busyness and bliss

Over the last few days, we've been gettinerdone. 

That's farm talk for we're on a schedule and have a lot to do. Shchedwal if you're from England. I'm not sure how the Europeans say gettinerdone though. Probably sounds much more refined with an accent. Although Larry the Cable Guy has an accent and no one would accuse him of being refined. Or from England. Is he even from America? Just what kind of accent does he have anyway? Hmmm, something to ponder...

Last spring we took full advantage of the millions of dandelions that covered our property. The years previous, we spent most of our waking moments trying to rid ourselves of the weed that turned our lush green grass into fields of mustardy yellow. Then we heard about dandelion wine. We also heard about fritters, salads, and coffee, but they got us with the word wine.

Besides, that's what us country folk do. We make stuff, with equipment.

Our first batch yielded only 4 bottles.

Okay, that's a lie. Our first batch actually yielded 5 bottles, but as new winemakers, we had to sample the product. It's the least we could do for our future guests who may desire to imbibe with us. Now we wait with our buckets ready for the first glimpse of yellow to blossom...

This weekend we'll be bottling our first batch of strawberry wine. All 6 gallons of it...

well, 5-3/4 gallons of it anyway.

 For the sake of honesty.

My grandmother has been staying with us for the past week. At 86 years young, she is still as sharp as a tack. She was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's and moderate kidney disease, but that's not what brought her here this time. She had gout in her foot with a massive infection that decided to wander up her leg a bit. Stubborn woman that she is, she thought just keeping a positive attitude would make the gout go away.

I must take after my grandfathers side...☺

Even though Grandma has been spending most of her days with her foot propped up on a pillow, we've recently put her to work.

And let me tell you, reading The Lion King to a little 3 year old great-great granddaughter is hard work.

Especially when that same little 3 year old wants Gramma to use different voices for each of the characters. Correct voices. With feeling. Before this moment, Great-Great Gramma had never even heard of The Lion King.

Great-Great Gramma took a nice long nap after that.


With 12 people now living under this one roof, I've been cooking up a storm. Most days I'm happy to spend extra time in the kitchen, but while I'm still trying to figure out what I can and can't eat, it can get very overwhelming pretty quickly. In fact, I spent an entire day quietly crying in the kitchen, the whole time blaming the onions that I wasn't chopping.

It's nice when my family understands.

It's even nicer when a daughter who didn't know about my onion episode shows up with grain/gluten-free Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes, just because. (These are made with black beans~and they were DIVINE!)

Finally, we are officially on Spring Break. And even though we've put away the school books for the next 10 glorious days, the learning hasn't stopped.

Maddie wanted to learn how to take "pichurs" with Nana's camera.

Good thing I ducked or this would've been one of those "artsy" type pictures of my mid-section.

And the bliss continues...