Emerging

I love my corner kitchen sink with its cheery windows, and my seedlings are also loving it! The cauliflower is growing like blazes, the teensy little mint seedlings are filling up their teensy little peat-pot homes, the poblanos are popping through the soil, onions are reaching for the sun, asparagus are sending up delicate shoots, and the eggplants are finally making an appearance.

The blackberries and raspberries have yet to show any signs of life, but round 2 with them will be digging up starts from someone else's patch. The seeds were just an experiment. I will not be daunted!

One more victory - successful transplanting of the cauliflower starts into larger pots (homemade newspaper pots, even) without significant shock and no losses!

Many more seeds to start this weekend, according to my notes-to-self on the calendar. Gardening will be MUCH cheaper if this works and I can get away with buy very few bedding plants from a greenhouse...or perhaps even none at all!

Schleich Vice

Does this image play any role in your childhood memories?

It certainly does for me! And I had every intention of creating an identical memory for Luke, until we discovered Schleich toys. Hand-painted, true to life, detailed, and so very cute! We are slowly collecting...

I've long been strangely proud of the fact that I don't have an expensive coffee habit. It's not really any better to have this retail addiction that involves buying small farm animals. It soon became clear that a barn-raising was in order...

Getting Dirty!

Is there anything better than hands in dirt? Good black garden dirt, dusty dry dirt, fluffy potting soil, loose brown piles of dirt freshly dug from a post hole for a new fence? The season of dirt is upon us...soon to be followed by the season of green and growing.

This vegetable gardening thing is still pretty new to me, but every year I learn a few new tricks and get more "invested" in the process. This year I'm starting a lot more of my own plants and have bought some heritage seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I have some of my earlier plants started and was amazed to see cauliflower sprouts already popping through the soil. I have purchased 4-foot lights and am in the process of setting up my grow-table in the garage to keep my little babies warm and happy. I've brewed chamomile tea, watered it down, and started to spritz my flats of starts to prevent damping off disease. This year, I will even try "hardening off" my starts before planting them (novel idea), and am also excited to try some seed saving this season. In a few years I might pass as a bon-eee-fide gardener!

There are a couple of more raised beds to be built, a rototiller to be purchased (oy - $$!), and soil to be ammended, but I'm ready for it! It's fun to finally get to work rather than just plotting the garden layout in google sketch-up or making a nerdy seed inventory spreadsheet. Yes spreadsheet! It's lovely! I can sort the info by vegetable alphabetically, or by how early the seeds should be started, or by the seed company, or by the year the seed was produced. I will add a rating column and notes so that I can keep track of the brands and varieties I like (or don't like) and want to plant again (or avoid), etc. Yes, I'm a garden nerd!

Happy spring to all!

Knit-wit

Over Christmas, which we spent with Dad and Diane, I learned to knit! Oh, how patient Diane is! She taught me to cast on, knit, and purl, and got me started on my first pattern - a scarf. We came home before I learned to bind-off, but thankfully anything and everything can be learned from youtube, so the scarf was completed without mishap.

Next, I had my eye on a cute home decor item that I was pretty sure I could make. With the help of google I found a pattern, then popped over to youtube to learn how to cable knit. I am happy to report that - just one rip-out-and-restart later - it is now complete! Blocking and all! This, in itself, is a miracle, because I have a great history of starting (and ONLY starting) projects.

So, here it is. I have much to learn about consistent yarn tension and, well, precision in general...but it's my first all-by-myself knitting project. It can only get better from here!

P(r)ay

As part of Luke's regular bedtime routine, we say a prayer each night after he is tucked into bed with his blanket, water, and bear. He loves to "pay" (pray) and often requests to "pay" whenever he lies down...for a nap, to get his diaper changed, etc.

Last night, I laid a very tired boy in his bed. We said our usual prayer, in which we "God Bless" by name nearly everyone we know, then move on to "God Blessing" Katie-the-dog and the horses and mules before wrapping things up with an "amen" from both of us (his favorite part). After the amen, he was very sad that we were done and kept saying "pay...pay", so on my way downstairs I called up to him that he could say a prayer by himself if he wanted to. Immediately, I heard him babbling away and including the words "mama" and "dada". This was followed by his squawking inhaling and exhaling sound that is a very loud and lifelike imitation of our mules braying. I realized then that he was saying what he could remember of our prayer, blessing mama and dada and the mules.

I doubled over in the kitchen, shaking with laughter and trying not to cry over the preciousness of it! Minutes later he was silent, and I realized, with a lump in my throat, that my not-so-little-anymore boy had prayed himself to sleep for the first time.