On Halloween...

this is where you'll find me, waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear!

Now, maybe it doesn't look like much, but this is the extent of our pumpkin patch--a volunteer, at that!  We've no idea what kind of pumpkin it is, since we had four varieties stacked on the front porch last year and I don't recall which ones decomposed in the blue pot (that later was dumped onto the ground beside the porch).  Also, I'm not actually sure that we'll have a pumpkin at all, since there is only one vine (I don't know if cross-pollination is necessary for pumpkins?), and the blossoms are crazy delicate!  Two weeks ago after the mowing guys apparently got too close, two blossoms just fell off.  Saturday, I knocked another one loose just by shifting the vine.  Now I'm trying not to get too close or breathe too hard on the darn thing!

Do you have any surprise "volunteer" plants in your yard?

How to write a blog post when...

...You're exhausted, had a long day and an early morning ahead?  Like this:

I've committed (and re-committed) to writing more regularly.   I know I should probably think about pre-writing posts to stockpile (how non-committal was that statement, by the way?).  I haven't.  I don't.  I think I'm doing pretty good at writing the night before (Why yes, I do consider myself talented at producing quality work under pressure...also known as procrastination.).  Because I've committed to giving you something to read, you've received something to read.  I even managed to tangentially relate it to the theme.  But that's about it.  No fabulous tutorial (though I might pull together one for the invites and banner I worked on with friends on Sunday for next week's Tuesday post), no amazing talents, no pictures of my tomato plants to convince you I have a sort-of, kind-of, not-quite-as-black, green-ish thumb.  I hope it's enough.  And even if it isn't you can count on me being back tomorrow, with something else.  Maybe even something better.

Bringing Order to the front yard

If you've been reading this blog for the last year (or if, like me, you stumbled across it more recently and went back to read earlier posts), you might remember my posts about getting control of our front yard, particularly this one that talked about taking everything out and this one that talked about putting something back.

Well, I thought we were finished with the front yard once we'd planted our switchgrass, barberries and monkey grass.  What I didn't think of was the inevitable weeds that would sprout around them.  Now, I'm sure someone (probably my mom) mentioned mulching the area, but that just didn't seem necessary (and we were in the midst of the nightmare that became our bathroom remodel).  This spring, we developed quite the weed problem, which our lawn company wouldn't get close to, since their product might damage our 'good' plants, too.  We also lost our monkey grass as it grew at the same rate as the regular grass and we couldn't really tell which was which (and had to mow).  The barberries are holding their own, however, and the switchgrass is doing great!  We also have a little volunteer pumpkin plant that makes me smile!

Anyhow, for a couple of months we've discussed using the leftover landscape fabric (from the earthtainer) to fight the weeds out front.  After my plans for our weekend fell through, J suggested we work on the yard instead.  (Now, I gave him a hard time about choosing labor over a 'fun' activity with me, but since I'm happiest when he and I are working on a project together, I jumped at the chance.)  We ran to Home Depot Saturday morning and loaded up a cart with mulch and concrete blocks to edge the beds.

In case you're wondering, we got 15 bags of black mulch (1.5 cubic feet per bag) and 100 blocks (5.5 x 5.5 squares).  Oh, and of course we had Sandy the family pick-up to take everything home in.  I think we almost overdid it this time.

Yes, that's the front floorboard.  Where my feet went.  J had a row of them, too, but his desire to actually hit the gas/brake won him a little more leg room than me.

Teenagers pay a lot of money to have a low-rider like Sandy.

As with most projects, this one took a lot longer than we expected.  In fact, we spent about six hours on the actual labor part of the task (two or so on shopping and unloading), and we only did half the front yard.  Sandy bounced back much more quickly than we did, and we've been popping ibuprofren and naproxin like candy since then.  We hope to be ready to tackle the rest of the project next weekend (and since we got the learning curve out of the way on Saturday, we figure it really show go faster next time!).

Since it's actually late Sunday night, and I'm still tired, I'm going to tell the rest of the story in pictures:



Before:  As you walked out the door and look left, this is what you saw.



We rolled out the landscape fabric and cut x's in it to pop the barberries through, then held it in place with staples.



Laying the stone led to a lot of trial and error, but we basically laid out the blocks, scored the ground, then dug/tamped the earth under each stone until we could set it level with the previous block (also checked for front-back level).



After J set a section of blocks, I followed behind to backfill the front of the blocks with dirt, then cut the landscape fabric so you can't see it in front of the blocks.



After!  I have hopes of planting more monkey grass (this time, inside the bed so I don't get confused), but it already looks so much more 'finished' than before!

