Harvest!

Our harvest of the last week (minus all the tomatoes we've already eaten)!  That is a cucumber on the green cutting board.  It looks fat and yellowish, not like the cucumbers I'm used to buying at the store, but it *tastes* amazing!!  Even better than the ones I'm used to buying at the store!  Zucchini is on the white cutting board.  Sliced up for dinner.

I am happy.

My Happy Place

Yes, a garden.  MY garden!!

I have long loved gardening, but we let our garden go to weeds about 4-5 years ago because it was just in the not as important category while all of our energy went to growing children.  This year I felt that I had the energy to maintain a vegetable garden again, and I am so glad!

I neglected to take a "before" picture, which is too bad because this would look much more impressive if you knew what we were starting with, but imagine the entire 14' by 14' plot covered in weeds that went to my knees or higher, while a little 18" chicken wire fence around the perimeter was all broken and trampled down.

We rented a roto tiller and broke up the soil really good.  Then we began the hard shovel work.  Pulling weeds, turning over the soil, amending it, "stirring" it....all had to happen before we could plant.  We also dug holes for these green metal posts and put in a new 4' tall fence around the whole perimeter so we could better protect our lovely garden from animals.  We ultimately planted corn, zucchini squash, yellow squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, lettuce, and green beans.

So after weeks of intermittent work, here is my garden:

We planted both seeds and little starters.  The children wanted to try sweet corn this year, so we have a little corn section that grew from seeds!  The corn plants are thriving.  It's almost like we can see them grow before our eyes.

I made signs for the garden from our surplus of red bricks (wrote on them with permanent marker).

The yellow squash plant grew so fast it covered its sign!

Here is "tomato row" in the back.

One of our three pepper plants.

Our watermelon plant is growing slowly but hanging in there!

Look at our cute little lettuce plants!  They and the onions were the last things to get planted from seeds just a couple weeks ago, so they will take a while to mature.

Right by our back door is our little herb garden, with basil, rosemary, oregano, and parsley.

And today..... (drum roll please)..... was our very first harvest of one yellow squash!

"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."   ~  John Muir

Graduation Party Projects - Part 2

The previous owners of our home put in a lot of flowerbeds throughout the yard, and they were very beautiful......when we bought the house 14 years ago.

It has been continuous work to keep all the beds weeded.  At first I really enjoyed it.  I had three little ones and I would work in the yard as they played nearby.  It worked.

But as we added more children to our family and moved into higher grades of school, yard work had to take a back seat to more important things.  This large flowerbed mocked me with its constant weeds.  I could *never* keep it looking neat.

So with our daughter's grad party coming up, I decided to get rid of this bed.  I pulled out every growing thing and dug up the lamp post.  Moved living plants to other beds, threw away the dead ones.  Moved 13 decorative boulders to other places in our yard.  Dug up the sprinkler system hose and plugged up all the little dripper hoses, then re-buried it.   Hours and hours of work ~ if only sweat translated to weight loss!

With just a large swath of dirt left, my husband leveled it and put down a base of small pebbles, then a second layer of sand.  On this he laid paver stones, and we enlarged our patio.  More hours and hours of work.

Now we have a paved area for our fire pit!  I absolutely love it and we will get so much use out of this space!

Thank you, me.  And thank you, hubby.

Graduation Party Projects...

Before......

After!

Getting ready for a grad party is a great motivation to get some projects done that I have wanted to do for a long time, and one of them is to reduce the number of flower beds that I have to maintain.  We have so many flowerbeds that some of them do not look beautiful but simply mock me with their constant weeds.  So they are going away.  I love how this extension of our front walkway turned out! Big shout out to my husband for making my vision a reality, thank you honey!

February 29? Really?

Look what I saw peeking out of the ground!


This must mean spring is not far off!

Our First Tomatoes!

Play date with The Short Ones!

The short ones are sweet little friends from church (dubbed The Short Ones by their mother to distinguish them from their much older adult siblings who are The Tall Ones) whom we had over one day this week. It was special for me to get to spend more time with just them (I am usually blessed to spend time with one or more of The Tall Ones). First they played for a bit to burn off some of their excitement. :-)



And then they each picked out some seeds to plant in their own little sections of our garden. First K's turn..... she chose beans and carrots.





And then A's turn.... she chose watermelon and chives.



How I pray their little seeds will grow well and produce fruit! (gardening is such a metaphor for life....)


After we had done this hot and dirty work, we swam!



It was a fun, fun time that I treasure. Thank you, votemom, for sharing your Short Ones with me!!

First Week of Summer Break

So thankful for....

good books, and brotherly love


cool insects


hard, satisfying work






beautiful colors!



joyful fun

It's Not A Tornado, but....

...our clematis arbor did not survive the wind storm we had last week. :-(

Our Weekend in Pictures

League champions in their age division! (son C is standing in the back on the left)


And.....(drum roll please)...... I have been waiting YEARS to take the following pictures. My children are now old enough to weed wack and MOW THE LAWN!!! Yippee!!!!!!! In fact, they fought over who got to mow first. Our daughter insisted on doing it first since she's the oldest. ;-) (notice the very weedy garden behind my husband)





Working in afore mentioned weedy garden.......


....and though we have a ways to go, some of it now looks like this!

Every year it's the same.....I say I'm going to claim the garden from the weeds before they get too big, but every year we are in a push to finish school, and busy with birthdays, and I just don't get it done in April or early May.


We had a whirlwind visit with Uncle Kevin and cousin Cody, who flew in to town for a couple days! (great to see you guys!) This is Cody with his grandma. :-)

On Saturday afternoon we attended a high school graduation party, and had our co-op end of the year picnic! I was so busy talking and eating at both events that I took no pictures.

And on Sunday afternoon we had some friends over. Here is the "boy" table.


And the "girl/adult" table.



Busy but good weekend, being and doing together.

Thank you, Lord, for my family, and for all the mundane daily tasks that make up life. I love living life with my family. Knowing that You are over us and under us and around us and IN the daily-ness brings me such comfort and peace. I love you Lord. Thank you for loving me.