A Sneek Peek for Nenna (and Sue)!

Our new patio furniture ......

Ignore the big white coffee table... I have to get rid of that and buy a matching table. We got this set at Target but the table that matched had a wicker top and I'd rather have a glass top (I can just see my glass of wine not sitting level and spilling all the time on a wicker top table!).

Nenna, I've been checking the 10 day forecast and so far the weather up to next Saturday (June 6th) is 95 degrees and sunny! Let's hope it stays like that for you ;-) (although in all honesty I would prefer it 10 degrees cooler - and you'll know what I mean when you get here!)

It's getting busy around here....

So much to do.... so little time, or so the saying goes, and that's really how I'm feeling. Only two weeks (and 2 days) before my sister and bil arrive, but before that I have some other very special guests coming to visit :-) Next week my bestest bloggy friend Sue is coming in to town again with her hubby Doug and they'll be staying the night with us next Saturday.

I'm sure most of you know by now that I met Sue online a few years ago (quite a few years ago to be exact!) and we've had the opportunity to meet a couple of times now. The first time we did was back in Maryland when Kristen was about 3 years old. And I have to say even that very first time, I felt like I was seeing an old friend who I hadn't seen in a few years, rather than actually meeting a 'stranger' that I'd met on the net. Perhaps that's because we've never felt like strangers to each other. Sue has become a dear close friend to me, and I'm so excited that we get the chance to visit with one another again.

So in preparation for my lovely guests (both Sue and my sis) I've been busy getting the inside and outside of the house ready - and I'm nowhere near finished! I even have plans to paint the dining room , but it's not getting done today. Hopefully I will get to that on Tuesday. Today, and yesterday I've been busy out back with Jason.

I have to tell you, we are SO loving our 'Farm'. I'm still thinking of a name for it, I think Jason might have just come up with one for us, so if we decide to use it I will announce soon what it is. I have visions of having our little farm with a small fence around it and an archway of some kind (trellis like perhaps) that you would enter through. That's not saying the fence would be so high it would keep you out. I'm thinking of just a foot high or something so we can still access it from all sides.

Anyway, things are looking pretty good out there and we're still in the stages of planting things. Today we put more watermelon seeds in and I bought two more herbs from Lowes - dill and Italian parsley. I haven't had a chance to plant them yet as a thunder storm has just rolled in so we're stuck inside for what might be the rest of the day. We also bought a blueberry bush and a blackberry bush, and yesterday we bought new patio furniture that I put together last night. Did I mention things were busy around here?!!! It seems to be never ending, but the good part is, we're having a ton of fun in the process.

Yesterday was a monumental day for me..... I harvested my very first radish! Yes, just the one!

He was looking so big in the ground that I just had to pull him out! The others still look a bit thinner, so I will leave them for a few more days. Look at him, isn't he cute? :-)

He tasted pretty good too. I planted more radishes yesterday too. So once this crop is harvested I will have others starting to grow already.

Ok, before this becomes a novel, I'll end here. I will have more pics to share with you over the weekend.

More Farm Updates

There's nothing much going on here other than getting the house ready for some special guests and of course 'farm work'. So, here's a few pictures of what's going on in the Farm this week. Jason went around taking lots of pictures! I need to come up with a name for our farm - any ideas?

This is a picture I took last week but didn't get a chance to post on here.... this is our pomegranate tree.The flowers started off as tiny red berries which eventually burst open in to these pretty things.

A pear on one of our pear trees. There are a couple more on this tree, hopefully we will get to eat them?

Chili peppers :-)

and the Scarlet Runner Beans getting bigger....

And I bought more herbs for the Herb Garden and added a few little whimsey things!

The Farming Den

I thought about making a new website so I can journal about what's growing in the yard and how things are coming along. But then I thought if that's my 'daily news' and most people would want to read it here instead of having to click on yet another site, I'd just keep things as is and give you some regular updates probably each week.

So this week down 'on the farm' we've been watching the seeds sprouting and watching the aphids gather and start eating the life out of them! Much to Jason's surprise, those little 'buggers' are just running rampant out there! We have some stuff to spray on them, and the other night we simply took a bottle of soapy liquid out there and sprayed too. No doubt it will be an ongoing battle, but hopefully the plants will win in the end.

On Sunday (mothers day here) Jason went out with Kristen while I rested still, and they bought some ladybugs. You release them in to your yard in the hopes that they stick around and eat the aphids. Sunday evening we let the first bag go (we have 3 bags total). There are about 1500 ladybugs in each little bag. I took some pictures, but I also tried out the video so I'm gonna see if I can post that for you first.

Radishes are coming up quickly, and they already need thinning out.

These are Scarlet Runner Beans and will grow up a trellis that Jason has made.

Kristen with 'Petey'! For some reason she's trying to name all the ladybugs!

Spreading a little 'ladybug' love!

This is the hard part....

... the down time! the feeling like an invalid cos you can't get your head off the pillow time, the wanting to get out of bed, but your body doesn't have the energy time, the knowing that your loved ones aren't being looked after the way you want time! This is the hard part!

