Saturday, May 5, 2012

Growin' kids and garden!

Hello All!

Had another fine weekend! Put in some new flooring in our dining room ~ nothing fancy just cheapo laminate for easy cleaning ... carpet in dining room + kids = disaster!!!!

My Mum and Dad (Patti and Iain) came up to help with laying the floor and watching the kids etc. They brought my brothers (wimpy) Pitt Bulls 'Floyd' and 'Daisy' with them to visit with our Gypsy while my brother worked two double shifts back to back... tired boy I bet!

Elias turns eight months old on Sunday May 6th and he's already started to pull himself up to standing!! Our life is sure to change again in just a few short weeks!

Nick has been extraordinarily busy in the yard! But the manual labour has looked good on him!  With the trees cut he had to stack over one cord of maple in rounds. No easy task as some of those rounds are a foot in length and a foot in diameter, weighing over 50 lbs as the wood is wet. Thank goodness we bought a wheelbarrow... then we realized the difference between the $59 'red light special' and the $120 wheelbarrow.... hmmm well it'll do for now. We'll beat the crap out of it but whatever!

Nick thought long and hard on where to stack this cord of wood... needed to be close to the gate so if someone does want to buy it they don't have to lug it too far. Also the stack needed to be in a place which was out of the way for the kids to play... and, AND must be stacked in such a fashion that the dog could not use it to launch herself right out of the yard! So he chose right beside the shed, and directly infront of the one neighbour who has a secure yard for the inevitable!... And it really didn't take long for Gypsy to scale the pile and swan dive straight into the neighours yard to play with Jasper her spaniel of some sort! Several times we'd go out to call the dog inside for the night only to find her looking back at us from the neighbours deck!!! The neighbour didn't seem to mind thank goodness but Nick went and put another row of wire fencing up so she can't possibly jump over!

After the wood stacking, came the raised bed making. That turned out great but we had a bit of a chuckle at Nick's newly developing carpentry 'math.' :D

Then came the dirt. And entire dump truck full of dirt was dumped on our driveway. Over 6 yards I do believe. $350 worth anyway!!!!! But Ruby enjoyed watching the driver back it up and dump the load, it was cool!

Nick spent much of two full days loading that dang wheelbarrow and carting the dirt to the raised beds! Then he pulled out the pencil posts, 6 feet high and pounded them into the ground surrounding the raised beds. With his trusty staple gun he's stapled netting over the top and sides of the raised beds to keep out the pesky birds and deer which are large vermin around these parts!!!

We've planted; carrots, wax beans, green beans, russet potatoes, onions, green onions, and beets from seed. A neighbour gave us some 1" high kale and today we went to the Farmer's Market. I picked up; leeks, guilan (Chinese Broccoli), butter lettuce, Mizuna (like Arugula) and 5 different kinds of tomatoes. Our 12 x 12 raised bed is now full... let us see the fruits of our labour!... Or starve because of  brown thumbs!

In the 12 x 3ft bed along the back fence Nick put two rhubarb plants and we are anxiously awaiting 16 raspberry shoots from my in laws!

We also picked up 7 huckleberry bushes from a local nursery which Nick planted under one of our tall fir trees.

I can't WAIT for everything to start getting bigger! We've now got one plum tree which is in full bloom, 2 apples (one tree has 4 kinds of apples grafted to it!) and a hazlenut tree! Once in bloom Ruby will have a fine 'orchard' aka 'forest' to play in!

Lawn mowing to do tomorrow!

I'm also trying to get some picks in an album posted here on the blog! So exciting is this new adventure!

Kate

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