Garden 2010: Try again

Look at my boy, trying to eat a leaf. That is kinda the story of our lives right now, Simeon learning about his world and me trying to keep him alive! We have had a difficult few weeks, the death of a dear friend, then Daniel and I had a terrible stomach bug, and Simeon had two more teeth come in. But we are very thankful for our blessings: the gorgeous weather, our healthy little boy, introducing Simeon to the joys of playing in a baby pool, and our families and friends. So we have been trying to make the most of our spare time and while the weather is nice we've been trying to get outside.


After our garden fail last year we've been working on some changes to our garden. A friend of ours got us this book about raised bed gardening Square Foot Gardening. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a small backyard or in our case side yard garden. So the author has a specific dirt mixture he recommends, we tried to add to ours rather than discarding everything we had. Daniel marked the bed off into squares to help us plant without overcrowding.

We also purchased a tumble composter from Lowes and got rid of the nasty rotten "compost trash bucket" we had going. We haven't harvested any of our compost, but I'm looking forward to using it.

I started some carrot and lettuce seeds, and being I started them too late and too deep it's a miracle any of them came up. Then we bought tomato, peppers, onion, and an eggplant and set them out. Once again we have invested a good chunk of change in the garden and are really hoping to actually harvest some veggies this year.

Christ is Risen! Spring is really here!

Isn't that a great picture? My husband is so talented in so many ways. Pascha (Easter as Western Christianity calls it) is finally here. Lent was difficult for me for many reasons this year, I hate to whine so I won't go into my struggles. I know that I am so very blessed in many ways, and I am grateful. I do feel like I have been blessed by the time of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. I feel like I can make a clean start and am energized to be a good wife, mother, and Christian neighbor to those around me. Indeed he has risen for us!

Daniel and I have discussed the lack of pictures we have taken of Simeon and have planned on ways to change that. We'll see.

Daniel has been really busy at work the past few months. We are blessed that he has a job at all, but I am also exhausted from carrying most of the household load myself. I hope that the majority of his 13 hour work days are over for a while at least. We have also had colds it seems like all winter. So the beautiful weather and the wonderful celebration we enjoyed at church this weekend have been so refreshing to me.

Simeon is really increasingly mobile. This for the moment is making my life easier because he is so excited about be able to get to things and play with them. I think much of Simeon's fussiness in his early months was not being able to make his body do what he wanted. One of his favorite activities is trying to get to Barley, unfortunately playing with Barley is yanking his hair so I have to try to warn Barley if he's preoccupied like he was in this picture.

Simeon is eating more solid food. We have done some finger foods, but are still doing mostly purees and of course breastmilk. He loves to eat and I'm having fun introducing him to more foods.