We spent three hours at the County Extension Office today. The boys now know everybody from the 4-H director to the soils testing people. They were delightfully behaved the entire time we were there, and were thrilled to leave laden with all kinds of goodies from everyone in the building.
We got more information than my mortal mind will be able to process in a decade. And we really only scratched the surface. But it was good, and we know who to contact when we get ready to have the spring water tested, when we're ready to put in a pond, and when we're ready to start our own 4-H club. Wee!
We got home, had a delicious early supper, then played games until bedtime.
Smidge learned (the hard way) why we have table manners rule #8: Do Not Blow Into Your Straw. We'd made milkshakes. We aren't sure what happened, as nobody was looking at him prior to the point of impact, but evidently his straw got plugged. So he blew. And he blew. And then IT blew. We heard him make a panicky, whining noise and looked up to see... that he'd been hit with a cream pie? What is that? His entire face, from the upper lip to the hairline, was covered in whipped cream. Couldn't tell where his eyes or nose might be. The front of his shirt? All chocolate milkshake and sprinkles. The large plastic Steak 'N Shake cup? Almost completely empty. Got him cleaned off and into the tub, made sure all was okay, and then allowed myself to giggle. I've never seen something explode like that before. (The house rule is just b/c it's annoying and makes a splattery mess on the table. Don't tell them, but I had NO idea milkshakes held that kind of explosive power!) Once he realized he hadn't blinded himself for life, all that was hurt were his feelings over losing most of his milkshake. The boys, however, think that was the coolest trick they've ever seen!
Just as I'd tucked the last child in, and turned off the last light,
We're supposed to go talk to the Wheeler Wildlife folks tomorrow to round up information on doing nature studies in the area (again, steeeeeeeeep learning curve for me, so we've got to start early). The morning routine works nicely, and leaves afternoons open for things like this, so that's nice. But I think we'll wait and see how everyone is feeling. We might just bury ourselves in pruning information and call it a day! (LB, I know I didn't get a chance to call, please let F. know that we got sidetracked with the great exploding milkshake.)
Phew. I'm pooped.
G'night!
Kiss those babies,
Dy
4 comments:
Here's a good site for muscadine recipes. http://www.lockmanvineyard.com/recipes.html#Scuppernong_Grape_Butter
I've never pruned mine, tho,they just grow wild all down our fenceline. They're about as tough to kill as wild morning glories. Our grapes are fairly tart. I still have about 8 jars of jam left over from last summer.(they were ripe by the end of June in TX)
The leaves make some people itchy, tho, so I wear long sleeves and gloves. They also make a great dye.
OH, that sounds delicious! Thank you for sharing the recipe link! (Good to know they're hard to kill. That's the kind of plant we need around here. *grin*) And thank you for the heads up on the itching.
We may end up making dyes for fabrics quite a bit this year - between the muscadines, the pokeberries, the black walnuts... tons of ideas!
Dy
Now that is the sort of thing that needs a photo for illustration! Smidge and the milkshake, I mean. Who'd have thunk?
The gardening/landscaping thing sounds like fun (except for the ticks, of course). We had a friend over yesterday who was talking about what they do with their nine acres and I had land envy, but then she mentioned the copperheads in the woods and I got better. I am hoping for a little garden, anyway, but no vineyard.
Sodas are watery and will just have lots of little bubbles. The clump of air doesn't have to work hard to get to the surface.
Milkshakes are much thicker ("have greater viscosity") so they gather up the air more and more forced air until the air has enough combined force to pop through the heavy milkshake in one giant bubble. Much more like hot lava or the mud pits at Yellowstone.
See. It now "counts" as science.
FYI, on your template, the blue-grey color for the word "Labels:" and such looks good, but that same color is on white when it says when a comment was posted. It's near-impossible to read without highlighting the text.
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