Toads!

We have slugs, a lot of slugs. I've tried drowning them in buried cups of beer (very effective but the carnage is more than i can bear), picking them up with chopsticks and transplanting them to the trash (time consuming) and just hoping they'd go away. But those tell-tale mucousy trails made it clear they weren't just going away.


For two summers we tried to "entice" some toads into our yard. We put some clay pots on their sides and fluffed decomposing leaves into the bottoms. We arranged them in a shady spot by a large tree and made a rock "garden" of sorts. We left out saucers of water. Nothing. I decided there may be toads in Chicago, but not in at least a 10-block radius. If we were going to get toads in there, we were going to have to import them rather than have it happen organically.


That's where things stalled for another year. You can't just buy any old toad and plop it into your backyard. That's why cane toads and bullfrogs have become nuisances or worse in a lot of areas. So i researched and found out that an indigenous toad for this area is the common American Toad. We started at Petco once i established that they do carry frogs and toads-- but as it turns out only the more exotic species (like tree frogs and such) that people keep indoors as pets.

So i searched the web and found Reptile City. The toads were quite affordable ($6 each) although the shipping was $20. In hindsight this makes sense because how else would you get live toads to you intact if not overnight? We set-up a little enclosure made of sticks and waist-high chicken wire in the afore-mentioned toad spot. We put saucers of water dug into the soil so they are flush with the ground. I got a notice that the package was due to be delivered by 3 pm.


I put a note on the door to make sure the postman rang the doorbell and left my phone number. I stayed close to home but with the ac blowing i missed his steps on the porch. The next time i checked i had a package slip to retrieve the package the next morning! I headed out to the post office and they searched for the package only to come back and tell me it was still on the truck with the driver. I explained the situation and as soon as i mentioned "live toads" that woman leapt into action. She called the driver, found the location of the truck and in 15 minutes the package was in my hand. In the meantime i had gotten a few frantic calls from Reptile City who had been notified about the package not being delivered.

After retrieving the boys we headed home to open the box inside their "habitat." I was very worried because i expected the box to be jumping or something and it was completely still. I opened both layers of packaging and found a cotton drawstring bag which immediately started moving and jumping and generally coming alive. I put that down on the ground inside the chicken wire and gently shook the toads out. Hot dog! 4 toads including a little baby one.

But damn if they weren't much smaller than i had anticipated. Even the biggest one took one look at that chicken wire and hopped right out. Madness ensued. I was running around getting old sheets that i draped around the chicken wire and secured on the bottom with rocks. Once that was more or less done we tackled trying to catch the 3 that had escaped. 2 had already hopped under the fence into our neighbors' yard. And so while holding a toad was not really on my list of to-dos ,i successfully caught and transported those toads back to their enclosure.

Ultimately i'd like them to be "free-range" toads. But for now i'm trying to keep them enclosed so that they adjust and make our yard their home. Tonight i'm going to get metal stakes and make a bigger enclosure out of landscaping fabric. I'm envisioning a toad "run" of sorts. This way the toads have more room and Henry can get in there with them and move around. He spent about 30 minutes in the current enclosure which is only slightly wider around than he is. I'll update with pictures as soon as possible.

Busy Bees

Thanks to all for the well-wishes. I owe several of you a return message but i wanted to get a post out so people didn't start to worry. We're really doing fine. My toe is healing-- at least to the point where it's just achy and not painful and it isn't really keeping me from doing anything.

This past weekend was testament to that. Even though the weather was less than ideal(rainy and 40 or overcast and 40 with strong winds) we had a good weekend and i managed to make some serious progress on my outdoor projects. As i like to say "there are only 2 days in the weekend and 2 hours in naptime," so regardless of the weather i was out there doing crazy things both days.

Saturday i moved the leaf compost pile from the back yard all the way around to the side yard. Last year i didn't get around to blowing/shredding the leaves until the very late fall and i was rushing around because by the end of my leafblowing it was snowing-- hard. I wound up making a leaf pile right next to the ac unit which i knew would have to be moved before we could use the ac this year. Let's just say that moving partially composted, water-logged leaves into a wheelbarrow, then wheeling it 3/4 way around the house through thick soft mud (i just turned over the entire front yard) dumping (and repeat) made me feel not so bad about not getting to the gym during the week.

After that craziness i transplanted some of the hostas from the front to the side and capped off my chores by using a sledgehammer to break apart this strange concrete ring the previous owners made in the garden. It was so ugly and i've been dying to get rid of it. I'm only about 1/2 done but that was more than a good day's work.

I won't go into as much detail on Sunday-- i tried to do lighter stuff that day but i still worked for the 2 hour solid naptime lasted and was EXHAUSTED last night. The only downside to working during naptime is that i come in and the boys are fresh and rested and i'm ready for a bath and bed with 4+ hours to go.

Anyway it was nice to make so much progress. Henry's party is at our house on Saturday and i'm trying to keep my expectations reasonable for what i can get accomplished, but it would be nice to have a few more big projects completed in the front yard by then. We actually have sunny nice weather predicted this week so i'm going to see what i can accomplish during lunchtime.

Henry and Silas are both doing great and are anticipating their grandparents visit this week. Henry knows his birthday is coming and is quite excited about both it and Oms and Opa's visit.

Making Choices about Food

I recently finished reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollen. I found it a powerful book (although the last section could have used some additional editing in my opinion,) and it's been generating learning and discussion in our household in myriad ways.

