FIRST LEGO LEAGUE - open practice

by Robin

This has become a part of my world, like it or not. Simon Peter loves engineering, robots and learning to love programming the robot.


This weekend, they held an open practice for anybody in the state that was wanting to work on their "missions" and ask for help by anybody else who seemed to know what they were doing.

This brave school opened their cafeteria up to 30 teams. We were one of them.





Simon Peter & his teammates started the first week of August, working on a logo first. Then, getting familiar with the NXT robots. He was thrilled the day the team picked his logo to go on the shifts.


I'm sure all five boys dreamed lego pieces & how to make the robot perform the way they wanted.


There were weeks of frustration.

And then there were weeks of breakthroughs & teaching one another.

Still there is much more hard work to do before the actual competition in late November. Measurements to be made and numbers to be calculated. Consistency to be achieved.

Here is an open table from this weekend with multiple teams standing around.

Here is Simon Peter working some kinks out of his program that wasn't being consistent on the open table.

One of our younger boys was having his own issues. A fellow team member with an extra year under his belt helped him out.

Another senior member worked on a new idea that he gleened from another team on another table.

They also were giving seminars for teams wanting to learn more.

We are very fortunate to have great coaches with experience.

Part of this weekend was to build friendships & experience. It was good for their character-building to be able to determine who was helping & who was full of bologna.

Here is a funny pic the boys staged.

Time back at the team table.

We came near the end of open practice time. Andrew wasn't sure what to do with himself. He found a little niche' of cleaning off wheels.

He's Assistant Wheel Cleaner.

Here are the boys acting out gracious professionalism. FLL is big on gracious professionalism. Teams are awarded bonus points for helping other teams or acting kind to their own teammates.

CHANGES in the garden

by Robin

Seedlings are popping up everywhere. Here they are, in no particular order. Ignore the wire cages. Those were to prevent chickens from eating seeds and still prevent puppies from running over them while they're seedlings.

Below - okra, adorned with recent raindrops.

Below is pole beans opening up 3 days after seeding. They are much bigger today but I certainly couldn't get a focused picture to show you.

Below is spinach.

This is a year-old Sweet Bell pepper plant. You can't tell, but it has 3 peppers on it. My spring ones are just throwing blooms now.

Hot peppers below. I eventually had to tie them to cages because wooden dowls were falling over.
Self-explanatory

Below, is new life on a wooden basil stem. I have sweet basil babies but it amazes me when new life shows up where you least expect it.

Below are 4 sweet bell pepper seedlings. These came from seeds that I gathered from my spring plants. We've come full-cycle here.
Bunching onions. Oh, by the way, hay is in every picture for a couple purposes. Mulching. Get it & the poop out of the coop for the chicken's sake. Fertilizing the soil. Diversion to keep chickens off of the seeds. Unfortunately, the latter didn't work because they wanted to scratch it around and the puppies couldn't wait to run around with some in their mouths. Oh well. At least the chickens will no longer affect the garden.

Cucumber seedlings below. I had to self-pollinate in the spring but at least it was worth the effort until the heat killed them. Can't wait to see how it goes through the winter.
Below is Garden 3. Hot peppers are just out of the picture at the top. You can see my climbing trellises for the cucumbers and beans. I'm so excited about fast-growing produce vs last year's brussels, cauliflower and squash which produced little to nothing for me.

That's it for now. Stay with us through the winter to see our Florida garden grow.

Isaiah 49:13

Sing, O heavens; and be joyful,
O earth; and break forth into singing,
O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people,
and will have mercy upon his afflicted.

This is my prayer for today.

More CHANGES - Leghorns now

by Robin

On April 14th, we were blessed to hear peeping coming from our embryology eggs. By the 15th, we had 3 baby chicks hatched out. One died that day so we were left with two.

They spent 3 weeks under heating lamps and soon joined by 3 from my friend's project. She had 3 Light Brahma babes and mine were White Leghorns. I picked them specifically for their large white eggs.
We enjoyed each and every stage of their growth. We let them live for 6 weeks on our back porch to ensure their survival from cats or wildlife. I sneezed. We watched their feathers come in and their combs turn red. It was a 4H project that turned into a life lesson filled with love and excitement.
I was entirely delightful that we had 3 girls in the bunch. The 2 boys went to the Feed & Seed store to find a farm of their own where they could crow to their heart's delight.
And then one day, we stumbled on our first egg and our girls one by one, beginning to lay eggs. I was as proud as they were. They began enjoying their petting time with us.

