Candy is for Kids

We live by the local high school and every year they do a Homecoming Parade down the street a few streets behind us. One of my former students was on the student council and told me about the parade. That year, my husband rushed my kids out to go see it, but they were already reaching the high school. 

Last year, I somehow did not have classes to teach that evening, so our whole family went out to sit by the street and watch the parade. The kids had so much fun. It's a good thing we brought our wagon because we had no idea the sheer amount of candy and goodies my children would be showered with.

This year, nobody informed me what date the parade would be. But it just so happened I was driving by the park where the parade begins and saw a giant trailer being decorated with glittering banners and footballs. My brain started churning, and I remembered the Homecoming parade. I did a quick search online and confirmed the high school Homecoming parade was that evening. I didn't get to go but my husband took the kids in our trusty little wagon.

You bet they returned home with a wagon full of goodies. 

This is a filing box filled with candy...probably 5-6 pounds.

No, I will not let them eat all of this candy. Some of it will be given away to my students. Some of it will be given away at our church fall festival. And the rest will probably end up as Halloween candy set outside our porch because I end up working on Halloween evening. They're lucky if they get 5-10 pieces of the haul 😂. To be fair, they get candy everyday after school from their teachers, so they're already averaging one piece a day.

***

I used to be a sucker for candy. (pun intended.) One of the most comical memories of my childhood was opening the refrigerator as a young child of 4-5 and seeing a bag of Skittles in the snack drawer. You bet I pulled it out and wanted to open it immediately. My mother and I would drive to my brother's bus stop to pick him up after school. I had my skittles in a little plastic cup. I even remember them starting to melt together because of both the heat and my little-kid fingers reaching in and out every time I ate one. 

That evening, my dad returned home from work, and he excitedly told me, "I got a surprise for you!"

"She already found it and ate it all," was my mother's flat reply. I'm pretty sure my dad had a look of silly shock on his face, but maybe I'm just reconstructing this memory in my head. Either way, that definitely wasn't what he was expecting to hear.

***

I ate one fun size bag of Skittles from the pile the other day. Although I enjoyed the sweet treat, it doesn't hit the same as it used to when I was younger. I will not be sad to see it all leave our house. 

Garden Updates 2023

It was a hot summer. My garden did not fair very well after...the middle of June. I think I was able to eat maybe 2-2.5 pounds of tomatoes I grew myself and maybe 3-4 small bell peppers. My basil has been producing and thriving through the summer. I have more basil than I know what to do with. My bushes are still full and I feel like I've pruned them a lot. My freezer is full of pesto. My refrigerator is full of pesto. There's a lot of pesto. 

I turned all this basil into pesto. Two colanders turned into about 2 cups of pesto. 

It turned perfectly orange. Beautiful.

These I used green and turned them into a delicious stir-fry.

Some of my tomato harvest.

Now that fall is officially here (although yesterday's high was nearly triple digits again), the plants are beginning to thrive again. My pepper plants are about twice as tall as they were last year at this time. I attribute it to consistent and daily watering. My garden is on an automatic watering system and it waters the exact same amount at the same time every day. I love it. I do still walk around the corner to say hi to them in the mornings and do a quick visual inspection, but I'm not hand-watering the plants on that side. 

I use tomato cages for pepper plants. Works like a charm.
These are about 5 feet tall (including the raised bed height).

I pulled one of my three tomato plants because I'm pretty sure it was diseased. I left two of them because I wanted to see if I could get a fall harvest. I'm not entirely sure I will, but it doesn't hurt to try. One of my tomato plants is now coming back for the third time. Yes, you read that correctly, the THIRD time from being cut back twice.

This tomato plant has been pruned twice. It's on its third life. 

The first time was not on purpose. When I bought the tomato plant at the store, one of the larger stems was bent and hanging over. When I planted them into my garden, I cut off the bent stem and replanted it in another pot. Tomatoes propagate extremely easily and this stem grew nicely and became a great producer for me in early summer. About 4-6 weeks ago, I cut it way back again to let it restart for the fall. It's now got some blossoms on it along with growing new foliage. If I'm lucky I may get another 1-2 clusters of tomatoes. 

The best surprise I got was seeing monarch caterpillars on my milkweed plant. I inherited this plant from the neighbor behind us when they were moving. It died last winter in the freeze and started growing again this spring. When I went out in the morning for my daily watering and walkthrough, I saw caterpillars all over my milkweed - eleven to be exact. I opened out patio door and called my children to come out and look at them. 😂 I think they enjoyed it but weren't as impressed as I was.

How many can you find in this photo? 

These caterpillars are not to be confused with tomato hornworms. I have gotten rid of my fair share of hornworms this summer. Those little suckers are resilient. I threw one over the fence and it SURVIVED. And it was a 10 ft fall onto cement. What can I say...nature is pretty amazing, even if I'm not a fan of how they amaze. 

I don't know how much more gardening excitement the rest of the year will bring for me, but it's been a pretty fun journey this year since I started in April. 

2022 I started with peppers. 2023 I added basil and tomatoes.  2024 I may try beans! Stay tuned. 

Writing New Memories

My daughter is beginning to learn how to read and this week, she started putting together her own sentences. Cue the bad spelling, nonexistent spacing skills, and large letters! Honestly though, I love it. It's so much fun to watch her learn and grow in this way. And I can take....a decent amount of credit. But not all of it. 😁

I posted this picture with her first "sentence" on Facebook and asked others what they could interpret it, and reading all the responses was very entertaining. 

So this is what it is actually supposed to say: The phone [fon] is not working [wrcceen]? Yes.

Translation: The phone doesn't work and it's confirmed. Apparently this was a conversation she and her brother were having regarding an actual phone in our house. 

This is the phone they were referring to, and they are correct. It does not work. It has not worked in over 10 years. Instead, it's been a wonderful "toy" for my kids.

I purchased this phone 12 years ago from eBay. It was the first phone I bought with my own money. I was going through a tough life transition and felt the need for some change. So upgrading phones was something I'd thought to do. New phones without contracts in the models I wanted were $300+ at the time and I was an unemployed college student. So I purchased this used phone that seemed decent from the description for around $200 if I remember correctly. It arrived, I started using it, and everything seemed great. 

The phone lasted me all of about 7 months. One day, it randomly shut off and wouldn't turn on again. I tried restarting it and all the tricks I knew how or could get as advice from others. Nothing worked. My brother ended up giving me one of his old phones and that's what I used for the year and a half after. After that, I told myself I'd never buy a used phone again. And that's stayed true for the last 10 years. I was lucky enough to be able to use other people's used phones for free. 😆 Until last year.

Last year, I purchased my second phone with my own money. The one I was using suffered a fatal fall and the screen shattered and was completely unusable. Before that, I'd kept using phones with cracked screens. I even paid to repair a cracked screen, and the casualty last fall wasn't worth another repair.

For all these years I'd resented this phone because it was one of the first "large" purchases I'd made for myself as an emerging adult. And it turned out to be such a huge flop. Now, I get to add a happier memory to it because it will forever be the topic of my daughter's first written sentence. 😊