How Does Your Garden Grow?

In the spring I’m always full of hope and plans when it comes to the lawn and garden.

I think that this will be the year that even though I hate the lawn I will keep it nice and neat if only to make my husband happy. I will plant grass seed in the bare spots, dig out more thistles and fill holes. It wasn’t…

During the winter John and I made lists of vegetables for the garden and in early spring the kids and I started seeds in the house.

Our vegetable garden vision didn’t quite pan out this year… … that’s right, we’ve got one sad tomato plant that I’m afraid has never seen the proper end of a hose. On the bright side this is a very hardy tomato plant, if I knew what it was I’d recommend it to all my brown thumbed friends!

In the spring I’m certain that the girls and I will garden together and that the flower beds will be beautiful and mostly weed free (even I’m smart enough never to hope for weedless).

In June it looked hopeful.

But now that August is here my flowers appear to be engaged in a game of  hide and seek…


… I figure it was nice of me to leave so many weeds so they’d have such nice hiding places.

For mothers day John and a good friend bought flowers for my window boxes and they were gorgeous… …emphasis on were.

And so my gardens grow, or to be a bit more correct; wither, die, and are smothered under weeds. But that’s the great thing about gardening, while it’s possible this was my worst gardening summer in history and I’ve pretty much given up all hope for the time being, I can already picture next years garden. You know, the one brimming with sweet corn, tomatoes and herbs set in the nicely manicured lawn right next to the house with the wonderful perennial flower bed and the beautiful window boxes. You should come visit it’ll be great… next summer.

These Moments

A two month hiatus from blogging has left me with a plethora of pictures to share, here are just a few that may have made a “This Moment” Friday blog had I been online.

Trouble Makers

Morning Light

Giggling With Grandma

Fourth Of JulyOregon

Tide Pools

Days That Make You Go…

Remember last years  post about the fun of the Long Lake Lager Fest?

Remember the car trouble on the way home?

The Third Annual Long Lake Lager Fest was again a great time with friends – an excellent tradition in the making.

And again we had car trouble on the way home, except worse – not such an excellent tradition.

Today was the day the report from the mechanic came in.

Some days just make you go:

I’m thinking of hitching a ride for the Fourth Annual Long Lake Lager Fest, I wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun but I’m not sure we can afford the drive home!

Do I Dare Hope???

It seems that we are back up functioning and online…

… of course I thought this before and was then proven wrong – more than once.

So though I’m supposed to be doing lots of other things before the weekend I’m going to share a story quick in case it all crashes again!

This morning Ivy was snuggling on my lap as she woke up, looking at a picture of John and I from our wedding.  She said my dress was beautiful and wanted to know where it was.
I told her it was in a box in Granny’s attic and that it would stay there so that one day if she or Clara wanted they could wear it in their own wedding.
She popped her head up,looked at me eyes shining and said, “MOM I would LOVE that!” as she dove in for a big hug.
But when she came back up she was almost in tears as she said, “But Mom, I don’t know who I’m going to marry!”

News From the Computer-less

I’m still here… sort of.

Our home computer is still non functional.

Unfortunately this has more to do with the fact that I’m a stubborn do-it-yourself-er (even when it comes to things completely out of my league like a computer) than anything else and so with one thing and another, the computer is making progress but still not usable.

What I have learned is that I can actually survive without my computer and the internet. In the first few days of computer-less panic I wasn’t sure it was possible:

How do I get a hold of ____ without e-mail?   – The phone.

How do I know what the weather is going to do? – Walk outside.

What about the news? – News shmews if it’s really spectacular someone always mentions it.

Online banking? – Send it to work with John.

I ended up with only one main problem.

What about my blog?  – ???

Since there is no good option for blog writing away from home when you have two children and your local library often closes at five I’ll keep plugging away on fixing the computer. I’ve a backlog  of pictures, stories and books to share and who knows one of these days I may even break down and pay someone qualified to fix my problem!

