Last year tomato growers up and down the East Coast of the US suffered mightily by excessively wet weather that led to a tomato disease called BLIGHT.  There are two types: EARLY and LATE. And the name of the this plant disease is pretty misleading. The blights are not the same fungus, but actually two different ones.  Either way, EARLY and LATE BLIGHT are bigtime plant killers that affect both potatoes and tomatoes.

I anticipate that BLIGHT will come again this year. Why? Because it is necessary to take certain garden sanitary precautions to prevent its return. With all the novice tomato growers out there, they are unlikely to bother. If they don’t their ground will harbor blight spores. Which are airborne.

So to protect my crops, I’m looking into preventative measures. For one thing, healthy soil with good drainage. Another is to plant my tomatoes in the sunniest locations available to me.  Finally, I aim to clean out my garden beds and mulch with fresh mulch.  As a last resort, there are organic copper-based anti-fungal sprays which can also protect plants from the blight.

The blight sounds serious and it is serious. Apparently, the great potato famine in Ireland was caused by this wide-spreading destructive fungal infection, as it affects both potatoes and tomatoes alike. Growers beware!

as it slips through and under every little gap,

so bright and cheery are

the yellow crocuses in the garden,

the honey yellow  sunshine with its friendly fingers,

the tulips poking through,

their tops are green curled with life and tinged with red like

fingernails they scooped through the ground,

and me with my piles of things

like housework (gah!)

or yardwork (mmmm)

and pausing casually to read

the seed catalogs in the mail.

The truth is, we had severe weather. I think that is preferable in some ways to the usual blah and super cold, or the usual wet rainy miserable bitter cold which can happen. I think it is weird how we all seem able to connect and talk about weather. The outside world matters to me, even on days when I stay in my pajamas all day. Like today. I am still clad in blue flannel PJs, with white snowflakes on them. 

My work of course involves being outside with kids. Rainy cold weather is no fun, and we’re all cooped up and miserable. Unfortunately, I hear the forecast for Monday and Tuesday involves much rainy dreariness. I am not thrilled with that, but have you ever thought how lucky you are to know what is coming? I mean really, we had over two feet of snow and I knew it was coming. I bought a lot of groceries.

Which also makes me feel lucky and grateful. We had enough money for groceries. And we had heat. And still are doing fine. 

My kids and their peers at school did a fundraiser for Haiti and gathered more than one thousand dollars to be sent to Haiti in the form of aid for the earthquake survivors. I am so proud of the kids for making a difference. 

So we have one more week of February. Why is February the shortest month of the year? So we can survive it, of course, or so I’ve always figured. March can come blow down the door and spill our soup upon the floor. We’ll lap it up and roar for more. 

Random selection of pictures and one valentine.

There’s the sound of me groaning from having shoveled out the cars. Moan!

There’s the quiet tap, click, clicking of the girls upstairs playing our new obsession, Plants Versus Zombies, which is extremely addictive and very fun. Don’t start! You’ll get hooked! But if you start, you can talk Pea Shooters and SunShrooms and Melon ‘Pults with us anytime you want. Oi. Too fun.

There’s the cursing sounds of people slipping on icy steps, too.

So all these sounds are why it’s been so darn quiet around here.

Here in Philadelphia we are still digging out from the biggest snows, like, ever. Apparently, the warmer air holds more moisture, and more moisture means bigger storms. Bigger hurricanes for part of the country and bigger snows for others. There will likely be bigger droughts, and bigger rainstorms.  Who knew that “global warming” would mean blizzards that shut a city down for a week?

We had school a week ago, Tuesday, but otherwise it’s been snow days. And today is of course a holiday. My kids and I have had a lot of fun. Rather than write endlessly, I am posting some pictures. Each one is worth, well you know how much a picture is worth!

Drob remarked to me that it was probably time to pull up our remaining carrots.  I just did that! They are so funny looking, because they were grown in a pot, and because I had pulled them up before to see if they were big enough to harvest. They weren’t. As an experiment, I planted them back into their pots once again to see if more carrot root could grow after disturbing the plant in that way. The other thing I did which messed with the carrots was to periodically snip off some of the greens. This was something goofy I did just to please my carrot-greens-loving guinea pigs.

All told, these last two carrots did pretty well considering all their “challenges”. I hope that next year I’ll do more container gardening. I think it would be awesome to grow a whole lot more, right in my own front yard. I won’t be returning to the same community garden where I’ve gardened the last three summers, so I am trying to think what to do instead.

Container gardening means being able to really focus on each plants needs. If you have a compost-hungry crop, you can give it a bigger share of the rich stuff to its own container, rather than just fertilizing all the ground. If you find a spot is not sunny enough for a particular crop, you can move the container to a more sunny location.  Or, if frost threatens, you could even move a potted crop indoors over night. The possibilities are exciting!

Right now is the time of gardening dreams and schemes. I don’t plan to grow anything during the winter, except for the swiss chard that I have out on my deck in pots. My pots are too small, though, and the chard is small accordingly. I will dream and scheme the winter long, looking for funky– and larger!– containers to plant in come spring.

Also pictured above: my non-glamorous hair that apparently should be dyed. What do you think? Come on, I can take it, tell me the truth! I’m striving for more glamour, you know,  cuz that is really “me”.

You see, my mom was kind enough to tell me, though it pained her to have to give me such feedback, that I am really not making a good example for my children. My grey hair really should be dyed to make me prettier. My hairy “man legs” are offensive and gauche. My children are too dirty and I am too lenient with them.

So phew! Now I know ! Thank God I have Mom to tell me!

I blame technology. I’ve got this aging Macbook. It was a peachy laptop when I first got it. But now its having all kinds of issues. Including a lack of internet access that comes and goes in a random way. 

