Just Before the Rain! :)

I so need a new charger! It is killing me to have to keep borrowing hubby's cell phone for pictures! lol 

Right now, for instance, the sun is glinting off of water drops on our pine tree like a hundred sparkling shards of glass! The droplets are twinkling every color of the rainbow. I've never seen anything like it! Words cannot do it justice!

The morning has been pleasant, to say the least. :) My children slept in while the sounds of birds, oscillating fan, and the sanitation trucks provided the perfect amount and kind of white noise. :) Even little Koala was humming off and on in her sleep in those precious noises only the tiniest humans can make. It was positively perfect. :) 

Hubs snuck out around seven thirty while it was still breezy and overcast and took some pictures for me. It turns out that was in the nick of time, because not long after that the low rumble of thunder was heard, and the most beautiful rain shower you've ever seen came through! (Hence the sun glinting off of the rain-soaked pine tree!)

So, why am I updating pictures again so soon? I'm glad you asked! :) I know that we just posted photos a couple of days ago, but look at this! My pea plant has surprised me yet again! There is a flower on the vine!! 

I got to have the privilege of explaining to my littles that this single white flower was the start of fresh sugar snapped peas for the summer! :) It is remarkable that one single flower on one single little vine can stand for so much promise! :) I cannot wait to post update pictures of a tiny pea pod, growing for all it is worth!

Well, blow me down! We'll have peas yet!!! 

Another reason for updating again so quickly is the fact that I did not update about the celery plant last time, so here she is. 

You can see that I took an old Taco Bell cup I'd been using for rinsing and helped the little gal to stand up straight. You can see that the plant is leafy and green, and growing very well. I am still surprised about this, and absolutely delighted! :) The girls and I can't wait to have our own first bunch of celery to put in a salad or turn into ants on a log with a little bit of peanut butter and raisins! :)

Here is another photo, so you can see the stalks of the celery as they looked a couple of weeks ago. It is going somewhat slowly, but they are thickening. I have enjoyed looking at them as they grow. A baby bunny visits our yard every single day, but has yet to discover the celery. In fact, it hasn't nibbled at any of our plants - just the weeds around the bales.

I have done some looking online, and it seems that if you cut off the end of a celery stalk at home (as we all do), you can plant the stump and regrow celery in your own home. Since that is the case, when I harvest this I am going to cut it right there in the ground to see if it will use it's original roots to regrow.

One last shot of the celery; this time just a close-up of the leaves because I think they are pretty. :) Our little hermit crabs are really enjoying the garden, as well. :) We have broken off leaves from the celery and tomatoes and given them to the pets to eat. They just love fresh produce! In fact, today is so warm and muggy that I am going to take Tink outside and let him mosey around the yard a bit. We'll keep a close eye on him. I'm sure he'll love it! :)

The cucumber continues to grow and to amaze me. :) I know I keep saying that each plant is my favorite, but the cuke and pumpkin plants really are at the top of the list! To have seen this little guy go from three leaves to the tall and somewhat sprawling plant you see here has been both wonderful and exciting! :)

I do not know what to do about the bugs making spots on the leaves yet, but I promise you I will figure it out! :)

Speaking of the pumpkin, here she is! Now, you just have to admit that this is a beautiful and healthy plant! The amount of leaves from what we started with is so, so, so exciting to me!!

I keep finding myself praying that we've got enough bees coming around to pollinate the flowers when they begin to show and to bloom! I'm also secretly praying that we end up with both male and female flowers in the first batch so we get a fruit from them. Oh my. I said I wasn't going to get my hopes up, didn't I? 

I am apparently SUCH a liar on that issue! lol

The tomatoes are doing about the same. The proper name of these is 'Washington Cherry Tomato'. I have decided that means that they are the 'big' cherry tomatoes. They are definitely larger than the ones we purchase at the store or farmer's market. In fact, they're at least twice as large. 

You can see here that the first fruits are ripening nicely on the vine, and the rest are in varying stages. I believe we counted another seventeen flowers or so. 

I do not have a picture of them from this morning, but my beefsteak tomatoes that are growing in the planter have also begun to develop the pods that will hold flowers and eventually fruit!

Here is the beefsteak plant from the same bale as the cherries. I am still so disappointed these two tomato plants seem so lackluster. They started off really well, but I just cannot seem to keep enough water in the bale to keep them looking happy and perky.

I have only spotted the one single flower on this plant so far, but I can tell that there will be others coming on soon. :) I do so hope for huge, juicy tomatoes to grace my table this summer! I have many happy memories of my dad slicing up tomatoes right there in the garden and slipping them onto bread. Those were the best tomato sandwiches!

