Garden 2014

My first garden was in the Ward plot, graciously volunteered by  a 5 min walk from my condo. It was was a decent mixture of success and failure, but plenty encouraging. Infact, there are things that worked really well there in the depleted soil that didn’t work well in the future attempts (squash, chard, etc) . Herbs were a dandy failure. Here’s a link to it. And another. and yet another. oh, and more. and more. I was excited. I documented well

The second garden was in pots, 35+ minutes away at my father-in-law’s wife's then SLC home. Tomatoes finally took, the peas held their own, the squash and melons, grew but didn’t fruit much... and the watermelons were tiny. SOme herbs took but were rather useless a weekend drive away.  In the end it was semi succesful

The Third Garden was in the Stake Plots. A 5ish minute drive this time, I couldn’t check on it daily as with my first, but it was more accessible than the pots in Sugar house. Still, It was a massive weedfest (not that kinda weed), and took hours every weekend to keep up, eventually I just let it blend with the weeds. People took this as a sign of abandonment and started stealing my tomatos and smashing my pumpkins. I was not pleased.

Year 4, there was NO GARDEN. I really wanted to start some seedings, but I was due June 12th with twins, and the stake garden had a tendency to not be ready for planting until late may/early June. SO, even if I got my plants planted, I knew I’d be relying on Brett to help me put them in, and then they would go neglected all summer in favor of babies. He’ll help me get my garden in, but never helps much with weeding or maintaining.

Well, it is Year 5, and my 4th garden. Here is the whole year story in a very large nutshell: We’d just moved in mid march, my twins were still less than a year and feeding them took FOREVER and was messy. I was pregnant (still am!) Brett was trying to use up all his daylight getting sprinklers and trees in and wasn’t much help, and I found weeding highly distracting.   At last, I started seeds. Eventually, I transplanted them to bigger starter cups. Finally retrieved pots from storage got some things planted. Finally tried to get the rest of the tomatoes that wouldn’t fit into the ground... it was to hard (crappy dense soil, pregnant abs, little skill with a pick ax). Brett took pitty on me and spent 20 minutes helping me trench for them. I stole some of his landscaping dirt, made a place for the tomatoes in the trench, and lined with rocks hoping it would contain soil/dirt mixture. The water rolled off. Was having to water 2x a day and they were sad. Best idea ever--- I buried family size yogurt cups (with holes poked in them for leakage) in between the tomato plants and filled them when I watered. Tomatoes were happy.  Weeks later, after a good rain, I tried to make a second trench for corn. I’ve never done corn. I wanted to try. The wet ground helped, but I was still preg, and the soil still sucked. Once again, I tricked Brett. Lovely lovely brett. I got some more stolen landscaping soil mixed in, corn planted, had to dig little pits to make little lakes so they could get more water, but they seam happy.

It seams a little late to post all the pictures, so I will just show my most recent, which are a few weeks old.


Some Herbs, some months ago. 

The basil about doubled before it bolted, the dill got tall, then dried out The sage stayed 2 leaves for months, then 4 leaves for months (now looks great). Parsley did better after I moved it to a bigger pot, thyme spread a bit, both mints tiers below thyme) have done well and spread a bit.  Cilantro was fun and I got a few mini harvests from it before it bolted and dried out. 

Below are my tomatos starting to come in. These stupices have since had maybe 15 harvested, and now have another 6 or so ready for picking. The black cherries at the end have also had some rippen, but the first batch had some weird acorn like brown hard spots on the bottom. I’ve been told it was from overwatering, but the ones ripening now look healthy.

My peppers, below, were small for a long time. Then they decided to go crazy. Sadly I’ve had to throw out 5 bell peppers because they had rotting spots on them (more overwatering maybe?) The hot peppers ( I forgot what kind) are going CRAZY. none are red yet, but their must be at least 20 on the one plant. 

The seeds for these predate my first actual garden. I tried to do  a few small pots on my wymount dark porch. Failed. planted when we lived with my mom and dad, got maybe 3 red hot peppers. Polo stole them. This plant is now drenched with peppers forming. 

I was excited when small bell peppers came. First bell pepper attempt that has gone anywhere. 

