"Time Doesn't Wait for me...it Keeps on Rollin'"

So...It's been a good, long time since I've posted a blog. I'm not 100% sure why I haven't posted in the last 2 months or so....lots of reasons, maybe...but anyways...I figured that from here on out I'd at least put up 1 blog a month....even just for me and mine...as a time-line of sorts. I'm not sure that I've got anything of consequence to say...I really just enjoy looking back on years past and seeing where life was at during a certain month or moment...seeing how little Gavin was during a garden post in 2010 or revisiting Ivy's first birthday. I dig that. I have decided that I will try to at least post a monthly "scrapbook" blog of our family's going's on....It's mostly for me and mine, but please feel free to enjoy life along with us. Here's what I've got in this installment:

Chrissy and the kids went down to New Jersey for a few days. Gavin spent the afternoon in pop-pop's kayak tooling around the creek in Deptford, NJ.

Our seeds have germinated and are starting to fill out. Gavin is keeping his own garden this year. This is his row of lettuce. Should be ready to eat in 3 weeks or so.

We keep an asparagus patch...the nice part of that (besides it being a perennial and requiring almost no work) is that it pays off in EARLY Spring. We're harvesting about this much every 2-3 days:

Chrissy went to yoga class and the kids and I hung out on the deck. They made a "nest" for themselves under the slide. Too cute.

Our strawberries are looking great. Lots of our other fruit trees are looking good as well....peaches, apples, nectarines, blueberries, cherries. We're hoping for a nice, big harvest this season.

The kids hanging inside the blackberry arbor.

We finished our chicken coop a few weeks ago. Here's our girls "expressing their chicken-ness" on their roosts...there may be a rooster or two in our midst, however.

case in point. Alright...that pretty much brings us up to speed on the going's on around here. Thanks for reading. Hope you are all having stellar Spring seasons. Here's hoping for a fruitful Summer harvest and some great memories with our families. God Bless.

Small Shifts and Poultry Progress

I make up words for things in my brain...or use words in unconventional contexts. Ivy does the same thing. If she's sitting by the fire, she doesn't feel the "warmth"...she feels the "heatness". One word that comes up in my mind this time of year is "shift"...as in "The Shift". To me, The Shift is that time when Winter is finally transitioning out, the ground is starting to thaw, patches of new green start to appear, the ice on the pond has melted and you catch a glimpse of an occasional ripple as a fish makes a quick turn near the surface. Normally, around here, Winter is a VERY long season. As that temperature drops in November...you start to batten down the hatches; put the lawn furniture away, pull the boats up out of the water, tune up the snow blower. Then it's almost 5 full months of very cold and very snowy. We like to be outside quite a bit in the Winter but with little ones, it sometimes gets tough...you know the drill...spend 45 minutes layering them up with warm clothes only to get 10 minutes outside before a face plant or tumble sends snow where it shouldn't be. I dig Winter...but I LOVE the shift...that means, boating, fishing, gardening, outdoor living is right around the corner.
This year's "shift" was hardly one at all. We experienced the 4th mildest Winter on record here and got to spend a great deal of time outside all season. It is still nice to think about Spring and all the outdoor stuff that goes with it. It's been in the upper 60's this week and we've been talking full advantage of this gorgeous weather. I'll show you...but first....

Chicken Update!
The girls have just about tripled in size since we got them. They are two weeks old now and all of them have their wing feathers and most of their tail feathers in:


They are still cute...but it won't be long until they hit that gawky, feather-ruffled, necks-a-little-too-long-for-their-tiny-head stage...the "teenage" phase as it's known in chicken raising. I'm still anticipating one or two of them to be a rooster..we'll see.
Well...being that the ground is thawed, work began on their coop:


My pops (Pa, as he's known to his grand kids) has been designing and mainly working on this baby. We're thinking it's gonna look pretty cool as it comes together.

So today, after work, I got changed and in about 2 minutes was outside with the fam working in the yard. There's some work that needs doing on our gardens so we started on that. We had dinner...then right back outside. I took the kids for a sunset ride in the boat:


with snacks:


and swans:


We even managed to do the thing that spawned this blog's name:


We found the Blue Heron (this was the best shot I could manage as I fumbled in my pocket for the camera while it was flying away from me.

