North Bay and a birthday

Dave had a birthday and we enjoyed a wonderful day together going from his bike race in Novato to lunch and ice cream cones at Stinson Beach to fresh oysters from Drake's Bay and back home again for a backyard barbeque.  A lovely way to spend the day celebrating.

Our little fairy garden

A year or so ago, I found some website out in the great big world wide web that talked about fairy gardens.  Little container gardens with tiny trinkets that your children can play in.  Well, around here, we aren't afraid of dirt, we love to create and above all imaginative play = win!

 Basically, you take a big clay terra cotta pot and plant flowers in it or just use whatever you have laying around and then go to town.

We have a couple of pots in the backyard so I confiscated one for this project and set about to thinking and designing.  Funny thing is there really wasn't much of plan at all.  I went to a craft store and for probably under $5 got a bunch of fun little items and also used some things from around the house:  a double birds nest, a sunflower/lady bug candle holder, a tiny fence, a tiny basket, a circular mirror, a blank spool and a bag of a dozen teeny tiny eggs.

I plopped the items in the pot and rearranged them oh so carefully and then the children rearranged, too.  They don't always play with the little fairy garden but they do notice changes to it as the seasons pass.  The little flower candle holder gets filled with rain water, there are spiders that crawl around it and perhaps an inside toy wanders astray and finds itself amongst the tiny goodness.

Why yes that is a pumpkin in the background there!  It's helping the children learn about decomposition!

Quite a few months ago, Ashleigh got a National Geographic coloring book from the dollar store.  Inside of it was an envelope that had two flat paper discs with seeds embedded in them.  She planted them in the fairy garden pot and they grew wildflowers!  So, so cool!  The flowers have even made it over the winter and now into the spring.

xoxo

In between the recent rainstorms, we cleaned out the raised beds.  The children had a wonderful time "helping" and playing in the dirt.  The only plants left are the pea plants pictured below, spinach, green onions and beets.  The peas finally decided to show up.  They grew and grew and then grew some more.  But no actual peas.  Finally about a week or so ago we noticed the flowers starting to produce.  The beets got upturned a couple of times when Gypsy buried a toy among them.  I probably won't do them again.  Too much work, unfortunately.  The carrots worked out great.  We pulled them all out too and they were so sweet.  Not at all like the ones at the store.  I'm pretty sure we can grow those year round.  Oh and the broccoli.  So, they grew and grew.  Then we had broccoli florets and then the next day they were gone.  Stinky squirrels, I'm guessing got them.  I should have just harvested them that day.  Live and learn.  Thinking about planting more stuff soon but it needs to dry out a bit and well, I just don't want to do it yet.

And on that note... Happy Valentine's Day!

Fall fun.

So apparently you can grow other things in your garden besides beans and tomatoes and cucumbers... huh?  Of course, I knew that but sheesh it's working!  We'll see how it goes though... it's been kind of summery here so who knows what will happen when the temp drops below 40 in the evenings.

We went to the pumpkin farm with preschool.  It was 82 when we got to the part of the farm where the kids could pick out pumpkins.  We were all hot and ready to go and I can't believe I got a half way decent shot of the children in front of the pumpkins.  See miracles do exist.  

Recently

*I worked in Ryan's class at preschool.  It is absolute madness.  As one mom said, "It's like watching popcorn pop."  Couldn't have said it better.

*I made a couple of meals that I froze in an effort to have meals already ready.  I'm not really into doing that but I wanted to give it a try and see if it pays off.... in sanity points.

*I learned about a woman who tried to commit suicide because she couldn't pay her mortgage.  She lived.  Fannie Mae forgave her loan... The woman is... 90 years old.  What is wrong with this world?

*I think this ad is pretty cool.

We're trying Uncle Sam, we're trying...

Go seedlings go!

Victory Garden Fall 2008

We picked our pumpkin this weekend and planted a fall garden!  Crazy, huh?

There are peas, lettuces, broccoli and more... and it's all full of chicken sh!t as Dave said.  Fine, it's chicken manure but I read it works.  

A shot of our little cantalope on the left and a store bought one on the right.  Give you one guess as to which one had the best flavor.

Last day of summer

Incredibly, the very best of our 2008 Victory Garden is this pumpkin.   It started coming in probably some time in July and has just kept getting bigger.  Its circumference is about 29 inches.  As much as I love summer, I guess it's time to start saying hello to fall...  

Come on in Summertime...

... we're totally waiting for you!

So our cat...

... caught a friggin' lizard and bit the tail off it (or perhaps the tail "fell off" as a defense mechanism... okay!? then) and, well, we saw the tail moving around, squirming and wrigglin' and, well, we took the tail (er I did) and put it in an empty animal cracker/cookie plastic bin dealie from Costco and, well, we watched that friggin' tail move around... 

ALL.

ON.

ITS.

OWN.

yuck.

The things you do for your children.

(Dave is holding the tail... totally not me!  Not that I wouldn't do it but given the choice... yup, Dave's gonna do it.)

The remains of summer...

Today Ashleigh & Ryan played in the aqua plastic pool one more time and dined on frozen treats after lunch. There won't be many more days like this in the coming weeks so we took what we could for now. Squeezing out the last bits of summer sunshine just like you would the slurpy juice in an Otter Pop.

VICTORY!

