Pumpkin Patch!

Today Molly's preschool class met at the Vossler Farms Pumpkin Patch for a hay ride, some pumpkin education, and of coarse, the perfect pumpkin!  Siblings were welcome as well as Mommys and MiMis.  Here is how our day went:

Welcome to the Pumpkin Patch!

"Awww, isn't that one cute?"

"This one is so weird, and it's light too!"

"Oh wow, I want to see!"

Cutest mini haystack maze.

Molly was looking for a perfectly round pumpkin the whole time.  She is explaining to me why this one is the right one.

Hugging her perfect pumpkin.  Wow, isn't she beautiful?

"Hey Willy, Smile!"  This is what I get.  Just like his daddy!

After the hayride we snagged a wagon to collect our pumpkins.  Molly assured me she could pull Willy the whole way...and she did!

I think Willy felt a little like a king.

"Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!"  We will have to work on the Gobble-Gobble.

Molly had my camera on the hayride and took this great photo.  She is so talented!

Happy Birthday, Exeter!

This past weekend our hometown of Exeter celebrated 100 years at the annual Fall Festival.  Molly's preschool decided to do their float with a birthday party theme and told all the kids to dress up as presents.  Will meticulously measured, cut, and wrapped Molly's box and I had fun making the biggest bow I could think of.  I'd say it turned out to be a success!!

Succulent Extravaganza!

This weekend is Will's and my six year anniversary.  Normally we don't make too big of a deal about anniversaries or birthdays but this year we thought it would be fun to do something.  Unfortunately we couldn't really come up with anything that sounded fun without spending a lot of money and/or time.  So, we sort of forgot about it and were planning on doing nothing...until a few days ago when my WONDERFUL husband told me he changed his mind.  We are going away for the weekend, he is planning it all, and it's (well it was going to be) a surprise!!!  Wow, how cool.  I love surprises and the thing that I wanted most for this weekend was for my husband to want to do something with me.  So no matter what he was planning, he couldn't go wrong!

The surprise part didn't last but a couple of days.  He just waited for me to lose a little bit of initial excitement about the trip before revealing his secret plans.  So you wanna know where we are going?

To the Succulent Gardens Extravaganza!!!

Seriously, if you have any interest in plants, especially succulents, like me, check out this website: www.sgplants.com.  This place, "Succulent Gardens - The Growing Grounds" is so spectacular!  There will be little seminars packed with info about growing succulents, landscaping with them, using them in pots, etc.  I'm so excited I'm bursting out of my skin!  

There is just something about succulents that fascinate me.  When Will told me this morning at 4:30am I popped out of bed like a shot and ran to the computer to look it up.  Then I went downstairs, made some coffee and ran outside (still dark so I had to turn on the outside lights) and counted how many varieties I have in my little patio garden.  I counted 17 different succulents!!!  I had 18 but had to finally get rid of one after fighting some sort of infection/pest for months.  I have no idea what all their names are but I hope to find out this weekend. 

I will be adding pictures of my succulents soon!

All photos in this post were taken from www.sgplants.com.

The Big Green...

Sario adventures with the Datura plant!

If you all remember, I have a "Datura Stramonium" growing in my front yar-dirt.  I've been so fascinated by this plant!  It popped up and grew quickly into a large, leafy beauty with big white trumpet flowers that blossomed every morning and died every afternoon with nearly no water or care at all!  One day as I was out inspecting my plant, I noticed these little green balls attached to the leaves.  Suspecting that they were some sort of egg, I pulled off as many as I could find every day for about a week.  Eventually I lost interest and decided that it might be more fun to actually see what they were.

Low and behold, the green dots WERE eggs!  After just a couple of days without mothering my Datura plant I noticed several chewed up leaves. As i began searching the leaves for the culprit I noticed tiny little green worms!  Well, I'm not sure if they are called worms or caterpillars but oh how cute I thought they were.  Did I pick them off and squish them?  No way!  Let the adventure continue!

About a week went by without paying any interest to the Datura at all.  One evening my husband mentioned to me that my weed didn't look like it was doing so well.  I proceeded to tell him (rather snobbishly) that it always looks that way in the afternoon because the white flowers have wilted and shriveled into brown blobs from the hot afternoon sun.  Little did I know that my dear sweet husband was very seriously right!  Saturday morning as I went out to water my lovely succulent garden (I'm hoping to introduce them on my blog soon!), I was greeted with this:
 

AND THIS:

 

Those sweet little green wormies had eaten the ENTIRE plant and had grown into enormous tomato worms!  There were two of these big boys inching across the gravel toward the unknown.  Afraid that they would climb up my husband's truck and try to make a cocoon in there only to get squished the next day, I snatched them up and we began our search for a better home for them.  

