Tag Archives: garden

Excitement…

…of various sorts has been ours lately.  I’ll have to come back to the posts on the road trip, but here’s what’s going on more recently.

Lucy has finally given in and decided that she is, in fact, old enough to poop on the potty.  We are jubilant.  And it’s consistent, it’s been only one diaper since we got back from Fargo.  We even tried sleeping without diapers for a couple of nights (at her request), but that went less well.  Apparently if she sleeps in a diaper, she waits until she gets up to pee, and if she doesn’t, well, she doesn’t.  But maybe soon.

A month in the life of the Bakers

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Nearly a month, actually.  If you’re still checking, I’m impressed.  There has been a lot going on, including my going offline for weeks at a time and some serious writer’s block.  But here’s the update.

School ended, thank God.  Everyone survived.  Summer is hot, hot, hot.  There will be not trips to the zoo any time soon, membership or no.  The goal is for everyone to survive the summer.

Garden update

The beans have come!  It’s garden time, and my first order from Seed Savers has come in, and is already in the ground.  Well, not all of them, but nine Flor de Junio, and nine Tejano beans (I only ordered the Flors, apparently the others were lagniappe) are in their appointed squares.  Prior to their arrival, we already had onions (some green ones we rescued from the compost pile and some seeds which are just coming up), orange, green, and “chocolate” bell peppers, jalapeño and Anaheim peppers, basil, oregano (which over-wintered) lemon balm, dill, chives, parsley, orange mint, salad greens (some of which have already bolted and been removed, including the bacon-flavored one, whatever it was), and several types of tomatoes.  The daffodils and tulips are bloomed out, and the iris are in full bloom now (some yellow and some white, with some white and purple on their way).  I put in some morning glory seeds in pots in hopes of getting them to climb the play ground the porch posts.  The orange tree is blooming (I wish I could send you a smell of it – it is amazing!) and the jasmine is almost there.  All the berry bushes (ok, they’re not bushes yet, they’re sticks) have new growth, so in two years, if nothing goes wrong, we will have berries, too!

Blame it on Spring Fever

In an attempt to make up for the long, long silence, here are some pictures.  First, the “man pit” that Craig build over the old (dug out hole in the grass) fire pit.  It is now an oven and stove.  I picked up the brick off the curb, in my church clothes, no less.  Dad would be proud.

The roasted (in brick oven) vegetable quesidillas (cooked on brick stove) were really, really good.

We have done a little planting.  We’ve had several dafodills bloom, and the tulips and iris are ready to bust.

Louisiana Sweet Oranges…or not

My heart is broken.  The six (and only six) oranges left on the tree we planted last year are gone.  We weren’t really expecting any the first year, so we were really excited when we had a ton of buds, then hundreds of tiny green oranges, which diminished slowly until eight were left.  Two split and we removed them.  And when I went to check the one that had started to turn yellow this morning, they were all gone.  Even the ones in a bunch that I contrived a pvc-and-rag contraption to hold up since they were too heavy for the little orange tree branches.

Off the grid…sort of

We had an exciting weekend.  (The post is a little late because I was waiting on pictures.)  In honor of Craig’s Justice Walking theme this week, which is fasting from the artificial and feasting on the natural, we went to Barataria Preserve to “hike”.  We did the two-mile board walk through the swamp, which was really cool.  There were tons of very large spiders, lizards, small snakes, dragon flies, and we saw an owl in the top of one of the trees.  Lucy walked almost the whole way by herself, which was nice.  Samantha got to ride with Dad.

Strawberries

This post made my day.  Craig’s dad is growing strawberries, and we have been the beneficiaries of his bounty for the last month or so.  We are exploring new and exciting ways to use them all, but Lucy still likes to eat them plain, preferably daily or twice daily.  Craig’s dad has beautiful, neat, raised, mulched rows for his plants, but neglected strawberries for ground cover, now there’s an idea!  The book list at the end of the post is great, too.  I’m going to have to head to the library for a copy of Jamberry.  That was one of my favorites growing up.

Pictures take way too long to load…

…but here they are.  You might wonder what I’ve been doing with myself lately, since I clearly have not been posting here.  (Besides telling my Latin students that the preceding sentence is an example of an indirect question, and would require and accusative-infinitive construction in Latin.  If that doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean anything to my students either.)  Here are a few pictures to help you imagine what we have all been up to.  I’m a little embarrassed by the blurriness, but I’m still figuring out these digital thingys.

Even the home garden isn’t safe…

Maybe I should retitle this blog something about poo.  It seems to be a theme lately.  Until I get a chance to start writing some of what’s dancing around in my head (and digital camera!), this is worth reading.  (How’s that for a teaser?)

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