life interrupted

It seems I have slipped a bit again.  So much has happened since my last post and I don't really know where to begin.  On May 12th, Taylor and I ran in the Race for the Cure-Boise.  It was a gorgeous day and I felt really good.  I beat my first race time by 2 minutes and of course Taylor was waiting for me at the finish line again.  She is a speedy little thing.  It was a lot of fun and I look forward to my next one which is probably in August.

Boise Race for the Cure 2012

My friend is a nutritionist and I decided to work with her and try and get my nutrition on track and I am so glad I did.  I also took progress pictures for the first time since last September and all I can say is I was so shocked at how much my body has changed for the better since then.  I attribute it to beginning weight lifting.  Even though the scale hadn't moved much at all, I have definitely lost a lot of inches.  The first week of working on my nutrition I lost 5 pounds.  Its a 30 day program intended to help me become a "cleaner" eater and eliminate added sugar and processed foods.  It has been challenging and I will have to incorporate a lot of this for the rest of my life but I am happy with it so far.  I am officially coffee-free and have been drinking green tea instead.   For anyone that knows me... this is HUGE! I can't wait til the end of the 30 days so I can compare it again.

My garden is doing wonderful!!  I have four types of tomatoes, jalapenos, bell peppers, cucumbers, Lemon cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, summer squash, lettuce, scallions, spinach, wax beans, green beans and carrots all growing now.  I have room for two more cucumber plants and then they will all be full.

My first radish

The radishes I have picked since this are a bit bigger and the plants in the beds are a lot bigger now.

Mother's day this year was great.  My husband (and children of course) thought of the perfect gift.  When we bought this house, the front landscaping was a MESS.  There were three huge nasty rose bushes and I wasted no time digging those up immediately and I pulled out all of the myrtle that had taken over.  I uncovered a truckload of river rock and listed it on craigslist for free so it would get hauled away.  The bed has sat empty for over a year now.  On Mother's day I woke up to this beautiful sight-

Mother's day 2012

This wasn't enough to fill the area so the next week I went and bought some more to fill the space.  I am so happy with how it looks.  It is different than most people have around here with their bushes and daylilies.  I wanted lots of color so I have it now.  Now all we need is some mulch and it will be complete.

Summer has officially started and we are going to have a busy one.  My son graduated from kindergarten, my oldest is officially a middle schooler, we have two kids in tee-ball and games or practices 4 of the 5 days a week.  I have decided to cut back on work so I can be more available at home.  It was a hard decision to make but one that was needed and I think it will really help on many levels.  As it was before, I would have missed every single game of theirs and that was just not acceptable.

I am sorry I was neglectful and I hope I have been able to play a little catch-up with this post.  Thanks for visiting!  

A place of my own!

 Finally! I have something I have wanted for a LONG time.  I have a real garden area.  I have a reputation for not being able to grow things due to my own negligence and frustration and it is often a topic of humor around the home.  I have never successfully grown a vegetable in all the years I have tried and even my flower pots wither away by the end of the season.  I really hope to change things around and actually get something to grow.

Last month we finalized the design of the beds and off I went to Lowes to pick up my lumber.  I managed to successfully pick out un-cracked and un-warped wood and Brent went on and put them together.  Our original 2-bed plan was swapped for 4-4x10 ft beds that stand 9 inches high.  He really did a fantastic job and I am glad we decided to double the amount of space because it doesn't seem like a whole lot of room.  I may be a little over ambitious though with what I intend to grow.

On Friday a HUGE pile of dirt was delivered to the house and most of my Saturday was spent filling up the beds.  I thought I would be extremely sore today but to my surprise, I felt really good when I woke up this morning.  We still have a lot of work before the area looks like we want it to but the most important this was I am now able to plant some things.  Which is exactly what I did this morning.  The back right bed is now holding  seeds for carrots, radishes, scallions, and two varieties of lettuce.  I left about two feet on that bed to plant some more lettuce in a few weeks in order to extend the growing season.

When I was perusing around the net one night, I came across a blog that had introduced a nifty free online program that will help you plan a garden.  This is exactly what this Master Gardener wanna-be needed.  It is called Smart Gardener and tells you pretty much everything you need to know about planning and caring for a garden.  It starts you off with the design, and takes you through seeding, sowing, planing, care and harvest.  it provides information such as climate factors, plant compatibility, pests and control, diseases, how and when to plant and harvest.  It is an amazing tool!  Here is what our garden will potentially look like when it is all planted.

I love that it gives me a weekly to-do list that I can check off as I complete it.  It goes so far as to remind me when I need to water.  I am terribly unorganized and very forgetful.  This little program takes all the guesswork out of my garden.  Now I am just crossing my fingers for some sprouts to show up in about a week.

We decided to omit the potato bins this year and just concentrate on the main beds and getting a compost bin set up.  We are going to take out all the grass around the beds and along the back fence and possibly put some sort of curbing or barrier between the lawn and the garden area.  We still have quite a bit of work to do but I think we will be able to get it done eventually.  

One of reasons we never did this before is because we just couldn't afford it.  I think that is part of the reason why this is so gratifying. Thanks to Pear Budget we have been able to purchase the supplies we needed without having to worry about it cutting into the grocery bill.  Since we have set aside money since January each month for this project and others that we plan on doing throughout the year, it is a huge burden lifted.  Knowing we are going to be growing natural, fresh produce for our family in an affordable and responsible way is so rewarding.  I'm still going to keep my fingers crossed in hopes that something makes it past my black thumb!