Harvest

Harvest, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.

Tree trimming

Tree trimming, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.

gardening

We finally got rid of our wood pile. This involved me pulling several thousand nails from a lot of really old, baked-in-the-sun-for-80-years boards. Then we built a screen to hide the ugly shed and planted some vines that should cover the screen in short order. They are native, perennial, semi-deciduous, and drought tolerant.

We removed the prickly pear from the ugly concrete thing it was in and replanted it in the back yard along the fence. It's growing new paddles now!

Lavender strawberries in various locations and going wild.

The garden as a whole is pretty symmetrical and filled out. I have 5 beds on one side and the other has 3 plus a big one.

Along one fence I have beans and corn.

My 1015 onions are getting big and I have a few red onions growing too.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up about the squash, but it's looking pretty good.

I have elephant garlic flowering. I cut the scapes today and will probably make pesto with them.

And here is my big bed (covered in pecan blooms).

I'm trying the "three sisters" method here substituting sweet potato vines for squash since we have such problems with squash vine borer and I wanted to keep my squash under cover until it started blooming. Here I will have corn, with beans growing up the corn stalks and vines acting as mulch. I also have a ton of swiss chard, spinach, bibb lettuce, and a little arugula, a few hot peppers, and a ton of green tomatoes. I had to pull my snap peas because they were covered in powdery mildew (and at 7 feet tall they had outgrown themselves anyway) and so I've replaced them with cucumber vines instead. Our jasmine and blackberries are also growing and hopefully they'll cover the fences we built for them soon!

Oh, and here is a tiny fig.

why they make baby seats

Untitled, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.

We've just been doing the usual, making lots of trips to the hardware store and building this and that. Photos to come!

already lost track of the garden

I wanted to keep tabs on what the garden produced and an estimated dollar value but I'm just not meticulous enough for that. I've been pulling an assortment of spinach, bibb, chard, beet, and arugula leaves every few days and we've had enough for a salad almost every night. With some homemade vinaigrette, maybe some bleu cheese and the pecans from my in laws, it's pretty tasty!

There are 2 peaches growing on the peach trees and the pear tree seems to be attempting to make pears.

The asparagus is shooting up, I can't believe I have to wait 2 more years to harvest it!

I checked on the bees and things look good. I should have reversed the hive bodies when I checked so I'm hoping to do that tomorrow. I have a couple of extra deep frames so I'd like to swap them out with some of the frames with old, dark wax before they get filled up. I also had some hive beetles in the top of the uppermost super so I need to track down the little beetle trap I have and get that installed too. We have plenty of flowers and now we have plenty of water too, so hopefully we'll have a good nectar flow.

I created one last raised bed, I plan to use the "three sisters" method in it except instead of squash I'll use sweet potatoes. The corn I planted didn't sprout though, so it may be too old. Will buy more corn seed. The idea is you plant the corn and once it's about 6 inches tall you plant beans to grow up the corn stalk. Then you have squash vines below to act as a ground cover/mulch.

I chose not to plant squash there becuase I had such a problem last year with the squash vine borers that I'm going all out with insect covers and some other strategies this year in hopes of a better outcome. Of course the fabric already tore, I need to figure out a better setup.

We got a lot of rain this week, which was desperately needed.

We're still in the process of getting our rain barrel/cistern setup figured out. The one barrel I have below the shed filled in minutes and water was shooting out the overflow holes. I got some long soaker hoses hooked up to them and now hopefully the overflow will divert to the fruit trees and the vegetable bed. We need to have tanks to hold 500 gallons or so for it to be of real use, since we tend to have heavy rains with long dry periods between.

And I continue in my attempt to grow alpine strawberries from seed. I had some that had gotten almost 1/2 inch tall (this took months!) and then I inadvertently killed them all. I've started over and have them in the window now in hopes that a little sun will help them out.

A very Texas day

Yesterday my parents came down to visit and instead of working on some huge project we went to the farmers market in our neighborhood and got meat and grilled burgers. I even ate one. Then we went and picked loquats down the street and I got bit (stung?) by some fire ants. It doesn't get much more texan than all that!

