It has been a busy week

With the coming of the frost we had to get some things in order aside from covering and uncovering the plants for those two nights with frost we had to them get all the wet sheets etc inside the house and get them washed

Things here are hectic with the big boys in school they do not get home till about 4pm on the bus then it is snack time etc

Alex and Tim are busy on the high school football team so that means they do not get home till after 7pm we then eat dinner together as a family (it is my excuse to not have dinner ready earlier I am really bad at getting food on the table at a normal dinner hour)

Dave is not usually home till after 6:30pm so evenings are hectic with homework picking people up at the assorted times they need to be gotten ..animal care in the late afternoon etc

SO here is what I have gotten done so far this week

I brought in the potted plants that need to be kept indoors in cool weather I can take them outside to the deck for bright light during the day till the weather gets too bad but most of the time I am too lazy for that LOL

I have stared the process of transplanting them into larger pots with fresh potting soil..this met with histerical laughter from Dear Dave because ..well his comment was "dirt is dirt"

No dear Dirt is the stuff outside potting soil is a special mix of lightweight humus soil a touch of vermiculite and some lovely bits of styrofoam to break it all up nicely so it drains well

his eyes glazed over when I said "No dear blah blah blah" that is what he heard till I said get me a big bag of organic potting soil POTTING SOIL not gardening soil

yeah yeah I know...

So far I have transplanted and brought inside

a pot with 4 strawberry plants (still producing the kids are thrilled) a large pot of Peppermint (I can't bear to part with it over the winter) A pot with munstead lavender that I started from seed (so proud of myself) and a pot of french lavender that actually has some lovely flowers on it one of the many pots of basil

Still to be transplanted will be the large pot full of assorted kitchen herbs (basil rosemary thyme flat leaf parsley sage and I think there is some oregano in there) and the lime stick which now looks like a bush

I have a few house plants that are happy to be in fresh dirt and new pots and are thriving in my one lone south facing window

Another neat thing I did this week was with the WORMS

The worm bin has been moved outside to get rid of the fruit flies in it it contracted those nasty pests because Alex put some banana in there and did not cover it with the damp newspaper so they got in

it looks like the fruit flies are gone from there now I just have to get them out of my kitchen another few days will do the trick

ANYWAYS

I was checking out the worm bin and because we had a bunch of rain I turned on the drain and sure enough there was WORM TEA I harvested 4 water bottles of worm tea for a total of 80 ozs!! cool!!

Dave has been on a shopping spree he has decided that we do not have enough trees

so he has been buying fruit trees it is his goal for us to have an orchard of assorted fruit trees

we now have

some apricots plums apple trees and a cherry tree

VERY nifty

I hope they all live

Other than that we have been working on cleaning up the yard and getting things ready for when fall Dave plans on taking time off at the end of the month to get some things done around here I am hoping to get a chance to get outside to get some more berries picked (can't take the little ones) and we have wood to get chopped and split and a wood pile to fix up and a ton of other things to get underway for winter

not to mention making all that tomatoe sauce

I am still on the lookout for a good food dehydrator we did not get our solar one made as we had hoped so I will opt for a counter top model for now just so I can get done what I need to get done

OH and the kids book

Little Glass Bottle the first book in the kids can series that Zach and Tim are writing is all set for me to get it out to a publisher so I have been spending what little spare time I can checking into that kind of stuff

we gave a copy to Zach's teacher from last year and she LOVES it she took the copy and put it on the reading shelf and the kids in the class love the story too (3rd graders)

Zach is very excited at this prospect and so he and Tim have started work on Book 2 LOL