Catastrophe!

During our rash of breaking things the hard drive jumped on board and we lost our computer. Today I’m at the library frantically catching up while attempting to keep Clara from pulling all the books off the shelves and sticking them in the return slot…and now I think my time is about at an end because I smell something suspiciously stinky coming from Clara’s direction.

Hopefully I’ll be back online soon, but now I must go put the library back together!

 

Just Imagine

Just imagine waking at five am to the sound of a crying kid and realizing that your air conditioner has broken.

Then imagine getting the kid back to sleep but being unable to fall back asleep yourself because the five and a half straight hours of sleep you just got was so much better than normal it’s almost like you aren’t tired.  Plus you are panicking about the broken air conditioner since it’s five am and the temperature is already nearing 80.

Imagine that after you do fall back asleep you are violently woken up when hearing…

…”MOM THE FREEZE POPS AREN’T FROZEN ANYMORE!!!” …

…and all that that implies.

In case you are having trouble imagining the implications let me help you:

1) Daughter is out of bed, down stairs helping herself to freeze pops for breakfast without your knowledge.

2) Freezer has clearly quit working, (insert very bad words of your choosing here).

3) If the freezer isn’t working, the fridge probably isn’t either (more bad words here).

4) Remember that the air conditioner is broken and that the house is now nearing 80 degrees, consider what that means to food in non-working refrigerator (bad words here).

5) Realize that you were in fact quite tired and that your now cumulative six and half hours of sleep doesn’t seem like near enough and that more sleep is clearly out of the question.

Imagine that the adrenaline involved in the situation is enough stimulant to have you out of bed shuffling thawing food into the chest freezer before your eyes are fully opened and you’ll just have imagined my day before 8am.

 

The good news –

-we have a spare fridge

-we have a chest freezer

-it rained all morning so it is only now approaching beastly hot

-my fridge needed cleaning out and defrosting anyway

-the pigs like it when I clean the fridge

 

Despite the “good news” I’m hoping you all only ever have to imagine such a morning!

The Keys

I lose stuff. Well not all stuff.  In fact, like most of the mothers on the planet, I’m usually the one who knows where the – pajamas, swimming suit, toy horse, tape measure and dogs are.  My wallet and keys, that’s a different matter.  I have misplaced my wallet so many times it no longer bothers me. I’ve yet to truly lose it and eventually hours, days or weeks later, I find it again. Same with the keys. Once I tried carrying a purse. Not a good plan, then instead of losing just my wallet I’d lose my wallet, keys, cell phone and purse. After kids showed up I tried using the diaper bag as a purse – same problem.

Now I have a system. My wallet is tiny, it fits in my pocket, mostly I leave it in the truck. My keys I also leave in the truck. When I go out in public I leave my Great Dane in the truck and figure truck, keys and wallet are safe behind her big, slobbery barks. When Piper needs to stay home I cart them around and it usually works out. Except when it doesn’t.

Many months ago I lost my truck keys. The good key ring. The one with all those little tags from stores ( and libraries) that I have collected over the past 10 years and can’t seem to get rid of just in case I stop by a Sentry store and need to save $.50 on a bag of grapes.  I looked in the truck (because that’s where I keep my keys) and then I looked in the basket on the fridge (because that’s where John keeps keys) and then I looked again and again. I looked in unlikely locations and I questioned Ivy repeatedly.

No keys.

John harassed me about losing keys, I ignored him.  Months went by. John locked the spare (and only) set of keys in the truck and I couldn’t harass him as much as I wanted to because it was pointed out that if I had not lost the other set a locksmith would not have been necessary.  More months went by.  I used the spare keys, life went on. John occasionally would bring up how I lose keys and I would agree that yes I really seemed to have lost them this time.

AND THEN

John checked on the bees.

Guess what was in the pocket of his bee suit.

What followed was some very childlike and very satisfying crowing in the kitchen that detailed just who it was that  really lost my keys.