I have a confession to make. Come Follow Me has always been hard. I don’t like it. I’ve never liked it. I’ve missed years of yore with studying prophets and 3 hour church and all the stuff that seems to have been an easy tradition shift for most. I’ve harbored guilt for these feelings and often felt like if I would just get on board, I’d gain a testimony of the program; but every year comes and goes and I don’t implement any kind of come follow me manuals into our lives. We’ll pick it up occasionally but since I haven’t really planted the seed into my own life, it never really grows for my family. And then a wise friend was talking about what she did for her family and an idea spurred. She said that she’s always struggled to make habits stick until she realized that it’s easier to piggyback habits instead of create from scratch. She said her family struggled with reading scriptures until she piggybacked the habit with bedtime prayers, something that they’d been able to keep consistent for a long time. She says you don’t have to master a gospel foundation from day one, just take a baby step every day. Find some goal that doesn’t feel lofty. When she said they only read 1 verse a day, I thought, “I think maybe we could handle 1 verse a day at bedtime.” And then I came home and looked at the book and realized it’ll be pretty easy to find 1 verse for each sub-category. So I went through the book and picked 6 verses for each lesson, based on what is already marked in my scriptures and what is highlighted in the manual. I only picked 6 because I still want to follow with our own Family Home Evening lesson schedule. Also, I’m an all-or-nothing type. If I make the list now, I’ll stick with it. If I wing it, I will drop the habit. So It’s all done now, while I’m thinking about it. (The scriptures in parentheses are because I know myself. If I miss a day, this is the verse I’ll skip).
So if you’re stuck on Come Follow Me, feel free to use my pre-selected scripture list of 1 verse a day:
This is a rough draft post. I’d love to say I’ll fluff it out but… my track record suggests otherwise. If you’re seeing it in this state and it’s not November, my track record holds. What can I say, I’m consistent! haha.
Below, find a schedule for semi-weekly primary-school science lessons for the month of November. A homeschool unit for November about – you guessed it – food. Note that this could easily be spread out to 4 or 5 days a week instead of 2! But we only do science twice a week in order to have time for social studies and extra curriculars.
Intro to Chemistry
Okay, today is pretty video heavy, but I feel like first graders need a whole lot of scaffolding for an intro to chemistry because for the most part, chemistry kind of just happens around them and they’re not super aware it is happening. The goal for today’s lesson is to learn 3 vocabulary words. What is Chemistry, What is Matter, and What is a Chemist?
Fold a paper in fourths and write Kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and garage on each section. Then discuss with your kid what science might happen in each room. Write or draw your answer.
Make cupcakes. classify ingredients as wet or dry. While cupcakes are in the oven talk about salt and sugar and how they look the same up close but very different up close. Talk about the purpose of sugar or salt. Can we use them the same?
Hot chocolate lab (Try this one from Science Sparks) point out the steam coming from the liquid! and add a solid, either a solid piece of chocolate or a marshmallow that will melt.
Talk about how some liquids don’t mix. They need something more to create a mixture. A mixture of ingredients that don’t like to mix is called an emulsion. Check out a great lesson on Science Sparks on Emulsions.
Here it is, halfway through February. As you know (you don’t know. I have no followers), I refuse to set goals in January. I take January off, mentally. I survive and mend in January. Perhaps because it’s “always Winter and never Christmas.” This year, I’ve needed a few other weeks, too. But I’m here. I’m feeling the need to set goals. It’s time. (Cue crazy Rafiki).
So… What goals do I have?
1. Finish the basement. It’s 4 years overdue. It’s sooo close. If. we. can. just. cross. the. finish. line…
2. Get chickens. Yeah. Totally did that. Blame the ADHD impulse and my Mama. But on the flip side have you seen the cost of eggs lately? And I already have half a coop, a rundown run (pun intended), and help with them on the way. So I guess the goal isn’t “get” chickens. It’s keeping them alive when they get here.
3. Homeschool a girly that is struggling socially in school. She has some body delays, and socially it’s becoming awkward for her. So I wanna give her a year to recoup, stay on track, and then we will evaluate how she’s doing. Kinda hope she loves it because it’s always something I have wanted but it’s a serious commitment and I don’t wanna mess that up. We’re talking a kid’s wellbeing here. I don’t wanna take that lightly. I intend to send the other 2 to school. Mostly because it eases the transition for those that have always discouraged me and because that gives one-on-one time to the one that needs it.
Man I sound all domestic and homey!
