Vehn Diagram

This is one of the things I learned how to do in my math class. Greg found this one online to compare it to some of the diagrams I've been drawing for homework.

First Fruits of the Garden

I've been watching this cucumber grow and grow, and finally I decided to pick it today. It probably could have grown a little bigger, but I was excited and tired of waiting for it. It smelled so good when I sliced it up, and it tastes good and fresh! Yum! (I actually put a little sprinkle of sugar in the bowl of sliced cucumber and that was almost like a treat.)

Did it again!

I'm speechless...it's a miracle. My brain has magically started processing math problems in a way it never has before. This is great! It almost makes me want to take another math class now....almost.

Hot summer days got you breaking out?

Yeah, me too. So I decided to go back to this kind of powder. About a month ago when it was getting really hot I started breaking out, probably because the weather has caused me to get sweaty throughout the day. I also was using the same old powder and it was feeling thick on my skin and dirty because I was so hot. It's the kind you put on with a small pad--it's almost like a liquid powder. So I pulled out the other kind of loose powder that's made by Almay.


It's called clear complexion powder. It has salicylic acid in it, so it helps kill your zits instead of making them worse. Since I started using that kind of powder again my skin has cleared right up! Just like magic!


(Sorry, I tried to get a picture so you can read it but it's blurry. Don't know how to make it clear.)

It also helps of course to wash your face more often, and I like to use this astringent stuff. I think that helps a lot too.

Call me Prohibition

My friend had the link to Engrish.com on her blog, and I hadn't visited there for so long that I decided to read it while I ate my breakfast. Sometimes I just laugh until I cry. Enjoy.

I wish I had a rocket horse when I was a kid.


What a creepy sign.

Garden Harvest Tip

(Squash finally growing well)

I get the Harris Seed Newsletter on my email, and I thought this last one was very interesting. And just to make it more interesting I stuck some pictures of the garden from today. It's amazing how fast things are growing now! Well, I have to tell you first...For some reason the ants love my garden, and they were crawling over all the plants, and if you looked inside a flower of the squash plant you wouldn't even be able to see the yellow of the flower because it was black with ants! Everybody kept telling me, "No, ants don't eat leaves," or "Ants don't care about garden vegetables," but THESE ants do! The plants were not growing well, and the leaves were obviously eaten away. I even sat down and watched a single ant to see what it did, and it went along the edge of a leaf and ate it away methodically moving down the leaf and back up the edge. So I got some really good bug killer that's ok for garden plants and just soaked the whole garden with it. I actually used almost the whole bottle just spraying everything, and you know what? All the plants are thriving now! And I don't see ants in the garden anymore!

(Tomatillos in the greenhouse)


Ok, so here's part of the Harris Seed article:

Summertime means harvesting in hot weather! By cooling your produce with water before refrigerating it, your vegetables will arrive at the dinner table fresh, crisp, and sweet.

While a vegetable is growing in the garden, it naturally creates and holds heat. That "field heat" stays within the plant even during cool parts of the day. After harvest, the plant keeps creating heat, which turns its sugars into starches. Until the vegetable is cooled down, it will keep losing sugars - and its sweet taste!

Hydro cooling- cooling with water - is the most effective way to decrease the core temperature of most crops. By immersing vegetables in cold water right after harvest, you can cool them evenly and retain their crispness. Leafy vegetables reach a cool core temperature in just a few minutes, and then they should be removed from the water so they don't become waterlogged. "Chunky" vegetables like zucchini, carrots, or beans take from 5-15 minutes to cool evenly, and this soaking time can serve as a first rinse.

After removing vegetables from the cooling bath, finish washing them, dry off excess water, and store them in the refrigerator. They should stay moist but not wet. By hydro cooling before you refrigerate, you'll have sweeter, crisper produce that will stay fresh longer than by refrigerating alone.

(Cantaloupe in the small greenhouse box)

Ta Da!

The last few weeks have been kind of stressful in my math class because I was out of town for the Alder Lake trip and the right after that I went out of town for the youth raft trip...so I missed some class and had to do homework early and take my test early. I had an hour to take the test (last Thursday) and I worked straight through it to the very end. I didn't even have time to go back and check my work. I saw that I had 5 minutes left and flipped to the last page to find two extra credit problems. I didn't think I do them in time, but I just worked as fast as I could and finished them. It turns out I did everything right and didn't make any stupid mistakes! (I tend to do stupid things like say 3+5=15 when I in a stressful test situation.)



As you can see, I got 105% on the test, and a 96% grade overall for the whole class so far. I have one more test and then the final exam. I hope I do good on them too!

Camping at Alder

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the camping trip, except for this deer or elk and the frog. We saw this animal on the side of the road. I don't know for sure but I think it's an elk? We saw it so close up--just right outside the car window on the other side of the guard rail. I could have leaned out of the car window and touched it if I wanted. We were laughing because we were so close to it and all it did was eat grass. Greg was whistling and clapping and yelling at it, but it would just look at us and chew grass. Hahahha!







Then the other story is this: One night Greg and I were walking between campsites and we could just see by the light of the moon. Greg was staring at a dark blob on the road to figure out what it was, and then it disappeared! So we put on our head lamps and ran over to find it. (He had been thinking it was a big fat rat.) It turned out of be a big fat frog! So he captured it and took it over to show everybody. It was kind of cute, and everybody swooned over it for a long time.



Finally Greg decided to let it go, so he put it down and we all watched where it went. It hopped away from our campsite and back towards the road.......then a car drove by, and we didn't see it hop anymore. Hahahha! Then in the morning we found a frog flattened in the road, right about where our little (well, big) frog had been hopping. Hahahhahaa! It was gross, and we felt bad but laughed about it too. These pictures that I took are just moments before the end of its life. Too bad...and it really seemed to like Greg. I told him that the frog knew who it's mama was. Hahhahaha!

Birthday Boy

Greg got a life jacket and a knife for his birthday! He's very proud of them. He also "accidentally" got this black mesh shirt to go with his life jacket. We went to get the life jacket together this morning, but he accidentally dropped some little rope that he bought on the ground right outside the car, so later he had to go back by himself to get the rope. The next time I saw him he was looking guilty and said, "I think they might have charged me for this cool shirt, so I took it home." It's a good thing though, so he can wear a shirt that will dry quickly and not be wet against his skin all day. He's excited to use his new toys on the youth raft trip this weekend.



We're going as youth leaders, and we're going to go down to Riggins a day early to set up camp and be sure we get a good spot. It will be fun to have a night to camp all by ourselves before all the kids get there. Greg suggested we go down the river by ourselves tomorrow night, but then he decided one of us would probably die, so we're just going to float around camp.