it has happened...

Something is eating my tomatoes...my tomatoes that are on a second floor balcony 15 feet off the ground. What is it?! And not only are they eating my tomatoes, they are leaving their mark IN my pots...their mark? Yes, poop. I can't figure out what the heck it is. It must be squirrels, it definitely isn't mouse poop. So for the past two days I have been spending quite a bit of time on google searching for every animal I can think of, and not just looking up the animal, but looking up what the poop for these animals looks like. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything that looks like what I have seen. I thought about taking a picture and posting it here, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it...maybe that's why I can't find a picture of it online. Although, there are an awful lot of pictures of poop out there.

The good thing? They are only attacking 2 of my plants right now, the two furthest down on the steps. So, I am just leaving those plants there, and probably tonight and tomorrow I will pick all the other tomatoes I have, and ripen them inside. I hate to do that, but I don't want to lose the rest of my tomatoes! The bad thing? These were my two best tomato plants, producing perfect looking tomatoes and ripening to perfection. I knew it was only a matter of time...

Oh, and with this lovely bought of warm weather we have had recently, all of my pepper plants have decided to bud again and I have little peppers all over the place...would be nice if they could get to a normal size and then we can eat them. And I thought they were dead :-)

UPDATE:
So I asked my all knowing garden friend at work what might be causing this poop infestation around my tomato plants, and she promptly tells me that it is tomato horn worms. I look them up on google, and yup, that's definitely what the poop looked like. I proceed to call my mother to have her go look and see if she can see them, and she calls back "YES! THAT IS DEFINITELY IT!" Apparently these little guys, are not so little. My mom said she saw one that was at least 3 inches long and 1/2 inch in diameter. Pretty much I am so skived out right now, but at least it isn't some weird rodent crawling up my stairs!

is summer really over?

I can't believe it is already the end of August. This is the last week of One Local Summer, and I have to say, the weather in Maine has definitely cooled off...a lot! we do still have an occasional warm day, this past weekend was beautiful. I'm trying to get all of my tomatoes in the house though, because it has been CHILLY at night! This summer was a strange one, warm for a week, cold for a week. I don't know what is up with this weather! I still have a feeling we will be hitting some extremely warm days in the fall. I love that, Indian Summer...I'm crossing my fingers for it this year :-)

For me the end of summer means the start of the busiest time of year, fall and into the holidays. No matter what I do, I seem to be so busy during the fall right straight through the holidays that by the time January 2nd comes around I need a vacation! And of course, can't have a vacation at that point, because that is when we do our year end physical inventory at work...man...lot's to look forward to!

Actually, I am hoping that this fall is a relatively quiet one. Matt and I are still working on the house...and probably will be for at least 20 years it seems. We would like to finish the downstairs completely, soon. Then we can start working on the upstairs, and eventually knock down the wall so that this duplex can now be a lovely single family home. We have been slacking a lot on the house this summer. I think partly because we had been working everyday since February, and partly because it got so humid that painting wasn't even an option. I'm glad we took some time to enjoy ourselves this summer though.

I have decided to do a REAL garden next year, so we are going to try and get the area we are going to use ready this fall. I have no idea what I need to do, but I am sure we will figure it out. My yard is pretty much sunny all day long so I think anyplace we put the garden will be a good one...now if I could just get rid of all the crows that seem to live up here! Not only am I going to have to build a fence around the garden to keep the woodchucks and deer at bay, but also I will have to put a top on the stupid thing to get the bazillions of birds out of it. I can see that next summer will be a stress filled one for me garden wise ;-) I've decided that I am still going to do container gardening...I had a really good harvest this year. So if I lose everything in the actual garden, I will at least have a little to fall back on :-)

As far as this blog goes, I have no idea which direction I am going to take it in. I have a feeling it will continue to serve as a place for me to put my thoughts on God and my many struggles at being a good Christian, and I think I will also continue to put info up about my cooking...because I love cooking so. But what else? Only time will tell.

giving concerns to God

Sometimes I feel like I can do everything on my own...well those are the times when everything is going according to MY plan. But, what about God's plan? I find that a lot of the time I tend to just lose myself in God's word, pray a lot, and those are actually the times that everything seems to be going MY way. It isn't though, it's God's way.

The problem? I get too comfortable. I start thinking about God less and what I want more, and then what happens? I get stressed out and feel like I have lost control of my life, again. I can't seem to get it through my head that I was never in control of my life. I need to just sit back and let God work, because if I do fight him, it always ends up causing more pain.

How do you know what God's plan is? I know that I have written a lot about prayer and reading my Bible, but I think that is just the tip. How do I trust God more and trust me less? Maybe when I am reading the Bible and praying, I'm not doing it the right way. I can't figure it out. All I know is that I am a planner, and sometimes I wish God would fill me in on what is going on in the next couple of months, so I am not always worrying about the next thing. That probably makes no sense at all.

I'm still having trouble praying, and that is probably why I continue to struggle. I have such great intentions. Why does something always come up? Or why does nothing but laziness come up? I'm not strong enough. I need His help. Will I always struggle? Even if I am doing everything I think I should be doing? Will it be enough?

busy/OLS weeks 8 & 9

I never realized how busy I get sometimes! But, here it is, a couple weeks after my last entry, and I don't even know where the time has gone! I have been crazy busy at work doing our physical inventory and valuation...fun stuff let me tell you. So, by the time I get home at night, I have no desire to even look at the computer, or do much else for that matter!

