Veggies

More picture updates of the garden in this last week of May! The past three days we've blessed with a good amount of rain in Hartland and the plants are soaking it up! Ahhhh, nothing beats the smell of rain in the desert... I swear that everything has doubled in size because of it!

One of the first of the zucchini with a million more to follow it! Zoey helped me plant seeds this year and I think she got ahold of the zucchini packet...I couldn't stand to pull out too many of the zucchini seedlings that came up, so we're going to have zukes morning, noon and night in a week or two!

Most of the tomatoes we started this year were paste varieties, but I couldn't help but a few of our cherry tomatoes! I also had a couple of volunteer cherry tomato plants come up from last year. Hopefully there will be a bumper crop this year so I can make a lot of salsa and spaghetti sauce!

I think that in a previous post I hadn't planted any cucumbers yet, but I gave in and as you can see they are climbing away! We also put together another small raised bed to add to our collection and I planted more cucumbers and tromboncino squash. The bed is just a make-shift one made from concrete block and it's next to our dog run. Hopefully the squash and cukes will climb the fence with a little training.

Here we have a little mingling of beets, okra and carrots. Hopefully some yummy veggies soon!

Then and Now

This is our amazing Zoey Ash when she was just over 2 years old (younger than Cams is now!) I can't believe how fast that she's grown. She has always been such a sweet natured, smiley girl! We had planted the Catalpa tree behind her not too many days before this picture was taken. And I'm proud to say that that is one of the trees that I started from seed!

Here is our same pose today! Catalpa's are really fast growing trees and since the almost 3 years that the first picture was taken, it has grown probably 3+ feet! Not to mention the little beauty who has also seemed like she's grown 3 feet! I'm going to have a Kindergartner soon!

imagenes

Camryn is my little early bird in Hartland, so most mornings when I'm at home she and I have a bit of time by ourselves before Zoey wakes up (Daddy has either already gone to work, or hasn't made it home from work yet...) Sometimes she'll help me with breakfast, but mostly I like to set her up with a project to keep her little hands busy! We don't buy Play-Doh because firstly it has plenty of dye in it and my girls are allergic to red dye. Plus have you read the ingredients? Just can't help not wanting that junk around my ladybugs. So in turn I make home-made playdoh--simple flour, salt, and cream of tarter. Easy as that and if they happen to put it in their mouths (which happens A LOT!) it's perfectly fine, albeit a bit salty! If you're wondering about where the purple color came from? Blueberry juice! Hello all natural :)

And as an added thought: Yes, Camryn absolutely got her morning hair from me!

Garden

The garden is growing, growing, growing! And we're loving every minute of it! I'm of the mind frame of intensive gardening. In other words, cram as much stuff as you can into as little space as possible. This helps to conserve water in our hot desert summer days, and also helps me to have more of a harvest when I have only raised bed gardens. Even now in May I'm still trying to sneak in different seeds!

Look at my artichokes! This is the second year that they've been in the ground and Zoey and I are hoping for tons and tons of them! These are definitely in honor of my Grandpa Robert--can't wait to share these with him.

Flop

Well for all who are wondering, my egg incubating experiment was unsuccessful this go round. I'm attempting to try and find someone with local eggs to try again eventually but until then, the heat lamp lies dormant in the corner of our kitchen. I'm a little sad, but my friend Kelli (who inspired me to try incubating) had the same results... Between us we've got a full back of chick feed and nothing to feed it to!

On this week's agenda is to get some pics posted of mine and Zoey's little garden! I didn't get my second raised bed finished like I'd hope, but next year we'll have uber garden! So far we've got tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno, zucchini, delicata squash, watermelon and a giant sun flower courtesy of my beautiful little girl! I was planning on putting cucumbers and tromboncino squash in the second bed, so it looks like I'll have to do without my cukes this year...Boo! We've also got a big group of hearty artichoke plants and can't wait to eat 'em!

Badger

Here are a couple of pics of my proud little Badger holding her Spring 2009 soccer trophy--it was a bobble head trophy and quite possibly the most stinking cute thing I've seen because it LOOKS LIKE ZOEY! We had such a fantastic season, Z has so much fun with her little soccer buddies. And I have to say that for all of them still being only 4 years old at this point, they were doing a great job out on the field!

In other news we found out last week that the school Zoey has been attending for preschool (which is a fantastic school!) isn't the one we're zoned for, for Kindergarten. The mamma bear in me had a handful of emotions run through me when we heard the news. Tom and I immediately filled out an 'out of zone' transfer form for her to stay where she is. Yesterday was her official Kindergarten registration and we also had an IEP meeting scheduled at the new school to set up her education plan for the fall. I was so skeptical walking in to the place, but God being the amazing Creator that He is took off our blinders and showed us our daughter's future! This new school is much, much smaller and we have been told time and time again that it is very family oriented. During our registration we were able to meet the 2 Kindergarten teachers at the school. Tom and I are taking the weekend to think things over and do a lot of praying, but there's a good chance we might be taking back our transfer form. Keep our family in your prayers!

Bliss

Can I even put into words how much I completely adore this little girl? She is so so so animated all the time (I had to share a fraction of her great expressions!) And she is such an outside girl. We've really enjoyed these beautiful spring afternoons!

Irrigating

It's that time of year again here in Hartland, when my favorite fireman hauls out our giant hoses and we start irrigating the pecan trees. Messy, but oh the fun! Of course Dad and Mom took a little fun out of it because the girls were sure wanting to undress and streak through the front yard. For those of you who don't know, we have 20 mature pecan trees on our property--in the 4 years we've been here it's been kind of trial and error, but we've learned a lot in the art of 'pecaning' (Okay I just made up that word, but it sounded appropriate!) Zoey also colored herself in pink chalk and is not the lobster that she appears to be!