After seeing mommy holding them the kids decided they wanted a try.  The little claw feet were a little too creepy for their sweet soft hands so Willy came up with the great idea of letting it climb on his shirt.  If you ask me that is a lot creepier, but I was just glad to see that they wanted to experience them too.  (Notice Will is not in any of these photos.  He decided he was much more comfortable taking pictures than holding a big creepy crawly green thing! Haha!)

 

After we were done letting the big

green worm thing crawl on us we found a nice leafy tree nearby and sent him on his way (still assuming at this point that he would find a twig and make a cocoon while hanging from it, like a butterfly). 

He looked pretty happy up there in that tree.  I was certain we would be able to check on him and watch the process of him turning into a winged thing.

This was worm #2 which I decided to put over near my succulents.  He wasn't super happy there though and ended up back on the gravel heading towards nowhere land.  I thought this picture was interesting though.  Take a look at the big spike on his rear end.  I will mention it later.

After sending these two off I refocused my attention on the now bare and scraggly datura.  Much to my surprise (and delight at this point since we were having a wonderful and educational Saturday adventure!) there were several more worms that weren't quite full enough to leave home.

They ate all the way down to the stalk.  So amazing!

Willy and I decided to check out another datura plant that was a little further out on our property.  It looked like it still had leaves on it and we wanted to see if there were any eggs or worms on it.  There were!!  We were so happy!  Stay tuned for Part 2!!

A Tale of Two Rodents

GOOD EVENING SAYS RODENT #1:

If it weren't bad enough that I have to deal with decapitated, disemboweled and dismembered rodents on  an almost daily basis (no exaggeration), last night my sweet loving animals decided to make it a little more personal...a perfectly intact, soft, fuzzy, (dead) rodent at the foot of my bed.  Oh what thoughtful pets I have!  The really disturbing part of that tale is that I had already taken off my glasses and might have stepped on the dead rodent if it had not been for my observant-for-an-evening husband.  He plucked it from the floor by the tail and headed outside to return it to the land (toss it on my yar-dirt so the animals can snack on it and rub their faces in it after the fermentation process has begun).

GOOD MORNING SAYS RODENT #2:
My husband's job requires him to rise anywhere from 3:30am to 5:00am (usually the former).  This means that in order for him to get a decent amount of sleep he has to go to bed at 8:30 or 9:00pm.  I try to get the kids down around that time as well so the house is nice and quiet.  Then I stay up and play on the computer or crochet for another hour or two.  Especially lately we have been missing out on time with each other at night and in the morning.  So, we decided (yesterday) that this must change.  What does this have to do with Rodent #2 you ask?  Let me tell you:

 This morning I peeled myself out of bed at 4:15 (already 15 minutes late according to the new schedule), and hobbled downstairs to start the coffee.  As my husband and I were chatting in the kitchen already enjoying the new routine of actually seeing each other, Rodent #2 decided that our conversation was too dull for him and took off running across the counter.  I noticed that our cat Muffin already had his nose in the air but was looking on the floor rather than up on the counter.  Will picked him up and tossed him on the counter in the vicinity of the mouse only to realize that it had vanished!  Now the cat and my husband were sniffing around for this mysterious rodent. 
I practically saw the light bulb turn on in Will's head as he began taking apart the stove.  Sure enough, hidden under the coils and little metal food-catcher dishes were traces of mouse droppings and prized dead insects that had mysteriously disappeared just days prior.  Unfortunately the rodent had gotten away, probably wiggled its way behind the stove to hide in one of his favorite drawers. 
Here is what I don't understand: how can a mouse have anything to poop out if there is nothing in the drawer to eat?!!  I'm not kidding, there are two drawers that have been empty for a week save for traces of bleach left from cleaning out the dozens of poops and pees almost daily!  Well, enough on that.  I can only hope that the animals take good long naps today so they  have plenty of energy for another big rodent hunt tonight!

