little woman

A few days before Thanksgiving we went in for our 20 week appointment. From the looks of it, we are going to have a long-legged little girl in April! After our appointment I ran into Central Market and had them “decorate” a cake that I could take back to work.

The person checking me out knocked the cake while congratulating me (because I was clearly beside myself with excitement) and one of the corners got smashed. He apologized profusely and offered to go get another one, but it wasn’t bad. Nothing could get me down at that moment. He apologized again and told me he knew I would make a good mother. While it came from a complete stranger in a moment in which absolutely nothing could possibly upset me, that was so nice to hear. Now that I actually believe all this is happening this is what consumes my thoughts… will I be a good mother? Will we be good parents? Goodness, I hope that guy at Central Market was right!

♪ It’s the the concerts you enjoy together,
Neighbors you annoy together,
Children you destroy together,
That keep marriage intact. ♫

Mother and I have been shouting it from the rooftops so this is probably old news to everyone. But I just had to document it. My little sister, Mary, got into her first Broadway show recently! ‘Anything Goes’ just won the Tony for Best Revival of a Musical. While we were watching the Tonys, I told Paul that now they would extend their run, probably go on tour and Mary was a shoo-in. Just a few days later, I got a very excited call from Mary and, sure enough! She started last week and is loving it! The cast looks pretty fantastic with Jessica Walter, Sutton Foster and Joel Grey.

We are going to up see her the last weekend in July for about a week. It has been about a decade since I was last in NYC so we will hit up some of the touristy sites. There is also a free TMBG concert in Brooklyn that weekend as well!

Mary had been living in NYC for about a year after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Musical Theatre. Some people have a very ’42nd Street’ experience and get hired right off the train and for some it takes years. Getting that first show on your resume is one of the hardest parts. I can’t wait to see how her career blossoms! I am so extremely proud of her!

Her pic and bio from the Anything Goes website

She’s just a
Broadway Baby.
Walking off her tired feet.
Pounding Forty-Second Street
To be in a show!

After a Memorial weekend birthday bbq, we had about 4lbs of watermelon left over. While I love a nice juicy watermelon on a warm summer day as much as the next person, it was far more than we could have finished on our own. Now that the peach wine has been moved over to the cute new 3-lb carboy, the wine equipment is ready for a new recipe. I remembered reading a watermelon wine recipe and thinking I wasn’t so sure… but here we are! How about a wine experiment?

Watermelon Blueberry Wine

3lbs watermelon (no need to deseed)
1lb blueberries
2.5lbs honey
3.75 quarts of water
2 tsp acid blend or 2 lemons- We are going to start using lemon juice and zest instead of acid blend when possible. Use the zest and juice of one lemon per teaspoon of acid blend)
tannin
yeast nutrient
Campden tablet
pectic enzyme
yeast (the book called for champagne but we used Montrachet on recommendation of AHS)

Mutilate fruit in nylon bag. Boil honey and water and pour over bag. Add other ingredients as directed. Stir daily and wait. We just moved this over to the carboy. It is a beautiful milky pink. Who knows what it will end up tasting like, but it looks fruity and delicious! Garey, author of The Joy of Home Winemaking, had a similar situation with left over fruit after a summer party which prompted her to come up with this recipe. Now she says she makes it every year! I am very interested to try this one.

We recently tasted the Apple Wine we started back in November. It looked and smelled very much like apple juice but was a little dry. I thought it was because we used champagne yeast, but when we got advice from the beer store,  they said that was a common issue. If you want a sweeter wine, you “back sugar” which is simply adding sugar just before bottling. A product called Wine Conditioner does the trick and also kills off any additional yeast. Otherwise, they would just eat the sugar up and make the situation worse. I believe you can also use simple sugar or honey as long as you also use potassium sulfate to kill the yeast. Even though we have already bottled the apple wine, we are able to back sugar a bottle at a time. It seems to have done the trick! Very tasty!

Now for labeling… I thought I would piggyback off of the basic bookplate design and use the same label paper that was used at the wedding. Extremely basic, but it gets the job done… and I love woodcut images and this font called Hesperides. (Last year it was Blackadder, this year Hesperides. )

Back in February we made Pear Wine from a recipe in a book that Val gave us for Christmas. I guess I forgot to post about that one! It won’t be ready to taste until early Fall, but I assume we will probably need to back sugar that as well.

making pear wine

And now we are attempting a Peach Wine recipe from that same book. So far we have taken 3lbs of peaches, pitted them (you can leave the skin on) and mutilated them.