I took this photo on Tuesday when I was getting pics of Aunt Bea. I made an unfamiliar chicken howl and got Penny to fluff up in defense. She even stomped her feet at me. I called her a silly girl.

Thursday, these two girls are going to Christmas, FL to a modest-size farm of our Poultry Club leader. Her hubby is also the local livestock county-extension agent. They will have a great time with 200 of their other friends. I feel a bit badly that Penny will be lost without a human to talk to her. She has always like human companionship. Essie doesn't like people. A flock is right up her alley.

I miss you girls too. Thank you for teaching me so much about the poultry world and how delicious free-range eggs are. I know the world may think it is silly when I cry after I drop you off, but I don't care.

Your Adoptive Chickenmom

SAYING GOOD-BYE - our 1st set of changes

by Robin

This is going to be a very emotional day for me & the family. To spare you my medical history, in light of new-found ailments, my Opthamologist says, "Environmental allergies". Andrew's bloodwork results come in on next Monday but I'm pretty certain his ENT is going to say "Allergies and here's a referral to an allergist" since he found not obstruction in his throat.

So, as much as it breaks my heart, I'm certain of my allergies to the chickens. It has been that way since I first held my fuzzy Leghorn chicks. I was so glad when I found out they were both girls. Lucky, now renamed Aunt Bea because of her hips, joined our girls at 1 wk old. They were hatched out by my friend doing the same Embryology project. She's a Brahma. I thought if they lived outside, I wouldn't be affected; however, I forgot how much time I'd spend cleaning nesting boxes & reloading feed. Did I mention that hay makes me sneeze too?

Anyhow, they will be going to new homes this week. Below is Aunt Bea & Penny, grown up and sitting on a low fence under the playhouse, saying good-bye. They've been coop-mates for 6 months. Aunt Bea is going to my friends small flock of 4 to continue being a backyard chicken.

Her life will remain pretty much the same except for new scenery and friends.

I am really going to miss her hips and her waddle.

And her beautiful coat pattern. I just think she is a beautiful girl and would have loved to have the boys show her at the Fair this winter.

Feel free to click on the below picture and see the black marks. It's almost as if they were hand-painted by God. I love the pattern.

Essie was busy at the moment to take parting shots. I'm sure she'll say her good-byes privately this afternoon.

And we have another momentus parting (possibly) today. Our recent addition, Sam, is going to meet a family of 5, including 3 boys this afternoon. Sam has been a wonderful addition to our family. Her personality is delightful and she came already "assembled" with no issues. This is why it is so hard to make this decision. Why her and not the chihuahuas? Well, it isn't because they're cute and she isn't. Cuteness can only get you so far. Honestly, the pups are a LOT of work and sometimes I feel discouraged that we'll never get through the teething stage. Sam is definitely the "good one". We're much more attached to Sam than the babies.

She's gentle, loving, playful, self-entertaining, house-broken, well-mannered and the list goes on. The decision was made solely on her coat type. She consistently sheds a lot of oily, wirey hair & dandruff containing dander. She loves to shake a good couple-dozen times a day which is endearing to watch but bad for dander-control. The chi-boys have soft hair which was more like the texture of our former boxer, whom we lost in February. Plus, they get thrown into the shower a couple times a week to prevent dander build-up. I guess you could say I'm hedging my bets but have no guarantee this will work. I went from being fine to needing an inhaler immediately and then having eye infections soon there-after. Something has to give as much as I know this is painful & disruptive for each one of us.

Here is Simon Peter with his girl. He's crushed. He's mad. He's emotional. My heart is breaking cuz his heart is broken.

Sammy, you will be more than missed here. Yep, right down to your cute little,....er....rather.... meaty man-hands. I'll miss you staring out at the rain and knowing that you're thinking, "No way in this world am I touching wet grass." I know the squirrels will be the only one happy to see you gone. They will now have reign of the trees AND grass.

Ok......... kleenex time.

Aunt Bea, please peck an email to me when Ms. Thomas lets you. Let me know about your new friends and what color eggs they lay.

One distraught mama........more changes tomorrow.

MOSQUITO BITES

by Robin

Andrew says to me yesterday, "Mom, you sure do have a lot of mosquito bites on your face."

Sadly, it's acne. Fourty-one year old acne.

GARDEN REPORT

by Robin

I really didn't want to think about the upcoming changes tonight so I decided to play the avoidance game and blog about my garden instead.

