Day 148

1. A lazy morning. Working on my crossword puzzle (I"m slowly getting better!), enjoying the flowers from the wedding on Saturday. Also note the cat's collar that needs a new battery and the row of lazy heads sitting on the couch under the window. :)

2. A visit to the much loved plant nursery! Finally, finally, finally got some vegetables. And some roses to replace the ones Tonka ruined, argh. And some annuals

3. And a few cacti to add to Dad's cacti and succulent box that we keep out in his office.

What else? A little bit of placing and planting. Scott was here for dinner. Also cooked the first ham from the pigs I raised. It was delicious!

Day 140

1. Made Rhubarb Crisps for dessert tonight. For dinner we had marinated barbecued porkchops, sauteed cabbage and red potatoes with chives.

Other happenings -

Homeschooling & piano

Finished filling up the potato bins with compost

Planted potatoes and onions

Moved some sheep into the orchard

Worked on a farm newsletter

Enjoyed the sunshine!

Day 201 (Friday)

1. Scarlet runner beans in the vegetable garden
2. A wedding! Sara & Colin got married. It was pretty fun... they were excited!
3. At the party with Amanda and Hannah... oops, I didn't think to take pictures until it was dark...
4. & 5. Floating lanterns! One of the most amazing things to see in person. Really.
6. What else? Lap swimming early in the morning, cleaning up inside and outside today, enjoying the wonderful wedding reception, dancing :)

Four square & gardening

So it's summer here! Well, kind of. Hopefully I didn't just jinx it.
I'm afraid the peas and lettuce will be dying off, but that means that one day we might just get a tomato. It's been such a cool summer so far that we will be doing good to get any. ;)

This evening just felt so summery as I performed the yearly ritual of setting up the vegetable garden sprinkler. It reminds me of the my first vegetable garden when I discovered that I actually liked gardening and that it could consists of more than just weeding. It would've been the summer that Mom was pregnant with Daniel. She declared that there would be no vegetable garden and I decided that I was wiling to do what it took to have one. I think she then helped me convince dad to buy me my first "power tool", a Mantis rototiller.

Well, dang-nabit, my eyes are getting tired, so I've got to quit, but I will close by saying that fourth of July was pretty awesome this year. Foursquare was one of the highlights strangely enough. I'm guessing the last time I played foursquare in a real box was in fourth grade... I know I remember playing it in first grade in California during recess. That was probably when I was learning it! Which was, ahem, quite a while ago.. . ;)

Raised beds

I've been dreaming of raised vegetable beds for years.

Or precisely, since I was 11 and discovered that I liked gardening. That spring, mom had declared that there was not going to be a vegetable garden - you know, something due to her being pregnant - and I realized that my goal in life that summer was to have a vegetable garden. And that I would miss pulling weeds. Well, not really. But I realized that there was more to gardening then pulling weeds. Since then we had various incarnations of mounded beds, or at the least, nothing but weed cloth laid on the ground with holes poked in.

But this year, unbeknownst to me, was destined to be different. God had heard my prayers.

In April we realized that our shed needed to be resided. The siding (batten wood) was failing to keep out mice and all sorts of nasty critters and had to come off. Well, if you're familiar with batten wood siding, you know that it consists of wide planks (about a foot wide) battened down with narrow strips. Well, the narrow strips weren't much good for anything but the wide planks, usually sized one foot bye eight feet, were/are perfect for raised boxes.

So... Tah Dah! We now have eight beautiful raised beds in the vegetable garden, and four flower boxes near the shed.



Today, Hannah came over and we got the pea trellises up, did some weeding and planted some squash and cukes. You can't really tell in the picture below, but we are using a bent over stock panel as a trellis for the cucumbers and squash. Hopefully, it should work!




I'm also being particularly ambitious by weed clothing everything. :) Should pay off in a month!

So I posted this and then realized I should give credit to those who deserve it. First off, I think Jacob and Daniel helped with almost every single box. They're pretty awesome! Andy certainly helped with at least half of them, and Scott, I think, built the first two, plus he did the majority of work tearing them off in the first place. Also, all the younger men helped with pulling out the original nails, which was rather tedious. I wasn't able to do a lot until yesterday but since my neck is doing so much better now I actually got contribute by doing the chop sawing. I now have a lovely sunburn, thanks to our last push to get them finished. I think we made five of them in an hour and a half!

The start of something

This may not look like much, but it's the start of Hannah W's and my spectacular (so we imagine!) vegetable garden.

Hannah and I are partnering together this year and we are both so excited to be doing it together. I'm so excited. Yup, it's been fun. And it's going to get even better.