4. Find it in my soul to pick up the dropped ball of FHE lessons instead of hasty find a picture and talk about it lessons. And when that is done, work on a scripture study guide. That I also started and set down. Man my ADHD is killing me. Actually I always just thought it was a personal failing. It wasn’t until I was 36, had newborn twins and was drowning in exhaustion and Dr Pepper that I asked for help. And that was because I zoned out while driving all my precious cargo because the car in front of me had shiny rims. No lie. Clearly meds don’t fix everything, though, because I am dreading picking up these juggle balls. Not because I don’t want to do them but because I don’t want to drop them. Or any other ball. Am I ready? I can barely do dishes and laundry. But part of that is because I’m lagging in the motivation category. And when I’m lagging on motivation it often helps to add something new. That’s why I love gardening in the spring. It’s something new. It’s a new garden. But it’s -4° today and my driveway is drifted over with snow and wind and I’m not ready to think about spring yet.
That being said, 5. Keep up with a garden. Back to domesticity, haha. I was debating about the 2 rows of tomatoes. Or maybe cutting back carrots. But, as I’ve hinted at, life seems to be changing in my family of origin and the extra garden space will probably be a blessing. And if I keep chickens it will both rock the mouse population (hopefully in my favor but who knows. They might all move further into my garden) and they can eat the shrivelled carrots I didn’t get to in time.
5.1 grow onions from seeds. Which means I need to get started soon. But as I said, it’s snowing outside! It’s cold in my house. I just can’t bring myself yet. Soon.
5.2 try lavender again. Pray we can fix the watering “sitch.” Pray they get enough light indoors. Pray they *finally* grow bigger than an inch high.
5.3 don’t make my tomatoes struggle this year by inadequate potting soil and starting them as early as I’d like to. I’d love to get my greenhouse here and ready to install, but it’s gonna cost me a pretty penny to transport it around a mountain range. Long story. Probably too much personal information. I inherited it but it isn’t near me. Let’s say that.
6. Figure out how to be a better neighbor when I’m a hermit. World peace. I have awesome neighbors. I wanna be like them. And I wanna be better at helping them. And my husband. And my kids.
Anyway, I usually publish these goals here to keep me accountable. And then I look at them in January and evaluate myself. But I don’t feel like looking at last year’s so, … Moving on.
An unspoken thing that I personally think is amazing about conference is that there are so many family traditions involved in how each household watches conference. If you feel like you need a new tradition in your family, here are are some resources I have found from the Church (while planning our FHE lesson for this week) that are totally free to you!
Print off and fill out conference notebooks (for older or for younger kids; or one of these pages one, two for in between)
color by topic pages (I personally think this one is worth it! love it). There is this one, as well, but a) it’s outdated, and b) it’s not as pretty. But it is still a good resource!
Conference Bingo! This is what our family does! we have pages my aunt made when we were kids, but the topics have shifted slightly and it’s getting harder to get bingos! So I think I’m gonna print these off, instead, this year. Before conference, I go to the dollar store and pick out little toys and party favors. I buy things that are less than a dollar (so multiple things in a pack) for bingos and then 1 dollar prize per session per kid for blackouts (I might have to make the “sustaining leaders” a free space in order to do that on this print-out). I try to pick prizes that are projects or crafts, so that my kids have some form of entertainment during conference, as opposed to a figurine, but even little figurines have value while entertaining kids for so long. Here is another page, but it has President Monson represented for “prophet,” so it’s a little outdated.
There are a lot of picture searches within the church’s website, but these two (one, two) deal particularly with General Conference.
Same thing goes for coloring pages. I found 5 in particular that are about conference (but I bet there are more hidden in the “internet cracks.” Some of these have President Monson, but he was still a prophet (one, two, three, four, five). And here is one about King Benjamin teaching his people, in case you’re following along with our FHE lessons.
Here’s a poster with kids coloring for conference.
This page has a blank bingo sheet, but I like the idea of drawing the ties given on the bottom.
If you told your family about King Benjamin teaching his people, this activity about his people pitching his tents toward the temple will have deeper meaning.
This one seems fun, too. Color in a square for each clue you see or hear.
assign a small treat to key words and each time that word is heard, the hearer can get a treat.
Here is a dot-to-dot of the prophet (and a picture story).
There is nothing to print here, but this story talks about watching conference via a tent, like King Benjamin. You could build a fort like they do in the story or a real tent. If it’s stable enough, you could even allow your family to sleep in it one night!
This activity involves 1 word for each letter of the alphabet and suggests writing notes about each word.
Here is a rope code game that has a hidden answer at the bottom of the page.
For kids that can read, they could cover these words as they hear them.
The second page of this story from the friend gives a nice way to take notes on a talk. If your note-taker can read but isn’t ready to take that thorough of notes, they might be able to follow this outline.
Here is a 2-week countdown of activities to prepare for conference.
If you want to update the pictures, this is a fun mini-conference setup with chairs and a pulpit that you can have the speakers walk to. But it’s from 2012.
This coloring page is similar to some others already listed, but a little bit simpler. It would still require reading, though. Or there is this one, tied to the talk before it.
