Garden 2009

I know, I know, it's been awhile. I'll make up for it with some garden pictures! We're growing lettuce, zucchini, yellow squash, watermelon, tomatoes, Tabasco peppers, jalapenos, basil, mint, and onions this year. We'll see how it turns out. The Tabasco peppers and the watermelon are my "experimental" crops this year.

The whole garden. The hose/sprinkler is set up with our automatic sprinkler system. There's a dedicated water line in the garden- whoever set this up did us a major favor.
I was unsure of the watermelon. It cost $1.50 and consisted of two tiny leaves. It's doing fine now!
Our lettuce finally looks like lettuce.
We've planted a ton of tomatoes, but I'm really excited about our upside down tomatoes. Thanks for the planter, Uncle Don!
Mint. It's coming back just fine from last year. We mostly put it in our tea, but I'm looking for other uses this year.
The basil has been very successful as well. So far I've just added it to tomato sauce, and plan to have a lot of tomato basil salads when the tomatoes come in. Any other ideas would be appreciated!
Our front- I just planted the flowers in the boxes today.
A close up of the pretty flower thing I picked up at yard sale two years ago.
My newest yard sale find- the birdhouse was on the pole, but Kirk took it off so it will be easier for me to paint. I was going to paint it today, but it was WAY too hot. Tomorrow it will be painted, and this weekend I will fill it with geraniums.

This is not the garden, but it's still pretty neat. That's Kirk holding Charlotte. Her mother Amber is by him, and she's petting Snapple, her new mini-horse. He's pretty funny and likes to be brushed.

Misc Pictures

Here's some pictures I've been meaning to share but just now got around to!

Zucchini. We've been eating a lot of it lately.

Last year we nearly pulled this thinking it was a weed, but then it bloomed. This year we got a lot more flowers on it. Very pretty, but it only lasted a few days.

I made a cheesecake in my crockpot! It turned out great!

This is my friend Amber. She's Sylvia's brother's wife, and under that blanket is their new baby girl. Her name is Charlotte. Sarah really, really liked Charlotte and wanted to cuddle with her. (That is, when she was not sniffing her diaper with interest.)

Quick Catch Up

It has been an extremely busy couple of weeks. For those of my readers who don't know, I was laid off from my position at Case New Holland. Friday, August 8th was my last day. The higher HIGHER ups made some radical decisions, and one of those was to let all contract employees go, so I was not the only one who ended up leaving. I enjoyed my time there and will miss most of the people I worked with, but I am excited to move in a new direction.

For my next step, I'll be stepping back into teaching. I've gotten positions at two schools as an English and Humanities adjunct instructor. I'll be teaching The Search For Meaning in a Changing World at Friends University, and two sections of Fundamentals of English at Butler Community College. Classes start next week. After I finish this brief update, I will continue working on figuring out what exactly I'm going to do in those Fundamentals of English classes! They provide us a book and a general idea of what the students must be able to achieve by the end of the semester, but that's all!

The Search for Meaning class is a little different than the classes I've taught in the past. It is in a five week format, and it is continuing adult students. It is also a four hour long class. FOUR HOURS. Luckily, Friends has already provided the entire course to me so I just have to teach it. (Of course, "just having to teach it" is not as carefree as it sounds!)

All of my classes are night classes. It will be nice to have my days free again and to do a large portion of my work at home. One of the things I liked best about teaching was the fact that I only had to be someplace a few hours a week. Everything else could be done anywhere. I'm hoping that it will be less overwhelming this time, but I'm thinking it should be. The last time I taught I was taking a full load of graduate level classes. Nothing is more horrible than grading 60 essays while you're trying to finish a couple of 20 page papers.

I'll get some pictures up of the garden soon. Our tomatoes are doing great, the zucchini is slowing down, and we were disappointed by our cucumbers this year. Kirk's dream of having rhubarb is dead- the plant died for the second year in a row. Our eggplant has flowers on it, but I'm not sure if we're going to get any eggplants yet. I'm already thinking about what we may try next year.

