Sandbox

Chris brought home a couple of boards and a truckload of sand yesterday.





After burying Jacob's legs in sand as we spread it around, he commenced to playing. Sadly, we only have one bucket, one shovel and a confiscated sand mold of a rocket ship.



Luckily, it's that time of year when things like sand toys are on sale, so I look forward to getting as much as possible for as little as possible. The sandbox is in the perfect place for playing during the winter, as well. It's next to the house, so it's sheltered from the wind and it will get the most sun during the day.



It's also huge!







Jacob and Chris resting and enjoying the new grass. It's growing quite well. We've mowed it three times and we only have a few dead spots to obsess over. One is right in front of the sprinkler head and I cannot figure out WHY it is dead. Thoughts?

Tomato, Tomato

How do you say it?

This is the first picking of our GIANT tomato plants. We've been waiting for weeks for these to turn red and they could not be more delicious.

I accidentally mashed the one on the left when I picked it, so I had to eat it first. Combined with some fresh picked basil and swiss cheese (we were out of fresh mozzarella), it was the perfect summer salad.

Jacob did not agree.

Instant Grass

As part of the garden effort, Chris's parents decided that we should sod the backyard. They own the house, so it was fine with me! Chris put in a sprinkler system a while ago and we found with weeds for a couple of weeks before finally laying the sod.

Chris started early on a Wednesday morning to get the grass in. I don't think the kids helped him much.

Now you can see the lovely corn! It took Chris all day, minus a break when everyone told him he was doing it wrong, to get it done. We finally finished when the sun went down, thanks to a lot of help from his dad. Getting the ground level was a nightmare.

So now we have to water, water and water some more before we can go play in it! I'm looking forward to having Jacob's party here in September. I want to string up lantern lights and plant tiki torches and just sit outside in my fake Adirondack chair.

Sadly the mosquitoes will just eat me to death and the dogs on the other side of the yard leave stinky little bombs all over so it's not a perfect dream.

How to Survive When We Break the World

Chris and I are giving each other green thumbs this year. We're pretty sure we can survive when the world breaks down and we go back to having to plant and harvest all our food. The above statement contains no truth whatsoever but it does feel good to think we could survive. Never mind that we'd have to walk over a mile to the river for water! Above is the pea and carrot row. Most of my carrots never made it up or were eaten to nothing by an invisible bug so I had to plant peas in the empty space. The onions are on the left and doing so poorly, I have no idea what to do about them! To the right is the lettuce and it's an understatement to say it's doing well. Anyone need some lettuce?

This is the first picking of my cucumber plants. Two days later, I picked at least 4 more and last night Jacob and Chris picked over 10. I made pickles this weekend! Next year, we are planting 2 cucumber and 2 squash to avoid cucumber overload.

This is my tomato/pepper row along with all my potted herbs. We'll see if any of these produce, as I planted them too late and they are much smaller. The first tomato plants are almost taller than I am and they are about to tumble over, despite the baskets!

These photos were taken just before dark and I have an allergy to my flash so excuse the darkness!

You can just barely see the little tassel of silk, which means we are going to have corn by the bushel in a couple of weeks. Because Chris wouldn't let me thin the rows too much! He's really excited about the corn, guys.

Technical Difficulties

I am not even going to explain how I just had to scramble for deleting cookies and figuring out where my Menu Bar went...this is what happens when you don't post to your blog daily and then get locked out when Blogger goes down...over a WEEK ago.

So when I last left you, I was going out to plant the garden. Which we did. And now, 10 days later, we have four rows of corn, one row of lettuce, and 3 wells of cucumbers growing. The carrots and onions are not quite out yet, maybe tomorrow? I also have two pepper plants since the packet of seeds contained exactly TWO seeds. Not 30. The tomatoes are doing well, I found one tiny green globe today, when I went to see if the hail storm ruined anything. A sneaky squirrel was trying to pop in, I hope I scared him off.

Perhaps it's time to make a scarecrow?

We are also in the process of putting in sod, but before we can lay that down, we have to put in a sprinkler system. So I've been "helping" in the loosest sense of the word. Jacob helps by falling down into the trenches and crying about it.

Do you know what muscles you use to dig out trenches with a weirdly shaped shovel? Muscles you didn't know you had, that's what.