After we docked, we had 15-20 more minutes of daylight. Gavin decided to "reward the day with a little fishin'" as we've been known to say around here:


While Ivy and I played catch with her new junky frisbee-thing:


Ivy insisted on bringing the frisbee back in her mouth. It wasn't until 5 or 6 tosses in that I realized that what I was doing wasn't playing "catch"...

I was playing "fetch".

Which sort of works...cuz I've never had a dog.

Not a bad Tuesday.


Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the third day. - Genesis 1:11-13

I love that part.

Wakey Wakey, Eggs and Bacey

Been on a bit of a blog hiatus. I'll be back next week with some new ramblings. Just a quick state of the family: Everyone's healthy, everyone's happy (most of the time) Until next week, I'll leave you with:



Rosie The Snowman (Snowwoman) Y'all!! (yes, those are red and blue milk caps).

Another 4-7" coming tomorrow. It's about time.

Talk to you soon.

Wreathing Havoc

So...second year in a row...probably gonna become a family tradition....

The Leo Family Homegrown Christmas Wreath.

If you remember back a blog or two ago...the one about the 12 ft. tall Christmas tree...when all was said and done...I had a solid 5 foot of pine tree bottom sitting in my side yard. This became the greens for our 2011 Christmas wreath.


We started by setting up our dirty ghetto table in our dirty ghetto driveway...hey...that's how we roll 'round here, know what I'm sayin'?!
We used the octagonal frame that Gavin and I made out of scrap wood and "L" brackets last year. In this shot, Gavin is using some pliers to take out last years staples to get ready for this year's greens.


Starting to attach some greens.


The girls arrive with the lights.


Almost done with the greens. A quick side-note. To those who have a super keen eye for keen observation...you'd notice that during many blog posts and facebook update
photos throughout the past 2 1/2 years or so, I'm wearing the same ratty, washed-out, stretched-out long sleeve black T-shirt that you see in this photo. The truth is...I'm wearing this shirt inside out because on the front-side it says "50 Cent G-Unit" and has an icon of a bullet with wings. Not my style at all but...Truth is....
I bought this shirt at a thrift store for 3 bucks like 3 years ago....and being a big, fat dude....this shirt has been key in some hardcore snow removal, gun-range shooting, and overall cold-weather protection over the last 2+ years or so...I can't begin to describe how comfortable this shirt is...It's getting a bit gnarly these days...but I'm not-at-all ready to get rid of it. It continues to be a key component to my Winter Well-Being...Anyhow...let's get back to the topic on hand....


The girl with the bow.


Stapling up some serious Winter-Berries...We're almost there.

A silly little basket-head...]

So....with greens, lights, pine cones, and berries attached....

Here's what she looked like all set up:


...and here's what she looked like come nightfall:




Blessed and thankful for the Lord's guidance, peace, and provision.....and praying the same for you and yours this Christmas season and into the New Year.

Merry, Merry Christmas,

Extreme Tree Trimming

Well...like many others...this weekend was the weekend to procure the family Christmas tree. I posted a similar post last year:

http://findtheblueheron.blogspot.com/2010/12/tree-trimmingliterally.html

about our exploits in securing our tree. This year was much of the same....same place: (a guy right in our town who's got a couple acres with trees planted on it)
same date: (first weekend in December)
Not-quite-the-same price: he went up from $25 to $30...but, in the end, I'm still supporting a local brother
same harvesting means: hand saws are for chumps....I say let the Stihl do the work.
same over sized tree: refer to the pictures below for explanation.


WE FOUND IT!! Now..a couple of factoids to bring up.

1. I'm 6'2"
2. The top of the tree is nowhere in sight in this photo
3. We have 8' ceilings in our Living Room

The reality is...the guy who we get our trees from has trees that are 3 feet tall and trees that are 23 feet tall...and all of them cost the same price. This adds an interesting element to choosing a tree because you are in the unique position of not necessarily selecting a tree, but selecting a part of a tree...last year we cut ourselves an 11' tall tree, lopped the top off of it, then shaped the bottom of it into a nice Christmas tree shape. This year, it was just the opposite. Chrissy spotted this one and decided that the top half was a keeper. Around here, we don't just TRIM the three....we chop that mother in half.

So, I fired up the ole chainsaw ant let 'er rip:

which elicited this response from my daughter:

shock, terror, and sadness at the fact that I just chopped it down. She's, by nature, a nurturer, and fell in love with our tree as it stood in the field...she had a real hard time understanding that it had to get cut down in order for it to be brought home and put up in our house. She came around, eventually.