Now we've arrived back at the broccoli plant. :) I know these little guys frustrated the ever-living snot out of me initially, but now they've become my pet plants! You can see clearly that there are more than two leaves in each plant now! I am babying them with added dirt (you can tell... they look short again), quality fish fertilizer, and a lot of kind words as I plant. 

My grandfather, God rest his soul, would let me help in his garden when I was visiting. He always said that plants, like his pigeons, do better when you talk to them. :) We would be out in his strawberries, tending them and talking to them lovingly. Now I baby every plant we grow, and every pet in the same exact way. 

I would give anything right now to be back in his yard watching him whistle and flag to his racing pigeons up in the sky as they responded with so many tricks. It is one of many sweet memories I have of him. I've really missed him lately...

Well, you get the gist. :) The summer is one of the most beautiful I have lived through. My home, my husband, my children, my family, my friends, my church, my life, my plants all bring me such joy. I am humbled by this. The Lord is so good to me. God is in His Heaven, and maybe not all is quite right in the world, but here on this little plot of land everything is beautiful. <3 I am content, and what can a soul ask for, more than peace?

To My Husband

Dear Hubs, 

    I was thinking about what I wanted to write to you for Father's Day, and I couldn't come up with anything that seemed good enough. I wanted to write a poem, but am afraid to lose some sincerity in rhyme. I thought of writing a straight you-themed blog, but that too seemed a daunting task. 

     How am I supposed to put my entire heart into words? I've tried off and on through the years, and have never yet come up with anything that sums it all up. For someone who enjoys talking and writing, and who loves you so dearly, I struggle mightily when it comes to this topic... the topic of you, and of my love and feelings towards you. Even now I am embarrassed, recognizing that already I am stumbling over this letter so badly. Please excuse that. <3 

     There are the big things, of course. The separate moments that we fell in love with one another, and the time we spent cultivating it... our wedding day, and the first years of our marriage. The miscarriages that dashed our hopes and broke our hearts time and time again. The eventual diagnosis that we had developed an infertility issue, which seemed like a crushing blow. 

   Then there was the pregnancy test that turned pink, and the baby that stayed and eventually turned our whole world pink. Giraffe entered our lives in a way we had never been told to expect. The day I watched you become a father you almost became a widower, and childless. It was the hardest thing we have ever gone through. I will never forget the hours we spent sitting together in broken silence in the N.I.C.U., or the mixed look of tragedy and love on your face every time you watched over or held our big little girl. 

(Gack! There goes my make up! Perhaps I should not have written this before church!)

   I saw something else in that N.I.C.U. ward too, though I was too upset and distracted to realize it at the time. I saw you becoming a father, and really, it seemed more that you already WERE a father. I always knew you were the kind of guy who was meant to be dad, and when the world exploded and Giraffe was here, the transformation was instant. You changed all of her diapers so gently and tenderly with love. Every single one, without complaint. You learned to dress her without further injuring her damaged and paralyzed body. 

   You championed me for seventeen hours a day, and even every two hours those short, painful nights making sure I had clean pumping supplies, and running scant drops of colostrum from the Ronald McDonald House up the long, long corridors back to the N.I.C.U. You were my rock when your world was falling apart as rapidly as mine. I can't keep going... there are too many memories... but I need you to know that you are the single strongest man I have ever met. The things we've gone through have been rough, and there have been times where we lived in more pain than promise. Through it all, you have have been the loving, tender, humble, yet strong leader that this family needs. You guide us through the good and the bad, and make sure that all of your girls feel safe and loved at the end of the day. 
   

When Koala joined us nearly two years ago, I got to see you shine all over again. You were so doting and attentive. You exhausted yourself seeing to it that I stayed pregnant and that she got here safely. Your home is completely surrounded in feminine energy, your life immersed in flowers and ladybugs and giraffes and pink and well, it suits you beautifully. <3 I know we have to run now so I'll end this, but I just want you to know that no man could ever be more loved, more appreciated, more adored than you. 

                                                                    Eternally Yours, 
                                                                                     ~Lynn

PS: I owe you one killer barbecue grill. ;)

Growth Spurt!

We Have More Tomatoes!

   Our cherry tomato plant has had some fruit for a while, but now we have real, growing fruit on the vine and a host of new blooms that will become baby 'maters soon enough!!! Yaaay! :) :) :)Last night I pinned down hubby and begged him to take pictures of our plants for me. He kindly obliged, so I have spent the afternoon making collages. Here are the progress reports so far!

