Rain, Rain, Go Away!!

I want nothing more than to get everything planted so I can just kick back with the kids (you know, in my sense of the word), but it has been raining a lot. When it isn’t raining the mosquitoes are horrible! It’s getting frustrating.

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day in the greenhouse. I had Emily transplant her cucumbers into bigger pots and then she hauled them up to her greenhouse (that still needs put back together). By-the-way she is wearing 3-D glasses with the lens popped out. She wore them all day. What a hoot.

Everything in growing quite big already so early in the season. Last year my peppers barely grew so I ignored the instructions and planted them too close. They were 5 plants across so I took two rows and moved them to the end. I also moved the last row that was entirely too close to the cantaloupe. Some are looking a little saggy from the move. I hope they snap out of it. Some of these plants are 2-feet tall!!

My husband spent the day building the last vegetable bed on the hill, but he did take some time to shoot hoops with his son.

Well, it was definitely worth taking the time to transplant the petunias out of the six-packs even if it was late. This is the same flat 9 days later. They are still way behind, but with a lot of fertilizer and some sunshine they’ll catch up in no time at all.

We had some sun this morning and the kids were able to swim before it started raining. Ug! I need to scoop the pool…. so many things to do!

The bottom bed is the one that Homer built today and let me just say when he builds something he does it right. He’s not quick, but that bed will out live me. He does things right the first time. Nick helped me shovel the dirt into it (I was afraid Elijah might be out-of-range).

Today, Olivia helped me plant the middle bed. The beds are 24 feet long and three feet wide. The center bed has a board in the back to walk on to weed and harvest. Because the beds are on a hill the back is shallow so I’m not really losing any growing space. I should probably have a board in the bottom one as well just to make it easier to access everything.

Here’s a view from the front yard sidewalk. You can see by the pool that it was raining on me. The black liner will eventually be covered in rock.

And this is the view from down by the hammock by the pool. Eventually there will be stairs built down the hill to the right of the beds. The dream is for it to go to a platform with a hot tub that has a boardwalk to the pool. I don’t happen to to have $10K laying around so it really is just a dream, but hey, it gives me something to hope for. In the meantime I plan to plant grass.

Yesterday and today lots of seeds were put into the ground for carrots, radishes, chard, cabbage, etc. All the beds in front of the greenhouse are now planted as well as two pots of flowers. Two of the three beds on the hill are done and only one bed of flowers is in. I started on a bed of dahlia’s, but after ten plants the rain chased me inside. Fingers crossed I can do it tomorrow. My grass really needs to dry out so I can mow, too.

For those of you that ask the court trial decisions are in and our case is closed for the most part. I can’t really speak to winners and losers because I fully believe anytime kids are interviewed by strangers and both sides are in a stressful situation no one is a winner. With that said Elijah has been allowed to stay with us full-time as he has for the last 4.5 years. As it has always been he has the freedom to chose to pursue a relationship with his father if he wants and I would never stand in the way of that. I don’t know if it is possible to ease the tension that has been created between the two homes, but I will remain optimistic that we can find a civil ground at least for Emily’s sake. She will continue to go back and forth as she always has. Thank you for your support the last year and a half. Hopefully,  good times will follow this dark period.