Tue., Oct. 2

Garden planted. Natasha, Justus, and I spent about three hours today planting the garden; we were interrupted by some rain part-way through, but it was at a good point to take a break anyway so who can complain about that?? Neither child was actually very helpful. They remained interested in helping for about the first ten minutes and then sporadically after that. Natasha took pictures of the planting process.

Something remarkable happened over the summer. Okay. If you don't get garlic out of the ground at a certain time, something bad happens. What? you ask? Umm, it seems to me that it rots or something. Well, after all our good dedication last 'winter' in watering the garlic, etc., we did harvest one of the (either Chinese or Mexican) garlics. However, the week the Chinese and Mexican garlics were supposed be harvested was the week Valerie moved in with us after being in the hospital for six weeks and there were hours and hours of driving to do so we didn't harvest the garlic. GR. And then we moved. When it was time to scoop up the stuff from the back yard at the other house, I just plopped three empty plant pots into one of the garlic pots - right on top of the 'dead' garlic. "I'll deal with it later." At the new house we put all the back yard stuff up against the house, in the shade of the north side and moved in and then went on vacation and then tried to settle into a routine and then had the seminar. So ... can you believe that in that time one of the 'dead' garlic in the container has completely re-sprouted on its own??!! With those three smaller plant pots sitting right on top of the dirt/plants!! In addition, elephant garlic in a different container has done the same thing. Woah! I have no idea what will be the quality of these new garlics, but it sure is curious! So that is the green you see coming out of one of the pots in the picture below. Also note that, thanks to Jim, we have a good amount of hay mulch to keep the dirt more wet than it would be otherwise (Watering every other day saves half on water!!) and warmer than it would be otherwise (good for when the nights start to get chilly). We made a 2' walk-way up the center of the garden, for weeding & watering purposes. If it were just me I don't know if I'd worry so much about having a walkway, but ... you know.

I mentioned that Natasha and Justus lost interest in the planting? Wellllllllllllll, since it was sprinkling on us off-and-on during the outside time today the children decided to make a shelter where they could keep dry. They built it in the exact spot where Jeremy and I would like to set up an actual ramada/gazebo thing. Needless to say, what Jeremy and I have in our imagination isn't quite exactly like this:

Other things the children did today included some read-aloud time (yay! ...don't do enough of that), Legos, major coloring (They're working on their coloring posters from the zoo last week, and then thumb-tacking them up in their bedrooms when the posters are done.), dog training, and house responsibilities. Sounds like a pretty normal day. Finally.

Here's a picture of Jabba, comfortably crashed. [BOY, did he enjoy all that outside play time today! The weather was ssssssso nice! Just over 80 around 11am and then the afternoon session was 79, very cloudy, and sprinkly.]