Then we pour hot honey water over that, let it dissolve, and add yeast nutrient, tannin, pectic enzyme, and a campden tablet (sing this song, doo dah, doo dah). There are a lot of other little steps along the way… stirring, adding yeast, checking on it weekly, etc. Peaches and honey… it smells amazing. I cannot wait for this wine to be done… if only we didn’t have to wait a year!!

This past weekend we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We started the day with breakfast at Juan in a Million… yummy breakfast tacos! Then we spent 2 hours kayaking on Lady Bird Lake. There were a lot of Swans on the lake that day!

Then we came home, got cleaned up and went back out. Paul needed to hit up the beer store and we both had Groupons to spend at Things Celtic. We came home, made dinner and had the bottle of wine my Aunt Beth & Uncle Alan gave us on Friday. We spent the previous weekend up north to celebrate an early Mother’s Day so we were happy just to be back in Austin together.

The traditional first anniversary gift is paper so we decided to design our own bookplates for our library. We have just over 900 books so we are going to need a few! Here are the designs I have come up with so far.

No, that is not a typo. Yes, it says “Thys Boke is Myne”. I recently read that a young Prince Henry VIII wrote this in his copy of Cicero’s writings and thought it would make a wonderful bookplate! I looked around forever thinking surely someone had made it! Not even Etsy had one! So when Paul suggested bookplates for our paper anniversary, I used that as a starting point. The two in color are panels from the Codex Manesse. I love the illuminated artwork and only had to manipulate the images slightly to make them work. Now we just need to get them printed! I designed them 6 up on an 8.5 x 11 label so we can just cut and stick! I can work on this (and start a knitting project) during my short break before I begin summer school.

Which, by the way, I just wrapped up my first semester of grad school! I only took one class, the Organization of Information, but between working full time and my insistence to making time for reading, gardening, working out, and other small things like going to Mexico, it was very busy! I am glad to have that one out of the way. Only 3 of my 5 grades are posted but, so far, I’m all A’s. If I had only been so diligent in undergrad…

In a couple of weeks I start the other 2 core classes and then I won’t have to make any more trips to Denton… huzzah! I am really liking the online format. I haven’t found it to be too impersonal or unresponsive which were my only fears starting out.

Anyway, the anniversary was great and it made me start a fun crafty project. Yay for a little free time!

Seriously, this is so simple to make it is an insult that it is a product to be purchased.

One of two black-chinned hummingbirds that frequent our feeders

One part sugar to four parts water. Boil water. Dissolve sugar. Let cool. Put on a sponge or in a hummingbird feeder (I found as many, if not more, butterflies visited my hummingbird feeder last year). I am also putting out fruit that is a little past its prime which is a big draw. Enjoy your guests!

In which I quickly summarize the last month…

Info Organization is going well. I have now turned in my research paper and only have one more draft on my big project due… next Thursday. Ugh! I should be doing that instead of this, but…

In late March we saw The Silk Road Ensemble on campus, an arm of the Silk Road Project started by Yo Yo Ma. Wonderfully diverse music by a great organization:

Founded in 1998 by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Silk Road Project is a nonprofit arts and educational organization that takes inspiration from the historic Silk Road trading routes as a modern metaphor for multicultural and interdisciplinary exchange.

That same week, we saw the national tour of West Side Story on campus. We met up with Mary’s boyfriend for dinner before a performance. Cary, normally the understudy, was filling in for Tony! He did a great job and the entire show was done very well.

About a week later, the Texas Library Association’s Annual Conference swept into town. We had a blast participating in the opening session flashmob before Jamie Lee Curtis spoke. I got to briefly run through the exhibits and attend a couple of panels before I left to jump on a plane for Mexico!

Last Sunday we got back from Playa del Carmen, Mexico for Ryan & Sarah’s beach wedding. We had a wonderful time eating and drinking too much, lazing about the beach, searching for shells, zip lining, cave snorkeling, and visiting Tulum’s Mayan ruins. There are more pictures here!

We woke up for sunrise on our last day

So this weekend we rested. Yes, I am dying to see my little pup (he has been with his grandmother since before the trip to Mexico) and yes, it is Easter weekend. But it also happens to be my birthday, I didn’t particularly want to spend another weekend traveling, and we had sights to see about town!

On Saturday morning, we hiked both trails at McKinney Falls State Park which is only about 15 minutes from the house. It was about 6.5 miles total. I recommend the Onion Creek trail first as it is paved and partially uphill… better for earlier in the day. We both preferred the Homestead trail because it has a natural dirt trail and the Lower Falls were more active. This drought has taken a toll on the Upper Falls.

part of the natural Homestead Trail

McKinney Homestead ruins

I had been wanting to explore McKinney Falls for awhile now and thought it was a good Earth Day activity. Also I inadvertently became a volunteer hike guide for McKinney and thought it might be a good idea to experience the trails FIRST before I was tasked with guiding people! After our trip to Johnson Ranch, I realized I might be able to get a good archivist volunteer gig with the National and State Parks. Well, it is about a 6-month commitment and travel is necessary (you go where assigned) so it isn’t the best idea at the moment. But McKinney needed volunteers to guide hikes so I said sure! Not what I originally intended, but should be fun! I am looking forward to it!

