Berries berries berries!

It is berry season at the Wenzel homestead this month!

At the beginning of the year, we invested in two varieties of blueberry bush for our garden. Though they are both still under two feet in height, one of them is actually fruiting!

If you did not know, blueberries need an minimum number of “chill hours” or total hours during the year between 32 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit. And being in Southern California, we don’t get as many of those hours as other parts of the country. Heck! We had triple digits for a day or so around this last Christmas. Yikes, I know! But there are a few varieties that will work in our area. We chose Jewel Blueberry and Sunshine Blue Blueberry, which work with only 150-200 chill hours.

So far we have picked about 2 of the smaller clam shell sized containers of blueberries. Yummy!

To better our chances of being able to eat our berries, rather than the birds getting to them first, the hubby built a bird net cage for our blueberry bushes. It was cobbled together out of left over PVC pieces and bird netting. I think this was actually our most successful attempt at keeping out the bigger critters from our bounty.

The blueberry bushes also need a more acidic soil mix, which is why they are in their very own wine barrel planter. No native soil at all.

We have been trying to cultivate our strawberry patch as well, but we have been waylaid by crabgrass at every turn. Hopefully this last effort will have gotten the bulk of it out. We are so sick of digging and ripping this stuff out! Ugh!

Another addition to our garden has been our boysenberry vines. They were dropped off one day last spring by our neighbors! What a nice surprise! We had no idea how to grow boysenberries, but when has that stopped us? In the ground they went! They grew all year, creeping into our paths and climbing our garden fence. We were wondering if it would ever flower! After consultation with the neighbors and the internet, we realized that we needed to get these vines off of the ground, lest they start to go back into the earth again and re-root. So we created this trellis. We wanted it to be sturdy enough to hold the vines, but also open enough not to be affected by the strong winds we have in this area (Santa Anas!). A month or so after installing the trellis, we started to find flowers on the vines! Yeay!

Now, a few months later, we are barely able to keep up with the berries that have been produced. I have already made a berry-vanilla-oatmeal crisp ice cream and have been eating them with yogurt for two weeks now. We have already started to freeze them, so as not to waste them. This last weekend alone, we have already picked about 6 cups of boysenberries from the vines. We have enough still on the vines to keep us happy for a month or more (and beyond since we are freezing them).

Hopefully next year, we will have the berry trifecta! If we ever get the crabgrass out of our garden (in a safe, organic way of course).

If you have any tips on getting rid of the crabgrass, we would sure love to hear them! Or if you would like our ice cream recipe, all you have to do is ask!

Monster Crochet

It seems like forever ago that we last did a bit of crochet. 

It is a great activity when the sun has gone down and you are curled up under a cozy blanket. 

Not really a summer activity. 

But there are some exceptions...

Our neighbors just had their first child this week. Such an exciting time!

One of our favorite pastimes with them is to come over and watch Walking Dead together, so it came as no shock as to what they chose for their baby's room theme.

Monsters!

Googly-eyed, multi-armed, multi-colored cute and cuddly monsters!

So in honor of their first born, we decided to create a truly cuddly monster for their soon-to-be 'lil-monster'. 

We used their baby shower invitation for inspiration. Since we had no instructions or templates, it took us a little over a week to create, but we really enjoyed doing it.

We hope the 'lil-monster' next door will like it too.

Cannot wait to meet you little guy!

Here are a few photos of the finished product:

We used the monster at the far right in the back as the inspiration!

Last Minute Plans

So this past weekend, we were supposed to help a friend of ours with a bash at the beach. We were tasked with staking a claim to a fire pit in the morning and hanging around all day till everyone arrived. We have several beaches in our area with fire pits so you can do a bonfire at the beach legally. (Though not for much longer due to some recent California law changes, but that comes next year.) You can only have a fire within the concrete rings provided at the beaches, in order to keep things from getting out of hand with the crowds. We decided on a smaller beach in Corona Del Mar, thinking that it would not be super-crowded. It was only going to be about 70 degrees out, which is downright chilly for August in SoCal so we thought there weren't going to be any issues getting a fire-pit. We drove up at 9:15 am with another friend in tow and discovered that all of the rings were already claimed. Just our luck.

Not wanting to miss out on all the s'mores our friend was bringing and with some quick thinking by the hubby, we came up with an alternative plan. We offered up our home for the party and since everyone was expecting a fire, we would offer one of those too.

Our backyard is currently in transition from a yard full of weeds to our own personal playground, but we are a few years away from full completion. One thing we have a lot of is open dirt and concrete chunks. The concrete was from the patio that used to sit just outside the back doors that we decided to jack-hammer out one day. We have been slowly trying to recycle or trash the concrete chunks. They actually constitute most of our pathways at the moment but making big chunks into little rocks is hard and tedious work. Needless to say, we have extra.

The day of jack-hammering... It feels so long ago.

Since we had so much concrete left, my hubby though that it would make a great material for a fire pit ring. Armed with nothing but some gloves and our wheelbarrow, he set about making the ring in our large expanse of dirt whilst I set about prepping some food and drinks for the party.

In little under an hour, he had everything set-up, including a little cooking area using a leftover grill from an older camp stove.

After everyone arrived and the sun set, we started up the fire and settled in. There were plenty of s'mores for everyone because what is a bonfire without s'mores?

Everything may have smelled like a camp-fire once it was all over but at least the party went on!

We hope everyone had a great time! We did!