This tale of two rodents seems strangely reminiscent of a post long ago in the land of Quince:

The Mouse

Datura

If you will notice in the comment section of the "Unexpected Beauty" post, Candace identified the mystery plant in my front yar...dirt.  It is called 'datura stramonium' which, according to Wikipedia, belongs to the "witches weeds" because most of the plant contains toxic hallucinogens and was used in witches love potions in the days of old.  A wonderful addition to the family home, right?  I also read somewhere online (take this with a grain of salt because I don't remember where I read it) that some kids were experimenting with this plant and ended up crippled and blind.  Yikes!

At first I was thinking that our plant was different because it was lacking the spiky balls of death:

But, as it turns out, this ugly weed-like "fruit" comes after the flower dies and falls off.  DUH!  Sometimes it seems that my brain just doesn't work properly.  This spiky ball opens up and drops out a load of seeds that spread all over the place.  Although I don't mind having the datura in our yar-dirt this year, I can foresee loathing as they invade my future utopia.  So, I have been pulling off the stem of the flower after it dies so as to prevent the growth of seeds.  I was delighted to see several datura growing happily in our lovely wastelands out past my yar-dirt.  As long as they stay out there I will be happy to welcome them every summer.

Instagram!

I just found the most amazing photography app on my iPhone: "Instagram".  They have several beautiful (pretty exaggerated, but still pretty) filters that make any ol' photo look like a work of art.  Here is an example:

Before

After

So fun!  I can't wait to try it on all the darling photos of the kids!

Unexpected Beauty

A few weeks ago I was pulling weeds in the dirt patch (soon to be a beautiful oasis) in front of our house. I started on one end and worked my way towards the other. As I was about to cut down my final weed I stopped myself.  This one looked different.  There was a sweet fat leaf in the middle of some low vine thing.  I left it thinking it would be pretty for a while till it got all big and scraggly like most weeds do.  Good thing I left it because THIS is what it turned into:

This is the beautiful flower that greeted me this morning on what I almost ripped out as a weed!

The flower starts out as a long tube.  It's empty and looks like like a rolled up leaf.  As time goes by the tube starts filling up until it finally blooms.

This was taken on my iPhone before any flowers bloomed.  I just couldn't believe how big and beautiful my little weed was getting! Now I wish I had taken pictures from day 1.

This is the vine thing that is growing under the shade of the huge leaves.  It grows like crab grass but has these pretty little leaves that almost look like succulents.  I thought this one would get long and scraggly too but as it grows in diameter it also grows in fullness.

So, obviously this is not a weed at all but a big beautiful plant!  I can't wait to see if some sort of vegetable starts growing from the flower.  Does anyone recognize it? Another thing to mention is that  I haven't watered it yet at all.  I put a hose to it this morning and am just hoping that it doesn't kill it!  Who has ever heard of a leafy, flowery plant that doesn't need water?  I will keep you posted on the progress of the flower!

Some NeoGrandma Style

I thought I should post something on my family blog about how I've decided to move "Steph's Stitches" to a blog all its own.  Please welcome,

www.NeoGrandma.com

Along with a pretty blog (getting there at least) all it's own, I've also opened a shop on Etsy.com!  Check out the cool custom button I made...ALL BY MYSELF!

I'm having trouble making the image a link so click HERE to go to the shop.

Go ahead and look around, but don't forget to check back soon cause I'll be making improvements and adding items often!

Unplanned Vacation

 A few weeks ago MarMar decided to take the kids on a special kids only beach vacation.  So we packed them up for a weeks worth of fun and off they went to Pismo. 

Will and I were excited as well because that meant that we got a week to spend together, just the two of us.  Little did we know how soon and how much we would miss our little ones.  It wasn't until the 2nd day that we were planning our own little road trip down to Pismo to say "Hi", have dinner with them and head home. Well, as you may have guessed, what was meant to be a snapshot, ended up as a movie. 

We stayed the night with the kids, Marlene, and her little helper Lily (whom I almost forgot to mention...sweet, sweet daughter of Marlene's friend, loves the kids and the kids love her, and is such a helper without even having to ask...just darling).  The next morning, Marlene and Lily packed up and left Will, the kids, and me to have a spur-of-the-moment family vacation!

The weather was to die for (thanks to Molly's prayers, below), the beach was super sparkly clean, the water was perfect, and there weren't very many people there at all.  Our recipe for fun!  Oh, by the way, all of these pictures were taken on my precious iPhone 4!  I mean really, can you believe it?!