Daisy Girl Scouts and Our Farmers Market Find

Year two of Daisy Girl Scouts is almost upon us, and I've found myself in the somewhat unplanned role of co-leader with four other moms. This year, the leaders with experience suggested we take on an animal badge, which includes of all things, talking with a farmer, veterinarian or person who otherwise works with animals.

And so crossed an unlikely resource: One of our farmers market discoveries. A local high school senior had begun selling beef at the local market this spring as part of her 4-H project. She's young and a woman - both of which will appeal to our city-slicker girls. Can't wait to here what she has to share this fall!

Not my cooking disaster

I snuck outside this evening to drop in a few quick pea seeds before the next batch of rain. What I didn't realize was my garden helpers had once again abandoned me.

I found them at our kitchen table, eagerly working on their "dinner." Having talked their babysitter into ponying up a tomato before they left, they had sliced it in half and squeezed it like an orange to juice it - as a dressing for her fruit salad of apples and ground cherries. Apparently it was an epic fail.

"I washed it out," my six year old confessed. "It got badder and badder; it was disgusting."

Instead, they opted to make a second dressing of orange juice and water, "and then we stopped. By our 15th bite, it got badder and badder with every bite."

I suppose I could have talked her out of her fruit salad idea in the first place. But to succceed at anything, sometimes you need a few stumbling blocks, too!

Backpack Blues

No new backpack this year. You'd think this small thing wouldn't have caused a big stink.

Other than her name scrawled in pen across the front - the result of boredom one day in after-school care - my daughter's backpack is in reasonably fine shape and can stand another year's abuse. First grade is not particularly challenging in terms of bookload or backpack weight, one would think, so I think we'd be fine for another year with our $5 used kid store find.

But no. When I picked up my daughter for daycare this week, I announced she needed to bring her back home to wash it, so I could see what shape it was in for school.

"But I NEED a new backpack!" she said. "Mine has my name on it! It's a mess!"

We talked about choices - it certainly wasn't mom's writing on the front - and that we didn't need to replace something that wasn't broken. I don't know that she's convinced. But truthfully, the thrill on Aug. 17 will be on seeing friendly faces she's not seen all summer, not whether the Tinkerbell backpack is back for round 2.

Saving bok choy seeds

Bok choy (or pak choi) is a great discovery for our Chinese food-loving family. The challenge is finding it just right. The stores offer huge, foot-long bok choys; the farmers markets on rare occasion offer small ones with more flavor, but they also aren't bred to sit on your refrigerator shelf.

So this year, we decided to try our hand at growing baby bok choy from seed from one of our heirloom catalogs. The problem? With our rainy spring, we started too late, and they bolted quickly.

It took a lot of research to find out anything about harvesting these seeds. If you're interested in saving seed, you have to wait until these little pods that form turn brown, then you can harvest them.

You'll want to split the pods in half - which you can easily do by hand - and both sides will likely have tiny balls of seeds covered with a small film. Reminds me of "ants on a log." Just peel the film back and dump into a container.

The seeds I've found are very prolific and easy to harvest, though it does take time. It's great if you love bok choy! In fact, once this heat wave passes, I'm excited about a fall planting.

Interested in trying bok choy? I have so many seeds that I'd love to share. Leave a comment if you are interested in some seeds!

Funky sheep and burping monkeys: And how was your weekend?

This weekend, we took the rare road trip to Evansville, Indiana, to see my parents. It's a rare treat for my children, as my remote-loving father has his gadgets far too close to the ground and my mother's scrapbook room is packed with tempting toys for the children to attempt art with. (In other words, it's far easier on them to keep the kids on our turf and for them to come visit.)


What to do when it's too warm to get outside much and you have excited children? Sometimes, you bite the bullet and run them off.

Saturday, after reading my lament at the Green Phone Booth that the kids wouldn't go marketing that weekend, my mother had stumbled onto a few "market" ideas. We found a Saturday morning market in Newburgh (by reading the paper), hit a farm stand (air-conditioned building, horray!) and a fourth-generation orchard that tempted me with rows of boxes of peaches, the last of the season.


But the greatest memories for my kids weren't food-related at all. No, it was jumping on grandpa's spare bed, not to mention the funky sheep and burping monkeys.


Be careful what you tell your kids.


We hit the Mesker Park Zoo, one of the oldest zoos in the country, early Sunday morning. As all kids are at that age, it's see the animal, and what's next? Until we saw a sign for the burping monkeys.

Yes, apparently as part of their socialization, belching means friendship. I started laughing about it, and of course, that is what they remember. Not the cheetahs they wanted to see for two hours. The burping monkeys.

The same goes for our stop home. We stopped at Lincoln's boyhood home, which the kids had grabbed a sheet about at the visitors station. (Incidentally, they have kids' days every other weekend in the summer.) My 3 year old was ticked that Lincoln was nowhere to be seen, but finally settled into going to see his house and the living farm. Not impressed by that. My 6 year old loved the attempts to carve wood pegs (which I'm sure impressed her woodworking grandfather!). But then, I heard these words: "Let's go see the funky sheep."

Funky? I have no idea what prompted that particular adjective.

Yep, you can try to teach your kids history, try to teach them about animals, try to teach them about eating local, and they'll just remember about burping monkeys and funky sheep!