June Garden

Thanks to some nice hot days and plenty of rain, our garden is filling in nicely. I decided to plant fewer flowers this year and filled in every last corner with heirloom edibles. We have four different varieties of tomatoes this year, a dozen plants in all, which required the addition of another trellis. We also have four kinds of carrots in red, orange, yellow, and purple, one squash plant that is beginning to resemble something from the jungle, two varieties of bush beans and lettuce, eight basil plants in addition our perennial herbs, some miniature short-season melons, and a wayward Mammoth sunflower that sprouted from one of last year's fallen seeds.The Bright Lights Swiss Chard is living up to its name, looking beautiful, and growing like crazy. Between the chard and our CSA, we are up to our ears in greens right now and will be trying some new recipes from this book. Tonight: Swiss Chard Gratin. Tomorrow: Homemade Braised Chard Pizza.And the lavender is budding. There are few things better than plunging your face into the plant and inhaling deeply. Garden aromatherapy.Thankfully, our not-so-pretty-to-look-at, but pretty-effective fence has been keeping the little critters out of our garden. All except for one that is...
Boy, oh boy, does this baby love dirt! He loves to dig it, squish it, occasionally taste it, and generally get it all over himself and everyone else, all while repeating over and over with much gusto, "Ucko!" Noah, on the other hand, has discovered how to turn on the hose and tries to help wash the dirt off everything and everyone.
Good (and muddy and wet) times in the garden!

In The Summertime

The first days of June brought with it some HOT days (90+ degrees in the shade!) giving the garden a boost and sending us running for our swimming suits and sunscreen. Within the span of a few days, we had filled more days with street parties, wading pools and Popsicles than I could remember having throughout the past two summers combined. Of course, last summer is a blurry, sleep-deprived memory due to the fact that Isaac was barely out of newborn stage, and our outside time was greatly limited to the shade. The summer before that I was pregnant, feeling queasy, and you could not have paid me a thousand bucks to put on a swimming suit. So, armed with a new kiddie pool, complete with a mini slide, and some SPF 60, we are ready to wring every last bit of fun out of this summer.I had been so looking forward to warmer weather and not having to dress two squirming boys in hats, mittens, boots, etc., etc. to go play outside that I quite forgot it takes nearly as long to put sunscreen on two squirming boys. I had also forgotten that sunscreen is messy stuff, as they smear their little SPFed bodies up against windows, appliances, and unfortunately, all over the piano. After finding that the black finish came off with the cleaning cloth when I tried to clean the sunscreen off the bench day after day, I decided that we were in desperate need of a piano bench cover. When an Internet search turned up few options available for purchase, Curtis said, "Why don't you just sew one?" I thought about for a minute before continuing my search even more furiously, because I really didn't feel that I had the time or energy to come up with a pattern. Alas, I could find nothing suitable for our extra long bench. So began a several day project, with me measuring and re-measuring, crawling around on the floor cutting fabric scraps of fabric, and sewing them together while perched on a toddler-sized chair in front of the sewing machine I had placed on an end table in my make-shift sewing area in the foyer. The best (and maybe the only good) feature of the area being that it was located on the other side of the baby gate and out of reach of the kiddos, so they could safely play on the other side while I worked on my project.Several days later, we have a brand new quilted piano bench cover...

I was so happy when I slid the finished cover over the bench and it actually fit that I may have done a little dance. OK...I did do a little dance, and the boys laughed at me. This project just might have given me the confidence to actually finish the quilt that I started over a year ago (the scraps of which were used for this cover). Though I may need to set up a better sewing area in a corner of the basement. That toddler sized chair just isn't cutting it :)

Lots O' Hats

It has been brought to my attention that when you post several photos of newborn hats on Ravelry, people assume that you are expecting a new baby. So I thought I had better announce that we are not expecting. I am, however, knitting a bunch of newborn hats and other items for a local newborn photographer (check out her amazing work here).

As a knitter, I really can't imagine anything better than getting to pick out a variety of gorgeous yarns (that I don't have to pay for!) and trying out a bunch of new patterns, while at the same time satisfying my need to knit teeny tiny baby things. I can't wait to see some of these hats on the beautiful newborns she photographs!

