Under the Tulip Tree

The Flower Farm, Canby, Oregon

Last Saturday, we took the Canby ferry across the river over to our yearly destination for pumpkin picking, The Flower Farm. The ferry only takes a few minutes but we stand by the railing and take pictures anyway.

The Flower Farm is a sweet little place just down the road from the ferry dock and it's never very crowded. We like to sit at the picnic tables and eat our hot dogs and potato chips under the apple trees.

The pumpkin train takes us on a loop around the farm and to see the farm animals where we can pet the bunnies. We travel on through homemade haunted tunnels and decaying sunflowers until we reach the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins. 

We were a little late this year so the pumpkins were already picked for us and placed into piles around the farm.

Our final stop is the giant haystack pyramid where everyone but me races to the top. I watch as each of them disappears into the dark haystack maze and I eagerly wait for them to find their way down. They finally emerge, laughing, blinking their eyes in the bright sun. I'm not such a fan of heights so they agree to come down and hold my hand at the bottom.

The Goddess and The Toad

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I finished the kids’ costumes before Halloween. I hate scrambling at the last minute so this year I started on their outfits as soon as they had settled on what they wanted to be.

Perry wanted to be Toad from Super Mario Bros. (an obvious choice for obvious reasons) and Arden chose to be the goddess Aphrodite (not so obvious and a slightly curious choice).

I made Arden’s costume from a variation of Simplicity 4106. The original pattern is sort of a tunic-y thing so I added another foot or so to the length. It’s still a little too short but I think it's okay. I made the headband from gold trim and leaves from a fake poinsettia. Easy peasy!

Perry’s Toad costume was combination of a few patterns. I made his vest from Simplicity 7030 and just trimmed a little extra off of the front. The pants were made from Simplicity 2481 and took about eight seconds to make. I busted out laughing when he tried them on because he looked like a mini-nurse. I left the hat for last because I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make the big mushroom head. I ended up making it like a chef’s hat (only a little shorter and a little wider) and then stuffed it to keep it puffy.

We are all set for the Halloween Parade tomorrow!

Sweet Crochet

This little cupcake was made by my sweet girl, Arden, as a birthday gift for her friend Maddie. Her friends like to put in their birthday orders when they come over and Maddie asked for a cupcake. This pattern is from Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet, an adorable book my mom gave Arden for Christmas last year and I would say it's been put to seriously good use.

Making Jelly

Last week, one of my neighbors brought me two 5-gallon buckets filled with concord grapes. She lives kiddy-corner from our backyard in her mother’s old house. Her mother, Carolyn, was 94 when she died last year. I remember seeing Carolyn up on her roof just weeks before she died, cleaning her own gutters and brushing moss off of her roof. Her house has the most incredible birch tree I’ve ever seen. It spans the entire width of her property and has branches that swoop down to almost four feet off the ground. Carolyn would rake the birch leaves in the mornings in a thin housecoat and slippers. The rest of us would be freezing in the cold rain but she seemed quite happy out there. All of the men in the neighborhood would offer to help, of course, but she would brush them off dismissively. I really didn’t know her well since she died shortly after we moved in but I will always think of her fondly.

When Ann brought the grapes over I was like, Great! I’ve always wanted to make jelly! And then I was like, Oh. I’ll have to make jelly now.

Mom?

My mom makes the best jelly in the history of the world. I remember the grape and apple jelly she used to make when we were kids and I knew I could make it work if she made it helped. She brought over the supplies and we followed the recipe on the back of the Sure-Jel pack with a few minor adjustments. Needless to say, it turned out wonderfully.

Some things I learned while making jelly with my mom: you have to wait patiently and really let things come to a rolling boil; you must never squeeze the bags of fruit as they drip juice (it will make the jelly cloudy); and you will use more sugar in seven jars of jelly than you will have used in your entire life combined.

It’s fun and pretty easy and you should try it, too!

Still Pretty

I tried my hand at vegetable gardening this year and to say that it was unsuccessful would be putting it mildly. My onions were painfully small, my carrots were miniature and black, my tomatoes had blight, and though I was able to grow one 5 lb. zucchini, the slugs sucked the rest of the plant dry all summer. I did grow some beautiful snap peas. Unfortunately, I waited too long for them to plump on the vine so each pea turned into a bitter, hardened version of itself.

I did learn some things, though. Mostly that the areas I was trying to plant in were not ideal for growing vegetables. The ground along the rock wall is hard-packed clay and completely filled with the roots of the two lilac bushes. Same goes for the bed along the house were there is a stump from what used to be some sort of evergreen. I also had concerns about planting edibles so close to the foundation. The house isn't that old (it was built in 1950) but who knows how many years of lead paint have been scraped off of it and dropped into the soil.

I will say this: I love this side garden anyway. When we moved here a couple of years ago, there was an ugly path made of brick-colored cement circles placed directly on weeds and grass and if you didn't step exactly in the middle of the stones, they would kick up in the back and nail you right in the Achilles tendon. We put this gravel path in last spring and we like it so much better!

There also used to be overgrown weeds and ivy along the rock wall here with no beds at all so last fall I piled on leaves from all around the yard and left them there all winter. By spring, the leaves had killed everything underneath it and I had a clear bed waiting for me. Did you know it was that easy? I've done this same thing with newspaper in the backyard and it totally works.

I'll plant things again here next spring but I'll be moving the vegetable garden to the backyard (if I plant one at all, they are a little high maintenance for me). I'm thinking herbs in pots and maybe some more ornamental grasses here this time. We shall soon see.