The White House

The White House

Thursday, June 9, 2011

I Love Summer!!

Hello Friends!! How is it I only find time to blog every 3-4 days? I've got to find a groove.
Sunday Homer went back to filling the pool. He got to 24,000 gallons when the power steering pump went out on the dump truck. Bummer! We still need another 6,000-8,000 gallons before it is full. Who knows when he'll have time to rebuild the pump...he works so much.

My greenhouse was still a mess so I spent some time getting the center bed planted. I covered it in fabric and planted my cantaloupe and watermelon,  but the plants were weak and I don't think it is worth the time to try and keep them alive. I also planted some zucchini seed since I killed all my beautiful starts. I'm going to rip out the fabric and plant more zucchini seeds. Not sure if there is enough summer for it to work, but it's better than a big empty bed. (Yes, I'm too stubborn to go buy plants).

The cucumbers and peppers are beginning to perk up and flower. The starts were stunted and got into the greenhouse late, but I think it will all work out in the end. At least next Spring everything will be ready to go.

I have pots still waiting to be planted. Ug! Maybe today?
I still need to take care of this net. Cutting off the "leaves" is going to be major time consuming, but it is too heavy with them on. I definitely need to get this over the chicken pen as the raven have gotten 3 of the 5 chicks.

Mess really bugs me and when you are in construction mode there are always things piled up. I did manage to clean up this area yesterday. I also moved the table. I spent more time fighting a tangled hose and now the area is open.

We had such a busy few days that the kids hung low. Lucas quietly entertained himself with toys all day, and the girls made up all kinds of adventures around the yard. It is so heart-warming to watch them connect.

The kids got ahold of my camera again. :)
Flower is such a sweetie.

Monday was a hot one and the day was spent planting garden beds. Here I planted five different kinds of sunflower seeds.


Emily was such a big help. We had quite a system going and it sure made things faster. We weeded together then she watered the parched bed then I ran the rototiller while she went on to the next bed. I planted flowers and then moved on with her. I'm a little over half-way done now and wouldn't be without her help.
This bed holds 26 Powderpuff Asters. (Note the hill in the background...looks good, but just wait....)

I cleaned up my three Hansa Roses that were a wedding gift four years ago in July.
In one bed I planted 16 red, white and blue Wave Petunias (don't know where the photo went). I guarantee there will be a purple. Maybe a pink.  Every year I get them mixed up. This winter I plan to make tags out of yogurt containers until I have one for each plant!

This bed is "supposed to be" 12 Cherry Tidal Wave Petunias.
This lilac was also a wedding gift. For the first time it has three blossoms!! I plan to plant an Avalanche Petunia on each side of it. We haven't pumped water up to the upper pond yet. We still have to get the "wrinkles out".
This bed has my teeny tiny marigold starts that completely blend in with the dirt. I have confidence that they will grow.... or maybe just foolish optimism. There are 9 Hybrid Snowman, 33 Janie Spry and on the end 14 Joker Pansy.

This bed I filled with Nasturtiums seeds which should have been planted several weeks ago, but I'm just going to think positive.

This bed is 10 Shock Wave petunias.... coconut, denim, pink....we'll have to wait and see!
The peas Jadyn and Olivia planted are coming up. Soon I'll have to run some string. I planted one of my big Impatiens that I saved all winter on the end.

This bed has approximately 56 broccoli plants. Since I doubt I'll have enough flowers to fill my beds this year I am using some of them for vegetables.
On the end is more broccoli and then I seeded lettuce and spinach (which also should have been done several weeks ago).

We worked hard in the yard all day and even threw in several loads of laundry trying to get maximum output! :) At 5:00 we jumped in the truck and went to see my nieces play softball. The fence surrounds it all and I couldn't get any good shots. Justise played catcher this game.

Jadyn did some pitching and first base. (Homer picked up the Little Ones and Emily stayed with me).
At 7:30 we headed across the street for Nick's game. Emily helped with the coaching. :) We won by two goals (I think).
Tuesday was another busy day around the house and then Lucas had soccer practice at 6:00pm down at the Ester Park. Dad stayed home to watch basketball and I took the girls to the playground during practice. For some reason I didn't have my camera.

Yesterday Elijah mowed the ditch for me. What a chore! It was about 8 inches long and the bag had to be dumped with ever pass. (I have to bag it otherwise it would blow in the pool). He dumped it over the fence for Daisy and the Chickens.

See the hill now? That is smoke from the Hastings Fire which is close to 20,000 acres about 15 miles North of town.
After another very full day of yard work and laundry we raced off to Lucas' soccer game. I so wonder what my little 5-year old is saying to his team mate.
Look at him go! He scored another two goals last night. It is crazy what a sense of the game he has for being so young. He really gets positioning and is very competitive. We may have another competitive soccer player in our future (Nick and Cody played one season of comp, but their team wasn't very good so they decided not to continue with it and went back to rec).

This photo is to give you a sense of how dark it was from the smoke blocking out the sun. It made it very cold out. You can see how thick things are by looking at the hospital in the background. Youth sports are suspended when the air quality reaches a critical stage.... apparently this is not critical.

Again...see how dark it was out. (I should have edited for better quality, but I wanted you to get a sense of the smoke we are enduring). Homer took the three younger kids and Emily's friend home while I went to Nick's game. It was cold, smokey and spitting rain. It takes 11 to make a team and I only had 9 show up. The other team went down to 9 to make it a more fair game (they do not have to, but a classy coach does). Unfortunately, we were beating them pretty badly so he took his team back up to 11, and we still dominated. You are not supposed to win by more than five and I lost track. We ended up winning 8-2 and I suspect someone from the organization may be calling to scold me (I could even be suspended!). It was an honest mistake that I was off by one goal and I did switch up my players with weaker forwards and we still scored. Sometimes these things can't be helped. My son is so cool in his pink shorts and dreads. He's a unique one!

It started raining some time in the night. Of course, I left out my bucket full of seed packets. Isn't that my luck? Hopefully, I can still use them. I don't think my head can deal with the smoke today so even though I have plants that desperately need to go into the ground I'm going to be working on the house and maybe in the greenhouse. I'd like to have another big day of accomplishments. Emily has her guest to play with and I'll enlist the Little Ones to help me since most of the mess is their toys!!

4 comments:

Kim@Snug Harbor said...

That picture of Lucas and his teammate is precious!

stace41971 said...

That's a LOT of smoke!! My head would be a stuffed up snotty mess, I don't know how you deal with that..yuck!
Glad to see Elijah mowed that bank for you...it looks like quite the chore and quite frankly I wouldn't want to have to deal with it! Oh..wait...I have my own "Hill" over at the other house that I'm supposed to be dealing with.......*sigh*....You think Elijah would come down and do my bank too??? LOL
What do you mean you're not allowed to win by more than 5? Why? I can see that rule applying to 4 year olds...but for the older kids? weird. I'm glad Nick is having fun his last year playing though...love his pink shorts and dreads!

Gail said...

Things are looking so good.

You are one busy lady, no wonder you have no time to blog. Enjoy the summer!

Janie said...

You're having hotter days than we've had in Utah so far. We've reached 80 a few days, but the weather had mostly been cooler than that.