The girls got very excited this year when an Elf showed up at their school to watch the children.
When school got out for break, an Elf showed up at our house. Meet Joy.
Every night he leaves to give Santa an update on the girls and then finds a new spot to hide each morning. It is like Christmas each morning as the girls run in to see where Joy is hiding.
Last week I helped my mom out at her work with a United Way fundraiser. Knowing that I would be in the Williams Tower (the tallest building in Houston) I took a tilt-shift lens to play with. Even though we were only on the 6th floor, this is what I captured. Not the most interesting scene, but still fun to play with! The lens makes it look like miniatures.
I am not sure why I wait so long to weed the garden. It makes for a painful (literally) experience when I put it off until it is so overgrown. I can’t believe that I did not get one edible thing out of the garden this year. 🙁 I am thinking I might plant fall tomatoes and see how that does.
As I was weeding and cussing Eve for eating the stupid fruit…the whole reason we have weeds to begin with… I mean really, I can handle child birth…it is a one time thing (or 2), but weeding…it happens several times a year! Seriously! Anyway…I ran into this guy. The funny thing, DD#2 could not stop checking him out. High heels and all… Such a tomboy for being a girly-girl!
My Monday’s got very interesting this weekend. I found out that I would be an adjunct professor for a social studies methods class at my alma mater– HBU. A few weeks ago, one of my former professors contacted me and asked if I would be interested in the position. I am just giddy with excitement. I loved that class when I took and hope to do the same for this group of students.
As we were wrapping up the class for the evening, it started thundering and the wind really picked up. Pretty soon, the sky opened up and the rain started falling. After about 45 minutes it was just sprinkling so I was able to drive through the flooded streets and horrible traffic to get home. The storm had just passed through and knocked out the electricity. And when I say it knocked out the electricity, I mean everything, including the traffic lights. It just amazes me that people do not understand (especially the UPS driver) that when the lights are out it is a 4-way stop and fly through intersections that are not operational.
My camera happen to be in the front seat and I took this waiting in the long line of cars to get through the intersection.
Wade fixed gourmet mac and cheese with hot dogs (real cooks have gas, so not having electricity did not hinder him from cooking dinner). We ate by candle light. Something we have not done since the hurricane 2 years ago. The bad part was that we did not get electricity until 3am. Being so hot and humid and not having AC makes for a bad combo. I got very little sleep.
In the morning, we checked out the damage. The winds were so strong, they moved the bball goal across the patio. Some of the pots were flipped upside down and thrown across the yard. Our bug zapper was ripped off of the eve and thrown on the ground. AND my luffa fell down!!! Wade and I are not sure what to do with it now. The fruit is still not ready to be picked.
But…the playhouse was unaffected! We built it to withstand a hurricane and it looks like it just might work. We even have small pieces of wood to cover the windows if we need.
After working all weekend, *most* of the playhouse is finished. Now it is just fine details that need to be added.
This weekend, we had to finish the other 1/2 of the roof. This time, we decided to put the shingles on the roof like roofers do. Wade was able to get the plywood up on the rafters while I screwed it in. We added the tar paper and then I shingled…in the dark since it was so darn hot outside. This made for some interesting lines… 🙂 We realized as we got down to the very end, we were 2 shingles short. UGH!!! The next morning I headed back to HD to get 2 more. Of course, I failed to get the right color so 2 shingles are tan instead of red. I was NOT about to go back to HD for $2. I put these last 2 shingles on at 7am…and I decided I WILL NOT BE A ROOFER in my next career!
Now we are doing the details. Wade helped me put most of the trim on. The door is finished, but we need bigger hinges. The inside is painted. The only major thing we have left to do is the railing around the front. This weekend…I am confident we will finish! At least we better!
To continue the saga of the playhouse, I dove back into working on it (yes, this project started in May and it is now August). Mind you, it is now the hottest part of the summer here in Houston, TX. The heat index is over 100 everyday. But I wanted to have this finished before school started so I needed to work on it as much as possible.
To back up just a bit, when we left for vacation mid-June, Wade had the goal to get the siding on the frame that was already on the playhouse. Without any help, and the monsoons that came through, the frame mildewed before the siding was put on. The weekend prior, I unscrewed the frame from the deck and put it in a burn pile and we got new wood.
