For three years in a row now, I have lost my cucumber crop to the blasted cucumber beetles. One of my favorite foods to preserve from the garden is my Grandmother’s Secret Dill Pickles, and so the loss of my cucumber crop really breaks my heart. Last year I was able to can a few quarts because some good friends gave me some of their excess cucumbers, but I have not had a good pickle canning session for many years now.

Do you see that nasty little yellow and black striped bug on my cucumber plant? They may look all cute and harmless BUT let me tell you, they are real, real pests. They are very destructive.

Besides being able to eat cucurbit leaves in a matter of days, they also cause bacterial wilt which kills the plants. I can live in harmony with many bugs, but not these guys. Killing my cucumbers means war, and I am tired of losing that war!! I’ve tried a few things to kill cucumber beetles over the last few years, but nothing’s been successful. Until this year. This year, I caught them early. And I struck hard and I struck fast.

How to Kill Cucumber Beetles, Organically

This year, I turned to Diatomaceous Earth. Last year, when I found the dang beetles, I read that food grade Diatomaceous Earth can be used as an organic insecticide, so I ordered a 50 pound bag from Azure Standard. According to the National Pesticide Information Center, Diatomaceous Earth is a type of silica made from the fossilized remains of diatoms. It’s a fine,white powder and it’s edible. Under a microscope, it supposedly looks like shards of glass and it is deadly for any bugs with an exoskeleton, like cucumber beeltes, and fleas, and all sorts of nasty parasites. You can read more here at this useful article by Paul Wheaton.

I have read that you should be careful not to inhale DE, but last year when my husband suffered from intestinal parasites, I broke out the DE and made him drink some diluted with water. He also insisted on taking a course of antibiotics, but I have read that DE will do the trick without the antibiotics. So file that tidbit of information away for the next time you get intestinal parasites {or head lice…}.

Essentially, the way I killed my cucumber beetles was to dump the DE all over my cucurbits. I lifted the leaves and doused it good on the underneath since the cucumber beetles like to hang out on the underneath side of the plants. And I covered the dirt all around the plants, too. Because despite having read that cucumber beetles don’t crawl around, I see them crawling all over the ground. So I think they do crawl.The first day I found the cucumber beetles, they were all over. I thought about the situation for a few minutes {because I had to remember WHY I bought that big bag of DE last year…} and headed out to my garden shed. I grabbed the DE and spread it all over using the method I described above.

The next day, I checked on my garden. Instead of finding hundreds of them, I found maybe 10. And I killed them all. The next day, I found ZERO cucumber beetles and I was very encouraged. However, after a few days, 5 maybe, I started finding a few more beetles, so today I covered them all up again with more Diatomaceous Earth since I am going away for 5 days and won’t be able to check on them. It is so helpful to be in the garden every single day to see find stuff like this. I’ve left strict instructions with my husband to be on the lookout for cucumber beetles!

Other organic methods I have read {and tried} for killing Cucumber Beetles:

• NEEM Oil – this is the first thing I tried. I’m guessing that it didn’t work because I was just too late. I didn’t know right away how destructive they were, and by the time I got the NEEM Oil, it was probably too just late. But it is supposed to be effective.
• Homemade Trap – it caught a few beetles, but needless to say, I won’t make another one…
• Row covers – This is something I have not tried yet. Maybe next year.

Cautions I have read about DE -

I read not to use the DE on flowering plants as it also kills the bees that pollinate the plants. A very helpful person on my facebook page told me that I can manually pollinate the plants with a Q-Tip, if need be. One of my plants was already flowering and I am spreading the DE anyway. It does have baby cucumbers on it, so we’ll see what happens.

Otherwise, my garden is growing good. I did find one more bad garden pest on my potatoes, and I will tell you about that soon! But everything else is looking really nice.

Have you ever dealt with cucumber beetles? What did you do? And most importantly, how do you stop them from coming back next year? I am really considering burning my garden this year after it’s done.

 How’s your garden growing? Please share! I get sad when they’re aren’t any comments on my blog.

Cheryl writes at On the Old Path about her homesteading and homeschooling adventures with 6 children and many chickens, and tells about her son, a brain cancer survivor. She also shares fun tutorials and delicious looking recipes, like this pectin-free strawberry jam.

