October and Halloween 2018 in the books!

I really can't tell you what happened to October.  I think I blinked and it's over.  We had a wonderful trip to the South Texas Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch in Hondo on October 14th.  We picked a new location this year just to get a little variety (we usually go to the Medina Pumpkin Patch) and it was really a lot of fun! 

They have quite a few more activities there, including some awesome slides the kids just loved, including Max. Also some bouncing pads, horse rides, an awesome corn maize that was lots of fun for about 5 minutes (then I got hot and tired of that!) ha! I think the kids loved it though.  

 Bounce pads were fun, even Max wanted to try!

 A vampire cat!

 Those slides were awesome!

 Meow, little kitty!

 They give you a map of the corn maze before you take off.

 Max had the best transport of all!

 Several big boxes of apples for an apple cannon they had there. What a waste of good apples!

 Observation deck in the middle of the maze

Max had all the fun he could handle! Peace out!

Halloween was great, as usual. We all met at Jeff and Colleen's and had dinner and the kids all trick or treated in the neighborhood. John and I stay at the house and pass out candy while they're gone, which was about all we could manage this year since his arm was out of commission.  

 Commander Max, ready for space!

 Belle, from Beauty & the Beast. Her Nene in Houston made this most beautiful dress.

 Uma, from the Descendents (Disney). KT is drawn to the color teal!

 The Forsythe family

 The Koenig family

On to November!

Crisis Averted, Somewhat.

On Monday, John was out in the barn "piddling" around.  He was using his welder and had it plugged in, and while walking around it he tripped on the cord. Boom! He fell face first into the gravel (and has the road rash to prove it.)  His right elbow hit the bottom of the shovel that was propped up nearby and took the brunt of the fall. 

Off to the ER we went, where they took an x-ray, put on a cast-wrap kind of contraption, and referred us to an ortho a few days later.  The x-ray revealed the bone had chipped and was pulled away by one of the tendons. Possible surgery was threatened. 

Today we went to the ortho and the judgement was that his tricep muscle had indeed pulled a chip of bone away from is elbow. The doc thought it would resolve itself without surgery since John had some improved range of motion already,  and he has to go back in 4 weeks to re-evaluate.  They took off all of the wraps, etc. so I think John was just relieved to get all that paraphanelia off, especially the sling which was irritating the heck out of him.

He's still really sore and has a bruise above one eye, and a road rash on his nose, but he's getting better. I think he was most relieved about no surgery, and so was I!

Microgreen Success - Finally!!

You'd think something as simple as starting a tray of greens would be easy, peasy.  Well, not so much.  My first tray had some success in germination, but then most wilted and died, despite my over wrought hand-wringing and over watering (or maybe because of that!)

The second tray wasn't much better.  This time I added a thicker layer of seed starting medium, but it didn't seem to make much difference.

I'm using a felt underlay, with a layer of seed starting medium on top of that, and then sprinkled the seeds on that.  I start the trays with the cover and then remove it after germination since the greenhouse is pretty hot. I think I can leave the top longer now that the weather has moderated.

This third try has actually become what I'd call a minor success! Pretty decent germination and I harvested a small pile of greens yesterday. Hooray!! They were pretty and pretty darn delicious as a little decor on our salads last night. Crunchy! I think the difference was that I added a kelp fertilizer to the watering, and I've been spraying a fine mist over them daily.  

I'm starting a 4th tray tomorrow and I'm planning to increase the number of seeds, sowing them a bit thicker this time. I'm following guidance from Johnny's Seeds, and to read more about them, an article I ran across today. I'm determined to learn this gardening skill!