Good Ole Garden

So what is going on with my straw garden you ask? Ok no one has actually asked but I figured I'd let you know anyway.

My garden and the area all around it are green green green! We have a soaker hose that goes on at night to drip water into the bales and that sucker, or soaker, works amazingly. It's watering everything! Watering it so well that we grow probably every kind of weed you can think of. Well maybe not that many but it sure feels like it. We don't have to weed the bales as much as we did the dirt garden (although there are random weeds that pop up in them) but all around them? Holy cow we can barely get up next to the bales there are so many! We've been slacking a bit and we're paying a price. That and the fact that red ants have taken up residence out there and if you go out with sandals on - as I often do - you get bit!!

But the stuff that is growing is growing like crazy. We even have a few peppers. The tomatoes won't be nearly as awesome as last year but that's ok. One thing at a time.
Here is a zucchini that we planted out of the side of one of the bales. It's doing wonderfully. There's a small one next to the yellow flower that's growing.The lettuce is insane and I'm pretty sure I needed to harvest it like yesterday. I sure hope it tastes as yummy as it looks!
After I took that above picture I went out and harvested the leaves. I got a huge bowl full. I'm so thankful for the internet. It taught me how to harvest and store my lettuce. I'd be so lost, sometimes, without it!And we have some big, bright, red strawberries. YUM!So it's pretty swell so far. I'm already looking forward to next year where I have plans to plant seeds so I can grow things like corn and carrots and peas and stuff like that. This experimental year has been fun though.

While the big cheese was away

I mentioned in an earlier post that last week Mark {aka the big cheese} left for a 3 day mini-sabbatical. He got back Wednesday, we had our wahoo Wednesday, he worked Thursday then left early Friday morning for a Promise Keeper event in Denver. He got back early Sunday morning (12:30am), slept till 5am then got up for church. He had a busy week so we decided to try and have one too. Ya know, to pass the time.

So this is a random post about some of the things we did and experienced last week, mostly while Mark was gone.

First my sister sent me a few shots of my kids and one shot of the big black clouds I was talking about in an earlier post, that she took in Omaha. I played with Instagram and had fun changing the look of the pictures.

Love that sass! {most of the time...} Yup. Time out on vacation.Do you SEE how big and black that is?!?!?!? THAT would be why we were driving away fast with sirens blaring....It was dusk. Not midnight I promise!Anywho....We had lunch with some friends on Tuesday - when we went to the river in Bayfield- then I had book club at my house Tuesday night.

Thursday I had lunch with another friend at a park. Our kids played wonderfully together while we talked and talked and talked. Unfortunately this is the only picture I got. 4 of us never made it in front of the camera.After the park we went to her house to continue with our chatting - we seriously talked forever! While we were out on her back deck and a wasp flew up my shorts/capris. At first I thought it was a stray hair or thread or something and tried to brush it away. Nope. It started stinging and wouldn't stop!

I think I got stung 4 times. We immediately put ice on it and I took Benedryl. Everything seemed fine. No real big swelling and the pain went away. Whew.

Until the next day. When I woke up after Mark left on Friday, my knee and thigh were red, swollen and itching like crazy! I tried putting stuff on it but we left in the morning to visit another friend and spent the afternoon at her house up in the mountains. I wasn't able to ice it (or broccoli it - frozen bags of veggies work wonderfully too!) till later that night during our small group at our house.Saturday my friend Kim gave me a bag of different things she's used on her family for stuff like this. The spray on Benedryl helped a lot. Now it's just really weirdly bruised and that didn't happen till Sunday...Who knew it was a gift that keeps on giving?
And yes I did really take pictures of my own leg. I'm weird, I know, but I was very fascinated!
Saturday we had a huge gust of wind that did this....
I kept staring at it wondering how in the world that happened!

Then I visited our garden. Many things don't look so hot. We believe it's because some of the straw had hay seeds in it that are competing. So a couple of the bales are growing some beautiful hay but the others are growing some awesome lettuce and peppers and hopefully tomatoes.On the way to church on Sunday - and the kids' first time seeing Mark - Kate drew him a picture of his family in case he forgot what we looked like...and in case you're having a hard time telling who's who, it goes from left to right: Kate, Jack, Kale, Mark and Me. I look like I have huge boobs but I'm pretty sure they are puffy sleeves on my queen dress...And that's what happened while the big cheese was away :)

Straw Garden Update

Not a whole lot to post other than we are still in the watering and fertilizing stage. Only a day or two more of that though before we plant our goodies. There are a few sprouts of something poking up in the straw thanks to the boatload of wind we've had. I'm pretty sure it stirred up stuff and deposited it right in the straw. The good news is that we know something can grow in there! :)

I'll post more pics of the planted bales in a few days. I'm so excited for them!!

