Ballooning over Belview

Hubby and a two other pilots were scheduled to fly at the Belview, MN SOD Days celebration on Saturday, September 13th. Weather was looking bad for the 13th so the guys went out a day early and flew Friday morning and evening then had a glow in the park after dark with two of the balloons. We love Belview and want to make it our home some day. Enjoy the slide show...

Fruits of our labor

We planted a vegetable garden for the first time in quite a few years. The place we used to have a garden became too shaded as the trees got taller. We picked out a new spot by the round barn. A friend turned the soil and hubby dug holes for fenceposts and we put up chicken wire to keep the bunnies out.

We decided to plant beets, tomatoes, cabbage, jalapenos and cilantro. 27 tomato plants found their way into our garden. Everything was great although I won't plant cilantro again - the timing was all off.

I've been busy with canning the tomatoes and am now getting to the point that I'm giving away tomatoes. I tried making catsup last night. I've never made it before but we'll see how it turns out when the Heinz bottle runs out.

Here's the tally so far: 16 quarts whole tomatoes, 8 pints tomato sauce, 9 jars salsa, 16 pints beets, 4 pints pickled beets and 5 pints ketchup.

Bailout Alternative

I took down this post because the math was all wrong. Curse the calculators that don't go past a million. I need a government issued calculator that figures into the billions and trillions and gazillions. Dang.

Escape to the Momish

Some days, when I'm stressed out over the huge list of things to be done and not enough time to do it, I fantasize about escaping to a stress-free life. Doesn't everyone do this? My fantasy usually involves selling everything and loading up the dog and hubbie into a Winnebago and wandering around aimlessly. I start thinking about all the beautiful things we'd see and people we'd meet. Then I start thinking about the high price of gas and how would we pay for everything and what if we got into an accident and then we'd be bumming because we didn't have health insurance.... OK, that fantasy is over, get back to work.

Today while talking to my friend who's having a hard time finding a job and is feeling the financial strain, we fantasized together for a bit. We talked about joining the Amish community. And, as usual, the negative thought about how it would be pretty cool until we were shunned for doing something a woman is not supposed to do. We decided we needed to start our own community and would be a matriarchal community and we would call ourselves the "Momish". It's actually perfect. It would be made up of mother aged women who aren't mothers. You know, not moms but mom-ish. They could bring along their men if they wanted. We'd all share the work and make the major decisions. Wait. That sounds kind of stressful - to be in charge of that many people and make decisions for everyone and soothe hormone induced tempers... well crap. Get back to work balou.

Dramatic Critters.