*** UPDATE: we believe a few deer had their midnight snack...two broccoli plants, the eggplant, and a tomato plant were uprooted and chewed at. I was able to replant them all, but we went ahead and bought another eggplant since we only had one, and we aren't sure it will survive due to the deer having their snack!! We also sprinkled Coyote Urine around the garden and we sprayed the plants with a all natural oil that keeps squirrel's and other pest's at bay. Curious if this stuff works??***
Ever since we moved here to this house, I have wanted a veggie garden. I kindly kept asking nick if we could make one, but nothing ever became of it.
Well, on Tuesday of this week, nick mentioned how it would be fun to have a garden. I of course agreed immediately!! Nick said he could get railroad ties free from work, so on Thursday he brought home the ties and that night we set out where we wanted the garden and we began to dig out sod. Now mind you, we have LOTS of holes in our yard and we have been wanting to fill them and plant grass seed in these holes. Well, we decided to dig out this sod deep enough that we could replant this grass...so we were digging it several inches deep and rolling the grass up and then transfering it to the holes around our yard. Unfortunently the hardest part of the entire garden I have no pictures of. Just trust me...it was some hard work:). We only got about 1/4 of the sod removed on Thursday. On Friday my dad said he could have AJ bring out some soil for our garden so we had to get the sod removed. I started in on it about 1:30pm and I dug for 2.5 hours. I was exhausted. Nick got home around 4pm and finished removing the sod(there was about 1/4 of it left). Nick finished up the sod removal and called AJ. Our truck arrived with soil!!!
While nick spread the soil (and removed some of it cause we had about 7 wheel barrows to much), I went and mowed the lawn. When I was done mowing it was 6:30pm so I quickly went inside to make PB&J sandwiches for us all(I know, I know ...a gourmet meal!). Back out at 7pm to plant the garden with nick's help. We planted quite a bit and will see if we need less or more of a certain veggie, or what not to plant next time around. We planted 8 Khalirobi plants, 4 green pepper plants, 3 rhubarb plants, 2 rows of green beans, 1 row of beets, 8 broccoli plants, 4 banana pepper plants, 1 row of Okra(my boys LOVE THIS STUFF), 1 yellow zucchini plant, 1 green zucchini plant, 1 eggplant plant , 3 cucumber plants and 4 tomato plants!!!
Today, saturday, we layed the black soaker hose down on the garden and nick is currently out digging us a nice line underground that will take water out to the garden so that I do not have to have a hose strung all the way across my yard to the garden(since the garden isn't near the house).
Nick putting together the pieces of water pipes with this certain glue.
This is the faucet(which is right along the house and easy to reach) that nick is attatching this pipe too. As you can see he already has a part of it burried but has not hooked it up to the green hose(that you can see). We were going to put it on a timer so that it would automatically water it, but the timer was more than I was willing to pay. It doesn't take to much effort to walk out on my front porch, lean over the railing and turn the water knob!!! :)
I'll keep you posted on my garden as it grows, or fails and what I would do differently for next year.
Elijah wanted the pool up for his birthday so we put it up...it was cold and dirty water, but the boys didn't seem to mind to much. They weren't in it to long....enough to get wet, and run and jump into it several times.
Then it was pizza time. Ethan, Ross, Avery, Braden and Isaiah were his friends he invited.
Elijah opening his gifts.. He got several great gifts and has enjoyed using them. He got twister and so last night we got it out to play it. Pretty fun and challenging when you are a grown up:)....or should I say over 30 years old and trying to bend in odd ways. You can see I had to keep a hand on "little man" otherwise he would have opened all of Elijah's presents for him.
I have officially made and decorated two cakes now:). This one was pretty easy minus the amount of time it took to bake this since it was a deep pan!! The edges got a bit to done, but the center was so yummy and moist.
Elijah blowing out his sparkler candles with the help of Liam.
His friends and him eating breakfast the next morning. They had scrambled eggs, sausage links, fresh strawberries and pineapple and Elijah requested monkey bread.