I had my surgery 4 days ago now, and the day after I came home from the hospital I felt great. I got up and took Kristen to school, and even took myself off to the ENT for my appointment. I thought I was fine, I thought I was 'back to normal' already. But it all went down hill later that afternoon. Since then I've practically layed in bed resting my head back as much as I can, because when I get up and walk around it feels like it's going to drop right off my shoulders! It's a horrible feeling, it's annoying... and frustrating... and just about everything else you can think of when you don't want to be stuck in bed doing nothing!!!

I feel like a petulant child who can't do what she wants :-p And I feel like stomping my feet because I can't get my way. Not that anyone else is doing the things I can't mind you! that's half the reason I get so annoyed when I can't take care of things, because it doesn't get done. I know it's petty stuff, it's stuff that will wait til I get better, but I don't want it to wait.. I don't want the laundry piling up until there's nothing left in the drawers to wear! I don't want the dishes piling up in the sink because the dishwasher is still full and needs emptying! I don't want to remind someone the dog needs feeding, or the hamster needs cleaning...... I JUST WANT TO DO IT ALL!

But I can't, and so I wait. Wait to feel better, and just let my body do what it needs to do to get back to 'normal'!

It's Mother's Day tomorrow! I thought I might make it over to my inlaws but I don't think that is on the cards now. I think I will postpone the day until next week when hopefully I can celebrate more fully?

Happy Mothers Day to all. Have a blessed day with your families.

It's over....

the nasal surgery that is! Thought I'd write a quick update on here while I am now incapacitated and resting my head tonight!

I had my nasal surgery done on Tuesday morning, and everything went well. I stayed overnight at the hospital which was nice mainly for Jason so he didn't have to worry about me once I was home. My nose bled for a few hours afterwards, but nothing serious. It's just nice that he didn't have to deal with seeing all that, and the staff had me on antiobotics and fluids etc throughout the night. It was nice for me too to be honest, just letting someone look after 'you' for a change and not worrying about what's for dinner, or if Kiki has done her homework etc! I really needed the rest afterwards.

The hospital was lovely, brand new building, I had my own room, and for meals they gave you a menu and told you to just order when you wanted something... it was like room service :-) I stayed in bed all afternoon, had my meals brought to me, stayed up late watching tv, hee hee, it felt like a mini vacation! I came home yesterday afternoon, feeling a little week and a little sore in my nose, but much better than I thought I would.

This morning I managed to get up as normal, take Kristen to school, then headed off to see my ENT again at his office, because he had to remove the splints from my nose! This was what I thought was going to be the painful part, but thankfully it wasn't half as bad as I had expected. From his office I thought I would head to the grocerie store and get a bit of fresh fruit in and some other stuff. It was half way around the store that I realized I might be doing too much too soon. I just started moving slower, and it was harder to focus my head. I think it is the swelling that is causing that feeling. You just don't realize you are all swollen up there when you have no bruising to show for it.

So I get home, slowly put the groceries away, then decide to 'slowly' unload the dishwasher, then finally realize I NEED to sit down and rest!! By the time I had to head out to pick Kristen up my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool. It's steadily got worse over the afternoon, so now I've confined myself to bed, with my head layed back on the pillows and I'm typing this on the laptop.

Why do we always do too much too soon? I guess I just didn't realize I needed to take it so easy. But now I know I should.

So that's my little update for tonight. I feel ok, just overdoing things has made me a bit light heaed so I shall rest... rest... rest.

Until next time.........

Busy in the Backyard!

Yes, I know it's been forever since I updated in here, and that's partly due to the fact the weather has been so nice lately that we've started making the effort to get outside and clear up our back yard. Remember last year when Jason tried his hand at growing veggies but the organic soil we bought was no good.... well the beds just went to waste and Jason lost all interest in doing anything out there.

Until a few weeks ago. We found a local gardener on line that specialized in helping suburbia bring a little farming to thier back yards. We had his crew come out and clean up all the veggie beds for us and re-do the sprinkler system so the beds and fruit trees get watered better.

Here's a few photos of the changes so far.... this first picture is taken from the upstairs gameroom (through the closed window). You can see the beds are all full of weeds, and look, we even have fence panels that have fallen down from the high winds we had!


next picture.... here are the beds, all cleared out with mulch in between them now, so it's not so muddy to walk on out there after we've had rain. The two beds at the top right have had hay put on them, this will keep the soil moist and stop the weeds from growing up and I've already planted some tomato plants and peppers in there that I bought from the store. You can see the other bales of hay that we haven't used yet. We won't need to use them until the seeds we've planted start growing.

below is just another view of the beds....

Over the weekend Kristen and I painted some cute signs for the veggies. I told Jason I need to make it look as inviting as possible otherwise I'll lose interest in going out there!

So that's what we've been busy doing over the past couple of weekends. Yesterday we also added plants and mulch to the flower beds out back. I'll take pictures of that later this week.

Tomorrow is my pending 'nasal surgery'. I just went to the hospital this morning to get blood work taken, and I also had to have a chest xray and an EKG! Everything looks good and my surgery is at 9.30am. I'll update how I am as soon as I can, but it may not be until the end of the week. Until next time...

Nenna! I will try to update soon, promise! I have my surgery Tuesday morning, so will try to catch up with stuff tomorrow.

xxxxx