Monday, April 16, 2007

The Crews Family Garden Patch ...updated

I didn't blog much last week, in fact, I didn't do much of anything last week. No spring cleaning, no yoga, almost no knitting, almost no working, almost no walking. I spent a good part of the week sick on the couch, sleeping as much as I possibly could. Brett and I walked about three miles on wednesday evening since I was finally able to breathe through my nose a little bit. By friday I was good to go but still didn't manage to do anything but dishes and laundry. Brett's truck broke down on wednesday so he was driving the pathfinder, leaving me and the boys stuck at home for a few days. Not like I felt like leaving the house much anyway.

I think I made up for all that laziness over the weekend though. We finally planted our garden and tended to the nursery. Saturday we bought our seeds and some compost and got the garden tilled up and part of the compost mixed in. And being the engineers that we are, we planned and plotted everything out on paper first. We change our design every time based on what we are planting and what part of our garden plot we are using. We had to break early on saturday to go to Houstons friend Isabel's third birthday party. It was a lot of fun. Brett and the boys played in the pool and we drank beer and ate some of the yummiest fajitas i've ever had. Isa's parents, Erin & Kevin sure know how to cook! I had to get her salsa and cheese dip recipes ... they were sooooo good. After all that fun we came home and all fell asleep pretty early. Good thing too because we had a big day ahead of us on Sunday. We got up the next morning and ate some pancakes and then headed back out to the garden. We got our rows all set up and planted our seeds. Then we moved to the nursery. I don't usually help Brett with the nursery besides planting time every February but since we were already out there I helped him pull weeds (what a chore) and spread fertilizer. I managed to figure out a way to hold a small bucket of fertilizer and drink a beer all with my left hand, leaving my right hand to spread the fertilizer in all of the pots. Now that's the way to work!

We had a really great weekend with lots of quality family time. And productive too! I'm so super happy that we finally got our garden planted. I really missed having a summer garden last year. Things were just too crazy with the kids last summer for us to handle a garden on top of it all. Brody is a little older now and was pretty happy to sit and nap outside while we worked. And Houston is our little helper. He planted seeds, did some digging and some weed pulling, played in the sprinkler and just had a great time. I think the craziest thing about this weekend was the weather. On saturday I wore a tank top, shorts and flip flops during our gardening adventure and got a bit of a sunburn. On sunday I had on a sweatshirt, sweatpants and even socks and shoes (a rare thing for me). This is Florida, is it not? And this IS the middle of April, correct? What in the blazes is going on with this weather?!?!?! At least we finally got some rain out of it all though.

So now that we're at the beginning of a new week, it's time to get back to work. My agenda for this week includes a lot of "finishing up" and apparently, upon review, is going to also require a lot of coffee ...
1. finish the spring cleaning out of my craft room
1a. post reply on The Conversation (as Andy so kindly reminded me in the comments)
2. start the spring cleaning out of my office
3. finish my nephews knitted birthday gift (better late than never ... but i had to learn intarsia to do it which i stumbled about for a while, i've got it now though)
4. finish my brother-in-laws wildflower website in time for the wildflowers blooming out in the field (also better late than never)
5. finish the boys toybox that has been on hold ever since the strange streaks and spots showed up when i stained it three months ago (i decided to paint their names on the top of it to cover up the spots and put poly on the sides since those are fine)
6. paint the doorway between the kitchen and laundry area red (i started taping the trim over a month ago)
7. walk at least three times this week
8. and of course, all the usual things such as laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, diaper changes, hair appointment, dentist appointment, pediatrician appointment, etc.
How I ended up planning a dentist, hair and doctor appointment all in the same week, three days in a row i'm not sure. *she makes a mental note not to do that again*

I'll add some garden pictures soon, although they won't be very interesting until things start to sprout. I'll leave you here with a list of what's to come from the Crews Family Garden.

Super sweet corn, green beans (bush blue lake), acre peas, speckled butter beans, texas sweat peas, okra, straight neck squash, crook neck squash, zuchini, carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, watermelon, cantelope, peppers, tomatoes, and a patch of some fruit seeds that i'm experimenting with including papaya, pomegranite, noni, kiwi and guava.

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