Happy Saturday

 I know I may be unusual, but I'd chose a Saturday working in the yard over any Saturday shopping! It rained a bit this morning, but then turned into a beautiful day and we all headed out to work.

Moriah bought me this pretty plant -

We pulled the garden fence out this morning; I like the ease of being able to get to all the beds more easily for planting. I am also going to widen the walkways around the beds with more ground cover and mulch to reduce the weeding. The bottom is the kiwi plant that we relocated; of course this the first year in at least five that Lowes does not have kiwi plants for sale now that I need to buy it a kiwi mate.

It's amazing how nicely the grass can grow where I don't want it and yet doesn't grow in the middle of the yard where I actually plant it!

I think Mooster is going to have that baby in May. I ordered her milking machine and it is sitting in the living room in a box almost as large as a dishwasher. JD gets to set it up, figure it out , and give me lessons. He's pretty excited, (not!). 

Mooster showing off her new purple harness

 The guineas are out taking care of any bugs in the area that Mooster makes such a mess with her hay.

While James attempted to fix the mower and helped JD swap tractor attachments, Ben got to start moving excess dirt left from wall number one.

JD drew out where the lower wall will be and started digging it. He is going to work on the two side walls simultaneously, so the tractor can be used on both walls. He switched to the smaller tractor, in spite of the smaller bucket, due to the steep hill.

Standing where the lower garage drive way will be shows the need for the retaining walls!

Back to my planting - my sister just drove home from a visit in Memphis with her trunk loaded with plants that were multiplying at my Mom's house. I put in several plants in the middle of the driveway.

After trying a few things, hostas are the only plant that I like and thrive around the front patio in the shade, so she sent many more hostas and I filled in the empty spots.

Happy Saturday!

May 1st

 I scrolled through past years' photos on or as close to May 1st as I downloaded photos and I thought it was funny that the theme was the same - the garden, baby chicks, and little helpers getting dirty. Then there are several sleeping, tired photos. I love spring!

I didn't remember, but we built our first two garden beds in 2010, so Julia was turning four.

Elijah turned two that summer -

Here is Tori and Julia in 2011 helping plant; they would have been almost five and 6.5.

This is 2012 when we planted my Mother's Day roses -

We also attempted strawberry plants in pallets that year, but the grass and weeds were too strong of a force.

Here is Tori and Julia in 2013, age 8 and almost 6, still planting and watering.

The baby chick pictures look pretty much the same year to year, but here is a batch in 2013.

Lastly, a photo of Elijah last year after a good day in the sun and a fresh bath. I need to get my camera out the next few days and capture Selah, Elijah and Bella in the garden; they are hard little workers!

Some Progress

 I feel like there is hope of catching up in life the next two weeks. While the mission trip and wedding were busy, they were enjoyable; Julia's hours of hair a day the last few weeks has just been frustrating. I am thrilled to say that we salvaged enough hair to braid and bead. At this point, she and Tori will both be due for a new "do" right before school starts, but until then, I can focus on bigger things.

My garden is starting to look rather neglected. I picked a good bit today, but need to weed and stake some plants. I think I overestimated how many grape and cherry tomatoes we can eat. I have been giving them away, but decided today to try canning them.

I added nothing and ran them through the course food processor to keep them chunky enough for pico de gallo. My three bowls made nine quarts total. (The bottoms will settle when they cool.)

I am still fighting the bills from Selah's dental surgery. We were told on two to three occasions that it would all be filed under medical due to the nature of the surgery. Shortly after we were sent a $4,800 dental bill. They were apologetic about filing it incorrectly, but we can't get anyone to actually correct it. After filing a $81,000 (That is not a typo!) medical bill that my insurance paid $31,000 on, we thought it was finally resolved. Not so - I got a new $4,800 dental bill in the mail yesterday. Want the best part of all? One of her caps has already fallen off and has to be redone! I'm going to see if my dentist will do it rather than dealing with the children's hospital dental billing mess again. Something has gone terribly wrong with our medical system considering I had a C-section for $6,000 back in 1991!

We were invited to speak on our family and adoption at a church a few hours away tomorrow, so we are all heading out bright and early.

Hair, Hair and More Hair

 I often have to schedule things with myself months in advance that most people may find amusing. I have planned for months to take out Julia's locs - they are just a disaster and personally, I wouldn't recommend them for kids so young. It is, however, a time consuming project much like putting them in last summer. I waited through the wedding and Gabriel and Alayna's moving to even begin. So, the last few days we have rented  DVDs from Redbox and worked for as many hours as we both could stand. 

It's honestly not as bad as I feared, but it's still going to take me several hours a day for the next few weeks. 

I don't know how TV-free homes do African hair!

Yesterday, I was agonizing what to do about Selah and Bella's hair since they also needed to be redone. I didn't want to break entirely from Julia's, so I had the big kids take it out in two shifts of every-other-corn-row so that I could re braid it quickly. Keeping the parts made it go quickly and while I can't do that every time, it worked well this time.

Moriah captured this very glamorous picture of me, along with the messy kitchen behind me. Keeping it real...

 There is so, so much I need to be doing in the house and garden, but I'm just focusing on Julia's hair for the next few days. I did pick the garden before dinner. We had brushetta with my home-grown tomatoes and basil, purple peas and cantaloupe. I love gardening WAY more than hair-dressing!

