Garden 2014: Fencing 101

I know, I know, absentee bloggers aren't really the right way to work a blog but I was so stressed with having to accomplish a post all of the time that I had to cut somewhere and this was first! Honestly, I figured that if I was stressing about blog posts then it just wasn't worth it, I want this to be a stress-free zone, a place for me to unload (or upload) my life, a way to detox and let some out without overburdening Hubby and freaking out the neighbors! So, no promises that I have returned indefinitely, but I am hoping to restart (again) and stick to it. 

My biggest issue is that I feel like I need a schedule, so I make one post a week, which seems too little so then it becomes three posts a week, which also seems cheap but I can't keep up with five posts a week either. So let's settle on a number here, my obsessive nature demands it. I will post twice weekly, I can manage that through the summer, while the kids are home. In the fall, I might change that, but for now, I can commit to some Momma time spent here. On to what I actually came here to chat about!

I have epic plans for a brand new garden this year. Plans that may or may not actually come to fruition, considering that we had snow not so long ago and this Northeast weather has decided to skip between winter and summer, pretty much skipping spring! We have just now got around to putting in the posts, Hubby says that we have to have all the plants in by May 15 in our zone. We shall see if that happens. We needed a pretty fair sized fence since we live surrounded by woods and we have three dogs. We found a great deal on pressure-treated posts, which, looking now, may be a bit overkill but I suppose, that it is better to be safe than sorry. 

Hubbs had a day off and our two older kids were spending a weekend with their mom, so we had relatively unhindered time to get half of the posts in. Cap fell asleep and took a nap with his grandpa while we dug so that was helpful too. 

This adorable helper had me in teary smiles with how cute he was. Not very helpful but who can say no to sunshine and smiles

Digging went a bit slower since a few of the spots had rocks the size of my hand in them. 

My brother even came out at one point to help me dig one post hole while Cap tested his leg strength

Cap desperately needed to climb into the holes that I made and then use the trowel to pull the dirt back into the hole, just in case it was an accident that it was in a pile next to the hole. 

I am so happy and grateful that I have this beautiful child to help me enjoy the sunshine

Happy Spring Everyone!!!

Garden Update: Waiting on Cinderella!

     Our peas are finally all gone and the vines are starting to dry up. In between sales at our yard sale in the morning, I'll see if I can get the Hubbs and kids to help me weed the garden and pull out the pea plants to give our new stars a bit more room to grow: the Pumpkins!!! The vines have grown to reach about ten foot from end to end and in a few more days the Jack-Be-Little pumpkin vines will meet the Jack o'Lanterns and we will have twenty feet length of just pumpkins. The carrot plants never came back and while the tomato plants have grown, they haven't flowered at all so I am not sure if they will fruit this year at all. Other than one small moonflower vine that somehow made it through our late frost. The leaves of our plants are so large, three times the size of my hand, although my petite little hand is not a fair judge of size. They are easily fourteen inches across. 

This was a pumpkin at the beginning of the week

This was the same pumpkin today!

 I counted at least a dozen pumpkins started and twice that many flowers still blooming. So I think we will be okay for carving this year. Plenty of roasted pumpkin seeds for everyone and maybe a few to sell farm-stand style. I hope they get huge and beautiful because they are the most exciting thing going on in that garden!

two more peaking through the weeds

I hopefully will have an equally exciting garden update next week and a great update on how our yardsale went. For now here is a picture of Handsome taking a nap in our bed, it is by far is favorite place to sleep, curled up in my arm, preferably right after a cuddly nursing session. Enjoy the weekend!!!

Garden Update: Spiders!!!