We had a wonderful day doing chores outside. Jack cut the grass & edged while I took care of the various gardens, floral & veggie. I pulled a lot of weeds & hoed a lot of ground. For the most part, the chickens and puppies were in the way so they had to be put in their respective pens. Sammy girl was a big help in keeping me company in the hot pepper garden. She has such an old soul for a young dog. She understands everything we talk about. I wish you could see that her tongue was popped out slightly in this photo. She talked me through cucumber & bean seed plantings.

Where to begin.....

Seeds recently planted: lettuce (my own seed), more sweet bell peppers (my own seed) & 2 variety of sweet yellow onions (store). Those have come up and my hens have done their best to eat as many early-sprouting tender shoots as possible. Thankfully, the recent rains popped a few more tender shoots out of the ground and we're cooking now!

Seedlings found in the ground.... of their own choosing: basil (left) and baby cherry tomato plants (right). I had some other cherry plants that should have been barely producing by now, but they did not survive the flooding of TS Fay last month. So, we're starting over. It's all good, right? (week ol' seedlings next to fallen leaf)

Seeds planted today: cucumber, string beans, spinach, okra, leeks and bunching onions. I am really looking forward to seeing all these in the next week or two. I also resecured many toppling-over hot pepper plants that are still strongly producing everything from jalapenos to cayenne.

Speaking of long, slim red cayennes....... I dried several up and then put them in the cuisinart.

To achieve this with little pepper, I did a lot of short pulses.

Look at the gorgeous color. I made the mistake of taking a whiff of the open cannister and started choking on pepper fumes, I guess.

Click on this to enlarge. The original was soooo sharp I almost started choking again.

Then, I put them in a nice jar to finish drying and be used later in chili or some other dishes.

My only fear is that mold may start to show up since they seemed only partially dried out and somewhat "soft" on the inside.


Here are some surprises that Jack pointed out to me today. I totally missed this!!

Can you non-Florida natives tell me what it is?

Yep, it's BANANAS!!! Not a few either.......... LOTS of bananas to go with my morning smoothies.

My Mango plant grew another 6", the puppies killed my avacado plant and my pineapple plant is in the off year. It looks like it may give me 2 in 2009. They are slooooow growing.

Then, my citrus trees all lost their blooms because they had been recently transplanted last winter. They're still young so I'm not surprised they went through shock. BUT, my neighbor's grapefruit and orange (pictured) trees are coming along nicely. I'm looking forward to several of these falling on my side of the fence. I also get wild grapefruit in the lot next to our home. The owner said we could keep whatever hit the ground. Yeah!! Plus, at church, a lot of our senior citizens are on medication that don't allow them to eat citrus, so we get some that way too.

A couple of miscellaneous things........ I have one sweet bell pepper that produced through Sept and I've got 1 half-grown pepper on the way. My other S.B.Pepper plants are blooming finally. I lost every bit of my big tomato plants. I will have to buy some of those. I don't want to start from seed since I can get a good crop of these before winter if I buy some a month old.

My thyme is dying for whatever reason. It used to be huge. I wish I knew how to save it. I wonder if the hens are laying on it or the chicken poo is too strong for the roots. (I'm composting dirty hay into the garden soil.)

My flat-leaf Italian parsley finished seeding out. I kept plenty of seeds and let the hens eat the rest. Today, I went to pull that dead section and realized it wasn't even attached to the plant itself. I guess it sends a shoot up from deep within the roots....... to the surface. Then, it flowers and seeds. I never noticed that before. D'uh! Anyhow, I didn't have the camera for that, but later, I took this picture of the parsley "stalk". I wonder if it will continue to grow upward off the ground? Does anybody know?

That's it for now. This fall/winter, it should get exciting around here again for veggies.

CHANGES

by Robin

.......Sorry to be so out-of-touch. Thank goodness for that feature that lets you blog ahead of time. It really helped me last week when I didn't have consistent time to sit down at a computer.

Anyhow, lots of things have been thrown at me this past month. Some health issues for myself and for one of my sons. Some issues partly dealing with little free time. Some with having two growing boys that are getting their own schedules. Some schedule changes for Jack.

Over the next week, I'd like to announce some of those changes. Stay tuned friends. Please keep our family in your prayers.

FISHERMEN like YELLOW

We couldn't live with this color but for one year. Oh and we put up the beadboard a couple months after we moved in and painted it green.

It still needs the pictures to be rehung but you get the idea.