Year of the Rooster

I just went in and updated my profile. If you add the year you were born it includes your Zodiac sign. Do I need chickens or what? I's destiny.

Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

Well, the sunflowers are up to 2' tall and that's corn and green beans in front of them. We had to put stakes at the ends of the rows and start running twine every 4" to help support everything on windy days. So far we've added four rows to the sunflowers. These are the best sunflowers I've ever gotten to grow...look out you giants.

We also placed stakes and twine on the corn/greenbean row. They only have one row so far. I picked a bush type bean, so they won't get really tall.







These are the cherry tomatoes which I started from seed.

Can't wait to taste them, Yum.


We are going to Oklahoma next week to help my Mom with some yard work and purging, I have also heard we may be putting down new laminate flooring through the kitchen/dining room. When I spoke to her yesterday she said she had a list. Maybe I should have asked how many pages?



Is it strange to now know that "the baby" is a girl, that it just seems alot more real. My house is sooooo not ready for a baby! Charles says it will be okay, we'll just put her down with the dogs.



Speaking of dogs Daisy, one of our other grandbabies is expecting in the next week or so. They are suppossed to take her to the vet soon to have an xray of the babies to determine how big they are and if she'll have to have a c-section.

It's a Girl!

They are naming her "I don't know", see comment posted on last blog. Any other ideas are welcome. Amanda is putting together her own blog "http://chaoslaughterandlove.blogspot.com/". Take a look, its under construction.
I'm going to bed now. Sheri, sorry I forgot to call. I'll talk to you tonight.
Sweet dreams.

Virginia Tornadoes

I spoke with Sam and Courtney (Hopewell, VA.) last night after I heard about the tornadoes. Their fine, some wind and rain but nothing severe. The one tornado went through Colonial Heights, Sam said it crossed I-95 over by the mall, Circuit City area. His boss had one cross in front of him while driving down I-95. They live about 10 miles from there. You just never know.

Well I'm off to work, more later.

Amanda and Charles go to her Dr. appt. this afternoon, is it a boy or girl?
We'll soon know. Pink stuff? Blue stuff?

We also have fruit...

Well at least in a year, maybe. I ordered Dwarf Lemon, Lime trees and a blueberry plant in February. The blueberry took 3 weeks to arrive. I just knew it was too dried out, but I soaked it overnight and then planted it outside in its new home. Now look at it (I wasn't dreaming) it does have leaves.

Yes, that's right its only 4" tall. It may take two years before we get blueberry jam. The lemon and lime trees arrived in only 2 weeks. they are doing really well, but it says it will be a year before we get fruit. Get your Corona's ready!

We have red strawberries! The peach tree we discovered growing over the back fence last year has peaches on it. So I covered it with netting, I hope to get the fruit before the birds do. See the little peaches.

I also planted one pot with herbs. Cilantro (for the salsa), peppermint and chamomile (for tea), and catnip (for you know who).

Oh, right in the middle of the herbs is a Lavender plant. Here's to sweet dreams.

Amanda this is for you...

http://www.diapersewing.com/quick_dry_aio.htm

Now you too can sew your new baby diapers! hehehe
For those that didn't know Amanda and Charles are expecting in September.
So any sights you find that would be helpful, please let me know.

Now I'm having TOO much FUN!

Here is a picture of my pink petunias, they are just so pretty. And here is a picture taken April 18, 2008 of the sunflowers growing in bed one. There is also corn, green beans, cucumbers and yellow squash in this bed.

It was just an idea....

pictures taken April 18, 2008

All winter I did research on raised bed gardens. See the information at "http://www.squarefootgardening.com/". So we built three raised beds next to the patio for our kitchen garden. I ordered seed and plant catalogs, trying to figure out what to plant. Also, besides what to plant I wanted to make sure we planted things we would eat.

We built the boxes out of pine, they are 4' x 10' and 11" tall. They each have a soaker hose, which we buried, that loops around in the bed and the hose is setup on a timer so they get automatically watered at 6 a.m. each morning for one hour. This is the neatest part because I don't have to worry if everything is getting enough water. Plus when it gets hot outside I don't have to worry about standing outside and watering.

I started Roma tomatoes, Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes and hot and sweet pepper seeds in the house, which we then replanted in bed two. They started out so small I was worried they wouldn't be any good, I also planted lettuce and carrots and basil in this bed. We've already been eating on the lettuce a couple of times. You just cut what you want, you can get up to 4 cuttings before having to resow.

I draped the mesh over the beds when everything was little to discourage the cats from thinking we made them a giant litter box!

Just getting started

Since this is my first try at blogging, I just wanted to post a picture.

This was taken by Amanda and Charles while they were fishing on Beaver Lake. Beautiful Canadian Geese.