The George Family Journal

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Farmers Market

On Saturday Joy, Alexander and I visited the Lexington Farmers Market that is run in the car park of the Lexington Horse Centre. Joy was on a hunt for peas, even tho peas are out of season now, she was determined to track some down (she didn’t manage to). One of the stalls was selling lamb, it seemed a tad expensive but you knew it was locally grown. Lots of different veg was on sale so we scooped up some fresh leeks, very long and skinny leeks for Sunday nights menu (Leek and potato soup) and some ‘new’ potatoes (which I think was just a codename for small).

Joy also found someone she recently met at the local library, April, whom was up at 4am making bread and apparently all night making more bread! Ahh the live of a baker. In any event we picked up a really nice focaccia loaf with spring onion and asiago cheese on top. I made a olive oil dipping sauce for it mmmmmmmmm (EVOO, balsamic vinegar, rock sat, cracked black peppercorns)... was good.

We also picked up a bag of mustard greens for the chickens, but it seems between Kale, Mustard Greens and Collard Greens they really really love the kale the most. So its a bust on the mustard greens but they must be eaten.

Right now I’m frying up the leeks for our leek and potato soup so the kitchen is hot but has a nice aroma..

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Whats been going on lately?

Aah summer, much has been going on lately, sorta kinda. If its not 90F and stinking hot and dry, its 90F and raining an inch a day. Its been very wet so far this summer.

Alexander came out of his cast and is doing well, he bear crawls more than he walks right now, but I’m sure he’ll revert to upright at some point in his life. His birthday party went quite well, joy is still working on the video footage of that so I’ll get that to upload at some point… yeah we are quite behind on the video footage I think.

June has been a busy month, Alexanders cast removal, his birthday, Joys birthday, our anniversary and a family wedding this coming weekend.

Things were kinda hectic this past week so we didnt do much for our anniversary. This is what I got for Joy;

Its a hand made stone vase, I didnt think it would show up in time for the anniversary as it takes several weeks for it to be made, but it did, and all were happy with the result.

Joy in turn, got me that awesome chicken coop which I’m still doing the final touches on, plus she signed us both up for the motorcycle safety course, its a three day intensive course that at the end of it, if you pass, gives you your motorcycle license.

Last night we transitioned Alexander to a big boy bed, we got a full size (twin I think Joy calls it, I call it a single bed), and stuffed him in there under the covers. We actually bought bunks and the one in the photo is the top bunk since it still has rails to stop him from getting out. (We decided, even if the new baby is a girl, they will still share a room for the first 5 or so years and it will be good for them, well it remains to be seen if he will sleep through the baby crying in his room or not, when it arrives….)

The other day was also his first taste of nutella, that chocolaty spread that just seems to go everywhere

Alexanders new saying is “down chochoo” which means he wants to go to the basement and play with his birthday present

I’ll have more birthday pics when Joy is done with the video footage.

Vegetable garden wise, my peas all died a horrid death :( sigh… The strawberries are doing really well and my tomatoes currently have 30+ toms on the branches, but I dont know how many will survive the heat or the birds and insects. But I am looking forward to being able to pick a home grown tomato and eat it like an apple!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Slack!

Yes we have been extremely slack… so here is an update in no specific order.

(Lots of pics and more info below)

Some time back, Joy and her friend Katie entered into a half marathon down at Virginia Beach. It was a bitterly cold weekend for a race but there were still over 10000 people turned up for the race. they both finished (bonus!).

Alexander had a great easter egg hunt, run by the local pentecostal church, they hid hundereds of eggs around in a field and let about 100 kids loose. Alexander scored about 10 plastic eggs with little things inside them and kept saying “more more more”. Not that he ate any of the contents he just wanted the plastic eggs to play with.

Joy has also been teaching Alexander how to mow the lawn and start working on some chores.

His other chores are feeding Gwyn each morning and night, so he toddles off to the big bucket where her food is kept, gets a margarine container full of it and fills her bowl, only he thinks she needs multiple scoops to be happy.

The chickens have been doing great, 4 brown eggs a day, we have been giving some away each week and still have loads to spare, its so much fun. We are thinking of going from 4 hends (roughly 20 eggs a week) to 8 hens (so 40! wooo) with a new coop.

The weather is finally starting to turn and warm up, spring is indeed here. The veggie patch this year has been left to do its own thing, the plan is to pile all the chicken coop straw onto the compost heap and mix it all into the veg patch so next year we have a super fertile patch to sow. That leaves me with planting in containers for this year, so its only a small planting. We have about 24 pea plants, about 12 tomato plants, 5 bell peppers and about 5 or 6 strawberry plants.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Fall / Autumn Updates

So autumn is here, or fall. The leaves have gone from a bright green to a burgundy red, all around us the mountains are in various shades of yellow to red with the odd blotches of green from the evergreen pines.

