The Bounty

This is after I harvested three giant bowls of lettuce and spinach. After. Andy's greenhouse is really amazing, and I just had another fantastic spinach salad for lunch. My neighbor has a giant bowl of lettuce for dinner tonight. I have one of my own in the fridge as well. Delicious.

Happy Mother's Day

To my mom, to Andy's mom, to my Nana, and to all of the other lovely mommas that we know and love. This weekend we had some gorgeous weather (finally) and spent as much time outside as possible. Late yesterday afternoon, Sophie wanted to come in and lay down for a while (not unlike her) and I agreed to stay in with her. She fell to sleep for a while, then woke up and vomitted all over the couch. Ick. So, that then became the theme for the night and we changed our dinner plans to include takeout pizza instead of the fancy plans we originally had. Today, she woke up much happier, drank a bit of water, some ginger ale, ate some saltines and dried bananas and even spent a little time outside with us between her many naps (she is on a long one right now). Now that she seems to be feeling a bit better, her sister is not feeling so hot. This makes sense to me, but it's such a bummer. Her tummy hurts and she almost seems like she wants to throw up, but so far she hasn't.

Tonight we ate (by we, I really mean just Andy and I) a delicious spinach salad from our garden. We picked enough spinach to supply neighbors on both sides of us with a large bag of it and have our own salad. We also plucked a large bowl of lettuce greens and had a salad from that at lunchtime. But back to the spinach salad - it was delicious! We added bacon, hard-boiled egg and poppyseed dressing that I made this afternoon. It's our same recipe that we usually make, but I substituted canola oil for the corn oil and instead of 3/4 cup of sugar, I added 1/2 cup of agave nectar. I think it was a divine Mother's Day dinner and I just wish my girls were feeling up to eating as well. We had planned to go out for ice cream today, but I think we will squeeze it into one of our days next weekend instead.

For Mother's Day...

*Andy washed Charley for me (she really needed it)

*Andy and Emma built the hanging flower baskets for our front porch while Sophie and I napped on the couch (Sophie's fault, I wasn't tired at all).

*Sophie made a handprint tile for me

*Emma painted a flower, tree, and sun picture on a tile for me

*Andy made breakfast for me this morning

*I did manage to sneak up to the sewing room for about 30 minutes to prep a couple projects

Even with my girls not feeling well, Mother's Day has been really nice this year and I feel super blessed to have this wonderful family.

First Harvest

We have had some mixed results with the garden this year.

1. The slugs are eating all of the strawberries.

2. The slugs destroyed the broccoli.

3. The slugs attacked one of the tomato plants.

4. The slugs attacked our beans.

5. The spinach was the first victim to the slugs.

There were a few other surprises too, like which way the water would drain in the lettuce bed and just how incredibly moist one of the areas stays. We are also surprised (pleasantly) to see the raspberry bushes really thriving (we will have our first harvest next year). We are excited about the lettuce and green peppers which look pretty nice.

We spent most of today outside, working in the garden, and clearing weeds all around. But, when it was time to go in for lunch - a sweet little voice said "mom, can we pull some carrots to eat for lunch today?". There is no resisting these little voices around here, so pull - we did.

The girls devoured all of these carrots (sure, they are small). But first, they climbed up on the stool by the kitchen sink and worked together to clean these little carrots. It was really sweet to see.

Even with so much of our garden falling victim to the slugs, we love being out there in the yard, in the garden... working, playing, planning. Currently, we are considering our next attack on the slugs...

That is going to be a really sore back...

...but the fruits of his labors will be good. So good. This is a retaining wall or frame for one of our garden beds. We are actually planning about six garden regions this year (oops, I forgot one - make that seven regions). We have blueberry bushes now. We plan for a region dedicated to raspberries. Two areas that will grow tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, and carrots. We are hoping to build a bean trellis or teepee for green beans. There will be a strawberry bed. There will be a flower garden for cutting, picking, smelling, admiring by the girls. I think that covers it. Unfortunately, the soil in the areas that we will garden has not yet been worked since last year. That is part of what Andy is doing now. But... soon we will have an amazing bounty of homegrown goodness. I think I know how Emma, Sophie and I will be occupied this summer and fall... and spring.

Oh, and for the record, Andy moved about three thousand pounds of rock today. He did the same thing last weekend. Wow! Wow! Bring on the heating pad. Oh, and the girls. They like walking on his back. He only winces sometimes. Strong man, good work.

One more thing... you should know that the rain this morning was crazy heavy and Andy was soaked. Super sopping wet. We need some nice spring weather soon. Please.