home from scout camp

Tristan is home from scout camp. This year he was the senior patrol leader at camp so had additional responsibilities. He is pretty tired so I don't have many details yet. Did get one fun story "everybody's pottery things blew up in the kiln!". Also somehow he took the geocaching merit badge not basketry even though he'd done the paperwork for baskets and bought all the needed baskets. I don't think he was able to complete the geocaching badge since he hadn't done the prerequisites but hopefully he had fun anyway. He enjoyed the pottery merit badge and the motorboating one. Have to wait on any more updates since he fell asleep.

Meanwhile I did the 2 large loads of laundry he brought home with him!

babies everywhere

We had torrential rains last night, that seemed to help everything grow at hyper speed. Plants are much bigger today, small tomatoes and peppers have suddenly blossomed and tons of baby tadpoles hatched in our pond!

baby tomatoes

baby apples

baby peppers

 

baby tadpoles

and more baby tadpoles

and more baby tadpoles!

New reality show, 1,900 frogs and counting. see how the Frogger family manage their large brood on a day to day basis.

Garden update

The gardens are growing well. before too long we'll have a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits. So far from the garden we've had a few strawberries, a little lettuce and some chard. A lot more is growing, and growing well this year. getting an early start on planting doesn't always pay off, depending on weather, this year it seems to have worked well to plant early.

little garter snake in upper gardens

wood frog in Tristan's garden

big garter snake in lower garden

Transplanted spinach plants

Colin's garden

Tristan's garden

Hayley's garden

"Tristan" species strawberries, yes we bought them because of the name!

my corn is getting big

Tristan is off to Boy Scout Camp

Another year, another summer week spent at boy scout camp. Tristan is off to hidden valley scout reservation with troop 69 for the week. He'll be doing all sorts of water games and sports, some handicrafts, motor boating and learning or practicing scout skills. This year Tristan is senior patrol leader at camp. The SPL for the troop is not going to camp this year so Tristan is next in line and takes on those duties at camp. For this reason we had to get him to camp very early for leader meetings, we had to leave the house at 7:00 AM. Hopefully he will have many good stories to tell when we pick him up on Saturday.

Setting up camp

Tristan and his tentmate Brendan



Waiting for the dining hall tour

 

Gardens are Growing!

We have all sorts of good vegetables and fruits growing now. Just about everything is planted, kids gardens, upper gardens, lower garden and container gardens. It seems we have a good start, I hope a lot of great food will be the result.

Doesn't this look funny? I need to get more fencing. This silliness is to keep out the wildlife, and our own bunny who was eating things in the gardens.

Garden is about 3/4's planted

All the garden plots are planted now except for Hayley's. I made two new raised beds and those are planted too. It was a lot of work but hopefully will be worth it. The only things which need to be planted now are the larger items that need a lot of space, squashes, pumpkins and such, that go in a bigger garden in a different spot. I also need to plant some more greens somewhere.

 Another project I've been working on is thinning the forsythia around the bench area, it's pretty but it has really taken over. We have forsythia in several different places so I didn't feel too bad about eliminating some in this area. Now the lilacs have more room and the bench can be used again. It was almost completely overgrown.