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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

After the planting waiting for the Babies!

I went out on Saturday the 11th to water the garden & check for paw prints... And I saw this in Bed 1. I squealed with excitement. My micro greens have sprouted.




Here is a close up!



Not much else is above ground yet. Miss Rollie keeps stepping in the Chive square. I will post what is in each square soon.

We enjoyed the rosemary again on steak Sunday night. Can't wait for other fresh herbs.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Beds are DONE! ~ Plants are IN!

Here are some photos... And a quick Post

The first weekend in April we bought the plants. My parents went with us for the ride around town.

First Stop was Central Market.. They were having HERB DAYS. Lots to choose from, we lost Dad in the store as he wandered looking for samples.

Second Stop was Calloways... More veggies... Lots of Peppers ( Sweet and Hot), a few veggies and 2 tomatoes.

Third Stop was Shades of Green... We finished up our Herbs and got 1 more pepper plant. They had pinion wood burning so we nabbed a bag of that too.

Mom and I planting.... "Blame your Son-in Law for the bad angle on the photo." - meg



Mom and Dad planting the plants, I did all the seeds. Do not worry we treated them to a T-Bone steak dinner that was soooooo good. Jay added some of the fresh rosemary to the steaks while he grilled... It was wonderful!



Rollie Checks out the Garden! She is having issues staying OUT of the beds. I guess I will have to put up the fences.



The Compost Bin... Love it! We added our first stuff Saturday April 11. I noticed Sunday night it was already getting warm.



Next post... Babies... Lots of Micro Greens!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Traditional Workouts on HOLD - New Workout - DIRT




Wow! We worked HARD last weekend! We got the old gazebo down and took what was left to the dump. It will finish rusting and returning to the earth in no time! LOL We finished painting the new gazebo, patio furniture and bakers rack for the patio. WOW! I should have painted my old bakers rack a long time ago! It looks wonderful.
On to the Garden!
We bought all of the items for Mel’s Mix * 1/3 Peat Moss (easy to find) * 1/3 Vermiculite – Buy the coarse grade in large 4 cubic-foot bags at any garden center. (Not so easy to find, but here is a source! At U-Line Shipping * 1/3 Compost – Buy bags of it at the garden center to get started, but make your own as soon as possible.

Oh My! It took up the entire back of Jay’s truck. Eek, did we over buy? Nope! Then it was off to Lowes for the wood. I wanted cedar, but settled on Pine. I decided to paint it. Not a good idea, by the time I bought enough paint, I could have bought the Red Cedar. LOL live and learn!

We cut the wood, drilled the pilot holes and painted, and painted and painted. Finally we had them ready to be assembled! Whoop the 3 boxes are built, the grids are cut and painted too, and we moved the boxes to the back yard.

Up next… oops! LAYOUT issues oh my!
So we have 3 (4’ 1½” by 4’ 1½”) boxes. The SFG guy Mel Bartholomew suggests 3 feet between boxes. So we completely ignored his suggestion and placed the boxes where we thought we wanted them… It was not right. We moved them… and moved them… WHY did we not draw this part of the yard to scale on graph paper and work on the placement? I do not know! But in the end our boxes are 3 feet apart and it looks good!



Mixing Mel’s Mix
Well this was fun. Did you know hoeing works your quads? I did not until Sunday night! We got all the ingredients unloaded from Jay’s truck and in to the back yard. Talk about your upper body workout. We unfolded the tarp and went to mixing it up. Peat Moss when dry is light and flies all over the place, we had to keep misting it so as not not bother our neighbors family BBQ. Vermiculite same thing… so it is all mix and we drag the pile over to the furthest box. Jay, my sweet, loving, wonderful, husband, shovels it in while wait to wet it down. It took forever to get the peat to soak up water. But by 7:00 pm we had a box done, smooth and fully wet. We it was smooth until Rollie, 2 ½ yr old pup ran through it; guess we will need fencing.

Monday night to tired to mix, and I was doing an allergy RUSH therapy tomorrow so we held off mixing box 2. Tuesday however we did get box 2 done, even though Jay did not feel good. What a good guy!

So that is where we are… I hope tonight I can get either box 3 done or get the grids pit together. Also, we have to decide what to do in between the beds.

Well there will be no gardening today… I just heard thunder… I work in an office with no windows, so when I went to the fed ex box; I see that it is raining cats and dogs.

I am just sad I do not have seed and plants soaking up the rain.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Growing my Salad

Well… I am planning my garden a little late, but oh well. I have to say Cindy Bodie is one of the main reasons I have the urge to garden. I do not have the space she has so I am going to have to get a little creative.

It is too late I think to get seeds from mail order, so I hope I can find some goods ones at Shades of Green here in Frisco.

I found an article outlining gardening in a soil bag. This sounded promising; save me time and then I add the soil to the beds next year or in the fall. But, then I remembered how my dad did his garden Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. So maybe I will do a little of both.

I hope to get “planting” this weekend mid March. Send good thoughts out to Jay so he will want to help.

My goal is to grow our salads, lots of peppers, herbs, and a few tomatoes this year.

So here I go… my own little Victory Garden!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Christmas Cookies

Until we get full swing in to the adoption process I am going to just blog about life. More to come later.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Recipie oops...

I have been bad.. I have not kept up my blog. Well the process is on hold for a number of reasons. Most are economic. I hope to be back on track in 2009, but that may depend on who wins the election. ugh. I will try to start telling the rest of the story soon.

Friday, May 23, 2008

The Weekend of Cooking Lessons

I am behind on my posting... I need to get in a grove to keep this up to date. Our Weekend of Parent Adoptive Training was as Jay said "everything you need to know and everything you did not want to know" about adopting from the foster care system. April 24-26 2008

We went to The Gladney Center for 3 8 hour days of training. It was amazing to see the room full of folks there to adopt, around 15 or 20 couples. From all over North Texas. We went over successful adoption stories, the hurts the children have endured, how we have to change our thinking on punishment, car seats, CPR, "do overs", CPS, and many more topics I will write about later. We met a couple, Scott & Marie, that live near us and we went to dinner with them on Friday night. It will be quite nice to have a friend going through the journey at the same time.

We are working on CPS proofing the house & getting it ready for the photos. Lots of little things we have to do to get the home front ready for inspection. Working on our profile book.. taking photos much more on this later, officially joining our church and completing our membership class, and more.