Summertime

My garden is growing! I am still dealing with nut grass, but have it out of where things are growing at least! I have baby cucumbers, yell ow squash and zucchini! I replanted carrots and beans. The corn is about 3 ft high, and everything is coming up nicely. I will post some pictures as well. I am experimenting with newspaper, I have read that putting a few layers down will keep weeds from growing, we shall see.

The kids get out of school next week, Calvin is graduating from 5th grade this week. Our friends are coming for a visit next week, and we are all going camping in the mtns! I am hoping for no rain and coolish weather.

The lightning bugs are starting to come out at night, which I always love. We are still in the process of getting the pool back up. We need to level the sand still. There is always so much to do around here!

Garden Time!

I am so excited to plant my garden this year! I have skipped planting for a few years, because the garden had become overgrown with trees. It was a jungle. So I had enough and Matt and the kids and I took to lopping all the trees off at the ground level. Once that was done, I mowed over it and sprayed it with Round Up. Then my neighbor graciously came and tilled it up. There were many large-ish trunks to remove, which had to be dug around and then axed below the ground. Needless to say, it was a lot of hard work. My neighbor, Terry, tilled it again, and we cleaned up the few tree trunks we had missed. I bought some fertilizer and he tilled that in and made the rows!! Ta- da!!! Gorgeous garden!!! So now I am waiting for the seeds to come. Meanwhile the aggravating seeds are falling all over the garden- the very ones that grew in to trees. So I am hoping to get things planted this weekend!! I will grow corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, peas, carrots, lettuce, garlic, watermelon, cukes and onions. I will grow some herbs, too. But I need to see how much room I have left!! Here are some pics of the progress so far.

Spring is Sproinging!

Today I finally got the lawn mower going- it would start but not stay running- I finally figured out why. It had no oil in it!! oops. So I mowed both lawns, and mowed over the garden really well. My neighbor has offered to till it up for me, for which I am eternally grateful. It was going to cost $50 to rent one from Home Depot, and I can't afford that right now. But, I really, really wanted to get the garden going this year. So much so that I have been dreaming about the things growing in it. For some reason, most of the dreams had Martha Stewart in them, like the one where I grew unusual tomatoes that smelled and tasted like peaches! Don't know what I ate for dinner that night :)

It was has been so warm and pretty here. Everything is blooming, and getting green and growing leaves. So I have the yard mowed, and pretty much done, for hiding Easter eggs in on Sunday.

We went to Reynolda House today, which I have been wanting to do since we moved here. It was pretty neat, kind of like a mini Biltmore. It made me want to take the kids and Matt to Biltmore even more, seeing their interest in Reynolda House.

I am really looking forward to planting a garden this year, and will post some pics as it comes along!

Florida vacation

Our family just got back from a Florida getaway. We stayed with our friend (and boss) Julie, and her daughter Elly, in Clearwater. We all went to Busch Gardens and I talked Julie and Matt into riding Sheikra!! Of course they loved it! :) We learned to play Dominion, which is now a daily past time in our house.
We also stayed in Rockledge (near Cocoa) with Matt's ex step father, Keith. That was gun, the kids love interaction with family members, especially guys! So we went to Sea World with the fam, and had a lot of fun. Keith got Calvin started on scuba diving, he completed the Bubblemaker course. He loved it! Ethan got to visit Uncle Kyton at his firehouse, which was pretty cool. We did a lot of driving, but got to see family and friends that we don't see that often. It was nice.
Now we are home and back in our own beds, back to school and work. I will say I really am happy to be living in NC, especially after going back to FL. It as nice to come back to daffodils and warmer weather, as well as budding trees! Spring is in the air!!

Christmas Thoughts

I don't know if it just me, but the wondrous ideas of Christmas I had as a little kid seem like they don't really translate to today, and to my own children. I remember listening to the old Christmas carols, not the pop'd up versions you hear now, and actually going to sing carols places! We went with school to nursing homes to sing to the old people. In my mind, Christmas as a kid really did seem like a scene from A Christmas Story. I wonder now what kind of memories my own kids will have of the holidays. We don't have tons of family or grandmother types to bake cookies with, or decorate for Christmas, or have huge family gatherings with. It is just us. So it is no wonder I feel a little bit of sadness for those Christmases past. I feel a little sad that my kids don't get to have those types of memories that I had, but it also makes me strive a little harder to make special memories for them to take with them.

My First Blog Post

Well, I figured it was time to give it a go, since I am constantly looking at blogs myself.