Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Charm-ing

First things first, updates, and then a story about my unparalleled sophistication.

Everybody got new swim stuff for birthdays from Andy and Leanne. They are REALLY HAPPY about it. They got to wear it all to swim lessons on Thursday.


I got to experience my very first for real mood swing of puberty on Monday night. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.... Glen took this photo of himself a few days before:



Bear Hunt stepped in and rescued me one day when the boys were really tired and cranky. He just wrestled them to the bed and put a sleep spell on them.


And ... now.... telling on myself.
I was so proud to be wearing the earrings my sister, Sarah, had made for me last Christmas. I love them, and have worn them all year, but one morning I got inspired to show her how much her gift was appreciated. I sent her this picture:



...with a note that said, "recognize those lovely earrings?"

I got a phone call about two hours later.

She says to me...

"I've never made earrings."

"I made you wine charms."

:)

I wondered why none of them matched.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Weather.com, you done me wrong

Today, a garden update.

Sometime in Mid-April, about 15 days before our last "normal" frost date, I looked up the 10-day forecast on Weather.com. They assured me that for the next 10 days, there would be no threat of frost.

"Well, hot diggity!" I thought. "Then there's only 5 more days until the last risk of frost has passed! There's NO WAY it'll frost again. Let's get those babies in the GROUND!!"

Having a long history of planting the garden in mid-June (due to work constraints), I was over the moon with excitement.

I filled the garden. Tomatoes, peppers, four kinds of beans, cucumbers, tomatillos, spinach, swiss chard, kale, carrots, beets, turnips, garlic, onions.... Now, of course, I still have a bunch to plant, but I filled up the available space. (Now I'm working on finding other space to plant. I could fill 10 acres without batting an eye. I love this.)

Then, this past Friday, I hear the unthinkable.

Frost Warning.

oh, poop.

I had a gig until after dark.

So my blessed, wonderful, insanely understanding parents drove out to the chateau with me in the dark, carrying flashlights, headlamps, and a laundry basket full of ittybitty "blankets".

And we snuggled everyone in for the night.

The next day, I went out to wake everyone up, and make sure we all made it through the night.


(This is the part of the garden with the frost-sensitive transplants.) (Apparently, I'm growing kleenexes.)

Everyone made it through, although some leaves still got a little wimpy -- they got a little too cold. But the majority of each plant made it. *Phew!*

Then on Mother's Day, I didn't have the kids (as it was Larry's weekend), so I boogied out of church right after choir and decided to get my sermon in the garden. :) I put snap peas in some lonesome places, and thinned the turnips, and started what will become a wonderful fence row of sunflowers.


I labeled the row with flags because I'm not the one who mows out there, so you can see where they'll spring up. I've gotten in two kinds so far, both tall, big, and yellow. I'll also be putting in some stunning red ones that grow on purple stems, and then a whole gaggle of them that are designed for kids -- they stop growing at 3 feet, so the heads are right at kid height.

And here, I have big plans for flowers:



By July, there should be a big bunch of old-fashioned farmyard flowers here -- hollyhocks, daisies, zinnias, asters.... Oh, it'll be pretty.

So feel free to come play farmer with my any weekend this summer! It's a lot of fun. And kids can just run free.... and they get so, so, so tired.