Well, so it’s been a few days since I’ve posted – time to catch up and record what we’ve been up to. First of all, life and school like usual plus several projects that are finally done (for now). The forecast is calling for rain tomorrow, and we wanted to get some things in the garden before then (90% chance); our neighbor was working his field today – oh, the dust did fly. It’s really dry, and we could use a good gully-washer.
These pics are from Sunday afternoon; these 4 kids went swimming fishing down at U. Harley’s creek.
Kate caught this crawdad.
Biggest minnow.
Dave and Beth stopped by and admired their catch.
One of our projects this week was to take a straight skirt and make it into an A-line (or whatever you call it; point is it has leg room which is necessary for an active wearer). I advised and helped some, but Tori did the majority of the work on it. We think it turned out quite nice…and functional which is more important! Straight skirts just aren’t very practical, and that’s kind of important.
Before.
After.
We’re kind of excited about our amateur alterations…and now we know how to do this to the other 3?4 skirts that are the same straight style.
Monday evening the sky was so pretty. Love this view!!
Tuesday we planted the rest of our potatoes, and had a great time enjoying the beautiful day. No pictures of that – it looks like dirt, that’s all! Yesterday we worked on our flower garden, moving some things and tearing out others, and worked on some plots for strawberries. Also Dad took off at noon to take Big Bad Bull to the sale barn where he cooperated very nicely and was sold for slaughter. Glad he’s gone. Evenings have been nice – Dad & I have gotten in a few walks, and kids have played some soccer. Levi & Jesse have been home by 7:30 (instead of 9:30) and it’s been nice having them around a little more (they’re doing shipping at PP and love it). Last night Dad & I did a CIT run and drove by a controlled grass fire which was pretty neat; when we got home everyone wanted to go see it too – they could see all the smoke from here. Funny – we drove by it and met Levi who had done an errand in Morton and had to drive by to check it out too!! That’s probably the most traffic that country road has seen in a long time!
And today… Hoppy joined our family. Joshua is EXTREMELY pleased with our new pet. Seeings that we have only two (2) cats on the place and they’re pretty wild, our prospects for kittens are pretty low. Our good mama cat Lovey got hit on the road awhile ago – good lesson for the kids but sad for us. She was big pregnant and always a good mama so we were excited for kittens again, but oh well, that’s how it goes. Anyway, I guess a bunny is soft & cuddly too…although not quite as playful as a kitten, and just not as cute for some reason.
And Joshua’s nose is still running, and running, and running. Add a sandbox, a garden, and some massive drooling (teething???) to the mix, and he gets to be a pretty dirty little guy. Thankfully God made dirt not to hurt, but that nose is another matter; little boy has been fussy too. Anyway, he was happy with Hoppy!
Enthralled audience.
So this morning I ran to Kelly’s early (there when they opened at 7:30 – for the record, that’s the time to go. Other times I’ve gone, it’s just been packed with people. Not so today – it was empty. Wonderful!)(Guess when my future trips will be?!)(7:30). I was home early (by 8:30) to do school meetings with everyone plus lesson planning for next week. While I was inside doing all that, my wonderful gardening crew was doing more soil preparation (Jacob: chief roto-tiller and Tori: director/digger). After lunch we got all the strawberries and onions planted and also a new lilac bush. And we fertilized everything that didn’t get fertilized yesterday, and by the time we were done with all the cleanup, I was TIRED!
Refreshed after a nap and a walk, the 3 littles and I did a walkabout so I could take pictures that I’ve wanted to take all week but didn’t take the time.
We started in the apple orchard, which for some odd reason (lack of vision perhaps?) has two Redhaven peach trees also. And this picture is exciting, because for the last two years we haven’t had any peach blossoms due to extremely hard (cold) winters. Three years ago was the first time these two trees produced much (about a bushel total, if I remember right), so we’ve been really disappointed these last two years. The peaches are SOOOOOOO tasty. Now, I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch, because we’ve lost promising crops before due to a late frost, and that might happen again, but at least there are infant peaches there now! Only a few blossoms are open so far, and the apple trees are just now starting to set blossoms, so more pictures will follow later.
Also by the apple orchard (with its two peach intruders) are our raspberries, and they’re coming along nicely.
Sarah wanted me to take a picture of this pheasant egg. We have no expectations of it ever hatching, as we never see the hen sitting on it. But, if you’ve ever wondered – this is what a pheasant egg looks like.
Pheasant pen turned leghorn pen. It’s worked out nice.
Remember this wall from last year? Well, the time has come to do something with it. To the left is a lilac and a bleeding heart (out of sight in this picture), and across the west wall we put strawberry plants. This north wall is in the shade a lot, so we’re going to put shade-loving plants here. We don’t know much about them, except that we’ll do impatiens at the front and hopefully they’ll spread onto the wall some; other than impatiens I don’t know what we’ll do.