~Jen

Introducing Bunny

I mentioned in my last post that I was pretty sure there was a rabbit living under our back steps. Well, the rabbit had babies apparently (pretty early in the season for that isn't it?), and at least one of them is still hanging around. We have seen him (or her) several times over the past couple days sitting nestled next our back step under the protection of our pergola, and venturing out from time to time to nibble on some grass. I caught a picture of him through the glass doors yesterday. I must say, he is adorable with a little patch of white fur in the middle of its face.

I am torn between loving the fact that he is out there where the boys can watch him (though I am sure he will get more shy as he gets a bit older) and knowing that the same cute, little, fuzzy bunny will wreak havoc on the garden later on. Of course, we could just get the rabbit fence back up and live in perfect bunny harmony. Until then, we will enjoy watching him and feeding him little bits of pear and carrot. Maybe that will keep him from eating my lilies.

Spring Ramble

Time to break the blogging hiatus. I have plenty of excuses for not blogging lately, none of which are very interesting or exciting, so I will spare the details and just move on...

We are enjoying warmer days here and there, though Mother Nature has a nasty way of playing tricks on us and giving us nice warm days one week followed by snow and sleet the next. Isaac is mastering the new challenge of walking in the grass and dirt, and particularly enjoys eating the bits of bread that we have thrown outside for the birds and rabbits when I am not looking. Meanwhile, Noah is back to his favorite outside activity of mowing and raking. And while we don't have a sandbox, the boys seem content to dig in a corner of mulch for hours on end, filling and dumping the same bucket over and over again. Isaac only sampled the dirt once or twice.

The garden is in need of some fresh compost and soil (our compost bin doesn't produce enough for the whole garden) before it is ready for planting, so I am a bit behind in my spring planting. However, we do have a few seedlings growing nicely in the basement. I am keeping it simple and starting only basil, Swiss Chard, and a few varieties of heirloom tomatoes inside. The rest of the garden will be directly sown as soon as the weather is more consistent and we get our rabbit-proof fence back up, lest I make the same mistake as last year and feed all those nurtured seedlings to the rabbits.

Speaking of rabbits...I am pretty sure one of them lives under our back steps. Though we rarely see it, he or she leaves behind plenty of um...evidence. However, last night as we were eating our Easter dinner, I happened to glance out the big sliding glass door in our dining room and there it was, just a few feet away, nibbling on the bits of bread (the ones Isaac hadn't eaten) and joining us for Easter dinner. How many people can say the Easter Bunny joined them for dinner? :)

That brings this Spring ramble to a close. I promise to be back soon with an update on some new projects and the boys' latest antics...

~Jen

Afghan in Progress

Quite possibly my favorite thing in our little living room is this painting, called Spring Leaves by Teri Jonas. I love the colors and the feeling of calm that it evokes every time I look at it. We got it shortly after I read the book, Tuck Everlasting, and it reminds me of the forest clearing described in the book.In fact, I love the colors so much that I was inspired to crochet a cozy wool afghan for our living room picking up on the colors in the painting. The afghan is a simple granny square pattern that I simply kept making bigger and bigger (instead of making a bunch of little squares and later sewing them together). I have a very bad habit of starting these large projects and then not finishing them, but the changing colors help keep my interest while the mindlessness of the pattern allows me to work on it little chunks of time and when there are other lots distractions. I was on quite a roll too, almost two-thirds finished and rather proud of myself, before I realized that I underestimated how much yarn I would need. So this project is currently on hold because the yarn I need is now on back order. Actually, a benefit of this pattern is that we can use it right now, it is just a little on the small side. (Isaac, as you can see, had his own ideas about how the afghan should be displayed for pictures.)
With the afghan project on hold, I have been working on a few quick little projects, including a vest for Isaac using a robin's egg blue color that I had gotten for the afghan and then decided didn't quite work with the color scheme. This was my first time using this particular pattern by Georgie Hallam (details on ravelry). Like her other patterns, it is well written with lots of room for personalization. I added a little orange elephant color work just for fun, but I like how it ended up matching Isaac's amber teething necklace so well.

So there, now that I have shared the afghan project with all of blogland, I will be less likely to set it aside and never finish it. Right?

First Steps

As promised, here is a video of Isaac's first steps. I just love his persistence and the look of concentration on his face. It makes me smile every time I watch it, which has got to be close to a hundred times by now! (So as not to get our blog music playing over the top of the video, you may want to go way to the bottom of the blog and pause the music player.)