Thankfully, I also love my goats because the kids forgot to put them back in the fence when I called them for dinner; when I looked out, they were "picking" green beans for themselves. See those cute little goats feasting? 

Fun To Come

Tomorrow I'm making the voyage to Richmond to meet Wendy and get Alyssa back. Then we are heading over to the airport to pick up my parents for a week visit. The last two days have been focused on catching up on some cleaning and laundry. I'm not really enjoying it that much, so I took an extended break today while the kids were at art class and Alei and I headed for Chinese food with the three little guys.

I'm looking forward to the out-side work that I need to do; it seems like so much more fun than the inside work. JD tilled a berry patch over a week ago -
                  

Wendy brought me four blackberry bushes and I bought four raspberry bushes marked down at Wal-Mart.

Another excitement in the works is baby chicks; Wendy got me a few specialty chicks at the feed store that will be coming home tomorrow with Alyssa. We even bought them a new chick house that JD is currently putting together. There was no way that the delapidated rabbit house were've been using was going to make it another year; it's begging to be put in the burn pile. (I realize the chick house is up-side-down in this picture, but with a neck like mine, you don't flip boxes for pictures :)

Back to work - the carpets don't vacuum themselves.

Since Last Weekend...

Life has been so busy; so busy that I never got to blog my last weekend post. Last weekend, we went on a spending spree - it certainly didn't appear that we are Dave Ramsey fans. The truth is that we had delayed certain purchases until it was just time and had to be done. The good news is that there were no credit cards involved! The biggest purchase was the lawn mower that JD has sighed and walked past all summer long at Lowes. The grass had gotten to the point that I really couldn't keep saying, "we don't need a mower, we barely have grass," so JD got his mower. (See the grass?) He took Elijah on the trip to buy it and Elijah couldn't be more thrilled to have a new, orange tractor!

The next purchase was a car for Alei to drive. Before you are too impressed, let me state that the mower cost considerably more than the car! Alei isn't to impressed with it's station "wagony" appearance, but it came from a friend and was a great price. Of course, it needs work, but JD has proven himself in that department over and over.

We also purchased four picnic tables from the Boy Scout jamboree. Once they use the things, they sell them at great prices. So, we got two tables for the front area and two for the backyard. It will be nice when we have group functions, which we love to host!

(We also bought a new grill and some over-priced knives, but that would be just embarrassing to admit, so I'll stop now!)

We actually completed our first week of school this week. It went pretty well, although I still need to order some curriculum. Somehow, the day is full even when we only do 1/2 of the work, that always concerns me. It overall is just going to be so much easier this year with Elijah and Julia two and four instead of one and three or zero and two!

The weather is lovely outside, warm but not sweltering. JD and most of the kids have been working outside all day. He is paying them each $1 per tractor bucket load to pick up the stray big rocks. They have really needed to be gathered and the bonus is that they are forming the drive-way up to the barn that we have been planning for several years. Even Elijah was working for a while.

I think that the farm work is so good for boys! James and Ben have more knowledge now of things like gardening than I did a few years ago when we moved here.

My garden has been the high-light of my summer. I'm just so thrilled that it's grown so well and can't wait to double its size next year. We have lots of cantaloupe ripening and they are so good.

I want to expand my cherry tomato numbers next year too. I only planted three plants, but we get a cereal bowl full every day. I never thought it would happen, but Julia actually turns them down sometimes now - I didn't have any idea that she could reach that point! At first, she just hosed them and ate them straight off the plant everyday, but now James and I get some too.

The new chickens I got each faithfully lay an egg everyday, so we are getting at least a dozen a day. Since Alyssa gathered early yesterday and Julia and I gathered late today, we had 26! (Like Julia's flip-flops?)

Julia asked if I could make her some eggs out of the eggs.

Lastly, two of our thirty baby guineas died this week. I have no idea why, but moved the other 28 this week in case it had something to do with the old rabbit hutch that they were living in. They are now inside the coop, separated from the big chickens. They are loud little guys, and really not very attractive, but that's all OK as long as they eat lots of ticks when they get big!

Have a great weekend!

Grandmas, Gardens and Chickens

JD's mom is here visiting for two weeks; his sister and husband brought her down and stayed for two nights, then JD will drive her home at the end of her visit. Tori was funny, as usual. When I told her that Grandma was coming, she asked, "which one? the white one or the black one?" I started laughing, as both Grandmas are quite white. She then started laughing and said, "what I mean is... the one with white hair or the one with black hair?"

Here's the white-haired Grandma trying to enjoy her morning tea with Elijah's help.

Elijah and I made an early morning trip to the garden to pick a few things. I can't get over the cantaloupe - they have totally taken over the 20 foot long bed, but that's OK since my blueberry bushes have died and my kiwi have never grown!

I think we are just days away from having our first ones ready to pick.

Elijah likes his mud-boots now. It cracks me up how you can't see any of his legs between his shorts and boots.

Lastly, we got eight more Rhode Island Red hens the other day from a local family. (We also took their two roosters that they assured me are nice - so far, so good.) We moved our afro and silkie babies in with our big chickens, they are all getting along fine after living side by side for so long and put the new chickens in the far side alone.

First, we clipped their wings, however, so they wouldn't fly out and become fox food.

Julia was less than impressed that we got roosters again; she remembers Chirpy and his evil ways! These roosters are no different; they will end up free on Craigslist if they aren't nice!

I finally collected pickle supplies, so that's my now project.