Hopefully this year I will actually have some success with experimenting with tomatoes [cue self-depreciating eye-roll]. The race is on! I’ll update this post as it continues… because I know no one cares but me… at least if I continue to mess up on my gardening journey. I learn something new each year, though!
Also if you’re looking for a good variety of heirloom seeds, the white envelopes in the picture below are from David’s Seeds on Amazon. I’ve been pretty impressed. I haven’t been successful in growing all of them every year (I kill a lot of them…) but they’ve all sprouted and I can tell the grower knows his stuff. I don’t get anything for telling you that, just want to spread a good business some love.
3/2/22 planted 54 tomato seeds! 3 each of White, Green, Valencia, Yellow, Brandywine, Rose, Prince, Moskvich, Carbon, Cherokee, Striped, Rutgers, Delicious, and Pear and 6 of Romas and Cherries because you cant go wrong with extras of those and it filled my tray. Also planted 54 peppers! which means all my plants this year are getting a heat treatment! because I learned last year that the reason my peppers didn’t grow was because my house is too cold.
3/8/22 I have sprouts! I looked yesterday and there was nothing, but today I have 3 Cherokee seedling poking their heads out! Way to take the lead, Cherokee Purple! There’s a teeny tiny little yellow and striped sprout, but they’re not actually out, yet. I bet they’ll sprout tomorrow morning.
3/9/22 Yay! Here we go! I see lots of little green things starting to happen in my seed trays! I’ve got 2 Rose, a Yellow, A Valencia, two Green and 1 White, a Striped, a Prince, and even a tiny little Pear starting to come up. Only the 2 Rose and the Yellow are really showing their leaves yet (I looked it up, those little leaves are called Cotyledons), but I bet most of them will be out before tomorrow!
I decided to make myself a little chart to keep track of my seeds. The light green are still sprouts, but the true green squares have become official seedlings (as in they’re upright). I’ll add a dark green once they have their first set of true leaves.
3/10/22 Yesterday was a frustrating one as the mom to lots of sick kiddos that turned into some kind of zombies that just weren’t hearing me or computing anything I said, so it was really nice to be able to look over to these tiny little plants and discover a new one! look at how many are coming up!
It’s funny that the striped are now in second place, as I don’t know if they’ve actually been all that successful in the past. But I think they’ve been more successful than I thought and I have not understood that their mottled coloring actually wasn’t super stripey. Hence why each year this experiment is ineffectual.
And guess what? I have a teeny tiny little Echinacea seedling! They’re supposed to take 2 weeks so I wasn’t expecting one yet. still watching on the peppers. I have had to push a few sprouting seeds back into the dirt, so I know they’re sprouting; now just to convince them to get some leaves.
3/11/22 Even more sprouts today. They make me happy. Yesterday, as I was looking at the chart I noticed that everything had at least 1 sprout except for the Rutgers. I remembered last year I struggled with them, too. I made an executive decision based on the fact that the seeds are from 2013 and that might be the reason they’re not doing too hot. I planted the 18 empty seed pots with 2 seeds each. so if I end up with 42 Rutger plants, I’m gonna have a field day! Really, I’ll just share them. But Rutgers are supposedly the go-to for canning whole tomatoes, so I have to attribute it to the older seeds being the problem. At least, I think… I mean, these seeds are almost 10 years old (yeah, 2013 was almost 10 years ago. I can’t believe it either).
Naturally, a Rutger plant starts showing up after I planted so many seeds… but I am not complaining. I figured it was better to just sow the old seeds anyway because they’ll just get older and older. Better to make too many tomato plants this year than to waste the seeds. Especially since the economy is gonna be tough and I can share with those around me.
So… all of my Rose Brandywines, seeds have sprouted, but one is funky. It’s all kinda curly and wonky. I think it will pull through, but it’s off to a rough start. And another one is missing half of its cotyledons. It just wasn’t wanting to give up the shell! I tried all the tricks; even spitting on the seed (google made me do it). I think it’s got enough left to keep growing, though.
Speaking of losing half of it’s cotyledons, my preschooler helped the poor Valencia out, too, so it’s only got half of it’s leaves; I think there is enough, as well, but ugh! And speaking of stubborn seeds, one of the whites still has a pretty tough shell, too. It’s too soon to try to help it, though. if I helped now it’d die.
still only 1 Echinacea and no peppers.
3/12/22 Not a lot of change today. Poor mom is gonna get all of the varieties she doesn’t want and none that she does! She likes the reds and dislikes the purple, green, and white. I’m hoping she will have enough of the second batch of Rutgers that she won’t need the 3 purples… my reds (or almost reds) are Rose, Brandywine (B), Rutgers (Rut), Moskvich (M), and Delicious (D) and, as you can see, those are the ones I’m struggling with the most!
