Saturday, October 30, 2010

The Halloween that wasn't.

The Spawn has shown almost no interest in the whole Halloween thing so far. She did like making jack-o-lanterns. Any opportunity to draw on an unusual surface is a sure-fire winner. Pumpkin pie interests her also. But dressing up, not at all. The Better Half is theorizing that she doesn't really see the point. She pretends all the time and doesn't need fancy clothing. Fancy clothing is fun, but usually unrelated to the pretend of the moment. I guess she might figure it sounds like Halloween is a day when the rest of the world joins her in pretending. Whatever the case may be, no costume. We may go to some low-key event so she can see other costumes (which would probably cause her to finally want to dress up) or we may just say the heck with it for this year. Maybe we'll just stay home and make a gluten-free pumpkin pie.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Next year, really!

That's the way I feel about our garden. Each year we've faced...challenges. This year was no exception. The weather plus the timing of our move plus the need for fencing and such made it impossible to get stuff in the ground for a summer garden. So we planted for fall and winter...sort of. Some stuff didn't make it in or not until late. We kind of missed summer entirely, so everything that made it in "on time" was probably about a month late. It gets a bit demoralizing. Next year the Spawn and I are in charge and hopefully that will be a good thing.

On the plus side, we discovered the best green beans ever and found a decent variety of carrots (thanks to the Spawn who liked the name). Assuming all goes well, we have some overwintering stuff--broccoli, kale, cabbage--that will make for good eating in the early spring. We probably have a couple of months worth of carrots and beets in the ground. And we have a plan for getting the ground ready to plant when spring does come. Chicken tractors are a good thing!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Why?

On the way home from the park today, the Spawn started asking questions.

"Why is grass?"
"Why is grass what?"
"Why is grass grass and not something else?"
"That's its nature." Note stock answer used when trying to end a line of questioning so I can concentrate not getting us killed on the road.
"What if grass looked like something else?"
"Maybe it wouldn't be grass any more."
"What if grass looked like something else but it was still really grass?"

Gods. What are the questions going to be in ten or fifteen years?