping him at the top in his classes at school, and he reminds James to be saving, because he's going to earn that laptop James promised any of them who earn straight-A's for a year.

Liza (Leeza there) is enjoying her Hungarian adventure. She's had some challenges teaching the school folks how to integrate foreign students, but I think she'll get that worked out once she has the language down. The sense of humor is very different. No one gets sarcasm at all. And no one just randomly breaks out in song for the heck of it. Poor Liza. Guess you had to leave home to really appreciate us, hunh? I enjoy the emails I get, and the $35 of phone calls during the first two weeks were worth every penny. Fortunately we've now figured out how to make internet calls, and won't be paying the extra phone bill every month. She's having fun adventures travelling through the country, and will even be heading to Italy later this month. She's found the LDS church group and is getting help with the language there, along with having someone to challenge/race in language learning-a new missionary who has only been in country two weeks longer than she has & had two months of intensive language lessons. She still thinks she can best him! (She tried to tell me she's not really a Moss, but her competitiveness and the fact the the first vocabulary she mastered was food-related, I'm not buying it!) She's exploring dance lessons with another exchange student, and is going with a classmate to meet a violin/viola teacher and find a viola so she can get back to her music. As much as I miss having her around, I am so very proud of her for making this happen!

Tori is having her adventure in the wilds of Bal'more city, and seems to be doing very well. She loves the neighborhood she's in, and has a park for her front yard. The job isn't the best she could wish for, but it's keeping her basic bills paid, and she's sqeezing in a bit of job hunting around work and her five college classes this semester. She still finds time to dance and spend time with friends. I have to say I'm impressed with how she's taking on life, and I'm very glad to claim her as my daughter! I'm even happier that she's glad to claim me as her mom.

I really do consider myself blessed to share my life with these wonderful young people. I'm pleased to be able to say that I really do love, respect and enjoy them, and that's a tremendous place to be as a mother!

Other family news. . .we enjoyed our visit with Mom & Dad Kniskern. They drove up last month for a three-day visit, with a long day driving on either end. Dad has fixed up a van for Mom, complete with portable toilet-for pit stops whenever they're needed, and everything she needs to be able to do her peritoneal dialysis on the road. We enjoyed being able to share our garden projects with them, and the visiting we enjoy whenever we can get together. We know the trip was strenuous for both of you. Thanks for putting in the effort!

Looking ahead, we're excited to be going out to Colorado for Thanksgiving with my sister and her family. This will be our first chance to meet our Ethiopian kinfolk-Taye, Gizachew, and Saba. They were adopted at the beginning of the summer, and seem to be doing very well adjusting to all these changes. In spite of just learning the language over the last three or four months, they're all in the top half of their classes. I hear Sierra is taking to the role of big sister like a star. I'm proud of you, Sierra! Now, Roman. . .actually, I'm hearing wonderful things about him also, and enjoyed a fabulous conversation with him last weekend. But can you really be old enough to drive already????

Catch up time??? Gardening news

We've been keeping busy around here, and James has been doing an excellent job of keeping everyone informed of our major projects, so I've been. . .off working on other things??? If you don't read James's blog (you ought to check it out!), I'll try to catch you up on what we've accomplished in the yard lately has included starting the sheet mulching project in the backyard, the strawberry bed (don't remember exactly when that got done-have I mentioned it already?), and the blueberry+ bed. That last was a major project and James did the bulk of the work! The bed is 8 x 18 feet (2.5 x 5-6 meters), and was dug about 2-2.5 feet deep (say .75 m) to break up the clay, then filled in layers of clay, peat, manure, powdered rock for minerals, and sulphur to acidify the soil. Each layer was turned by pitchfork and watered well. (That was my main job, along with cheerleading and appreciating his efforts!) The final bed is almost 18" (.5m) above the previous soil level, and involved roughly ten layers per hole. James divided the bed into ten holes, and did one or two per work session over about two weeks. Lots of work! But it's finished and waiting to dry out a bit after the bout of rain we had last week. We drove out to Afton, VA to visit Edible Landscaping and buy the plants for that bed, some (20) more strawberry plants, the nanking bush cherries for the front yard, and a dwarf pomogranate. (I had to acknowledge that a pomegranate is an experiment in this climate three times before they'd let me buy it!)
We also planted out 1 and 1/4 pounds of small yellow onion sets. If you don't know, that's several hundred of the little things. We may have some impressive stands of onions on Herb Hill next summer.
Silly little things, but my major gardening success for the month has been locating sources for seeds and seedlings of the Siberian Pea plant. That is a large-ish bush that fixes nitrogen in the soil, blooms yellow in the spring, and bears edible pods with seeds similar to lentils that are 35% protein. More perennial edibles!!!
After thinking it over, James has come to the conclusion that we do have room for a couple of dwarf fruit trees, so they'll be ordered this week: Saturn peaches (the donut shaped ones), and combination grafted trees for apples, pears, and akanashi. ('bye Eastern Redbud volunteer!)
Some of the inclination/motivation for those has come from the satisfaction we've felt as we've chopped peaches to stock the freezer for smoothies all winter long. Then Mom & Dad K. brought us a bushel of red delicious apples from their backyard, which we started processing Friday night just over a week ago. Then, the following Saturday, we took the twins out to the Maryland-Pennsylvania border past Frederick to pick apples from the neglected orchard a work colleague just purchased this year. That was another three bushels of free apples. We've had the dehydrator making apples slices almost constantly, while the crockpot brewed apple butter and applesauce. The kids have gotten quite good at the peeler/corer/slicer project, very tired of apples, and have gained an appreciation for the work that goes into food preparation.