The first section of the book lays out the path of our food system's industrialization from the 20s/30s to the present day. Key turning points and decisions along the way, such as crop subsidies, monocultures, and engineering cattle to eat grain instead of grass help you understand how things used to work and how they actually operate today.

Section two considers what he refers to as the "industrial organic" food system, i.e. whole foods. Pollen is an adept writer and is amazing at taking say, the history of corn and making it a page-turner. The conclusion i drew from the book can be boiled down to: the most important thing is to buy our food locally-- from farmers that we can "inspect" and have a relationship with. This cuts down on the petroleum fueled costs of transporting food across country, circumvents the industrial system of divorcing cattle from grazing and instead moving them to feed lots, and supports farmers that are farming in an environmentally sane way, i.e. merging animals back into the land so that animals fertilize the land and the land feeds the animals. Notice i didn't say organic anywhere in here. Of course a local farmer that isn't using pesticides if even better, but the chapter on industrial organic, or the large-scale organic food producers supplying whole foods-- was an eye-opener on how large-scale organic foods are as wholesome or logical as they might seem.



The book has been producing discussion and stimulating explorations of new skills in our household in a way i deem possible because of the rise of things like Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), local farmers' markets, numerous blogs and other Internet resources devoted to people trying to implement the same principles in their life. In other words, you don't read something that speaks to you and then feel like you have to "go off the grid" in order to implement your ideals.

It seems imminently doable to remain in our house in the city where we don't drive much and have access to public transport-- source our food from local farms (meat, dairy and produce), make as much of the other stuff as we can (i think my new interest for the summer is soap-making), grow some of our own vegetables and use native and perennial plantings in our flower garden (gone is our sorry looking lawn), keep using our cloth diapers and dry as much as possible on the line outside.

I'm not planning on quitting my job or not using electricity, and i'm happy to run my dishwasher when it's full thank you very much, but there are lots of things that help our budget, make us feel better about the food we're eating and nourishing our kids with, and show our support for the alternative suppliers to the industrial supermarkets. It doesn't hurt that it's spring and we get to start working on some of these projects!

At the end of the month we have a day-trip planned to a huge natural plant nursery in St. Charles, IL. I'll be meeting with a garden designer who will help me plan a very small prairie for our front yard. The nursery is an extensive supplier of native plants for the region and hard-picks their seed stock from plants within 20 miles. Other day-trips this spring include a visit to the farm we ultimately pick to buy shares of and source of meat, dairy and produce from.

Gardening Questions

Couple questions for anyone with gardening/plant knowledge.

1) Can anyone identify the plant below? It's possible that i planted it, but it doesn't look like anything i remember buying. It's definitely a perennial (and possibly a weed i guess) because it's come up in the front and spread like wildfire, and i definitely didn't plant anything out there. It looks nice enough, but i'd like to know what it is so i can figure out how much i want it to spread. It's not evergreen, but it seems pretty hardy for us in zone 5. Any ideas?

2) Anyone have suggestions for an evergreen, zone 5 winter hardy, fast-spreading, perennial ground cover? I'm already starting to plan for some gardening upgrades next year and this is one of the first key plant decisions i need to make.

Sorry to interrupt the normally-themed blogging. I'll be back soon with a kidlet update.

9 Weeks, 6 Days/ 2 Years, 1 Month, 2 Weeks, 4 Days

Although we had a lovely bbq to inaugurate our patio, i don't have pictorial proof. Not to worry though, we're having another gathering this weekend and by that time our "baby grass" should be coming in and i should have more flowers in the beds. Last weekend's gathering was a success, the cornerstone of which was JT's brisket. Of course the brisket required he get up at 4 am to start the 12 hour smoking process! This weekend we're doing simple steak tacos and his killer margaritas.

Before i forget i wanted to mention a few items of blog business. The first is that i'm in the process of migrating all our pictures to Picasa from Yahoo Photos. In case you haven't read, Yahoo Photos is being discontinued in the fall. I've already transferred pictures from the time Henry was 6 months on. I'm slowly working on the older ones which i have to download in a painstaking one-by-one process. I put up a new link to the Picasa site on the right-hand side of this page. I just uploaded a new folder called May 2007 that will bring you up to date with our photo collection.

Secondly, i've had a few people tell me lately that they forget to call or email us because they feel like they're in constant contact via the blog. This is great for you guys, but not so great for us. So throw us a bone and let us know what's up for you once in awhile!

8 Weeks, 5 Days/ 1 Year, 1 Month, 1 Week, 3 Days

We pretty successfully tackled our first major "diy" home project. This weekend, with the extensive and gracious help of our friends Corey and Troy, we put in a paver patio in the backyard. I don't think anyone would mistake us for professionals, but i think it turned out really nice, and certainly good enough for us to put the grills and a table on. We did learn that the old adage "measure twice and cut once" also applies when you're digging. We made a mistake with the dimensions of the space we dug but managed to find a pretty easy way to fix things up. I'll try to take some pictures of it soon to post. It was extremely hard work, but we managed to wrap things up by about 4 yesterday and go for an early dinner.

Today we had to head back to home depot for a few more supplies and did a bit more yard work. Although we've planted perennials that over time will make the backyard gardens pretty lush, right now they're fairly lackluster, so i think this week i'm also going to pick out a few annuals to brighten things up.

We couldn't have asked the boys to be any better. Silas slept most of the day away in his bouncer outside while we worked. Corey kept Henry entertained inside most of the time as it was sprinkling on and off and Henry wasn't too keen on getting wet.

We're hoping to head to a friend's house for a BBQ tomorrow, and then hopefully we'll be able to have people over next weekend to inaugurate our new patio!