Once I pulled out the spinach (it did decently until it bolted) I moved the sage dill and parsley to a big pot. Sage  is now twice this size with lots of lovely flowers, the parsley has been happy. The dill I think was already past it’s prime and drying out. 

 Greens: Chard is still happy, lettuce I under used, but made 4 or so large salads from, and added leaves here and there to sandwiches. I pulled it out this weekend. The Kale in the back was lovely and i used several leaves a week in the babies smoothies until the caterpillars got so bad that I tore it out (a few weeks ago)

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Apparently the white moths that were keeping shade in my Kale were laying babies that later aggressively consumed my kale. Lessons for the future. 

 My peas, below, were much greener and taller, but they have a short life span and I didn’t bother to replant them... because I didn’t bother to eat them this time. might pull out and try some quick things like carrots and beets that I haven’t done this year.

 The overflow tomato’s and the corn... which have since gotten much fuller. I even have an orange tomato on one now.

 My basil a little later, well filled (now half bolts), and the cilantro drying itself out. I pulled it figuring I can maybe keep the coriander seeds on top?

ALL IN ALL... I absolutely loved having herbs so close. They did much better than ever before. I never used the parsley (rarely do) but I snuck snippets of the basil, thyme, and green onion (not pictured) quite often. I have a rosemary in the front yard (not picutred) that I also used a few times with pork, and the cilantro had a few minor invasions. The new life with fresh and accessable herbs in the midst of cooking was probably my favorite change.   I also enjoyed replanting celery and green onion roots from the store (both sprouted, but only the green onion’s took), And seeing peppers slowing come, then BOOOM , was fun (now if I can solve the rot issue). 

NEXT YEAR, hopefully, we put in the grow beds, with a drip system, because watering them every morning is a bit more time consuming than I would like... though the boys now enjoy being gated on the patio while I do it... so not so bad. Blah blah blah blah blah. 

This is the third post today, and I didn’t cook, clean or pay much attention to the crabby babies while I did it, so please excuse me while I don’t even vaguely proofread this post that 3 people might read... not including the russians that are trying to steal my identity. 

Yardscaping 2014

We are done. 

Ok, clearly not forever.

But for now. 

Brett was gunna be done by memorial day. Totally did not happen. But once the curbing was in and the grass was sprayed on, I finally got to spend some time with B after work... SO now, of course, he’s trying to cram in a few hours of video games every day before the baby comes

That’s the male version of nesting.

Sometimes I make him pause and help me out, but I’m letting him get away with it for the most part, because he knows things will change soon.   

Yard TMI:

Anyhow, this weekend he finally hooked up the drip system for the fruit trees, and I think that was the final yard project for this year. This is as good as our landscaping is gunna get for now. Maybe next year we’ll get a fence. Maybe. Meanwhile, I’m grateful for the money we saved with him putting in the sprinkler’s himself (even using some nicer parts it was way cheeper), as well as what we saved by shaping and smoothing our own dirt (and the dirt we bought) and spraying hydroseed. Some of our neighbors paid to have sod laid, Most bought sod (4x the price of hydroseed) and had “sod parties,” which are time consuming and not much fun to attend (B has gone to at least 4, me 1). So in the spirit of being nice neighbors (and cheeper cheapskates), we sprayed our grass.  Almost just laid seed (even cheeper), but we got a late start and needed a faster start for the grass to get well established and mowed before winter.

One of the four loads of soil we ordered. 

freshly poured curbing as seen from the boy’s window. 

just a small grass patch for this side of the driveway

the curbing from sidewalk view towards boy’s bedroom. 

Corner view. Eventually there will be plants trees in that center island, and more rocks filling in the gap between the retaining wall and the curbing. B has since added wood chips to the corner.  

view from the side street

View from about where the corner for our front/side fence will go. 

The creepy green of freshly sprayed seed

Side view looking a little more understandable with the color showing where grass will be.

TA DA, the real color of baby grass.  Will eventually get darker as it fills in and matures, and we need some plants/trees , but good enough that no one should turn us into the city for improper yard upkeep. 

Nesting type things.

4 weeks ago  (at 34 weeks) I went through my “shoot, not quite ready phase.” It started a series of events that included:

 1.Buying a bike trailer.

