This Spud’s For You!

We had mix results on The Farm this year, mostly because of the damn animals eating everything they could get their furry little lips on. The cucumbers, peas and carrots all ended up being a lost cause and the weeds quickly took over their beds.

We tried our luck with potatoes this year. Neither one of us know a thing about potatoes but we got a little guidance from good old Google and figured we would get a little something from our potato plants. The other day when Bill and the boys were out in the garden cleaning up they decided to check out the potatoes and see if we’d have any to enjoy.

Man we hit the jackpot with the potatoes! As Bill pulled the plants from the ground it was like a potato bonanza, each plant yielding more than the one before. Within a half an hour we had a five gallon bucket filled to the rim with fresh potatoes. There were some BIG ones too!

This isn’t even a quarter of our haul

I have to admit, I’ve been very stingy in sharing my potatoes. I begrudgingly gave my mom six or eight and I refuse to let anyone else have them now that I’ve tasted them.

That’s right, they are the most delicious potatoes I’ve ever eaten. Bill fried a few up with some onions, olive oil and seasoning and they were melt in your mouth yummy. We even got Cameron to try some and he LOVED them.

I’m looking forward to homemade chips and fries, maybe even some hash browns. Of course we’ll be frying some more up for dinner tonight!

The potatoes are by far my favorite thing from the garden this year.

What is your favorite thing from your garden this year? Did you get an unexpected yield like we did?

This past weekend Bill and I were lucky enough to sneak away for some quiet time without the boys. Man did I need that!

We headed to one of my favorite places, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Chased south by bad weather, we decided to spend a day seeing the sights of Washington DC. If you happen to follow my twitter feed you know that we were all over the place.

The White House looking less than immaculate.

Something struck me as I entered the mall, you know, by the Smithsonian museums. I remember it being much cleaner.

The last time I was in DC was probably the late 90’s and I remember the mall as being pristinely manicured grass and nice gravel pathways. Now, everything is muddled. There is no clean line where the grass ends and the pathways begin and it looks…dirty.

We made our way to other sights around town and when we hit the Capital Building I was shocked.

As Americans, we were minorities in town. People from all over the world were walking around taking in the sights.

Shouldn’t we have our best foot forward?

The lawn at the capital building was disgraceful. Full of weeds and looking quite shabby. The beds around the building were in the same state of disarray. No definition where the lawn ended and the gardens began. Weeds growing and over growing everything. Over all it gave the appearance more of an abandoned house than one of the most recognizable buildings in our great country.

I know there are pressing issues in the world right now and some of you might think that the appearance of our nation’s capital is not important enough to even rank. I would have to disagree with those people. What visitors see when they come to visit us has an effect on how they see us as a nation. Don’t we have a bad enough reputation in some parts of the world? Do we really want to look like unkempt slobs to the world as well?

I didn’t take any photos of the dirty parts because I was actually embarrassed.

We’re struggling with record high unemployment rates. I can see a way to help the DC metro area with that…Hire people to take care of the grounds.

To me it all comes back to pride in ownership. This is our country, lets show some pride and put our best foot forward even if it’s in the garden. I’m sure there are grounds crews that take care of all that, they should be ashamed.

I don’t know, maybe I’m off base here but I can tell you that as I stood amongst the people from foreign lands I was embarrassed to see what I saw.

What do you think? Should it matter what our national landmarks look like or are there more pressing issues?