I’ve got my seeds for the coming spring already here. I’ve got two buckets of compost that needs to be dumped on the garden and mixed in…

I’ve got a garden that needs tilling and turning to sit over the winter.

Our four chickens are ready for their coop and to move outside.. Speaking of which, its 95% done, there are only two panels on the back of the coop that need to be cut and affixed, then I just need to seal some gaps and prime it all with an oil based primer.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Ewe Snakes…

This was in our yard last night.

Pleasant, no?

Ick.  Ick, ick, ick.  Keep in mind, please, that Stuart Dean wanted me to post these…

Monday, April 07, 2008

Mulch!

Well, it’s springtime, and that means time for working outside!  Today we got a HUGE load of mulch dumped in the driveway and I began mulching with the help of one of the other members of the George family.  Guess which one??

(oh, and check out my new hairdo!)

In other news, we are eager for the little man to get over his cold/virus/cough/teething as soon as he can so we can get some sleep and actually get some things done around the house.

We are planning to tile our bathroom as soon as we can get around to making a big purchase at Lowes—maybe this weekend.

I’m looking forward to my all day trip on Friday with my 7th graders.  I’ll be taking them to Baltimore, Maryland to go to the Baltimore Aquarium.  They have a special exhibit on Australian animals and everything!  We’ll see the dolphin show and the 4-d movie, too.  We’ll leave school at (gasp!) 3:45am and return about 11pm.  Good thing it’s a Friday and Grammy is babysitting the boy all weekend so I can recoup!

Hope everyone is well!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Some Pics

Here are some pics of Joys new car and our weird trees. We have four trees of the same type, except one things its not Autumn yet and wont change, the others are a beautiful deep ruby red colour. You can see the lack of rain has really taken its toll on our lawns.

The Saturn Ion is the same as the Chevy cobalt.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Gardening

The veggie patch is now knee high weeds and dry midget corn stalks. Joy and I did find one tiny bell pepper plant still growing in the weeds when we looked the other day. I really need to hoe it under, cover it in some straw + fertilizer and cover the top in black plastic and let it sit covered all fall + winter.

Our haning basket plants have withered up and mostly died off for the autum. Leaves have turned and are dropping all over the road, so all we need is a little autum shower and the roads will be very slick and slippery.

Temperatures have dropped. Wednesday it was 90’s (30c) and Thursday it was low 60’s (17c). Last night the heater came on so I know it dropped down low…Lets hope the unsually warm October weather is passed us now, we really need some rain/snow this year.

Joys rodeo is slowly dieing, its consuming coolant in vast quantities but nobody knows where its going, engine oil is not creamy so its not going into the engine.. no puddles on the ground. Garage did a pressure test and that was ok. We are going to get the radiator flushed and hoses changed and will just nurse it along with extra coolant every other day, as the option was to deplete our savings and look for another car, but we decided not to do that as having a savings buffer is too important right now.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Sleep anyone?

Oy vey!

Alexander has his schedule that I had worked on so hard for the past two weeks all out of whack.  When I say sleep, he says cry.  When I say eat, he says cry.  When I say change diaper, he says cry.  Basically everything’s all messed up.  So much so that I had to sleep downstairs with him last night so that Stu could get some sleep for his meeting today.  He’s been working very hard (Stu, not Alexander) on a project and today he has a meeting with the people he’s done the project for.  We hope there’s not lots to change/fix because Stu needs a weekend off, darn it, and he’s coming up to Harrisonburg this weekend come hell or high water!  The mamma has spoken!

Anyway, this morning, Alexander ate at 4:00 for about 20 minutes, 7:00 for about 20 minutes, 9:00 for 40 minutes, 11:00 for 20 minutes, and then slept until 3:00!  Now, I’ve just put him down and it’s 4:15.  Who knows when he’ll wake up again and want to eat.  I think I’ll wake him at 6:00 and feed him at 6:00, 9:00, and then have Stu feed at 11:00 to see if he’ll sleep for four hours during the night.  It would be so nice.  And it would really be nice if he wouldn’t make all these growling noises while he sleeps.  That’s what keeps waking us up.  Then again, he hasn’t pooped since Monday so the growling could be tummy problems.  If he doesn’t poop by morning, I will be calling the doctor.  Boy, the doctor is going to be so sick of me.  Can doctors actually make you stop being their patient?  If so, Alexander’s probably in the running!

Anyway, just a few photos from the day, and a photo of the hanging pot flowers I did in preparation for the Aussies arrival on WEDNESDAY!  Stu’s so excited to see his parents, but I may have him beat on the excitement front, just because I’ll have people around the house who want to hold Alexander and do things so I can sleep   Can’t wait to see you John and Gayle!