While it wasn’t really nesting, I’d been spending way too much time (this becomes a reoccurring theme for a while) trying to find good prices on used bike trailers.  I’d saved money from bday/christmas, and people wanted to sell really old ones for 75% of retail. So I ended up snatching a new one when they were 20% off, and brett let me use my rei dividend (which you can eventually cash out) to make up the difference with the understanding that this might be our second stroller when we need 2 non umbrella ones.

Part of me thought it might be a bit silly to invest in a trailer at 34 weeks pregnant, but we’ve used it at least 8 times already. It’s been great for when they are starting to get cranky, but I need to stall bed time so they don’t wake up in the middle of the night. Plus leisurely cardio for prenatal health. 

I tried to see if we could make it to the store/pediatritians. We could... but construction and lack of cross walks meant we couldn’t get home... so we spent 2.5 hours in a park waiting for daddy. 

2. Buying stuff for my birth kit.

3. Buying a few things for baby.

sleeping gowns are the shiz... and the other stuff was super cheep. 

4. Borrowing a crib (we’re up to 3 cribs now, all borrowed :).

 

We’re waiting on the mattress :)

5. Buying possibly way too many diapers

Oh yah, we’re only having one baby this time.

6. Borrowing a 3rd infant seat incase the boys weren’t big enough to move into boosters (we’ve yet to spend our own money on infant seats, truly another blessing), and incase I didn’t buy more car seats on time (see a few below).

7. Trading in our beloved Rav4 (I was very happy with it as a car) and buying a van that would fit 3 car seats (and yes, it had to be a van. When you have 3 kids under 14 months, you have to have to room to actually fasten all 3 in... because they can’t do it themselves.

He kicked a lot of tires before he picked one

My maiden voyage in the Van... for some reason the only photo I can find of it. 

It takes way too long to buy a car. They know how much they will negotiate for... this whole 15 minutes to talk to a manager each time thing is stupid... but at least they had a play room. 

8. Spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for the perfect diaper bag solution (hint- it doesn’t exist).

Hence no pictures :(

9. Spent an almost equally ridiculous amount of time trying to decide on a booster seat for when E (and eventually O) reaches that 22 lbs that means his infant seat is too small.

Had to check it out, just in case Brett really did make me buy the cheapest ones.

Ninja turtles don’t like kids in their laps.

I did most of my searching online (instead of eating or cleaning), but sometimes you gotta see a seat in person. 

10. Took my now 13 month old’s to their FIRST wellness check-up, so I look at least somewhat responsible, and because I highly doubt that I will be dropping Brett off at work anytime soon in order to take 3 babies to the doctor unless they actually need a doctor.

Healthy, small toddlers and the useless numbers assigned to them.

11. Made Brett look at my chart for booster/convertibles, since he wanted me to “buy the cheapest one.”

At this point I figured I might convince him to spend $150ish on one instead of $90 for the costco one that people said falls apart, and that is actually “not reccomended” by the something something institute...

Even though we’d borrowed another infant seat and E hadn’t quite outgrown it, it was comforting to finally get the new seats home. Plus now ZERO of the seats we will be using are expired instead of TWO outta three. Oh yeah, and  Brett picked a more expensive version of my most expensive chart option. Typical. 

We can keep rear facing him quite a while if we choose, and fit 3 across (so in theory we can fit 6 in our van if Brett keeps up this  baby after baby trend). Long expiration date. long weight/height range.

12. After we bought the car seats, I slowed down, a lot, but yesterday I had Brett move some furniture around for optimal crib placement (which is not the most aesthetic) and today I decided I  best start assembling a “toddler birth kit,” for who ever ends up with the boys during/after labor.

36 weeks

Ya. I forgot to fix my ISO, but I likes it. 

I decided Polo was left out

Uno fetus

and for comparison, this is the twin pregnancy just one week later in gestation. 

 So, last time, the difference between my bellies with the first and second pregnancies was significantly smaller. I think it is more obvious this time... though frankly, the legs might help... I gotta get my full setup  unpacked in the basement to do that though. Oh, and another light. Someone would have to buy me another light.