Saturday, June 18, 2011

Corn devestation and other garden pictures

The storm the other night took out two rows of our corn. I went out there in the mud this morning and cleared out the stalks. We are going to plant pole beans in the place on a fence.


There was corn in all of these rows... and now there isn't :(



pulling the stalks out to mulch in another part of the garden



The older corn did not fall down
and has tassels and silked ears



The Shackamaxon beans were not an entire loss, these ones survived and there is still half the package in the freezer.



pinto beans out climbing their fence!


I was happily surprised to see a hummingbird drinking from the pinto bean flowers while I was out working in the garden. I did not know they liked them.


One of the first pinto beans maturing


I opened about ten pods to try to see what the differences were. Some of the pods were yellow, but were not spotted inside. This one was spotted inside, but green on the outside. The difference on this one was that when I began to squeeze the pod the beans moved around inside easily - they were no longer firmly attached to the skin inside.


This is Pollywog
she is Pogo's new mouser in training.



She enjoys hanging out in the garden with me and chasing frogs.



crookneck squash



peppers



tomatoes, all still green


We have strung the new fence for the pole beans and were letting the dirt dry out a little in the sunshine. It's time to go see what we can do with it. Esme is having terrible cabin fever but is afraid to go get dirty in the mud because she knows that means Mom will wash her hair. It feels odd to have her tell me 'no play outside, there is mud, I'll get dirty.' so matter-of-factly. I feel like I've been given a changeling!

LATER : It really does feel like we've gone over another horizon with Esme this week.... It seems like she has finally connected thought process on a whole range of things. I was given a 'like a Cinderelly bath' with a loofah full of water over my head today. She is saying 'follow me' and 'carry me' even though those words are VERY hard to understand (follow sounds like 'throw me' and 'carry' sounds like 'call' or 'kill'.. very hard to get unless you also pay attention to her hand sign and try to correct the word). She is also trying so hard to do everything 'help mom' and to copy us. After we went to town today she took some plastic keys out to the truck saying 'I go back to work' today and then came back in a few minutes later, stole Daddy's keys off of his desk saying she needed the 'right key.' She was in the driver's seat of the truck trying out keys to the ignition before he realized she had actually taken them outside.

We were both outside in skirts walking to the mailbox the other day and she said we were 'two girls mom, we got skirts'. When there was no mail we were 'sad' it was empty and going home. Today going to the mailbox she was rattling off about how we would be sad again so we shouldn't go we should send Daddy on the motorcycle to see if it was empty so we didn't cry. It was just a light-year ahead of even last week, even though there were a few little 'gaps' I could put two and two together to know she meant an idea bigger than she has expressed before.

I was being asked to play 'mama and baby' with my bare foot and her toes just a little while ago.. she was trying to feed them both invisible tea and plastic food on a table. It feels very odd to have your foot invited to sit at it's own place setting at a table!

Mostly what I am seeing is a better ability to say what she is thinking or describe what she has just seen/did has truly improved. She no longer has as much of the frustration or ambiguity of meaning that she used to have (I want a purple etc...). There are still a few times she uses a color or a simple word instead of the real word like 'oh the poor pink yellow it fall' instead of saying 'kite'.. but she had said 'kite' earlier, so it is just a matter of habit...

She was bitten by a horsefly outside today and was able to tell me exactly what happened, show me the bite and say it was a bug that was flying. 'Something bit me right here arm a bug.' I watched it for a while but her arm swelled a little and it was gone by bathtime. There was a while back when she would have answered 'yes' to any question - but when I asked her if it was a snake that bit her (hadn't seen it yet) she said 'no, a bug. a bug bite and go fly.' Also all afternoon we have been having tea parties with 'bugs bunny baby rabbit' toy and a dragon and she was pouring 'apple juice' out of teacups and baby bottles and telling everyone to drink their own cup and not drink out of other cups...

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