Let's start with the slowest grower, the broccoli. We had four plants to begin with, but two of them failed to thrive and ultimately died. We had all but given up hope on these two when we purchased Alaska Fish Fertilizer for the garden. I have heard and read good things, so with fingers crossed we mixed it up and watered the plants. It is hard to tell much difference from the first picture to the last, but you can see in the bottom right photo (if you squint) that the plants have finally perked up and are each getting new leaves right in the center!

The link shows you the exact kind we purchased which, at 2 tablespoons per gallon to be used every third week, seems like a good value. I won't lie, it smells exactly like you think it will. I about wretched when I took a sniff after my sneaky daughter assured me it did not smell bad. Worse, the odor was stronger when mixed with water. My yard smelled for two full days. I am both enthusiastic about and dreading the next application. haha

In the bale next to the broccoli we have cucumber and pumpkin. You can tell just by the picture that the cucumber has gone from a humble few leaves to a healthy growing plant. :) You can also tell that some unfriendly bug has been lunching on her leaves. Grr. Depending on how large this problem becomes, I may have to invest in some food grade pesticide if there exists such a thing. 

As mentioned, here is the pumpkin plant that sits next to the cucumber. :) It is already growing and looking beautiful! Having read up on pumpkin, I have learned that it is not uncommon for the first round of flowers to be all female and, having no male flowers to be pollinated with, die off. I am trying not to get my hopes up when I see the first flowers, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't eagerly looking for them! :) I haven't decided yet what to do about trellising. 

In the third bale we have two kinds of tomatoes. Here you see the beefsteak. You can tell that this fella has grown considerably, but isn't necessarily entirely happy. This plant seems the most hungry, and looks wilted and pitiful in the hot afternoons between watering. It perks right up after it is watered, with every plant food application, and with every rainfall... so why can I not manage a good picture? This tomato plant IS showing the very first flower now, though, so I haven't given up on him. ;)

The cherry tomato plant sharing the same bale has fared considerably better, and is the proud owner of the fruit displayed in photo at the top of this page. Though you can't see them as well in the last photo here, there are thirteen tomatoes as of yesterday, and a good handful or two of flowers ready to turn into tomatoes. We are all very excited about harvesting these as they ripen! 

Ah, the humble pea plant we threw out but wouldn't die. :) 

This little guy has spent so much time growing in the leftover dirt I thought it would be wrong of us not to move him over to the fourth bale. Remember, it was recently half-vacated by dead tomatoes. (The heirlooms that did not survive.)

I scooped gently underneath and around his original planting pod, being sure to take plenty of extra dirt with me and praying that I did not upset his root system. Blessed amazement, he came just fine and did not seem to mind the transfer! Two days later when we took the last photo in the group above we found he'd crawled off to the side and is hanging onto the vacated tomato cage for dear life! haha Grow my little guy, grow!

My last surviving heirloom tomato has finally taken a mind to grow. (: This little guy is the only survivor out of four that we were given, but seems to be doing really well now that his roots are sure. Since this is the same bale that killed his friends, my thought is that it did not condition at the same rate (or as well) as my other bales. Still, we all know the saying 'slow and steady wins the race'. This little guy may surprise us and be the biggest yet. 

Now, I just HAVE to get to my planter tomatoes! These babies started out as outcast dirt thrown carelessly into the planter with the strawberry plant when I had to re-start my garden. I wondered if they might sprout, but otherwise did not hold out any hope. Sprout they did, indeed! We thinned out one or two when they were the size in the top right picture, but it just broke our hearts.

I know.... we're saps....

As you can tell, they did not just grow, they BOOMED!! How am I supposed to separate them now? I ask you! You can't imagine the joy these fellas give to Giraffe and me. I even think Hubs gets a kick out of them as well. I mean, look at them! They are growing faster and better than any other plant I have! We can't let them go now! You can see we plopped a broken tomato cage in there. That really made us laugh, it seemed so pointless. Yet, here they are in all their glory, growing like the kings of the patio! :) 

This is not the most recent picture of the celery plant, but it is the last snap that I have. Suffice to say that it is still growing. It is much darker green now, and I am concerned that it is going to end up being too bitter to enjoy. Next year this stuff is getting onto a bale, and we'll put a ring around it to help it grow tall instead of out. 

I should also mention before I go that we are planning on picking up some floral wire this weekend or the beginning of next. I am going to lovingly and carefully add it to the tomato cages so the various other plants have something else to grip onto as they grow. I am also going to try to use it to help brace up that planter full of beefsteak tomato plants if I can manage it without breaking any of them. 

Mercy, but I am green to all of this straw bale gardening! haha Even so, look at how the Lord is blessing it! (: <3 :)