Savannah writes about her family’s adventures at Ramblings of a Christian Mom while homeschooling her 4 children and homemaking in Eastern Ontario, leaning on Jesus along the way. Savannah also has some fabulous recipes and fun tutorials, like this chunky crochet baby blanket.

But this post is really about our school year. So here goes!

Anna is 9 and will be in 4th grade next year. She went to public school for the first time this past year. I was both excited and apprehensive, but she loved it and excelled. She was quite nervous initially, but made great friends and had a fun time. Her handwriting improved as did her repetition of basic math facts. She has been reading since she was 5 and continues to love reading. I was pleased to learn that I prepared her quite well for public school. Homeschooling’s a scary thing sometimes, but she did not struggle at school and was chosen to attend College for Kids this summer, a two week summer school for bright kids.

There were many things I liked about her year at school and a few things I didn’t like that much. For instance, I didn’t really enjoy packing her lunch every day. Luckily, she’s surprisingly not picky at all about her lunch and it turned out that I was able give her many leftovers that she ate! Without griping! It turned out to be a great way to use up leftovers… And having to be home by 3 pm when she got out of school was quite challenging for me. Many of our homeschooling activities are in the afternoon and it definitely complicated my day to have to worry about getting back to town in time. That was hard and some of our fun homeschooling activities, like a park day in the Quad Cities, just didn’t happen that often. Overall, though, I am pleased with her year. She brought home some really wonderful art projects and a great class book that her teacher had them put together. And most importantly, she likes it and is excited to go back to 4th grade.

Anna continues to play piano, and she added Girl Scouts and Tae Kwan Do to her list of activities this year and has been playing ball this spring.

Ben is 7 and finished 1st grade. He is usually a cheerful and loving child, interested in nature, riding his bike, and making weapons and duck tape creations. My approach to homeschooling so far for the younger children has been pretty hands off, bordering on unschooling. I let them explore, take them out into nature often, and read books. Anna learned to read on her own when she was 5 and I kept thinking Ben would learn too, in his own time. Around Christmas it became obvious to me that he wasn’t learning like she did and I started to get a little concerned. We stared working through Explode the Code books and the Spelling Workout: Level A from Modern Curriculum Press. Ben also worked quite a lot on Reading Eggs for something different. I shared more about our First Grade Curriculum in this post, if you’re curious.

Basically, since Christmas, we have been working on reading. It’s slow going with him and frustrating for me. He learns so differently than Anna did and I really have to work hard to remain patient as he is frustrated with all the words that break the rules. I can’t blame him for that, but it’s been hard on both of us. We are continuing to work with him this summer and we’re taking a new approach – just having him memorize words. I didn’t do that much with him, see disclosure above about me being bad about drilling basic facts. I often think reading will click for him when he’s ready and I need to stop pushing him. And then I think I have to do more. Help him figure it out. I don’t know what the right answer is. For the time being, he is working with his supervisory teacher a bit, and I am trying really, really, really hard to be patient and not lose my temper. It’s tough.

Ben played flag football and started taking Tae Kwan Do lessons this past fall, and is currently playing ball. He’s really quite good at sports. And I’m thinking about starting him on piano in the fall.

Cora is 5 1/2 and finished up pre-school. She’s also been working through Reading Eggs and she worked through a few get ready for Kindergarten books from Kumon last year. She’s knows all of her letters and numbers and is really close to reading. She’s a master egg cracker and loves to help me bake bread. And she’s the only kid who will willingly clean the toilet! She really wants to go to public school kindergarten this fall and we are thinking of sending her.

Cora is playing ball this spring and really wants to take Tae Kwan Do with Anna and Ben in the fall! And sometimes, Anna tries to teach her how to play the piano.

And last but not least, here is Sara. Sara is quite the stinker at 3 years old. She’s often found hiding in the bathroom playing Angry Birds on the ipad! But she also love puzzles and building and reading books. Her favorite books right now are Alona Frankel’s Once Upon a Potty and I Want My Mother. It was a huge year for her. Sara potty trained all on her own and she weaned right before her third birthday. She’s also sleeping half the night in her own bed in her own room. Huge accomplishments this year! She’s definitely a mama’s girl, but she has been warming up to her dad quite a lot and she now loves her babysitter and hanging out with grandma too!