I haven't even had a chance to post last weeks OLS meal, which we had! I don't even know if I took pictures of it...I made pizza. I have never made pizza dough from scratch, but it was really easy. I think it was just flour water and yeast (the yeast was not local). I didn't have any pizza sauce, so I just sliced up some yummy tomatoes from the garden and put those on the pizza dough, with some olive oil and salt. I didn't have local cheese either, just your everyday shredded mozzarella...I still can't find milk that isn't "ultra-pasteurized", and am not sure I am ready for actual raw milk, is there something in the middle? Then on the cheese, green peppers from the garden, and also some shredded chicken that I had roasted up the day before. It was really really good. It also made more pizza then I knew what to do with. I think next time I will freeze half of the dough so that it is available to me later on for an easy pizza...I think I can freeze the dough, does anyone see a problem with that?

This week's local meal, also no pictures, I took all the many veggies I had in the fridge...ok so it was zukes, onion, peppers from the garden...not as much variety as I thought. Then I just put them on the grill. It was delicious, that's for sure. I have never had grilled zucchini, I have to say it really brought out some amazing flavor. Seasoned with just a bit of (non-local) olive oil and salt and pepper. Yum!

I'm hoping that I can get back on track with posting, although I don't know what I want to post about now. I am still concentrating a lot on getting the house finished, and just settling into a normal life...It's really nice to feel slightly settled.

pray without ceasing

I have been having trouble with prayer. Not that I don't pray, but I feel like I don't pray enough, and that I don't pray in an appropriate manner. Does anyone else have this issue? This past Sunday, the pastor at my church was giving a sermon on discipleship. He said the most important thing about prayer is to remember to actually do it. It really hit me, convicted me to try and pray more and in a more Godly way.

I have always prayed before going to bed, rather, pray while in bed almost half asleep. So I tend to fall asleep talking to God. That is a wonderful thing, yes, but at the same time, I never have complete thoughts. I tend to ramble instead of praising God like I should. I forget about confessing my sins from the day, and end up just going off on tangents and not really having a focus. Not that that type of prayer is bad, I just believe I could do so much better.

I am doing really good with getting up super early and reading my Bible, but then I have to go to work. Instead of praying on my way to work my mind wanders to what I need to do for the day. I feel like there isn't enough time in the day almost. But there is. Yes, I am working for the majority of my waking hours, but when I come home at night there is definitely time to pray.

I think the reason I have such ease getting up and reading the Bible is because it is routine now. Yes, getting up early kind of sucks, and the past couple weeks since I have been back from vacation...well definitely more difficult to get up so early since I was able to sleep in until 7 or 8 (yes, that is sleeping in for me :-P). But it is structure, and anyone who knows me knows that I love structure and schedules.

So, I figure that if I can set aside one hour in the evening to pray. Not just sit on the couch with Matt and trying to pray, but being interrupted or wandering off to take care of the dishes or something, just actual meditation. To facilitate myself, I am going to keep a journal. I already have a journal, in fact I have many. It seems like I categorize my journals and each one holds a specific purpose...odd yes I know. But, I think that if I actually write down my prayers, this will actually help me to pray in a better way. Covering all my bases, and not having my mind wander aimlessly.

Am I being too hard on myself? Maybe, but I kind of think that God has convicted me recently about the way I study His word and pray. I am just longing for more information, for a better understanding. And prayer is going to help me with that.

I love my garden!!

I have been wanting to get these pictures up for a while now, but have been so busy! Life never slows down, that's for sure. We had our first tomato this past week! As you can see Matt had a lot of fun arranging our food to take a picture :-) And I have to say, it was the best tomato ever! Now if the other 100 or so would turn red, I would be happy! And my one cucumber plant is seriously producing a lot. Well, I have no idea how much a cucumber plant usually produces, but we are around 20 cukes from this one plant...I kept meaning to make pickles, but they disappear way too fast for me to do anything besides cut them up for sandwiches or just plain with a little salt...yum! I have been eating peppers and cukes for dinner most nights, so how much more local can I get?!

One Local Summer Week 7

This week I decided to try making tortillas. I had seen the recipe on Liz's site, and figured I would try it. I have been in a bit of a baking mood recently. It was actually really easy. Of course I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have. So I made the tortillas with King Arthur flour, non-local oil, and some local (tap) water :-) Can't really beat that!



I also decided to start picking the jalapeno peppers that are growing on my plant on the deck. I wanted to make pico de gallo, and of course wanted it super hot, but since Matt wasn't in the mood for hot, I made a nice mild pico de gallo (no seeds or ribs). I picked up some organic tomatoes and onions at the Farmers' Market (Hallowell, 6 miles) and used a bit of non-local lemon juice and some salt. Yum! I love to just put this over salad greens as well.




And for the filling, we scrambled up some free range eggs, also from the Farmers' market. This was the point at which we forgot to take pictures. Matt is almost finished with his here :-)




Mine were closer to being whole when I remembered to take the picture. All in all, really a great meal!




I hope to make these again soon, and the next time I think I will probably try and bake them to make nacho chips.