The rose is already straightening out and the yellow is still in the seedling stage because it had a pretty stubborn seed coat and was staying all curled up instead of upright. I noticed a split in the coat, though, so I was able to split it a little more and get those leaves free. Risky move, but luckily it worked.
I was panicking that my peppers haven’t sprouted but then I realized that most seed packets say 10 days at the minimum and that’s today. So I guess I should just hold my horses and give them time… I’m just so nervous that they will follow my normal trend and not sprout. Plus, I figure those calculations are meaning if you leave the soil at 80-90 degrees all day and night and I’m too chicken to leave my heat lamp on that long. I really should invest in heat mats but I haven’t been able to bring myself to that yet.
3/13/22 Definitely unsure on if the rest of these tomatoes are going to sprout. I think, since they’re the ones I’m most interested in testing, I’m going to replant. I mean, seriously, 4 out of 5 of them are my reds! Granted I already replanted the Rutgers. But I need at least another Brandywine and a Delicious to make this experiment valid. Unless I just send the second plant to mom (my control) and hope I get enough fruit on the other plants to harvest seeds. It’s been 11 days, though, and everything else has sprouted, so I went ahead and replanted a Brandywine, Moskvich, Delicious, and the 3 Cherries before I lose any more time. My Cherry seeds are kinda old, too, or I would have just left them alone.
On a happier and definitely exciting note, I’ve got 3 peppers and 2 more echinacea plants sprouting! Yay, yay, yay! 1 Kaleidoscope (so, a random bell) and 2 jalapenos. I’ve had good success growing jalapenos in the past. They must not need as warm of soil. I’m really hoping for some of the lemondrops, though. I’m curious what they’re like. And for the poblanos, because I’m bound and determined to have enough to make a meal out of chiles rellenos.
3/14/22 Upon noticing that I have a few poblanos popping up, I decided it’s time to upgrade my chart to include the peppers! Yay! The thing is… that Kaleidoscope pepper isn’t looking right. First of all, it still is a sprout and not a seedling, and second of all, I looked at it closer today and it’s not even got its head in the ground, it just isn’t doing anything else, either. It’s just a stick! So, who knows but it’s probably a gonner.
I gave up and just re-planted a few seeds yesterday, and now I’ve got a Rutgers, a Pear and a Cherry popping up. At least out of those, I only have to worry about the Cherry seed needing pulled. I’m also getting some second leaves! But not enough to say they’re out of the seedling stage, yet. Naturally, it’s the Cherokees that are winning that race.
And I now have 5 Echinacea.
3/15/2022 See the dark green? Yay! I realized yesterday that counting the “true leaves” was harder than I thought because at what point do I count the leaves as existing? I made my own personal verdict, because google didn’t have any answers. I count true leaves a when the leaf is open/at an angle similar to the cotyledons. There are lots of tiny leaves coming in, but the dark green squares coincide with plants fit my criterion. Once again, the Cherokee take the cake! But actually that pear actually has bigger leaves. and the stripes are my tallest plants, even though they don’t have flat leaves yet. The pear sprout is out of its shell and upright, but the leaves are tiny and all curled in on themselves, so I didn’t want to count it as a little seedling yet. And lo and behold, now that I replanted the Brandywine and now there’s a full-blown seedling in that pot. Oh well. I wish the Delicious and the Moskvich would do the same, but there’s still no movement in those 2 cells.
Still not much progress on the peppers. I’m trying to be patient. Really really trying. The kaleidoscope pepper worked its way out, it just had super thick cotyledons. I’m kinda curious which kind of pepper it is, since the kaleidoscope pepper packet is really just a mix of bells.
And I’m up to seven echinacea! Bonus points: I finally spelled echinacea without having to go back and fix it.
3/17/22 I didn’t do much with my plants yesterday, and tracked the chart but didn’t bother to post it because not much had changed, and the tomatoes are definitely more in a relative stage, so I think skipping a day is warranted. As you can see, my Jalapenos are doing great! I really think they must not need the heat as much as other peppers do. As far as the rest, just as I start to think nothing else will come up, I’ll find another sprout, but the sprout will still take 2-3 days to really turn into a seedling.
As far as tomatoes go, I think until the re-planted seeds sprout up, it is what it is. That poor little pear, though. Somehow it came up without any cotyledons. I mean, it does have some, but they’re smaller than a pinhead! even though it is upright and could be considered a seedling, I’m not so sure it is yet. It’s definitely a failure-to-thrive seedling. And remember the wonky rose seedling? Its true leaves are coming in wonky and curled, too! So, I guess it isn’t all “there,” yet. I mean, I still think it’ll be fine, but it’s definitely slower than the other two. I’m getting ready to transplant some of the tomatoes and thinking about how that’ll go and I wish that some of the shorter plants will hurry to catch up because some of the others are getting pretty tall and I can’t decide if I wanna do the whole tray (definitely the easiest for charting) or just the ones that need moved. I don’t want to rush the process, so it’ll still be at least the weekend before I do anything.