And that was our homeschooling year. Pop over to read about Savannah’s year with her 4 kids and Cheryl’s year with her 6 kids, if you are interested in seeing what other families were up to as well!

I hope you also had a good school year with your children!

Cascade has partnered with Gail Simmons to help people improve their food presentation. I’m sure many of you get meal ideas from Pinterest and blogs and know that the prettier the food looks, the more attention it gets. Well presented, good-looking food doesn’t necessarily taste better, but it sure is a joy to behold!! I have been working to improve my own food photography pictures and have a few tricks to share with you today. I still have room for a lot of for improvement, but the following steps help me a lot!

5 Tips for Better Food Photography

1. Take Many, Many Pictures ~ I have found that it takes a lot of time to prepare not only the food, but also the staging for the pictures. I hate it when I take a few pictures, clean up the area, and then find I have ZERO good shots. I have to take picture after picture to find one good one. Taking many, many pictures from every conceivable angle is a great way to get two or three good shots. Overhead, straight on, at an angle, from the left, from the right. Get creative with the way you approach your food! Make small changes the staging and take more pictures. It’s easier to delete pictures than to set up the area and start over again.

2. Use Proper Lighting ~ Lighting is the biggest challenge I have. Underexposed, overexposed, washed out, unappealing – all of these are problems poor lighting can have on your food photography. The best type of light is soft, natural light. Picking a shady outdoor location or setting up a stage near a south-facing window with diffused light can drastically improve food shots. I recently bought a cheap photo light box from Tanga as lighting is a real problem in my dark house. I have read mixed results about light boxes, but it’s fun to play around with it and see what I get! Just remember: turn off your flash and figure out how to get the light you need from more natural sources whenever possible.

3. Learn to use the Aperture Mode on your Camera ~ My favorite type of food photography has a shallow depth of field (DOF) which is accomplished by using a small aperture. Lower aperture numbers blur the background and make really pretty pictures. I’m slowly learning how to use my new 50 mm lens and photograph with low apertures. I love the shallow depth of field I get with these numbers and my new lens. Rachel at Bubbly Nature Creation does a much better job explaining aperture and DOF on her blog, if you’d like more information. I always wondered how to get those pretty blurry pictures until Rachel taught me that my 35mm lens just wasn’t capable of producing that effect because it didn’t have a small enough aperture.

4. Careful Staging ~ Careful staging requires careful planning. A clean, empty background, nice dishes, and fun accent pieces make pictures prettier. I’m always on the lookout for nice jars, pieces of cloth, and dishes at thrift stores because used properly, a well set stage makes the picture! I also love food pictures that accent with herbs and ingredients they used in the dish they photograph. To make staging easier, I bought a couple of Elmer’s 3 sided project boards. I can set them up outside or on my counter and block out all the mess if I need to!

5. Use Sparkling Clean Dishes ~ Sparkly clean dishes are a must have for delicious food pictures! I make a lot of my own cleaning products, but dishwasher detergent is one thing I have never been able to do a good job on. Nothing is more frustrating than pulling a dingy and spotted glass {like the one in my picture of my new light box} out of the cupboard for a photo shoot and having to re-clean everything before I can even begin taking pictures. I frequently have problems with my glasses and my measuring cups, for some reason. But I’m really impressed with Cascade Platinum Dishwashing Detergent as it is doing a great job on everything, including my glasses and measuring cups. According to its fact sheet, Cascade Platinum:

• Powers away tough, 24 hour stuck-on food {it really does!}
• Eliminates the need to pre-wash dishes {which saves water and eliminates an annoying clean-up step!}
• Helps maintain the look of new machines and helps prevent additional hard-water build-up {the inside of my dishwasher  actually looks cleaner since I started using Cascade Platinum}
• Delivers exceptional dishware shine {sparkling clean, spot free glasses are a wonderful thing!}

Gail  Simmons, Top Chef judge and editor of Food+Wine magazine, says, “The easiest recipes pop with unexpected, gourmet presentations. Drizzle bright sauces on sparkling white plates or layer desserts in crystal-­‐clean glassware. Keep your presentation sparkling with Cascade Platinum,which keeps dishes perfect for anytime entertaining and impromptu guests.”

