welcome to spring

our area got a whole lot of rain at the beginning of april.  which finally allowed our horrible looking yard to turn a rich shade of green.  and to grow at an alarming rate.  so the rain, plus a few other little distractions, made it hard for ross to get out and mow it for several weeks.

so then it looked like this:

but last weekend he finally got out to mow (and even got to “cheat” by borrowing our neighbor’s riding lawn mower – ours is a push mower, aka “would’ve taken 6 hours to mow”)

left: unmowed grass,  right: mowed grass

and voila, the after.  much better.

and now for a casual stroll around our yard.  i love when our yard finally starts to come back to life.

grape hyacinths.  we have them everywhere.

our one lone yellow tulip in the back mulch bed…

and the one lone daffodil right beside it.  must plant more bulbs back there this fall so these two don’t seem so random.  which right now, they are.

seedum, transplanted from the mother-in-law’s house a few years ago and growing really well.

more seedum.  this stuff is so pretty for not having any flowers.

gratuitous puppy pic!

and in the front yard:

on either side of our front porch we have tulips, more grape hyacinths, and creeping phlox – since they’re all in bloom at the same time it really jazzes up the front of the house without me having to do any work.  love me some perennials.

and tah-dahhhh!  garden 2k11 has begun!

ross had a work thing up in roanoke earlier this week and was kind enough to buy me some pepper seedlings at the roanoke farmer’s market.  these seedlings (red, yellow, and orange bell peppers) look soo much better than what i can usually get my pepper seedlings to look like and i’m A-OK with not growing them from seed this year.

all we did was transplant them from their plastic 4-pack into larger pots, where they’ll await their final transplant into the garden sometime in mid may.  can’t wait.

and finally, i started my tomato seeds – the only seeds i’ll be growing under lights this year.  everything else will get direct-seeded into the garden in may along with the peppers.

this year’s tomatoes:  amish paste (like a roma), black cherry (a purpleish cherry), carbon (purple beefsteak), german red strawberry (red beefsteak), and moneymaker (small, very round red tomato).

gratuitous baby pic!  our little future farmer (i told him we’d call him a farmer and not a gardener so he could sound more masculine – think that will convince him to help mom in the garden?)

backpacking weekend

ross and i finally got out to do some hiking over fourth of july weekend.  i love that there are so many options right in our region for backpacking; the stretch we did was on the appalachian trail in giles county.  about 13 miles total and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect.  in fact, it got into the upper 40′s at night and humidity during the day was low.

take a hike

update: all pictures from the trip can be viewed here.

in honor of our three-day weekend, some gorgeous weather, and a little bit of cabin fever, ross and i are heading out for a weekend of camping/hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Giles County.

the four legged babies have been informed of this trip and promptly started freaking out in excitement.  rosie even took her pack for a test spin this morning.

this is our first weekend of camping in an embarrassingly long time and it couldn’t be a better forecast.  i mean, tonight’s low is supposed to be 49 degrees for crying out loud.  can’t wait to get out there and i especially can’t wait for the amazing pictures.  much funness will be had.

parental hazards

when you are awakened in the night to a pitiful crying, do you wake up to investigate or do you go back to sleep?  first, you tap your husband, nudging him slightly, as if to say “it’s for you.”  then yes, you begrudgingly get up

when you realize said crying is from the four-legged baby who usually sleeps through the night, but is currently prancing about at the bottom of the staircase, do you go down to find out what’s wrong?  well, since you’ve already gotten up, why not

but when you realize that all this pomp and circumstance is merely because the four legged baby has been gorging himself for the length of a workday on chestnuts falling in large quantities all over the yard and are now threatening to explosively burst forth from his digestive tract, do you for one tiny second feel sorry for the little punk?  absolutely not.  you kick him outside and head back to bed, excitedly waiting to do it all over again in 24 hours.

garden update: june 13

this is a garden auger.  feel the power.

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as you can tell from the four bamboo posts already in, we drilled a small but deep hole at an 65ish degree angle.  this helps the poles to lean in

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then its time to use your muscles and jam the pole firmly into place.  many blisters and sore muscles will ensue.

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in general, we aimed to sink the poles about 12 inches into the ground

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if you make a really intense face, the pole will go in easier

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even i had to bring out the guns and help

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finally! all eight poles are in.  we designed this system using 1 pole every 2 feet – the boxes are 8 feet long, so that comes out to 4 poles on each side.  is this the best design?  not sure – this will be a year of trial and error

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a few shots of the (nearly) finished product from a couple different angles.  (later we secured all the post tops together by mounting a horizontal pole across the top and lashing them together)

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the first two boxes hold the tomatoes, basil, and squash/zucchini/cukes/pumpkins/watermelon (both boxes eventually had trellises installed over them).  the last box, the potatoes and onions

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the lettuce has really started to fill in

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this box has really started to take off – thankfully it won’t need trellises like the other two.

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a closer look…

strawberries

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pepper buds

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a pot of parsley, oregano, and basil i bought last weekend at the farmer’s market

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the rest of the tomato seedling stragglers.  these guys will hopefully catch up in the growth department

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what jackson has in his mouth 95% of the time

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sprouts

finally some pictures of what’s growing right now.  it’s still a bit early for most of the other veggies, but here’s what i have so far.

the onions are sprouting!

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condensation on the “greenhouse” roof.  the plant lights really heat things up.

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tiny basil sprouts

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i’ve been marking what’s planted where on this sheet of paper – learned the hard way last year.

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a small space heater turns on at night to keep the seedlings warm

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this is the plant lights set up we’ve been using – not the most elaborate. but i think it’ll be effective.

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once more seeds get planted, we’ll use this side too

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and just because they’re cute, here are a couple pics of the four legged children.

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