Uncategorized

We have a small planter near our front porch, and I’ve always been a bigger fan of veggie gardens over flower gardens. Yes, flowers are beautiful, but they’re the same amount of work without the “payoff” of fresh produce. I might come around next year and do flowers in the planter instead, but I don’t know. We’ll have to see.

Anyway.

So, because I favor veggies, I put carrots in the planter. my thinking was that it’s deep enough to get decent sized carrots, and carrots don’t flower like other veggies (since they’re a root vegetable), so they wouldn’t attract bees to the door – yet another reason to put something besides flowers there. I started the carrots from seeds a couple months ago, and it’s been exciting to watch the tops get bigger and bigger.

Because of their root nature, we’ve all been horribly curious how the carrots have been doing. Hubs even pulled a couple up a month or so ago – they were very spindly and not at all carrot-like, so he carefully replanted them. I decided to take a chance a couple days ago, and guess what?!

A real carrot!! A small one, but a true carrot nonetheless. Our tomato plants have really started thriving recently as well. And we’ve already used our own lettuce on sandwiches and burgers. It’s very exciting :).

So maybe, just maybe, we’ll end up with a good harvest of fresh veggies this summer after all.

–Wendy

P.S. Did you notice my new header? 🙂

You might remember that I bought a quilting book a few weeks ago – A Year in the Life of Sunbonnet Sue. It has patterns for 12 quilt blocks, one representing each month. There are options for making each one into a small wall quilt or you can combine them any way you like into larger bed quilts, i.e. one representing each season for a crib quilt, all 12 into one quilt for a queen size, or any other combination you can imagine. I don’t have any baby girls coming into my life soon to do a seasonal one for, and 12 small quilts for the walls isn’t something that really fits into our decor, so I’m tackling the “through the year” queen size for mine & hubby’s bed. I’ve finished 4 of the blocks so far…

February:

April:

May:

October:

When I have a few more done, I’ll do another update, and of course when the whole thing is completed as well :).

–Wendy

We’re trying our hand at growing some of our own vegetables this year since we’re out of the apartment and into a house with a yard. We bought tomato, pea, and lettuce starts and carrot, zucchini, and bell pepper seeds. I planted the seeds early last week and was rewarded with sprouts in the zucchini and carrot pots yesterday! It was very exciting :). The bell peppers haven’t come up yet; I’m not sure if they’ve failed or if they just have a longer germination period. Once the zucchinis get a little bigger, I’ll move them to where the other flowering veggies are – we don’t want bees right next to the door. Since carrots are root veggies, I put them right in the planter by the porch.

Do you garden? Let me know in the comments :).

–Wendy

Earlier this week, we joined my in-laws for their annual trip to the Tulip Festival in the town they live in (it’s about a half hour drive from us). We did it last year and had a lot of fun – even though I was more waddling than walking since I was pregnant with Small Fry at the time – so we accepted their invitation to go again.

We started the day with a picture in one of the many cutouts…

And then they traded spots since neither wanted to be in the lower one. This was our way of compromising.

This windmill was in the center of the kids’ play area.

The kids took a ride on the wooden shoe train. It’s basically shoe-shaped wagons atop tractor wheels towed by a small tractor. Both last year and this year, the boys’ favorite part of the ride was the “biggest puddle in the world.” Boys!

Then we walked through the huge tulip field. I don’t know how many acres it is, but these pictures represent only a small portion of the field.

It was too big for Small Fry to make it all the way through ;). Because of the way he fell asleep, he was sporting his very first sunburn later that night. However, because of babies’ Wolverine-fast healing ability, he was all better by morning.

In the middle of the field was an old John Deere tractor for kids to climb on.

This is kind of interesting. There in the front of the picture you can see that white line… it’s a strip of mesh fabric. They put those on each row of tulips and then plant the bulbs on top. Then at the end of the season, they just pull the mesh out of the ground and the new crop of tulip bulbs comes out of the ground easily without risking damage to them. I thought that was pretty ingenious.

Another cutout, this time with Grandpa 🙂

I thought these ones were pretty. I like the traditional smooth edges to tulips, but I also liked how these ones looked like ripped paper on the edges. Kind of like the difference between a rag quilt and a traditional quilt. Both are pretty but in unique ways.

And to end the day on a high note, the kids did the pony ride. Pardon my finger in Munchkin’s picture; I’m still getting used to the new camera phone.

–Wendy