This is also great advice for food photographs, too!

My Platinum Instagram Contest

If you’d like to show off your own food photography, Cascade has an Instagram contest just for you! The Cascade “My Platinum” contest is a four week Instagram contest that encourages fans to upload photos related to the weekly contest themes. Show off how sparkly Cascade makes all your pots, pans, and plates!

Each week, two contestants will be selected to receive a brand new Whirlpool dishwasher. Additionally, one lucky grand prize winner will receive a Platinum kitchen makeover!

Each week will have a 6-­‐day entry period where Instagram users can enter the contest with their #MyPlatinum Photo. Cascade will choose two weekly winners and one final grand prize winner after the entry period has ended. Please be sure to include both the #MyPlatinum hashtag and tag @MyCascade in your entries to the contest! Visit the contest landing page for all details.
• Week 1: My Platinum Plate (Entry Period: 6/3-­‐6/9) Show us your best dish styled from the sparkling plate up!
• Week 2: My Platinum Bite (Entry Period: 6/10-­‐6/16) Show us your best bite and most creative use of sparkling silverware!
• Week 3: My Platinum Clink (Entry: 6/17-­‐6/23) Show us how you serve up creative concoctions in sparkling glasses. Cheers!
• Week 4: My Platinum Table (Entry Period 6/24-­‐6/30) Show us your sparkling tablescape for your most special celebrations!
• Grand Prize Winner (Entry:6/3-­‐6/30 )

Connect with Cascade on Facebook and head over to Instagram  to sign up for the “My Platinum” Instagram Contest! You must register to win!

Do you have any tips for beautiful food photography? Please share in the comments!

My husband Dan is the most awesome, hardworking father there is. He’s patient and kind, plays with the kids, helps them build all kinds of projects, works with them and is teaching them to be hardworking, honest, fun loving and full of integrity. We have made some smart and beautiful babies!

To celebrate Father’s Day today, I let my hubby sleep in. I’ve got coffee ready and a nice egg casserole {that’s not mushy}, waiting for him when wakes up. Then we’re having a work day. There’s not much resting allowed when you’re moving, unfortunately. We’ll pack and clean for a while and then enjoy a fun water war out at our barn and have a nice dinner afterwards.

I wish everyone a wonderful day today. Don’t forget to pamper the special man in your life.

If you don’t have a kindle, but have a computer, ipad, or smart phone, head on over to download a Free Kindle App.

1,001 Best Grilling Recipes: Delicious, Easy-to-Make Recipes from Around the World

35 Homemade Bread Recipes – Fresh Out Of The Oven, Buttered and Gone (Hillbilly Housewife Cookbooks)

Betty Crocker 20 Best Summer Drink Recipes

Food Scrap Gardening: How To Grow Food from Scraps, Reduce Waste and Feed the World (Gardening Guidebooks)

40 Juicing Recipes For Weight Loss and Healthy Living (Juicer Recipes Book)

 The Paleo Chocolate Cookbook: 37 Healthy and Delicious Recipes That Are So Easy Even A Modern Caveman Can Do It

The CVS Drugstore Game: Strategies to Turn Pocket Change into Thousands of Dollars Worth of Free Products

How to Draw Cartoons – this book will help the complete novice turn out professional looking cartoons in minutes

Container Gardening Season by Season (The Weekend Gardener Series)

Growing Vegetables Like A Pro – How To Grow Vegetables In 7 Easy Steps! 

Green and Clean: Natural Cleaning Outside Your Home

 Soap Making: A Quick Soap Making Book, Including Homemade Soap Recipes, Soap Making Supplies, Lye, Process and More!

Do You Speak Dog? How to Easily Train Your Dog By Communicating With Him On HIS Level

A disclaimer about free Amazon kindle Ebooks – if you see anything here that you want, you might want to click right away and get it, because the prices change really fast on Amazon and they probably won’t be free for long! You can click on the picture of the book to be directed right to the appropriate page.

