Hamburger Update- no news

The hamburgers are still above my freezer in the garage, I kinda forgot about them... I took a peek at one the other day and EWWWWWW! I DID NOT open it! They are still rotting away, liquidity is setting in.

I sent e-mails to the Biology Dept at UF two more times, and didn't even get so much as a "you're crazy lady!" from them. : ( Well, they missed their chance at making a little more of a Gator fan of me. I do not like the Gators as a whole, but parts of them I have liked. Shands Teaching Hospital has taken very good care of my father, and Tim Tebow is(so far... no one is perfect!) admirable and a great sportsman, and I employ the knowledge of the Extension office at times also attending their plant sales of native plants. *sigh* I guess they missed the boat on that one....

I took a couple pics of the burgers. Here they are:






I apologize for the size, for some reason the picture loader isn't working properly...  Disappointment is all around...*sigh*
PS I have a post about a recent trip to my parent's house last week, however I have lots of pics to share so I think I will wait till the photo loader is working properly!

3 little birds, on my doorstep...

The wrens that visit with us every year came back.  I like to refer to them as "our wrens", but I don't know for sure they are the same ones. Any how, we had babies again, 3 this time!  Daddy was scouting for a nest site and when he found theirs was still there and in very good condition, he was VERY excited!!!
The pics are as follows...
The first shot is for perspective...behind the radio is where the nest is.  Up by the ceiling, and very safe.  No cats or other animals are going to get up there and disturb that nest!
                                    

May 7 - I know there is more than one egg in there...  Aren't they pretty eggs?  Momma disposes of the shells and the poo the babies make as she goes along, amazing!

May 12- looks like one has already hatched...

May 13- three little mouths!!!! that make a LOUD noise!

May 17- WOW, look at those mouths now! The noise that came from them is also louder and more incessant!  When anyone comes out the backdoor it's " Mommy? FEED ME!!!!  NOW!

Now, in between these pics, a neighbor found another baby bird that had fallen out of his nest in his yard.  The nest was too high for anyone to get up there and put this bird back, so we put it in with these birds.  Thinking that it was the same type( WRONG!!!) we thought maybe the momma wouldn't notice a fourth bird in there....  NOPE(What momma, I ask you, doesn't know her own kids, or at least how many she has?!?!)!  It ended up dying.  Sweetie Pie and The Rocket were sad, but it's an invaluable lesson about nature, it doesn't always have Disney endings...(They know this already, but I always welcome reminders of how good they have it!)

May 25- My, My, My! Look at how they have grown!

(Sorry guys, I am not the chuck wagon, she will be back soon!)

May 28- We are now officially empty nesters...

We missed the flying lessons, however, S did see the momma and daddy out on the porch calling to the babies to come out for their flying lessons.  They would sit on the back of a chair, and look up at the nest and call for them to come out!  Really cute!  Now they are gone and we can reclaim our back porch. 

Can't wait till next year!

Has this ever happened to you?

Garden

Been working in the garden.  Trying to beautify the backyard a little more.  I am a patient gardener, willing to wait on the plants to see if they will like where they are and what I am doing for them.  Not my husband, he is an impatient person who thinks he can get stuff to grow by hitting it with everything he's got in the way of fertilizers.  But he is good at retaining wall and pavers, and this is what he did for me:

Also a couple of these to sit on while we are playing horseshoes:

I planted flower seeds and seedlings on this side and on the other side I have the veggie/herb garden.

I've got everything squished into the area and it still does pretty good.  I would love to have a bigger area, but at least I have what I have.  Some new things I am trying are Dragon's tounge beans:

Aren't they pretty?  You can eat them now like this or you can wait till they are dried up and eat them like lima beans.  Also on the dragon line are Dragon's Egg Cukes.  They will be a yellow color and will look like a dragon's egg would look like!  Cool huh?  I am also growing some kale, collards, green beans(mostly for seed so I don't have to buy next year!), sugar snap peas, brussles sprouts(which are done now), mint, oregano, bee balm, lemon balm, basil, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, cowpeas, loofa, and melons. Not too much of one thing, I definitely won't be canning anything or having any one thing as a side dish for supper, except for the brussles sprouts, but it is fun to grow stuff and it's a sanity maker for me.  Weeding is a lovely, mindless, unwinding thing for me to so and I can get lost in it! 

Loofa and melons(2 kinds of watermelon and a honeydew type)

These blackberries grow wild in my yard, so I have trained them(somewhat, after all they are wild!) up on the fence line and this year I gathered enough to make two cobblers with them!

Who doesn't like the smell of gardenias?  This bush has been through a lot!  Last year the freeze got it bad and lots of the freeze damage had to be trimmed off, but this year it is coming back good! 

What are you growing? What would you like to grow?

Hamburger Update- final one?

Ok, so I haven't posted in a while- busy- sorry. 

I did have time to take pics of the hamburger though, and without futher a do, here they are:

The first three were taken the week of April 14th.  Notice how much condensation is in the McDonalds burger?  I don't know why, it wasn't hot or even warm when I put it into the container.

McDonalds' close-up 

I am surprised.

Real Hamburger close-up 

It's moldy, but obviously not as bad as the McDonalds.

Now for photos taken the week of May 3rd.

Major difference in the Real Hamburger: 

Now for the McDonalds:

Do you notice the liquid?  And I wish you could smell them.  The McDonalds burger has a sour smell to it.  The Real burger has a moldy smell to it.  The molds look different too.  I am wondering if there are two different molds growing on these burgers?  I contacted the local Extension office to see if they do mold testing or knew anyone that did, and they directed me to the Biology Dept of UF.  I emailed them and they have not responded.  My question now, is how long do I wait for a response?  My family(read: husband) is tired of the experiment.  I have placed the burgers above the garage freezer which will only hasten the decomposition process.  I would really like to find out what types of mold are growing on these burgers!

My findings were not what I expected.  I fully expected the McDonalds burger to stay fresher longer. As you can see that was NOT the case!  I will say that looking at that hamburger has caused The Rocket to think twice before wanting to eat fast food now, however, I still have a long way to go...

The Rocket achieves double digits!

This past weekend we were a partying crew as it was The Rocket's 10th birthday.  We had a pool party with some of his classmates and some other friends.  They are all polar bears because the water is still freezing and yet they swam anyways!  Then they played Just Dance 2 on the wii for a while(got warmed up) then they got back into the pool! CRAZY KIDS!!!!  The Rocket had alot of fun and really enjoyed having his friends over. 

The cake-his design

Transformers...

The birthday crew with mustaches...

The Rocket- 10 years old!

Momma getting in on the mustache fun...

Hamburger update #2

McDonald's hamburger- showing signs of mold now.  Below is the inside of the burger. I am surprised that it is already showing signs of rotting.  I thought for sure it would be a couple more weeks.

This is the Homemade burger, lots of mold.  I could not pry it open to get a view of the inside without destroying the bun.  I'll give it a couple more weeks. 

The smell is not very pronounced on either of them, however on the Homemade burger there is a smell.  On the McDonald's burger it doesn't smell like it originally did, but it doesn't stink either. 

My husband cannot wait for this experiment to be over...

Until next time...

Hamburger update #1

This is the Homemade burger, showing signs of mold growth...

This is the Mcdonald's hamburger, still good...  The Rocket doesn't want to eat this particular one anymore!

It's been a week, and already my thoughts are being proved...  Stay tuned!