Yesterday the kids helped me in the garden, which means they raked a patch of dirt frantically to "smoothen it out" while I carried bags of mulch, planted some potted flowers that we bought at Home Depot, and weeded the flower beds.
We live in this weird little microclimate zone here in Idaho where it doesn't get all that cold, during the winter, so stuff warms up in the spring much earlier than I'm used to. It's excellent for flowers, fruit, potatoes, and mainly onions. (Onion trucks travel up and down the big road I can see from my house all year long. They don't cover them, so whenever they go around a curve they dump onions out onto the street. If I felt like walking along with a sack, I would never need to buy onions again.)
The farm stands are not up and running yet (yep, we have those too--they're awesome!) but I'm getting things planted into my garden pretty successfully. My chamomile, sage, and thyme came back from last year; this year I put in lavender and I re-planted my rosemary, which the winter killed. This year I'm going to try either bringing the rosemary inside in a pot, or putting a cloche over it for the winter.
I also got ambitious and planted a rhubarb, an asparagus crown, and a grape vine in the vegetable garden. We may or may not be here when those things start bearing, but fingers crossed that we will be. We put in a border of strawberries, too, after the lady at the nursery laughed in our faces when we asked if strawberries are hard to grow here. "Oh, they grow here," she said. "If you can't get strawberries to grow around here you really need to have your soil checked." We got brave enough to try grapes because we realized there's a vineyard down the road, so they seem...plausible.
Sasquatch found three snails, and tenderly put them under a rock so they wouldn't feel scared. Nobody tell him that all bugs don't like being under rocks, okay? Otherwise I'll have to build even more insect houses than I already do.
Then, last night, Bud and Sasquatch decided they desperately needed a shave, because, as Bud puts it, "You know, I'm not growing any hair, but I do think I'm getting kind of a beard, Dad." So the Husband obligingly took the blade out of his razor, lathered up their faces, and let them solemnly scrape the soap off. I was called to admire their handiwork, and duly felt their cheeks and told them what a nice, close shave they had.
The Very Manly Shaving had to start, I'm pretty sure, because Eldest and I have "Girl Dates" where we give each other manicures and are very much foofy ladies for twenty minutes or so. The boys were disappointed that, in our culture, men don't usually wear nail polish...and that even when I offered to put clear polish on their nails that it just didn't turn out to be as fun for them as we womenfolk made it look.
Before he went to sleep, Sasquatch thought of these items to tell Jesus "thank you" for:
1. Chips
2. Flowers
3. Snails
4. New booster seat for the car with FIRE on it (he finally hit the weight limit on his car seat, and his booster has hot-rod style flames printed on it)
....so it was a pretty good day.
Cheers,
Breanna
We live in this weird little microclimate zone here in Idaho where it doesn't get all that cold, during the winter, so stuff warms up in the spring much earlier than I'm used to. It's excellent for flowers, fruit, potatoes, and mainly onions. (Onion trucks travel up and down the big road I can see from my house all year long. They don't cover them, so whenever they go around a curve they dump onions out onto the street. If I felt like walking along with a sack, I would never need to buy onions again.)
The farm stands are not up and running yet (yep, we have those too--they're awesome!) but I'm getting things planted into my garden pretty successfully. My chamomile, sage, and thyme came back from last year; this year I put in lavender and I re-planted my rosemary, which the winter killed. This year I'm going to try either bringing the rosemary inside in a pot, or putting a cloche over it for the winter.
I also got ambitious and planted a rhubarb, an asparagus crown, and a grape vine in the vegetable garden. We may or may not be here when those things start bearing, but fingers crossed that we will be. We put in a border of strawberries, too, after the lady at the nursery laughed in our faces when we asked if strawberries are hard to grow here. "Oh, they grow here," she said. "If you can't get strawberries to grow around here you really need to have your soil checked." We got brave enough to try grapes because we realized there's a vineyard down the road, so they seem...plausible.
Sasquatch found three snails, and tenderly put them under a rock so they wouldn't feel scared. Nobody tell him that all bugs don't like being under rocks, okay? Otherwise I'll have to build even more insect houses than I already do.
Then, last night, Bud and Sasquatch decided they desperately needed a shave, because, as Bud puts it, "You know, I'm not growing any hair, but I do think I'm getting kind of a beard, Dad." So the Husband obligingly took the blade out of his razor, lathered up their faces, and let them solemnly scrape the soap off. I was called to admire their handiwork, and duly felt their cheeks and told them what a nice, close shave they had.
The Very Manly Shaving had to start, I'm pretty sure, because Eldest and I have "Girl Dates" where we give each other manicures and are very much foofy ladies for twenty minutes or so. The boys were disappointed that, in our culture, men don't usually wear nail polish...and that even when I offered to put clear polish on their nails that it just didn't turn out to be as fun for them as we womenfolk made it look.
Before he went to sleep, Sasquatch thought of these items to tell Jesus "thank you" for:
1. Chips
2. Flowers
3. Snails
4. New booster seat for the car with FIRE on it (he finally hit the weight limit on his car seat, and his booster has hot-rod style flames printed on it)
....so it was a pretty good day.
Cheers,
Breanna