White Cloud sent me a 12 pack roll of their new Luxuriously Soft toilet paper a couple weeks ago. Now let me just start out by telling you that I grew up in Germany where they use(d) brown, rough toilet paper {I don't know if they still use it – but they used rough toilet paper when I lived there in the 1980s and STILL used rough toilet paper when I was in college over there in 1995-96.}  It resembles the paper towels you can use to dry your hands in public restrooms. It was pretty rough toilet paper!! But in a way, I am thankful for that experience, because I am really NOT picky when it comes to toilet paper now. My family thinks I'm crazy.

As a bargain shopper, I pretty much buy whatever toilet paper happens to be cheapest when we need it. Sometimes I get in trouble for the toilet paper I bring home, but I always justify it because the price was right!

Needless to say, my family was excited to try out the new Luxuriously Soft Toilet Paper White Cloud sent our way a few weeks ago. It is nice and soft; really soft. And it's quite thick as well which means I can use less of it. In a 6 person family, conserving is a pretty important concept. I'm constantly trying to get my kids to use less toilet paper. They really can be quite wasteful.

White Cloud Luxuriously Soft Bath Tissue is made using an innovative manufacturing technology called “TAD.” TAD, or “Through Air Dried,” is super-premium technology in the bath tissue world. It uses a special machine to blow air through single-ply sheets, creating a two-ply product with amazing thickness, softness, strength and absorption. It's also Rain Forest Alliance certified which means no rain forests were destroyed to keep my booty clean and dry. I like that a lot!

All in all, the White Cloud Luxuriously Soft Toilet Paper is a big hit at my house! If you'd like to see me in person, you can click on the video and take a look at what I have to say. This is the first time I have shared a video of myself and I never would've thought the first blog I shared would be about toilet paper!

White Cloud Luxuriously Soft Bath Tissue is available exclusively at Walmart, and clicking the link below will get you a $1 off coupon! Click here to Find White Cloud products near you.

$1.00 off coupon

You can also connect with White Cloud:

Like White Cloud on Facebookanbsp;nbsp;nbsp;
Follow White Cloud on Twitter

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links.

I don’t normally write posts about just coupons, but I thought you might like a few of these game coupons:

• $3.00 off SCRABBLE or CONNECT 4 Game
• $3.00 off any one TWISTER or OPERATION Game
• $4.97 value Crayola when you Buy $10 Crayola Color

And while you’re printing coupons, you can also sign up for a free Flatbread from Chili’s if you’re so inclined. They’re giving away one million coupons! Just click on the box to grab yours.

 

What’s your favorite family game?

So the big task that is going to consume me this summer is weeding. So far, anyway. I keep thinking I will get the weeds out, and then mulch, but I still haven’t finished mulching. My father in law gave me this antique rake last week and I’ve been trying it out. I love the way it looks, but I’m not sold yet on its function. It does a really nice job on teeny tiny weeds, but I’ve got some pretty big, nasty ones already that need a strong hoe. But isn’t it nice anyway?

Last week I decided to finally clean out my carrot area. I hadn’t found any carrots after 2 plantings, so I decided they just never germinated. I headed over there with my hoe and was just about to start whacking when I spied it!

Can you find the feathery carrot in there? I’m so glad I saw it. Once I found one, I put down my hoe and started weeding by hand. I found a lot of baby carrots in there. It helps to weed carefully and sometimes, I just have to use my fingers.

And there are smaller carrots! Look for two long, skinny leaves and the start of a little feather, an you’ll find it! There are actually a couple tiny carrots hiding in this picture. While weeding other areas of the garden, I found many more volunteer tomatoes, and transplanted a few of them and I also found a lot of flowers. The zinnias finally germinated as well as a few marigolds! It really pays to weed with an eagle eye and light touch sometimes.

Here are a few tips for weeding:

1. I wait to weed – unless I’m certain that the weeds are in fact, weeds, I leave them alone until I can tell for sure. Patience is a virtue.

2. I use my rakes and the hand cultivator like the one my father in law gave me, but I’m not afraid to put them down, get down on my hands and knees, and weed with my fingers.

3. Know what your plants will look like after they germinate! This Vegetable Plant Identification from Seed to Seedling at Gardening-Advice.com is a great place to look!! I can’t tell you how many little seedlings I’ve accidentally disturbed because I wasn’t careful.

4. Use carefully prepared soil to minimize weed growth in the first place. One of the tenents of square foot gardening for instance, is to reduce weeding. I might have to look more carefully at that option, myself!