New job

Yep, another one.

garden update

Lots going on in my world and I will write more about that soon. In the meantime, I've got my garden pretty much planted out and my spring stuff is starting to look good.

The spinach is looking spinachy and the chard finally seems to be outpacing the caterpillars (knock on wood).

The peas on the side fence are looking good (well, the Amish Snap Peas are, the shelling peas are a tangled stumpy mess).

We ate the first batch last night raw with sesame oil and poppy seeds, and they were tasty! It was a pretty good-looking plate with chard from my neighbor's garden, sweet potatoes and sage from mine, bread I baked, and a salad from the farmer's market. Too bad I didn't grow the wild rice or make the provolone... but it's good to have something to work toward!

on working, parenting, happiness.

I'm getting used to working again. It's a different type of job than I've ever done and I'm not very good at it yet, which stresses me out. But I know I can get there. I hope that they can be patient with me and I imagine they'll be pleasantly surprised when one day Winters starts sleeping through the night and I can think of words again.

The first day I worked 8-5 and because traffic sucked I didn't get home until closer to 6. It sucked horribly as I hate to be stuck in a car in traffic in any situation much less with my sweetie waiting for me at home. Since we start winding him down for bed around 6:45-7:00, this was unacceptable. So, I've started leaving for work in the dark which allows Aaron 2 hours of dad and boy time in the mornings and then I get home before 4:30 on a good day and get a couple hours of walks by the lake, stroller jogging, rolling on the bed play time, and lay in the grass while mom shovels stuff time (on a blanket, with a guard cat, of course).

It might be a different story if I had him with a stranger, but since my mom is taking care of him, I don't miss him too much. I get just enough time with him each day to fill up my inner basket of snuggles and smiles, and to be reminded how exhausting it is to take care of him all day. He seems happy, too.

I've been reading a French parenting book and it talks about how they make a point to have their kids wait regularly and play independently, to teach them frustration tolerance, patience, and self-entertainment. This fits in well with how I work also - I'm never ignoring him but I do try to give him time to play on his own when he seems content to do so. I've had a few experiences where he started shrieking or complaining and I couldn't rush over to him (hands covered in dough, etc) and I found that 15 seconds or so later he might be perfectly content again as he found another toy/turned himself around/forgot what was bothering him/who knows what. I do want him to grow up to be an independent little person who can make himself happy and does not rely on me to do that for him.

His happiness makes me wonder a lot. Like, wonder in a good way... it seems to be his base state to just be kicking around and happy. I like that. Sure, he gets frustrated when he's tired, hungry, lonely. As adults it seems we require a lot for happiness to sprout, not just the absence of crappy stuff. Of course he's usually smiling at somebody so I supposed his happiness may stem from connecting with other humans. We adults like that too. Working in a drug and alcohol detox I see people every day who really don't know how to be happy. Either they never knew or they forgot while they were chasing the artificial happiness for years and decades. I think I want to think more about happiness.

keys

keys, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.

i asked for a key to my over-desk cabinet and they gave me these to look through

peas

peas, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.

Winters loves to get his picture taken, he's just enamored of the camera. Here he saw me trying to get a shot of these pea shoots and thought I was taking his photo. He stopped paying attention to Aaron playing with him and turned on his little grinning bobblehead charm.

peas

peas, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.

I was clearing out some of the winter cover I planted to get ready for spring. I only noticed the blooms on these peas after I pulled them, so now they are a flower arrangement/cat toy.

cactus, lone star, longhorn paraphernalia, bongos

cactus, lone star, longhorn paraphernalia, bongos, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.

...yeah, that's austin.

garden summary, jan-feb

I've been keeping track of my harvest and so far it's just been about $10 worth of arugula and a bunch of lavender I dried. I'm really excited to ramp up the gardening as our last frost date approaches and am crossing all my fingers and toes for tons of tomatoes!

rainy day porch alternative

IMG_0361, a photo by sarahs_and_aarons on Flickr.