And I’m halfway there on the Echinacea! 9 out of 18. 2 little seedlings popped up yesterday. I really want to make about a 25 foot row and they’re supposed to be about 18-24″ apart, so I am still hoping for a bit more, but I’m excited about the 9 I have. That earlybird plant that popped up way before the rest of them did has a single true leaf established, as well.
3/18/22 Most of my tomatoes are ready to transplant. not all but most. I think Monday’ll be the day. I’ll combine the yellow, Moskvich, and delicious into one tray, I think. The peppers that were sprouted are all seedlings now and I have a new Kaleidoscope sprout. Gosh, they make me antsy. And my total echinacea count is 10.
3/19/22 A few more pepper plants! But still of the same varieties. I decided that since the ones not sprouting are the oldest (except for those darn lemondrops that I’ve never had any luck with) I’d try sprouting them in a wet paper towel and see what happens. Now the trick is to keep that paper towel damp. I “planted” 2 each of habanero, cayenne, lemondrop, anaheim, california wonder, chinese giant, banana, and mini belle. The habanero, cayenne, and banana are newer seeds than before, so if they sprout and the rest don’t that explains something. I know pepper seeds do not keep as well as others. I inherited most of the older seeds, so I also don’t know how well they were kept.
As you can see, most of the tomatoes are ready to transplant into bigger cells! I was going to wait until Monday to not rush the process and damage tender plants but it might happen today. And guess what? I have a few new little rutgers! 4 of them. The only problem is that 2 are in one cell, and one is in the same cell as the last rutger to sprout (remember how I replanted and then boom, there was a new tomato? yup). couldn’t have come in the empty cell… that would have been too convenient. I wonder if the same will happen in the cherry cells.
3/20/22 I don’t think I’m going to track my tomatoes starting tomorrow. I plan on transplanting them tomorrow morning but I don’t know the reason to keep charting them. As you can see, I still have 2 rutgers growing in the same cell, and the other cell is still empty. And now I’ve got a cherry in the same cell as one already growing and there’s still a cell (with 2 seeds as well) with nothing happening in it. I have a total of 7 rutgers now from al the other seeds I planted. 7/39 is a disappointing number but I don’t think they’re done sprouting up yet. And the other replants are still not doing anything either! Come on, Delicious and Moskvich! And lets talk about that pear… I counted it as having leaves because it does now… but even those leaves are tiny. the plant is like 1″ tall. It’s tiny. Everything about it is mini.
As far as peppers go, a couple more kaleidoscope sprouts are growing but not much change elsewhere. I have room for 30 pepper plants so I’m gonna have a bare spread! I hope some of the kaleidoscope peppers end up being the cooler varieties so I can try them. Anxious to see how my paper towel starts do.
No new echinacea plants either. I think 10 might be all she wrote. that’s just over 50% so I was hoping for a little better, but I can live with 10 plants.
3/22/22 I spent yesterday ainstead of charting. I have a few changes but the chart seemed superfluous now. So here’s a list of totals: we have 3 rose, 2 Moskvich, 4 (yup, 4!) Brandywine, 3 delicious (the last guy popped up this morning), 12 Rutgers, 3 striped, 3 Valencia, 2 yellow, 3 green, 3 white, 3 Black Prince, 3 carbons, 3 Cherokee purple, 3 pears (counting my mini guy), 8 cherries (another guy came up last night. I guess I didn’t need to replant, lol), and 5 romas. I separated a 6-cell pack for mom to take 1 rose, 1 brandywine, 1 delicous, 2 rutgers, and 1 cherry. So if I don’t count the 2 each I plan for my garden, I have 25 extra plants.
I have 6 poblanos (yay! 2 new sprouts), 6 jalapenos, 2 orange, and 8 kaleidoscope peppers. I am having trouble getting my paper towel seeds to be warm. they’re too far from the heat lamp. I just forced my (11…1 new sprout this morning) echinacea plants to a colder spot (sorry guys) so that the peppers are closer.
Also, I pulled out my lavender seeds from the fridge, yesterday. They’ve been in my fridge for 3 weeks. I might be fooling myself but I think I already see sprouts this morning! Teeny tiny white spots on the seeds. I have no idea if that’s what I’m seeing but I’ve longed for a lavender hedge for years and buying the plants one at a time and crossing my fingers that they survive just wasn’t turning out to be cost effective. So here’s hoping that my 1200 seeds give me enough to get a good hedge quickly. supposedly they only have a 20% growth rate (hence the extreme seed count), but stratifying them is supposed to help with that number.