I can't tell what Mark's face is all about. Obviously I caught him in an in-between moment...

Hoses, Plants and Gardening Oh my

Mark and I realized on Saturday that if we wanted to have a garden this year we had to complete it this weekend or we wouldn't have time. Our June and first part of July are already booked with family (which we are thrilled about!). So we determined that we had to work outside this weekend. A lot.

So we loaded up the kids and headed to Home Depot for another adventure.

I don't know about you but I love Home Depot. I walk into the store and I'm overwhelmed with possibilities and potential. Do I have time to do them all? No way. But I love to dream about how my house and yard can look...

We filled the back of the truck with plants and dirt and compost.The kids and I put the pretty plants into pots. No pictures of us actually doing it because I was trying desperately to not loose all the dirt...Here are a couple pots we did.

Here are the veggie garden plants. We picked out some zucchini, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and jalapenos. We are gonna try straw bale gardening this year. They seem like they'd be so much fun and easier. We tried going to the Co-op but it was closed (of course it was...it was Memorial Day...we were hoping they'd stay open for people like us). We then found a friend from church who buys straw. We were asking him where they get their straw and they said from the same place we went. When he found out what we were trying to do and that the Co-op was closed he offered to sell us some of his straw so we could get started. What a guy!

So Mark went over in his pick-up and plaid shirt (although he hadn't planned that...) and picked us up some straw!

We set them inside our fenced in garden area to keep the deer away. Apparently you can put them anywhere - even on your deck if you want. But we figured the deer would get them so we put them in the garden. We're gonna try 4 this year. We can reuse the old straw bales next year and I'm pretty sure we'll get 4 or 5 more if this works out. It's just watering and fertilizing for the first 10 days. Then you plant and ta-da! At least I hope it's that simple....I'll keep you posted.

Saturday night we went over to our friends (the Bleger's) house and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with their family.

Sunday was a big combined church service with a potluck afterwards. Then Sunday night we had our friends (the Kline's) over for steaks. Fabulous time!

Our memorial day was low key. We did a bunch of work outside because I was just itching to mow and move rocks and clean up the yard. I don't have very many days to do that and I was super motivated. Plus it was a nice work out. Bonus! We also hung out as a family.

I love having a flag to wave in celebration and remembrance. And it certainly waved! The wind was insane this weekend.

We had to move and stack our chairs to keep them from blowing away. My potted plants started leaning because of the wind. :(

Even though this post is a couple days after the fact, I hope you all had a fabulous weekend as well!

Garden Tour

I figured I'd catch up on some photos and the progress of our garden that I mentioned in the last post.

But first you have to see the gorgeous rainbows we had the other night. We had unusual weather. Stormy, sunny, cloudy, beautiful. The sunset was amazing! Sadly all I had to capture the loveliness with was my phone but I think you can get the idea.

I seriously imagined what it must have been like to have been Noah and his family and seeing this lovely promise from God for the first time. They weren't thinking of how sunlight refracts on the water drops in the sky. They were thinking about how God had saved them and was promising to never flood the earth again. How amazing!

And here is one of our strawberries. We haven't gotten a lot (and the few we've gotten have been gobbled up immediately by little ones). We didn't expect much this first year. Still happy with what we have seen.

A few of the 95 tomatoes. One is barely starting to turn a bit red but it was too difficult to get a picture of it. So you'll have to settle for these green ones.

Kale is stinkin' proud of the cucumbers. He loves them and checks them all the time and begs to pick one. I finally said yes tonight and he was so excited. It was really good!

Bell peppers especially for my father-in-law just cause I'm ornery :)
{he hates them...}

orange peppers!

Jalapenos!!!

A little spider friend who made a nice little house on our jalapeno leaf.

Kate and Jack inspecting the garden. Jack goes up to all the plants, moves a leaf aside and says "Cumbers!" Everything in our garden is a cucumber to him.

The enormous sunflowers just outside the garden bed.

Kale inspecting another cucumber. This one part of the vine climbed outside the garden bed and produced a couple cucumbers.

More of the beautiful and very tall sunflowers

And here is what our 2 small cucumber plants have turned into. A huge mess that is producing a ton of cucumbers. Fabulous!

So there's the garden tour! Can't wait to harvest it all!