Garden Pictures

Our garden has exploded over the past few weeks. We've started getting zucchini and yellow squash, and the tomatoes are starting to think about getting red. We're excited!

Here's a general picture.

The zucchini is HUGE. I have never seen such huge leaves. This picture was taken last week- it is even bigger now.

Here's Kirk's hand so you can get an idea of how big a single leaf is.

The tomatoes are doing well. Here's our patio tomatoes- we're going to get a lot out of this one little bush.

We're going to have to figure out lots of creative ways to use zucchini. We tried this soup last night and it was really good.

Our first really big one- we decided not to pick it and then left town for two days. It got big, but it was delicious in the soup we used it in.

Wichita Weekend

We had a pretty productive weekend this week.

Cathy planted some jalapeños at Kirk's request. His coworker has an awesome recipe that features cream cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped jalapeños cooked on the grill. We'll let you know how that works out!

Our dishwasher is making a funny noise. Kirk, using tools from his favorite brother in law and the wonders of the internet, is trying to figure it out and fix it.

Meanwhile, in the garden, Cathy spots some green tomatoes.

Sarah sits wherever she wants. Nappers beware!

Cathy and Kirk had time to hit up a yard sale, where they got this adorable bunny picture for ten cents.

The Rose Bush is Blooming

I like to pick them to bring inside. They are very fragrent and the bushes produce a ton! Unfortunately, they do not last more than a day or two once I pick them, but the bush produces for quite awhile.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! Here's the garden pictures I've been promising!

We put down this stuff over our garden that we're calling a weed tarp. Over it, we put mulch, but here's a before picture. It looks like garbage bags, but is tougher than that. We hope it works- fighting the weeds last was the opposite of fun. This year we've planted tons of tomatoes, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, rhubarb, and yellow squash. We also have several herbs in pots around the yard, including basil, thyme, mint, parsley, and chives.

We spent a good part of today putting down mulch. We were happy to have the Scion- with the seats folded down we were able to get all 18 bags of mulch in with no problem.

We repainted the bird houses that the previous owner left awhile ago, with leftover paint we had hanging around. A family of sparrows has already moved in. Revitalize the neighborhood, and they will come.

Our two big pots by the shed. One has cherry tomatoes in it, the other has my mint plant.

Flowers under our bedroom window. We put new mulch in this bed as well.

Our irises are doing well.

In our spare time, we finished repainting the office. The color on the left is the new color, "Seaside Blue" and the right side is the pinkish brown color we painted over. It looks really good.

We nearly pulled this plant, thinking it was a weed...

We're glad we didn't. Pretty!

First Fruits/Job Hunt Update

Our garden is really starting to take off! Here's the first of the zucchini and the tomatoes. (They are supposed to be yellow, but they taste the same as regular cherry tomatoes.) We are going to have tomatoes up to the ceiling judging from how many green ones are on the vines. We got a grand total of four strawberries, but I think that the freeze we had the weekend right after we put in the plants did them in pretty well and I'm amazed we got any at all. Our cantaloupe vines look like we're going to get some cantaloupe, but nothing yet! The weeding has been insane; we can't keep up. Next year will be better. I'm going to try a method I read about in Momma's Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries, which involves covering the garden with newspapers and putting a special black tarp for plants over it.



I am still applying for jobs, but have yet to hear from anyone yet. I'm applying for technical writing positions (not many are out there so far), administrative assistant type jobs, and college level teaching jobs. I've also been looking for editing jobs, but the only one I've seen has not called me back yet, and it was so long ago that I applied, I doubt that they will. Oh well.

New Garden Discoveries!

Here's some new stuff we found in our garden over the past few days!

We did not know this was a rose bush until a few days ago. They smell wonderful!

Another clematis vine I did not even know was there until I cut down some of that giant grass (Pampas grass?) that is in the corner of our yard. It looks like it is going to have a lot of flowers!