6/21/22 This is a big gap but my website crashed when the host site decided to transfer my ip address on me. So, let’s play major catchup. First, I repotted the tomatoes to Costco potting soil. And that was the worse thing I’ve done since I left my starts in starting soil too long and fried them (that was years ago). Costco soil almost killed them! So many leaves had to be pruned. I don’t know if it was a soil deficiency or a bacteria, but it was bad. So disappointed. So after replanting into better soil, I had them all the way into half-gallon pots before eventually transplanting into the garden. I was going to sell the extra rutger plants but instead I planted everything healthy into my garden and gave the other 12 plants away. Including a yellow and a brandywine because they were hit hardest by the soil. It seems to be that potato leaf plants are finicky. But I gave all 6 red varieties to my mom for a control, along with an extra carbon.
They’re still struggling in my garden. I just put some fertilizer spikes in with them, in hopes it will help. I’ve got a couple of cherry tomatoes that have been growing for a while but aren’t in a hurry to ripen, and a few tiny Cherokee tomatoes. I’ve been quite happy with the growth of the cherokees. They’ve even seemed to pull through the best. And the Romas… I think they’re okay. But they’re purple? like, the leaves are purple. I don’t know. Either they’re missing nutrients, too, or the roots got too cold? Which is totally feasible, since it got so cold at night for so long. It’s just not proving to be a good tomato year. Which is a shame because I’m pretty desperate for tomatoes. If I don’t get a good harvest this year, I will have to buy tomatoes and I will plant 2 rows (72 plants) next year. Also, I’ve already decided that I will plant peppers and flowers at the beginning of March and then not plant tomatoes until the end of March. Because it seems that I start well on tomatoes but then something happens right before it’s time to get them in the garden every year. maybe if the plants start later, there will be less problems.
7/11/22 I’ve harvested a few cherry and pear tomatoes (and they’re legitimately cherry tomatoes. last year I somehow ended up with carbon-colored grape tomatoes. they were seeds from my brother so I think there was some random combining of seeds, there). I’m thinking I will get lots more soon, because I added some tomato fertilizer stakes to my garden and my plants are looking *so much* better (no paid promotion. I’m not an Amazon affiliate)! I only put one in the ground for every other plant so they had to share, but it helped! I will never buy Costco miracle-gro soil again! It was bad news! And when I feel like I have a second to even breathe I’ll look into what planting soil I want to buy in bulk next year because I guess it pays to be picky.
I have a few Cherokee purples growing, too. Not huge, but they’re growing! And the plants are blooming instead of struggling, so hopefully everything starts to catch up.
9/1/22 Well the tomatoes are finally coming in! I harvested a handful today, mostly cherry. I usually have a ton of tomatoes by now but all the tomato growers around me have been struggling, too. And apparently the states are planning for a national tomato shortage (conspiracy theory: I think someone is planning all the shortages. I think if individual people were able to run their own lives we wouldn’t be in this situation. But a handful of people have all the power and are clenching their proverbial fists). But I think (fingers crosssed) I’ll have enough tomatoes if they all ripen. I think next year I’m going to double my tomato row and if I do, I’ll put cherry, pear, and rutgers in their own row. Right now they’re so bushy! And since rutgers are determinate I can’t pull the suckers. I’ll give them more space between plants, too. And they’d be happier in a cage than tied to a post like I’m doing with my tomato plants this year. Then maybe they’ll all be easier to manage. We’ll see what happens, though. I don’t think I can manage more plants unless I actually get my greenhouse in place.
Guess what I’ve been doing this week? Except I refused to rush this process so I’ve actually been doing this for a couple of weeks, but we’re kinda in the thick of it right now. Send a soda and a carpet cleaner!
Anyway, I was sitting on the edge of the tub and musing on how potty-training twins is just different than potty-training singletons. I mean, in a lot of ways, it’s the exact same, but some things caught me off guard and I figured I’d post what I’ve learned. I’m not claiming to be an expert! I stink at potty-training! But if you have twins, and come across this post, I hope you get the advice you’re looking for.
first of all, there is someone to fight over your toddler’s underpants selection. Seriously, I let each girl pick out a character on their training pants, so I thought we’d be fine. But somehow, we get home, get into the potty-training process, and one twin suddenly wants the Cocomelon underpants that the other twin picked. Needless to say, we now have 2 sets of Cocomelon training underwear.