5. I have found that weeds come out easiest after a nice rain! Don’t be afraid to get a little muddy.

How do you weed? Please share some of your own tips!

Here’s what else is going on in my garden:

My son helped me plant watermelon and pie pumpkins. We still have giant pumpkins, cantaloupe, and another type of melon to plant. We have to get that done tomorrow! I also planted my orange Okra. I can’t wait to see it grow!

The cucumbers I started from seed and transplanted are flowering! The cucumbers I direct sowed are up and looking good, but not flowering yet.

My cabbages are looking good! And so are the cauliflowers, brussel sprouts. I’ve been harvesting a little broccoli already. Unfortunately, I don’t think I will get a big head this year, but I’ll keep harvesting the side shoots as long as I can.

The distributing discovery in my garden are these little holes and the disappearance of all of my sweet corn. I had two gorgeous rows of sweet corn and then they ALL disappeared, expect 2 lonely little corn stalks. I’m guessing these holes have something to do with it, and that it’s probably field mice, but I don’t really know. Has anyone experienced this? Please let me know!

But here is the real reason for the lack of progress at my garden:

We are actually moving into the barn, temporarily. If you missed my announcement yesterday, we are finally starting our Passive House and will be living in the barn while that happens!
Here’s a sneak peak at the inside of the barn. Don’t judge my dirty floors… I’ll share more photos later, once we get all moved in! But moving this past weekend is a big part of why I didn’t get very far on my to-do list.

And that’s what’s going on in my garden. What’s going on in yours? Do you have a tip for weeding that I didn’t mention? Or, know what the annoying holes are in my garden? I’d love to hear!

Linking up: TGP;

Here’s my Weekly Menu and Freezer Cooking Plan -

Breakfasts ~

• Maple Sausage French Toast Bake
• German Pancakes
• The Best Buttermilk Pancakes
• It’s Easy Being Green Smoothies & Toast
• Eggs & Bacon
• Yogurt, Berries & Homemade Chocolate Cranberry Granola
• Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Lunches ~

• PB & J Banana Burritos
• Leftovers
• Egg Salad Sandwiches on Crackers
• Bean burritos with homemade re-fried beans made in under 10 minutes

Dinners ~

• Corn, Avocado & Tomato Tostadas
• Chicken Picata
• Grilled Steak
• Grilled Chicken
• Stuffed Banana Peppers
• Chef Salad & Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs
• Dinner Out or Homemade Pizza

 That’s what I will TRY to make… What are you eating?

Linking up: MPM

Yesterday, though, I was looking for some apps to download to reinforce basic skills over the summer with my kids and I found an app called Spelling Bug. At first, I thought it might be one to download, but then I read closely. Do you see what I saw? I totally judge when mistakes happen in professional settings. Why should I believe that you can teach my kid to spell when you can’t get your description right??

There, Their, or They’re

You can bet your bottom dollar I’m not paying $1.99 to buy a SPELLING app that can’t even pick the right version of THERE to use in THEIR description.

In case you don’t know:

THERE – According to the American Heritage Dictionary: THERE is most often used as an adverb or a pronoun {though the pronoun part confuses me a little honestly, as I’m not sure which noun it replaces}.

• I’ll take you THERE. 
• THERE are lots of spelling mistakes on the internet.

THEIR – is a possessive pronoun. It shows that something belongs to a group of people.

• THEIR car broke down on the way to Iowa.
• THEIR teacher taught them the difference between THERE, THEIR, and THEY’RE in the third grade.
• Kids use THEIR hands to arrange the letters to learn how to spell using the Spelling Bug app.

THEY’RE – is a contraction. It’s two words: THEY ARE. That is all.

• THEY’RE coming to visit us soon!
• THEY’RE hoping the rain will finally stop.
• I hope THERE will come a time when THEY’RE able to see my post and fix THEIR error. {And I’ll take a free download for pointing it out. }.

And that’s your 5 Minute Grammar Lesson! If you’re looking for more, here are some of my more popular grammar posts:

Should have gone OR Should have went

Your welcome OR You’re welcome

Definitely OR Definatly

Supposed to OR Suppose to

Until next time, Grammarians! Enjoy your weekend.