Self Defense and Centipedes

In a nutshell, the title is my Sunday.  Well, mass amounts of drugs to make getting out of bed and moving possible (you'll read why the was necessary in Monday's post), church, a self-defense workshop with my Sunday School class, and some good girl time with friends prepping for Baby E's first birthday party (which has a Hungry Caterpillar theme), supper with J and some time curled up with J watching TV.  But really, the most important parts were the self defense workshop and the crafty-time.  (Oh, and yes, we made caterpillar themed items, but with all the feet I gave one caterpillar banner, I'm pretty sure he was morphing...and "centipede" gave me an alliterative title that caterpillar just wouldn't have...)

By the way, I'm not certain that teaching self defense to a bunch of teenagers is necessarily a good thing.  I mean, I think it's awesome that we've added some tools to their toolkits, and in four years, they're going to be relatively on their own with a whole new batch of opportunities to put themeselves in stupid situations with poor choices.  But for now, yeah...they were really more interested in chasing each other (and us) with silly string (my co-teacher's suggestion instead of practicing with real pepper spray).

Saturday smells like...Fresh tomatoes

Seriously, y'all.  There simply cannot be a better taste in the world than a homegrown tomato.  Specifically (since we've not dug into the Better Boys yet), a Rutgers heirloom tomato.  I had tomatoes put on a sandwich at Subway yesterday, and they were just so...tasteless (Really.  Completely without flavor.)! 

This week, we've eaten our tomatoes in salads, in homemade spaghetti sauce (with spaghetti squash and sausage from our good friend Cooter...which I guess makes it homegrown sausage, too...), and sliced with fresh homegrown basil and cream cheese.  I'm pretty sure that today I'll be nagging my husband to fry up some bacon so I can have my first BLT of the summer, too.

I really hope that you've got your own tomato garden (or at least a farm stand or farmers market) to visit for your own fresh tomatoes this summer!

Waaahhhh!

Okay, so let me preface this by saying that I know there are folks who have it much worse than me.  I know that there are earthquakes and hurricanes and injury and death and all sorts of awful things going on.  I'm aware of those things, and I pray that the injuries and death and damage to much of the east coast this weekend are minimal. 

All that said, I was really looking forward to sharing our plans for the weekend with you today.  Like, I was really, really excited about them. 

What plans?  I signed us up to go canoeing on the Elhorn Creek.  Visit the website for Canoe Kentucky to learn more about it, and you'll see why I was so excited.  Click on the "water conditions" link and you'll see why those hopes were dashed.  The creek is especially low, and we've not had enough rain in the last month to make it possible for small, active people to get through the route without having to get out and push their canoe 'four or five times'.  Y'all know J and I are not small (or even on the small-ish side).  I shared that with the owner and she replied that if we were hoping to just float along with the current and enjoy the creek, Saturday is not the day to do it.  Crushed.

The owner tried to help by suggesting we look into the Kentucky River route (in twenty feet of water, there would be no chance of anyone, even us, dragging the bottom).  I'll be honest, I was kind of 'meh' about it.  It costs more and there's no current, so we'd be working for every moment of it.  Also, this route goes through downtown Frankfort, which is great for sight-seeing, but not really the relaxing day on the creek I'd pictured in my head.

Then, I spotted the guided Kentucky River tour.  Y'all!  You get to lock through a lock built in the 1800's!  I've never even been in a 'modern' lock--this one sounds awesome!  So I called Allison back with my new plan.  Which was when I learned that there is a fundraiser Saturday night that has cancelled the guided tour.  Seriously?!?  Allison noted that we could come back any time (well, to the creek after we get some rain or to the guided tour any Friday or Saturday), but then she remembered that the lock closes after Labor Day.  So...we have four days left to actually go through the lock.  One of those days I'll be at a wedding; one of those days I'll be sailing with my youth group; one of those days I have other plans.  That leaves us with Labor Day.  We'll see.

In the mean time, I'm plan-less for Saturday.  Since I've been out of town the last few weekends, I really wanted to plan something fun for us to do, hence my crushing sadness when my 'perfect' plan went south.  I'll let you know what we end up with!

Thankful Thursday--August 25

This week, I am so thankful for our garden!  Yesterday, I took one of Rutgers' tomatoes, some fresh basil, cream cheese and sliced onion to work for lunch. It is amazing to me how different a fresh heirloom tomato tastes compared to what you buy at the grocery!

I'm thankful, too, for my friends who reach out last week to share that they've missed me while I've been in DAR-world.  Our summer workshops are over, and I am so excited to share in some girl-time with them this weekend!

Finally, I am thankul for the kids in my Sunday School class.  They finally started back for the year a couple weeks ago, and I got to see them for the first time (as a class) on Sunday.  A year ago, I commented to my co-teacher that I wasn't sure I could imagine our class as the confident, self-assured members of our parish that the class before them was.  A year in, I've no doubt that "my" kids are well on their way. 

What are you thankful for this week?