Lilac – looks kind of weak here, but it’s mostly getting blown by the wind. Really it looked pretty good after we planted it. It’s an Abraham Lincoln (blue) which will be BEAUTIFUL in a few years.
Bleeding heart (transplanted from flower garden). So far it’s adjusting well, too.
West wall – not much to see so time for a picture of three sweet littles!
Ummm – like I said, not much to see but those who know say that’s pretty normal at this stage!
View of the park and its trees, on the way to the wood shed...
…to see the turtle and snake habitat.
Grandpa Steiner brought this little guy out one day this week. He seems happily at home here in his horse trough habitat, don’t you think?
I think he’s smiling :)
Baby garters prefer the dry end, the west side.
Around the corner to another strawberry patch (we decided several small patches would work better than one big one).
Not much to look at, but we’re hopeful. We’ll let you know when (if?) any life shows up.
To the right (south side of shed) is Ben’s garden.
He does a wonderful job of taking care of it. He’s a good helper in the family garden, but in his free time he’s quick to zip over here and work away :). Stakes to the left are potatoes, middle is empty yet (too early for beans),
next is onions (few survivors from our first onion transplants which mostly died),
with carrots in front (started from carrot ends…will they produce anything?).
And finally, his faithful strawberry plants that he transplanted from our failed patch two years ago. They have a few blooms and are being carefully tended, so they just might yield another handful of berries this year. Too fun!!!
On to our big garden – tiny spinach.
Tiny lettuce.
Broccoli (bought and planted March 22).
Onions, take two. We bought the first batch the same day as the broccoli, but it was too cold to put them out. Hindsight is 20/20, but I guess that’s how we learn. Anyway, we finally put them out on a Thursday after keeping them in a bucket for ten days. We thought it was going to rain the next day, so we didn’t water them; when it didn’t rain we should have soaked them good, I guess. Then that Saturday and Sunday were very hot, and VERY windy – I think Sunday was over 80; they just baked pretty dead. Live and learn. Ben got the dozen or so that had new shoots, and we’ll see how these do. We’ve never done these candy onions before, but everyone who does them loves them, so hopefully we’ll have more success this time around.
Anyway, they look good for now, but it’s pretty windy out as I write this, so we’ll see what they look like in the morning :/ Our wind out here is really hard on young plants (hence the cans around the broccoli).
On to the garden. Love these daffodils!! (I had to hold it because it was so windy.)
So pretty and aromatic.
Third year lilac – we’re watching these closely, waiting for the blooms to open. We love spring!!
Love our tulips (still very windy).
Third strawberry patch; these are ever-bearing so should be fun for kids all summer. This was the flower garden, but some of the flowers in it were taking over the space, and we realized we don’t really enjoy them that much when they bloom in the summer. We love the first flowers of the spring, but after that we just kind of get busy with life and don’t have any flowers that we really love. Now, Aunt Marcia’s flowers – that’s another story. She has beautiful flowers all summer long, but I don’t know half the names of them. For now, we planted strawberries and are sticking with our tulips, daffodils, lilacs, and a few others (chives, coneflower, black-eyed susan, lilies, irises). Strawberries only produce for about 6 years, so we’ll re-evaluate then and maybe put a few more flowers back in.
Yep, it’s a pretty sorry-looking garden right now, but we’ll re-evaluate in a month or so.
Nice thriving blueberries from Farm n Fleet (second year). They have a few blooms, it looks like…
Not-so-great-looking blueberry plants from an online company. Hmm, not the best idea.
They’re alive, but just barely; we might replace them with F&F bushes this year yet…
More peaches, this time in the peach orchard south of the house. Exciting to think of maybe having our own fresh peaches!!
And all the trees are pretty heavy with blooms, although we know many of them won’t last all the way to become fruit. Hopefully some will though!
A mommy’s favorite flower :)
And another :)
And so ended our fun walkabout – and while we walked the temperature seemed to drop steadily. Hope that means we’ll get some rain tomorrow!
Many precious bouquets picked and presented by precious hands!!!!
Give me this over a Kroger bouquet ANY DAY!!!
Wilted flowers!? Never fear, tomorrow I’ll have a fresh supply. Love it! :)
These are from the crabapple tree. It should be blossoming soon.
So nice to have L & J home for Bibletime tonight!!!! And so nice to have Levi’s ankle/foot almost back normal – it’s been a good week for him with little pain. Thank You, Lord.
And that’s it, the longest post I’ve ever done, I think. But it’s four days’ worth, and those days were busy, full, and very productive - - which is why I didn’t do any writing at the end of them…I was wiped out!!! Oh, and I didn’t even mention that all week I’ve been getting ready for the APACHE convention which is tomorrow and Saturday. Making lists, checking supplies, comparing curricula, poring over the brochure trying to decide which sessions to attend, etc… this is a highlight of the year for us and yes I’m excited!!!!!