The bounty from our Victory Garden... green beans as tasted by Ryan and Ashleigh holding our first tomato!

Meet Sam the Dragonfly...

While sweeping the floor the other day, I came upon this lovely creature that had found its way into our house...

I shouted to Ashleigh to grab her bughouse and then mustered enough strength to somehow manage to get that bug in. Ashleigh proudly proclaimed his name to be Sam as if he were an old long lost friend... (Oddly enough when I was a child we had Monarch butterflies that visited our house in New York and I named one that would strangely visit each and every year Pete.)

Here she is checking out Sam and note the littlest member of the family behind Ashleigh's shoulder... who doesn't want to put a bug net over your own head?

We let Sam go after Daddy's came home from work... he buzzed us once and then flew over the fence and across the neighborhood... silly, I know, but how cool is that?

Here's what a few hundred dollars of sod will get you...

Two wet children who won't sit still for any photos at all!

Home Work

So I think we've completely demolished the backyard. Yup. I think there are only a handful of plants left in our lot... absolutely amazing. Only about a half dozen trips to the dump... yay! boo.

Now that we're nearly done with the plant removal, we're onto the real demo... the patio cover, the horrible (sorry previous owners!) gray brick patio, part of our 2 decks, the concrete walkway, the rock BBQ and the hot tub barrel horribleness. Wow! Seeing that in print makes me realize we have our work cut out for us... but demo work usually goes fast... hopefully. After the demo... some edging, sprinklers and finally grass. Boy, that makes it sound so easy... Thankfully through our great new neighbors we've found a contractor that might be helping us with some of the more wretched tasks like digging out roots left by the big pine tree.

Speaking of roots, we have this ridiculous bamboo clump near our fence and let me tell you... I'm against it. Today, we attempted to dig out some of the new shoots. Ugh. I will only wish bamboo on my worst enemies... perhaps this is a job for the contractor as well.

We also hung a few photos up above our couch... Hooray! That wall is so long and man it still needs a few more items to make it not look so friggin' huge. Maybe some of that Pottery Barn wall office dealie stuff... like this but in black above the watchmaker's bench:



Then I'm thinking maybe something like this on one of the other walls like the hallway... Looks so easy, no? I think I could even use just some scrapbook paper... God only knows I have enough to wallpaper my whole friggin' house inside and out!

New title

Well, I did it... I have started a vegetable garden... our very own "Victory Garden"... hopefully. Ashleigh is super excited about the garden although she is all about the harvest and somewhat interested in the planting. (Similarly, everday she asks me if the peaches are ready to eat!) I admit it was getting to be a bit slow going after we filled up our peat pots with water and just sat and waited for them to expand to the appropriate size so that we could get to seed sowing. We've planted cucumbers, corn, carrots, peas, green beans, green onions, tomatoes, pumpkins, melons, sunflowers... good stuff!

Now we wait... hard to wait... very hard... must wait a long time... still waiting... I really do hope that at least a couple of the seeds germinate and then really take off. There is one small problem... I planted like 72 peats pots just with tomato seeds. Yes, I'm not sure what I was thinking. Either I will have to throw half of them away when the plants start to take or I will be known as "That Crazy Tomato Lady."

Before & After

So now that the pine trees and oleanders are gone what do we do?

Here's a before (at least of the oleander):


Here's an after:



Looks like we traded one big mess for another... although we feel like we nearly doubled our space. The man who cut down the biggest one of the three oleanders said it was the biggest one he had ever cut down. They were just wrong. I'm excited about all the possibilities however we are most likely going to do over half of the work ourselves. I really enjoy working with Dave on all the projects around the house... we work well as a team together but we certainly ain't no Roger Cook.

Tuesday, tuesday...

Today, I realized we have 2 peach trees in our backyard... yup, 2 peach trees. I typed into Google something like "Pink flowering tree green leaves" and BAM! So that means at one point we had an apple tree, a lemon tree, 2 peach trees and grapevines... awesome!



Tomorrow, James, the man who cut down our 2 pine trees, is coming by to give us a quote on the oleander ridiculous... hopefully, his quote won't be ridiculous!

Also, organized Ashleigh's closet... ugh! How does one child accumulate so many toys and bits? Well, I found this awesome 14 pack of Iris clear shoeboxes at Costco for about $20 and Voila! it's done! Her closet is sooooo much bettter... she's even got a cozy little spot now for reading in her room...

A quick shot of the 2 babies having fun in her room prior to the great clean sweep of March '07!



And I overdid it yesterday. Didn't really finish all that laundry and my back is sore after the mulch moving... I do have good intentions, honest.

Coming out from the fog... with flip flops on.

A week of being sick with little ones takes a lot of out of you... I read recently where someone asked what a stay at home mom is to do if they are sick? The answer... it's not allowed! Ha! So true. I will tell you though that we did run out of TP however we all managed to eat.

A wonderful weekend full of sunshine helped. Our crazy backyard seems to be blossoming all over... every time I go out there to check out something, I find another new green leaf pushing its way up through the earth. Too many bulbs for our liking though. Often I just want to mow it all down and start over. I just want a play area for the children and a patio/BBQ spot. Simple enough yet I can't seem to find a good place for ideas. Eh, there's time.

So it's back to preschool this week for Ashleigh and a routine for the rest of us... woohoo!