Meanwhile I’m seeing a new therapist. He is so awesome. Too bad our health insurance is about to get all skimpy on us. 

Well that’s all for now. Sorry for lameness.

We were at the Family Fun Center because of a birthday party– my daughter’s classmate. So with a bag of tokens and several tickets, the kids got to do the rides and all that. So my ten dollars was a quick and fun way to lose some cash, and it was entirely unnecessary, and that’s probably why it was so darn fun.

Anywho, we topped off that experience with a trip to Best Buy where I bought a little Mp3 player for Carla. It was a reward, or possibly a celebratory gift, depending on how you look at it. She’s nine years old, and this week for the first time in the past six years, has awoken five mornings in a row in a dry bed. She’s had this goal of staying dry five nights in a row for years.

At first, she wanted a trophy for an award for this task. A gold shiny trophy. But that was what she thought up at say, age 5 or 6. Unfortunately, bladder control during the night hours isn’t something that is actually under one’s conscious control. Though toilet training is often accomplished with the help of encouragement in the form of sticker charts and small rewards for trying and making, night time dryness either happens or it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it’s tough for the kid to make any changes one way or another.

Most kids outgrow their nighttime peeing by around age 9. Nine is how she is  now.  Dare I hope for a sixth, seventh and eighth dry night? Well anyway, she wanted to know earlier today what she’d get if she was dry again tomorrow morning.  I told her, “You get to wake up in a dry clean bed, that’s what.”

I certainly am not about to buy her another. high tech gadget. But I am excited about the thing. You know I’m going to want to borrow it, right? I mean, I have to borrow it so that I can help her load music onto it.  She requested some jazz, some Beatles and some country music.

Jazz, okay. Beatles, sure. Country??? Where the heck did she get that idea?  Certainly not, I told her, when I was hungry and cranky to boot.  But after a good serving of pizza and a cupcake, I was mellower.

“You can listen to any kind of music you want to,” I told her.  ”I just don’t want to hear any country music myself, as that is not what I prefer.  But you are free to listen to any music you want.”

I also bought Annie a super duper soft stuffie dog. She named him Elvis. We then went to the Dollar Store and bought Elvis a dog Halloween costume. Elvis is being a clown for Halloween.

Annie is being a Black Cat. I made her ears this evening, and attached them to a black head band. At the dollar store, I found a dog collar, and bought that for Annie to wear as a cat on Halloween.  She’ll also have a long furry tail, and face paint. Oh the cuteness!

Carla is going to be a vampiress. Originally she was going to be a California Water Witch, and go around with a dowsing stick, or divining rod for finding water. The stick, however, broke. So that killed that plan. No sense trying to tell her that she could easily find another stick to dowse with.  She  just chucked the whole idea out the window, along with the broken stick. Now I have to find her some vampire teeth.  She already has a lovely long black cape with red silk lining.

The Dollar Store also graced us with several fun witches hats, stickers, and other goofy Halloween fun stuff. I look forward to sharing this goofy stuff with the kids at school. Dressing up is so much fun. I think that’s why I love Halloween so much.

Needless to say, all this playing and shopping brought us home hungry. I quickly threw some water on for pasta while I dug around in the fridge to see what could be made quickly.

I found five hamburgers that I’d cooked sometime pretty recently. I found a container of left over broccoli rabe. There was some leftover Chinese food from last night, along with some very dubious older left overs. While the water was heating to make some pasta, I cleaned these things and finally came up with a plan.

Step 1) Snarf the Chinese. YUM! Hey, the cook’s gotta eat, right?

Step 2) Take two big tomatoes from the freezer, and dunk them into the boiling water. Take them out, and peel off the skins. Then squish them a little in a bowl and drain off the water.

Step 3) Chop up the hamburgers. Place them on top of the tomatoes in the bowl.

Step 4) Sprinkle lotsa basil and oregano on top of the meat.  Dice up a little garlic clove and put that over the top of the meat.

Step 5) Microwave the tomato-hamburger-herbs about 2 mins, then stir and repeat on lower setting.

Step 6) Heat the broccoli rabe in the microwave

Step 7) Drain the pasta, butter it, and VOILA! Dinner time!

I served the meat as though it was “meat balls” which is basically what it tasted like. The children and the husband all observed that they weren’t really very ball-like at all.  True, that. But Annie and Drob both really liked them.  Carla wouldn’t touch them, but that’s just how she is. Carb girl.

I love it when leftovers get made into something new. There’s something magical in that, to me.  To take what seemed like an empty fridge and plumb it for goodies, combining things to make it all new again. Fun, and practical.

But what will I be for Halloween? I’m thinking maybe a crocodile.

I guess I kind of forgot to blog for the last three months. I don’t know where the summer went, it was gone in a flash.

I can’t possibly catch you all up on what I’ve been up to. So I’m going to just jump back into this, putting together three thoughts and call it a day.

1) It is time for me to consider that I may be just another adult with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.  This disorder, with its truly annoying and inglorious name, sure has a lot of symptoms that fit my personality. It’s always tempting to sit down with a diagnostic book and self-diagnose.  My husband feels strongly that I fit the ADHD mold. I just don’t really want to cop to this. I don’t want to have ANOTHER diagnosis. ANOTHER thing that is wrong with me. But that’s just negativity taking over.

2) It is one hell of a crap ass, cold rainy and miserable day out there. I just want to hide under the covers all day. Alas, that is not likely to happen. But maybe a little tiny half hour nap after lunch wouldn’t hurt anyone?

3) My daughters are really doing great in school this year. I am so proud of them. One of the things that seems to be helping Carla is that she is taking a stimulant to treat her ADHD. It works for her, it seems. If it works for her, would it work for me too?  Meanwhile, though, I’m sticking to coffee. Lots and lots of it.