Also, you will need 2 training potties. with my older kids, I hardly ever used the little potties. It just seemed like 1 more step to get to independence. Besides, there is soooo much more cleaning involved! Invest in a good step and maybe a little potty seat, and you’re good to go! But with twins, you need 2. Not just 1. I’m sure you can guess why you need one… guaranteed your toddlers will have to go to the bathroom at the same time! But let me enlighten you on why you need 2: Both will want the toddler potty! Then you have two kids crying and peeing on your floor and pushing each other off the little potty, and … yeah. You get the idea. You need 2. And, in case you didn’t read the paragraph before this one, they need to look the EXACT SAME!
Another learning curve I didn’t expect involves rewards. I’ve always had the rule that anyone that celebrates in the potty victory gets a treat. So if big sister sees them go, she can get a treat. This is the way my mom always did it, and it worked! It gets the older kids to encourage the process. But there was an unexpected snag with twins… When everyone gets a treat for going potty, the twin that didn’t go doesn’t think they need to. They get the reward for zero effort. Ugh, I had so many puddles in my life until I changed that rule. Now, you only get a treat if you’re the one to go. Big sister doesn’t seem too offended by the change; but still, do yourself a favor and just not make it a thing that needs to break. Besides, with twins, you have a built-in cheerleader without the reward system.
And that built-in cheerleader is a special joy. I love watching my twins remind each other to go potty. I mean, sometimes it’s that one had an accident and so the other realized they had to go, but they’re so happy for the other kid’s success! And when one gets candy the other one decides they want candy, too, so they hurry to the potty for their own treat.
Something else that I wouldn’t say caught me by surprise, but was definitely highlighted is the fact that twins are two different people. I know, that sounds obvious. But each kid has their own way of doing things, so when you potty train individually, you tweak the system to fit what that kid needs. But when you’re potty training 2 at once, you have to use a little more finesse. For instance, my twin A is very go-getter. She’s bold. She goes potty for the success of being a big kid. She likes “special” underwear (i.e. not the training pants) and so having an accident in her special panties is so sad and worth staying clean and dry. Twin B could care less about special underwear. She totally goes potty to get the treat. Also, twin A has a stronger bladder. She needs to run to the bathroom less frequently. But twin B drinks a ton and runs potty a ton. I mean: All. The. Time! So, a potty timer just wont cut it! In fact, the potty timer really annoys twin A. She’s gonna go when she wants to go! So, twin A has special underwear, is reminded less frequently, and often would rather quickly go back to play instead of demanding her piece of candy. She’s methodical in the entire process. Twin B demands her candy every time, loves the praise for staying clean and dry, and has to go about 4 times as often. She also needs watched closer on washing her hands because she’ll try to take shortcuts.
Lastly, I never realized how much free time I had before I spent so much time in a bathroom! I mean, for REAL! I barely get anything done in its entirety in one sitting right now. Case in point: I am just plain typing this from sitting outside the bathroom, because I got sick of the walk from my regular writing spot all the way to the bathroom and back, just to repeat the process after one sentence. I am greatly looking forward to the day they’ll be self-sufficient enough to go on their own.
So, there I was, minding my own business (aka cleaning the front room while my children are watching educational television -*cough,* Octonauts, *Cough*), and I overhear that the whale has a sunburn.
So, my curious brain decides to google if whales really can get sunburned.
Hippos don’t get sunburned because they secrete a red sticky substance that not only refracts the sun, it keeps bugs away. Beauty companies are studying hippos in order to mimic it in makeup. (Side note: when telling all of this fascinating info to my sister, she informed me that The Lion Guard lied! One of their episodes talks about hippos getting burned. Is that not the epitome of mom-to-modern-preschoolers life? Haha, not only are we discussing random facts we learned in one kid show, we are cross-examining it with another kid show. … Here’s where you ask us how much we let our kids watch and we tell you to mind your own kids, thank you very much).
Anyway, you should also know that domesticated pigs can get sunburned and heat stroke, but wild pigs don’t. The fur on a wild pig has been bred out of our domesticated breeds.
But wait, there’s more.
Elephants and rhinos can get burned. That’s why they hang out in the mud.
So, hippos nope, but elephants and rhinos, yes. (source)
And cows and newly-shorn-sheep can get burned, too! I asked my mom (dairyman’s daughter) if that was true and she said yes, and she has seen it personally. Lighter-colored cows turn pink when they’re sunburned! I know you were just dying to learn that.
Apparently, researchers are discovering the more plants with chlorophyll an animal eats, the more likely they are to burn (no good source but enough you can see a connection. my best one has since been taken down. Google it, though). But also some research in humans who take chlorophyll supplements have started to emerge). I guess I can see it… chlorophyll collects sun rays. Who knew the plants were getting revenge, amiright?