On Saturday night we went to a concert of medieval and renaissance music. Fantastic instruments and wonderful music… I love this group!

Paul gave me a translation of a tale about a  medieval war between two Japaneses clans. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan tells a tale about the battle that took place on April 24, 1185 that ends with samurai warriors jumping into the sea to their deaths. To this day, a certain crab whose markings look like the scowling face of a samurai warrior are thrown back into the ocean because they are thought to be the lost souls of the warriors.

I also got an rock carved into an owl.  What a great day! I have had a wonderful time celebrating my nine and twenty years!

I submitted some of my photos to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center 2011 photo contest. I don’t know what made me decide I could compete with professionals but I have taken a LOT of wildflower photos over the years. I figured I would give it a shot! I have submitted these so far:

Yes, I know… technically not a wildflower But I saw other submitted photos of leaves and the rules say “no invasives”.

Very quick post… I had to share this granola recipe I pilfered from an NPR story. I make this on Sunday nights and it lasts for about a week and a half. I have a couple of scoops of granola and about half a cup of Greek yogurt in the mornings. Very, very tasty! Enjoy!

NPR Granola (with slight modifications)

Makes approximately 10 cups

8 cups rolled oats (not quick-cooking or instant)

2 cups slivered almonds

1 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup honey

2/3 cup butter

Dried fruit (optional, I use cranberries)

Position racks in middle of oven and preheat to 300 degrees. Lightly spray 2 large baking sheets with nonstick spray or line with parchment paper.

Mix oats, nuts, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon and cardamom in large bowl.

Combine granulated sugar, honey and butter in small saucepan. Bring to simmer over medium heat. Pour hot liquid over oat mixture and stir well. Toss mixture until thoroughly mixed. (Option: Caramelize white sugar with a little water, then add honey and butter. To do this, add white sugar to a small saucepan over medium heat and spread evenly across the bottom of the pan. Add a little water and stir until the mixture reaches a boil. Keep the mixture moving until it begins to turn brown. Then, add honey and butter. This process will add a caramel flavor to the granola.)

Spread granola on prepared baking sheets. Bake until golden brown and fragrant, about 30 minutes. Rotate pans halfway through.

Cool granola completely. (I leaved it covered on the counter overnight.) If you like large “sheets” of granola, remove with a large spatula. If you like clusters, let the granola cool until it won’t burn your hands, then shape into handfuls.

Add dried fruit (if desired) after the granola is cooled. (Adding the cranberries before it is baked works just as well.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This weekend we played in the garden- pulling weeds, pruning trees, clearing out the dead and emptying one of the compost bins.

We are currently working with two composters. Once one gets full we start filling the other so the first can decompose. The one we started using right after moving in was filled with black gold this past fall. We had only a little bit left and decided to make compost tea.

Compost Tea Recipe

5-gallon bucket (no, we aren’t using a brewing bucket)

an aquarium air pump and tubing

2 nuts (or something to weigh the tubing down)

a grain bag from the beer store (no, we won’t use it to make beer again)

5 or 6 spades of black gold

2 tablespoons molasses (for sugar)

2 tablespoons seaweed or fish emulsion

1 teaspoon citric acid (or several tablespoons lemon juice)

sprayer/watering can

Fill the 5-gallon bucket with water. If you are using City water, let it sit for 24 hours to get rid of the chlorine. We used greywater. Put the compost in the grain bag, tie the top off and place it in the water. Add the rest of the tea ingredients to the water. Weigh the plastic tubing down with 2 nuts so it sinks to the bottom of the bucket while the air pump sits next to the bucket on the ground. Turn on the pump and let it sit for 24 hours.

After 24 hours is up, take out the tubing and the grain bag. Pour your tea into a sprayer or watering can and use it all immediately. Using the air pump made this an aerobic compost tea with living microorganisms so it all needs to be used immediately while they are alive.

This can be used on anything! Your lawn, your veggie and flower beds… everything! It is a safe way to give your garden a nutrient boost. You can buy compost tea at The Natural Gardener, but we had practically all of the tools and ingredients necessary so thought we would try it ourselves. We have patches of very dead grass so I plan to focus the tea on those areas first. Then the beds can get an extra boost!

We used this website as a reference.