Having done it once already, we decided to put the siding on the frame, then put it on the house. This would serve to square up the playhouse. Before, we put the frame on the deck and then planned on adding the siding. This is what it looked like the first time:
Here we are working on putting the siding on the frame:
Once that was complete, I shingled one of the roofing sheets. Boy did that make it heavy!!!
Wade and Calvin were able to slide it up to the top where I screwed it in but we decided that was not the smartest idea, so the other side we decided to roof it like a traditional roof…while it was on top of the structure. I put in the windows just in time. Monday afternoon…a VERY strong storm came through. Wade and I were able to get the other 1/2 of the roof covered with tar paper and a tarp.
I found THIS website last year and thought it was kinda interesting. After poking around for a while (and found that you can even use luffa for toilet paper!) I decided I wanted to try to grow some. My mom and I ordered some seeds and waiting until the spring to plant. I planted mine mid-March (since the harvest time was so long). I planted 8 seeds and attached lattice work to the back of the garage. I did not know what to expect as we patiently waited for the stuff to start growing. It was it sprouted WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY later than everything else in the garden, so I was thinking it would not work.
This picture was taken May 15th.
This is how the current garden looks:
There are BIG HUGE YELLOW flowers that bees and wasps just LOVE! I HATE…HATE….HATE those things. All of them! There were some BIG HUGE black and yellow BUMBLE BEES today. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! When I get brave enough I might take a picture of them because they look cool…but I’m still scared of them. Yes, I am a big weeny.
Because of the bees, I told Wade I think we need to take the whole thing down…even though this seems to be the ONE thing I can grow!!! I decided to pull a couple of the luffa and see what has come of them. I pulled an “original” one that has been on the vine for about a month now, as well as one that has just grown. I took them inside and cut the ends off and began peeling. This is what I ended up with:
Pretty COOL! Next I opened the one that just grew in the last week or so. It was TOTALLY different. I am afraid I am going to have to wait until they get a bit “older” before I pull them from the vine. The website where I found this said that they wait until the first frost before pulling them off the vine. That means another 5 months before I could get them. I can’t have bees until then!
Not sure what possessed me, but I decided at about 8:15 yesterday to go outside and weed the garden. It was bothering me THAT much! I found that in a day the tomato horned worms were back with a vengeance. Every year, they come…I never know when, so I just have to watch for them. In a day they will eat all of the leaves off of an entire tomato plant. And let me tell you…they leave BIG poop behind! If they weren’t such a menace…they are very pretty. I pick most of them off by hand, then I resort to Seven dust. I have tried natural things, but nothing KEEPS them off.
I mentioned my luffa in the last post. After looking at it a little more closely, I found that I had 2 HUGE fruits! They are well over 12 inches long. I just might get a few luffa scrubs out of this crazy plant!
I found this guy hanging out in the corn. He was pretty big. Not sure what kind of spider he is.
And after 2.5 hours is the humidity and heat…this is what I ended up with. I swear I lost at least 10 pounds just from sweating. I am pretty sure I had a mild case of heat exhaustion when it was all said and done. Felt pretty dizzy and had a headache. I still need to pull the corn, but I didn’t want to disturb the spider. We have too many flies in our backyard right now to get rid of ANYTHING that will help with that! (Not to mention the bug zapper is hidden in the luffa.)
We went on vacation. The girls and I were gone for 15 days. Wade joined us for 4. I asked that while we were gone, he pay attention to the garden each day, pick anything that had grown and PLEASE water it. I know for a fact he did not water the herbs, because those are all black dead. I can’t tell about the garden because towards the end of our trip a tropical storm moved through we had lots of rain.
This is what I came home to.
The cucumbers got a fungus that pretty much destroyed them. All the tomatillos fell over into the carrots (they were little when I left). And the cherry tomatoes all busted from the rain. The corn is all dried up and the large tomatoes had been eaten by birds. But it looks like my yellow gooseneck squash might survive. Of all of it…that is the one I wanted the least.
On the other side of the yard is the luffa. Ever seen Little Shop of Horrors? That pretty much describes the luffa.
I also brought back this weird plant from my grandfather’s. He said it was garlic, and the bulbs do look like garlic…but after chopping one up it has a very strong onion smell. Not sure what it is, but it looks cool!