     With Baby coming a little earlier than I had planned, my garden updates have been a little lacking. While Steven and I enjoy sitting on our little bench in the garden for a couple minutes every day, since I got poison ivy a couple weeks before he was born, I haven't done my share of the weeding so at this point, the garden looks like a giant section of weeds interspersed with bright orange pumpkin flowers and tall pea vines. As soon as I can bend over comfortably again, I'll grab my gloves and the wheelbarrow and the stroller to take care of that beast of a garden.
     This picture, while slightly difficult to see because I was too scared to get too close, is of a giant spider nest made between some of my pea vines. The half dollar sized momma spider stayed close to the nest until the little spiderlings were big enough to be on their own, which took two weeks or so. There had to be around 300 tiny little spiders in the nest, which caused a disagreement between James and I. He wanted to "take care of them," they were too close to the house and he was worried about them getting in and biting one of us. I disagreed, figuring that in all reality, only a couple would make it to adulthood and the momma probably dies after her job is done. We had thought that they were wolf spiders, but when I looked it up, wolf spiders (who tend to be aggressive and bite-happy) carry their eggs with them. Nursery web spiders (a very appropriate name) look very similar but carry their eggs until they are ready to hatch and then make their beautiful web nursery. So this protective momma, won the argument and now they are out of the garden and out in the big scary world, hopefully growing up beautifully and not biting lots of people.
     In other garden news, my peas flowered in tiny, delicate white flowers. I wasn't sure what the flowers were going to look like, so I was happy when they looked so pretty. At this point, we have eaten almost all of the peas right off of the vine with none to save for actual cooking or canning. Note for next year: plant three times as many pea plants to prevent us devouring all of them. There are a couple that we missed eating while we were in the hospital and are now too dry to eat, so I will pick them soon to dry out for either pea soup (although I doubt there are enough for that) or to plant next year since these did so well. Thank you Burpee for giving us a wonderful crop of great tasting, off-the-vine peas. While Burpee may not have been to blame, our carrots did so poorly, if we have one plant I would be surprised. We had a late frost that did many of our more delicate plants in. The pumpkins have taken over most of the garden and a fair chunk of the sidewalk. The tomatoes are about a foot tall and doing well, we are still unsure how the potatoes are doing and surprisingly, my moonflowers have started to grow while I was away. I was convinced that the shock of transplanting and the frost had finished them off, but two vines are growing on the trellis so we will see if they bloom.
     In other news, baby Steven is above his birth weight, filling out his newborn sized clothing and spending a lot more time awake, mostly between nine pm and three am.
But he is doing well, this Momma is counting down the days until she can start some serious work on the extra 20-30 pounds that are still left over and until I can go swimming again. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables, high protein, vitamins and trying to stay hydrated to help the process along. This weekend, Baby and I are down in Altoona, PA visiting family, celebrating my grandmother's 60th birthday and my grandparent's 25th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, Hubby could not get off work during the busy summer season so we are also spending our first chunk of time away from Dada. All things considered, I think I might be the most affected by that event. James has to work all weekend so he is a little preoccupied and Baby does not notice much quite yet. Two nights of this lonely momma pacing the hallway to calm Baby will be quite enough for awhile. While I love being with grandparents, I can not wait to be home with James and back in my own bed!

Garden: End of June Update

     Only 9 more days until my due date and I might be going a little stir crazy. Hubby says that it is nesting and that the feeling is completely normal but I am wary of this advice. I do not feel the incessant desire to clean everything or to cook tons, just this overwhelming feeling that nothing satisfies me (how selfish, I know). Nothing does it, not cleaning, not cooking, not chocolate, movies, shopping, sleeping, walking, ice cream, sewing, stitching, nor laundry makes me feel like I have accomplished anything for the day. This close to my due date and I figure that a slight feeling of agitation is probably normal and not a step into a diagnosed   disease (fingers crossed).

     On the positive side, my tiny little half-hearted pregnancy garden is doing pretty well, all things considered. Hubby and I spent about five hours prepping and planting and I have spent maybe two hours since weeding and staring at it, so its success has much more to do with luck and benevolent garden spirits than my green thumb. 

 This garden is maybe ten feet long by four feet wide, so there is nothing really too special going on here, but since it is my first garden since I was a child, I am pretty impressed with the idea of seeds turning into plants then turning into food. The picture to the left show my amazing pea plants, which are by far doing the best, then in the wine barrel planter are my potatoes that I started from too-soft spuds left in the cupboard too long, and at the bottom is a daisy plant that Hubby had given to me for Mother's day. There are also pumpkin plants in between the peas and potatoes but are hard to see in that picture, when they start to flower I will post new pictures of them and in front is supposed to be a row of carrots, the really neat ones that come in purple, orange and yellow but I am unconvinced of their success at this point. The kids and I really love eating cut up carrots with our meals so I thought different coloured ones would really go over well but a late frost might have disagreed with me. The picture  above that shows more pumpkins, I planted some for carving and some tiny Jack-Be-Littles for decoration. In the top left of the picture you can almost see the tomato plants that I am attempting. I have not thinned out any of my plants, like I said, this is supposed to be a minimum input garden considering I can not bend over much at this point, so there are just mounds of plants growing and hopefully becoming fruitful in the near future.

      Here are my little pea flowers just starting to blossom, some of them have opened completely and I may, or may not, have tried to count them all to see how many peas that I will actually get. I do have a sneaking suspicion that my darling Husband will get to them before I do and eat them all raw straight from the plant and I will not get any.

     Not that I can take any credit for this, but we do have a mulberry tree that grows on our property which has tons of berries on it, all way to high for me to reach. I have been trying to convince Husband to spend some time on a ladder to aide in my conquest of the berries but it has rained so much in the past two weeks that we have not had much time to pick them anyways. I really wanted to get enough to can some, make some jam and to make a pie but the only one that has ventured to pick any has been E and she gets enough to satisfy her hunger and then moves on to something more interesting. 

     All in all I am pretty happy with my low maintenance garden, outside of getting poison ivy all over my hand and no carrot crop. The seeds that I bought from Home Depot have all done well and had almost 100% germination, which really impressed me. I am really hoping that this rain will stop for a couple days to let me clean and air out the house before Baby Rogers gets here although with single digit days until the due date, I am not sure that will happen!