Garden Update

Jeremy wanted to do something special for our garden this year so we put together an irrigation drip system. It was nice to work together to do it. We make a good team. I hope it helps the plants be happy.

The zucchini obviously like it. Above is the difference of 4 days. Both the zucchini and tomatoes are thriving.

 

One of our bell pepper plants is having troubles. It's been going back and forth between being droopy and being perky. I don't know what will happen with it because I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Is it getting too little water? Is it getting too much water? Is it something else? I don't know.

Overall, the garden is doing well. We even have a jalapeno growing. We'll see how the garden is in a few more weeks.

 

On a related note, we decided not to leave our watering can outside anymore when we're not using it.

 

Water a Flower Day

We got a late start with our garden this year. It's been a weird year, weird Winter, etc. In April and May there were several freeze warnings even though it was a mild Winter.

So on a rainy Saturday, Jeremy and I headed out to buy some plant starts so we could have our vegetable garden. 

And it just so happened that May 30 was Water a Flower Day. Some of the starts actually had flowers on them already. Ta-da. Celebrated. 

 

What They Missed- August 9

Sunday, August 9-

We watched Music & the Spoken Word then had a gospel discussion about outside and inside influences and watched a fortification video that the couple who minister to us recommended. The video can be found with the Come, Follow Me lesson on churchofjesuschrist.org for August 3-9, Alma 43-52. 

That afternoon the Primary had a Zoom Singing Time. The boys loved it. They were asked something good that happened this week. Our boys said, "Our oldest siblings went to visit grandparents so we have the house to ourselves," and pointing at Jet, "This little guy is crawling and can pull himself to standing while holding something." That's something since the last time I was at church and in Primary with these people was before Jet was born. 

Jet tried out finger feeding himself and he played with water on his food tray. 

It was National Rice Pudding Day so I made a recipe from the May 2015 The Friend magazine. I'd been wanting to do this recipe for Rice Pudding Day for years and I finally did. Hooray!

I also tried out yet another new recipe from melskitchencafe.com and it was a success and so easy that I'll definitely be making it again.

Slow cooker Southwest chicken stacks

Again, Lucky wanted to make sure I was writing down all the things he was doing for me such as refilling my water bottle and holding the baby and bringing me things for the baby.
He held the flashlight for me while I changed lightbulbs in the boys' room and when Jet woke up, Jr. Jr. took care of him while I finished up with the bulbs. 

There was also feeding birds and watering dying plants.
I decided to try my hand at making face masks (even though I really don't have the time) since I have quite a bit of scrap fabric that can be used. I managed to cut out pieces for one mask that day.

Festival of Life in the Cracks Day 2015

Nooooooooooooo!  I was going to get up and get things done.  I was supposed to be getting over my cold.  Then I woke up feeling worse this morning.  Blech.  So...
The little boys and I watched A Bug's Life this morning to celebrate Festival of Life in the Cracks Day, March 10. 
This afternoon, Jr. Jr. and I went out to get some fresh air because maybe that would help.  We went to a park to look at cracks in the pavement and to see what life we could find.  Plants?  Bugs?
I saw one bug that crawled into a crack and another bug nowhere near a crack.
But we saw plants.  Lots and lots of plants.  Lots of plants grow in cracks.  If you really get down and look at the weeds, it's awesome.  They have so many different textures.
Jr. Jr. thought this one looked like they were having a party.

Jr. Jr. took some pictures

 and I took some pictures.

Now I'm feeling lousy again and just want to get this blog post done so I can go to bed.
I'm also feeling grumpy again because I don't feel well.  Blech.  And I've still got sick kids, too.

Plant a Flower Day 2012

Plant a Flower Day, March 12. I didn't get around to planting new seeds, but Jeremy brought home a larger pot for me to transplant my mini rose plant he got me for Valentine's Day.

Except I'm going to wait a few days. This morning I looked at the rose plant and saw all these teeny tiny little spiders (I'm assuming they were spiders, they were climbing all over little webs). They were so cute, must be new babies. But... I do not want dozens of spiders running around my home, so they had to leave. I took the rose out and took a hose to it. Ran a lot of water over that plant. From all different angles, side, top, upside down. Bye Bye, spiders. I've decided to give it a few days and keep my eye on it. I found several more spiders throughout the day so I got rid of what I found. I'll give it a few days to see if I need to take the hose to it again, or if I can get rid of the rest one by one.
Anyone have any tips for this type of thing?

Anyway, so I'll transplant my mini rose later. Thank you, Jeremy, for getting me the pot... and the flowers.

Our New Pet

Meet our new pet. She's a venus fly trap and we were able to feed her three flies and a ladybug within the first four days of having her. She is awesome. Everyone has had a chance to see her traps clap shut on bugs (except maybe Jr. Jr.) and we're having fun.

They've Gone to a Far Better Place

We said goodbye to about half our plants today.
Remember all those posts about starting them from seeds, and how they've grown, and transplanting them, etc. etc. etc.
Our one spot to plant outside is a planter box in front of our neighbor's window (we planned to keep the smaller plants in front of the window and the larger to the sides- it's common courtesy). Our neighbors were okay with this idea. However, due to unforeseen circumstances that bit of earth is no longer available.

We feel worse for our neighbors than for the bit of earth we were going to use.

We tried. We really did. We wanted to do a garden, if even a little one.
When Jeremy went home teaching, the opportunity came up to donate our plants to one of the families he home teaches. They have plenty of garden space and were planning on sharing some of the food they grow with us anyway. And this way we don't have to throw out our plants because there's no garden for them.
So we said farewell to the pumpkin, tomatoes, banana peppers, and the one surviving sunflower, but kept the herbs and romaine lettuce.

Our kitchen windowsill seems so bare now. I guess when we separate the lettuce into individual containers that will help, though.

The kids look forward to going to visit the plants later in the season and we're happy the plants went to a better place instead of having to throw them away eventually.

See what good things come from home teaching? More than one family will be blessed from this.

Another Fun FamilyFun Idea

A while back, I mentioned that we would need to transplant some of our plants (which we did). For containers for the sunflowers, we used an idea from the March 2011 FamilyFun Magazine. 2-liter bottles as planters.

Once again, I like the FamilyFun Magazine.

Speaking of Plants

Everyone is doing pretty well. Some may even need to be transplanted to bigger containers already. Here they are:

parsley

oregano

basil

Sunflowers (Jr. on the left, Nichole on the right)

romaine lettuce

tomato

pumpkin

banana pepper (not quite ready to be transplanted)