A Thank You to Robin!

As I said before, I was pretty excited in march to see lots of green leaves poking up through the dirt. I couldn't wait to see what came up. It was like Christmas. These beautiful daffodils came up all around the border of our huge flower bed on the west side of our front yard. There must've been over 100 of them. I thought about sending Robin, one of our home's previous owners a thank you card. I should have. I imagined all the time it took her to plant those and how she must have missed seeing them this year after all that work. I am grateful for the good care she and Ross took of our home and the beautiful additions, like all the bulbs and our huge raised garden that make our home such a wonderful place to live.



These daffodils just made me smile everytime I went outside. They are little sunshines on a stem. They even survived two surprise snow storms, I thought for sure the big April snow, being so wet and heavy, would kill them for sure. They had just blossomed the day before the snowstorm. But they are resilient little things and looked none the worse for it.

We Are Sowing!

Back in February, mom had a fun idea to take a gardening class at Thanksgiving Point. So one Saturday morning she and dad and I headed off to learn about growing plants from seeds. Dad attended a general gardening class at the same time. We left with several packets of seeds, a small tray of seeds already planted and big plans!

A couple weeks later we got together with several more supplies and seeds and got sowing! While we planted and labeled our little babies, dad and Mo* made the light contraptions we would use to give our little seedlings warmth and light.

And what do you know, within a few weeks pretty much everything was growing. It was so fun! I kept a vigilant gardening journal and checked on my "babies" every morning. Every time something new would pop up, it was like Christmas! My tomatoes really worried me. They were what I was most excited to grow from seed and they were one of the last seeds to germinate. But up they came and they did very well.

Now lest you get too jealous and think I am some kind of magical green thumb, I had several failures and over-watered and under-watered a couple times. So . . . for the most part it was a success and hopefully everything survives the transplant in the summer! I'm so glad mom thought of this fun idea! We had so much fun checking on each others plants and progress. I still check in on her little plants to see how they are doing! What a fun hobby. I feel so agricultural!

Patriotic Summer Treat

From Blog Favorites #3

Mmmm - homemade ice-cream with home grown berries . . . Yeah.

A New Garden Favorite

These are our beautiful Autumn Gold raspberries. We are still getting them! We got a TON this year. Not sure what happened to the red respberries I supposedly planted in between these, but hey - these seem a little sweeter to me, so I wasn't too sad.

As usual, we also had tomatoes, zuchinni, lettuce, peppers, basil, cucumbers, blueberries and cilantro. We also tried cauliflower this year which did well. We had Asian pears coming out of our ears and could not keep up with them. For some reason our green beans never worked (how do you mess those up?) And the grapes I feel terrible about never getting to harvest. We were out of town around the time they ripened. I always do overkill on our garden and can't keep up when things get busy, but our garden makes me so happy. Natalie and Bert *LOVE our harvest too. I hope someday Sarah and Angela will appreciate all the yummy things we grow right in our backyard. If we could find a hot dog bush, we'd be in business!

Fall Fun

Here are a few random pictures from September...

During the month of September, I had a number of photography sessions. (See my picture blog for updates!) One of my sessions, not only did I get paid in regular currency, I also got to bring home some wonderful items from Angie's huge garden! Natalie and I thoroughly enjoyed this huge carrot and other fun cucumbers, tomatoes, mint, dahlias, etc. What a fun treat. Luckily, I just so happened to have some Asian pears in my van to reciprocate! I love all the things you can grow in Oregon. (o:

Angela got this adorable apron from her friend Tyler for her birthday. One day she came down in a Snow White dress up and put her apron and chef hat on over the top. I guess Snow White did do a lot of chores, so it seems appropriate. (o:

My girls crack me up. They thought it would be fun to have a tug of war with our tree. Guess who won?

Angela and Tori lucked out and got a trip to Out of This World one day while the big kids were in school. There are some perks to being the youngest. However, these trips are few and far between compared to all the outings I used to do with Sarah and Natalie before our schedule got totally crazy. So I like to splurge for Angela every now and then.

This was a funny picture I took at one of Sarah's Activity Day girls activities. For her Faith in God award (kind of like earning a boy scout badge, but it has religious aspects.), Sarah has to do accomplish a number of goals each year in different categories. For one of them, she planned an afternoon teaching her friends about the Word of Wisdom (no drinking, smoking, coffee, tea, etc. in our religion) using fun games and crafts. She did a great job!

Springtime Chores

We have 4 fruit trees in our backyard. This year they seem to have grown a LOT! Mac* did a lot of pruning and this is the mess we ended up with. Ugh.

Meet Mr. Chipper. This is what we got to help us out, but even so, it was still a BIG job. And I swear Mac* nearly got his hand chopped off 13 times. Plus he got whipped about 37 times. I definitely had the easy end of the job, bringing sticks. Except for the times I stood up and ran into a tree branch or the time I rammed my arm into a tree branch. Yeah, this was great fun. Not to mention the noise.
Ahhh, now this is much better. This is how we spent our Friday the 13th. Fortunately, the rest of the day was just dandy.

Jungle

We think that some of our vegetables look like they are from the Jurrasic era. The cabbages front left - are ginormous! The individual leaves are about 18 inches across. I used to be able to walk in between the two gardens, but they are growing across the divide. We've enjoyed a few cucumbers and zuchinni and soon they will be coming out of our ears. I can't wait for the tomatoes!