Baseball

Watching minor league baseball live with a hot dog in hand ($9 for the best seat in the house, no less) is MUCH better than sitting through a 4 hour major league game on TV...

Gardening

Well, the temperatures are finally supposed to stay above freezing, so I've bravely started trying to put some things in the ground. Yesterday I planted a BUNCH of potatoes and repotted all the tomatoes and peppers again. It's not quite warm enough for them outside yet, so now they're in the "garden suite" in even larger pots, awaiting Mother's Day when local lore is that it is officially okay to transplant outdoors. Hopefully everything will survive this multiple disturbing of the roots. The carrot seeds I sowed three weeks ago seem to be showing SOME signs of life (I had just about given up on them and was getting ready to reseed when I saw a few little sprouts popping up!). However, the few tomatoes and squash that I DID plant outside due to lack of space in the garden suite don't seem to be doing too well. I made the mistake of covering the container tomatoes with clear plastic the first night (for lack of appropriate material) and it appears to have burned the leaves pretty drastically. And the squash, well I KNOW that it doesn't like being transplanted OR cold nights, but it was starting to blossom in the little six pack, and it was definitely time to try and save two or three. But apparently it didn't agree, because despite the row cover and straw mulch, it's wilting and turning yellow as I write, while the plants left in the six pack and out in the open in our 40 degree nights seem totally happy... who knows! Well, that's about it for now-- everyone keep good thoughts for my little transplants!

Will it ever STOP!!!

And I thought a couple of inches on the 12th of April was bad!!!

How about 6-8 inches on the 15th!!! And possibly more to come on Friday!



As bad as this looks, it's all melted now and our backyard is once again a mushy, muddy mess...

California Dreamin'

Snow on April 12!!

Well, this is DEFINITELY different from when we lived in Los Angeles...

Quail attempting to find cover under Maddie the Volvo.

Let's hope the cabbage and mescalun makes it! (That's the garden over there under the blankets...)

Growing, growing, gone!!!

Belly growing growing.....

and gone from Texas.

Our new back yard in the mountains

We got to California about 2 months ago and things are going just swimmingly. We have a house about 3X bigger than our old one... not a farm yet, but we're just renting, so it's okay. We've started a little garden (soon to grow) in our back yard, and as anyone who has visited knows, turned the guest room into the "Garden Suite". We live in the mountains, a much COLDER climate than I'm used to gardening in, so all of my little tomato and pepper seedlings (now relatively large plants) are waiting out the cold and snow in the window seat under a grow lamp.

It all started with an argument over a baby prison (a.k.a. crib) when Wes bought us the car seat to make up for hating cribs. Now I'm a little over 6 months along in baby time, and baby paraphernalia is slowly but surely taking over. My mom came out the weekend before last and we did a little shopping, then my mother-in-law came out last weekend and we did a little MORE shopping. However, the baby's room is still serving as the office, so ACTUAL set-up will have to wait until we have time to set up and move the office to a more suitable location.

Oh, and as for baby birthin', for those of you who aren't yet in on the craziness, we've decided to have a homebirth!! We just feel it's the best option for us, and we're really excited. According to most of our friends and family we've crossed the line from starry-eyed wanna-be farmers into full fledged semi-crazy hippies, but I'm growing to accept that... that might actually be kind of a fun label to have!

The transition from hard working career woman to semi-retired 50's housewife has been relatively smooth. Besides a few days (okay, weeks) of laying on the sofa in complete and utter slothdom, I have found it pretty easy to keep myself busy. There's all these projects that I have been planning to do for, oh, YEARS, that I now magically have the time for (at least for the next 3 months. Then I'm sure things will change once again). So I'm knitting up a storm, refinishing furniture that's been languishing in disrepair for much too long, cooking all the time, gardening like it's going out of style... it's actually great. I have to work a little harder to keep my nose to this new found grindstone, but it's nice to not have a boss...

And for those of you who couldn't see the chicken video from the last post-- try again! It's public now, so it should work for everyone!