But that’s not all! Did you know that darker skinned people have a harder time converting sunlight into vitamin D (source)!?! This one kinda blows my mind because this pale-skinned northerner is not so great at having enough vitamin D whenever they take my labs. In fact, I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, so it’s kind of a big deal for me to get enough sunlight. But I checked other sources, and they all agree. The lighter the skin, the better the ability to convert sunlight into vitamin D. So, the ancestors that used to live near the equator had darker skin so they would not burn as easily, but they also get more sunlight, making that the necessity. And the ancestors that lived to the north were paler because they needed to absorb and convert the sun rays into vitamin D because the sun wasn’t as available to them. Bodies are awesome.
I don’t know if I really needed to learn all of that, but it’s fascinating, isn’t it? And now you know all that useless information, too! You are so much better informed, now! You’re welcome.
And, see? Octonauts are educational!
And my floor was clean for a whole 2 seconds while they were distracted, so… totally worth it.
Sorry I’m so late posting tonight, but today we went to the corn maze! Our corn maze, as many others, has a corn pit. It makes sense to me, all the corn – works just as well to play in it and then use it for feed or for planting. Our toddlers were split on this one. Mostly because it was cold tonight. One just wanted to snuggle where it was warm, but the other loved the corn so much she bawled as we pulled her out to head home! The funny thing is, she didn’t even really play in it. For the most part she just sat there, occasionally she would take a kernel or two in her hand and watch them drop. But apparently that was pretty awesome, given the reluctance to leave.
We stayed out way past the girls’ bedtime and they protested quite a bit on the ride home. I wish they would set up times earlier for families of littles. Most don’t open until later in the afternoon or even the evening here. We got everyone tucked in and snug in bed, so I wanted to get it all posted before I went to sleep.
I am in the thick of canning season this week, and Summer’s got a vacation planned, so we talked about it and decided that we were gonna take the week off! We figured it’s October, the weather is perfect, we were going to have a week of unstructured activities, just to give ourselves a break. I’ll still be posting, but it will be harvest facts. All of my tomatoes are ripe from picking them green last week (okay, not all of them, but an overwhelming amount en masse), and it is time for my yearly duty of keeping track of numbers so I have a better idea of what I’m doing next year. So, if you are tuning in for the activities, see ya next week. And if you wanna read boring garden facts, stay tuned!
I’ve had a longstanding date with my friend’s raspberry patch set for about once a year. She only calls me when it gets desperate in her patch and she’s struggling to catch up; her main goal is to fulfill all the demand that others have for berries from her patch and I usually take about half of the berries I pick. This year has been a great year for raspberries and she said she had more than she could handle, so I bought extra from her. That meant I’ve been busy working raspberries for the past few days. Since my preschooler helped me pick the berries, I figured she would also be interested in helping me process them, as well.
Obviously, this activity would have to be tweaked if you don’t have a food strainer, but you could easily mash berries with a potato masher! It just doesn’t involve a cool crank, too. My food strainer is called a Victorio, but based on the internet search dive I just took, they must have changed their name? either way, it looks like this. My preschooler could both turn the crank handle and mash the berries, and it was kinda fun watching her get so excited at something that is really technically a chore. She loved making “squished berry juice” and I loved both the help and the time with her. All in all, she lasted quite a while! Equal to about 4 quarts of raspberry juice/pulp. We added a little sugar and canned it that way.
I’m adding the activity scales here even though it’s not the end of the post because if you’re only reading for the activity, the rest of this is a little dry, but since this blog is also a chronicle of my gardening/canning adventures, I need to include the following information (mostly for me…)
All in all we had 6 gallons of berries (6 large clam shells) and it made:
2 batches of jam with lemon peel pectin (aka 8 cups of berries, 6 cups of sugar, an entire bag of my homemade lemon pectin – about 10 tablespoon cubes but they were old and nearly impossible to separate from the bag, hence the large batch, and 4 T lemon juice (it just needed the lemon). It set pretty well, but I understand why they tell you to do it in small batches. Some of the jars are extra firm gel and some are barely set).
2 gallon ziplocks of whole frozen berries (filled 2 xl cookie sheets and 3 regular sized (they’re Pampered Chef large size)
3 1/2 quarts of raspberry juice (it required a whole cup of sugar to make it not so tart) and then I went to the store and bought a regular sized clamshell of strawberries, a large clamshell of blueberries, a whole bag of grapes, and a small clamshell of blackberries and that plus the remaining raspberry juice (and half a cup of sugar) made another 2 1/2 quarts so I processed it all together – 5 quarts, 2 pints – and although the canning guides said 1/4″ headspace, I think I really needed a whole inch of headspace because they bubbled out everywhere and 3 didn’t seal (2 ended up in my fridge but I didn’t notice the 3rd until I didn’t wanna trust it),
pulp for fruit leather (filled a quart bag but its currently still in my fridge. I’ll update when it’s leather). I used the strainer and only ran it through once, so it’s really just pulp and seeds without any liquid. The liquid was bottled in the quarts above).
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