Loading her up onto the tractor. One of the nice things about buying a tree here is that the owner comes out in his tractor and trailer and hauls the tree out of the field right to your care for you...now heavy lifting.

Gavin made sure that the tree was secure during it's trip from the field to our van.

just a cool shot that Chrissy took.

Once we got it to the van...we loaded it onto the roof rack. I had to snap a pic because this thing was a giant root ball away from being the Griswold Family Christmas Tree:


Which stirred up the quote:
"Dad...that tree wouldn't fit in our yard".
"It's not going in our yard, Russ, it's going in our living room".

During the trimming and shaping portion of our afternoon, there was also a very aptly quoted:
"...little full....lotta sap".

At any rate...when the sawdust cleared, we were, as usual, left with a nice little Leo Family Christmas tree:


May all your Christmases be white...we'll bring you some figgy pudding...for auld lange syne...deck your halls...laugh all the way...come and behold him...and all that stuff.

Merry Christmas from The Leo's

The Summer Stretch

This time of year is special. It's that 4-6 week stretch where there's tons of sun and 90+ degree cooking-hot Summer days. A pre-dinner dip in the pool becomes a given and, if you stand still enough, I think that you can actually HEAR the garden growing. The harvest is daily and plentiful. Here's a shot of today's take:



There's my boy snagging a cuke to nibble on. Here's one way that I know that it's Summer...I find these all over the house:





You'd think that I've got mice but, alas, it's just the kids grabbing a little garden goodie to munch on before supper.

I'm going to try my hand at canning tomorrow. I have 50 lbs of cukes that need to be processed. I've done lots with freezer and fridge preserving in the past but have never used a bath canner. I'm looking forward to hopefully being able to put some food on our pantry shelves that will last for a year or so.
I've read the books, I've looked over the recipes....I'm going to add my own twist and hope for the best.
The crazy thing is that...let's take cucumbers for example. They cost about $.75 each on sale at the grocery store. I've got about about 24 cucumber plants. I payed about 10 bucks for all of them. They are putting out around 15-20 cukes a day. The savings that you realize by growing stuff yourself is insane. It becomes practically free. All told, I've got about 100 bucks, out of pocket, into my garden...and, when it's all said and done, If you had to pay retail for all of what we harvest, you're looking at easily $2,000-$3,000 worth of stuff. In this economy....how can you not grow something?

Hope all your gardens are heaving and all your crisper drawers are full.

God Bless.

Fourth Fun with First Campout

We're very blessed to live with the pond out back. It allows for all of the elements of camping without actually camping...fishing, boating, frog-catching, campfires w/ s'mores....then bring the kids inside, give 'em a bath and off to sleep in their nice, familiar beds. Very nice, indeed, but it was time for Gavin to experience a night out in a tent...with our home in sight just in case the sounds of night freaked him out. Really, that was what concerned me most...the sounds, and how he would handle them. We've got these trees out back filled with tree frogs that get so crazy loud at night, they sound like howler monkeys...add to that the bull frogs, the heron screeching, and the occasional shriek of a red fox or fisher cat and I was almost certain that we'd wind up back in the house after a few hours.
Nope...Friday night, the kid handled himself like a champ...slept like a log all night. Chrissy and Ivy hung out until it got dark and then retreated inside. We snapped some pics of the goings on:



Our little setup.






Some heavy-duty marshmallowing


'Shmallow Art courtesy of Chrissy Leo


Tent Dance Party!!


Of course the obligatory illegal fireworks had to make an appearance....thank you New Hampshire. Don't worry, we read the warning labels...no fingers were blown off in the making of this blog.

At one point, it rained for a 1/2 hour or so...we huddled in the tent, all 4 of us, laughing, tickling, wrestling...then we looked out of the tent and saw this:






Unbelievable, right? It was one of those magical times when you feel as though God just *winked* at you and whipped up something special just for you. It was the brightest rainbow I've seen here in years and hung around for a good 20 minutes...with our tent right underneath it.

All in all we had an amazing time...so amazing, in fact, that Gavin and I slept out Saturday night as well.....Well, it's Sunday afternoon and we left the tent up.....just in case :^)

Thank you Lord for all You are and how much You love Your children. Thank You for Your Creations and for allowing us to enjoy and explore all that You have made!!




A fool would ask for more.