{pretty, happy, funny, real}

{pretty}

Our euonymus bush has been so beautiful in the past week!  It makes me so happy to look at pretty flowers in the yard.

(We're pretty sure this is a euonymus... I've never really seen anything like it, so I can't be totally sure.  Any guesses?)

It is still looking rather bottom-heavy... if you remember, it had to grow outwards rather than upwards because of the two Rose of Sharon that used to be crowding it on either side last year.  I think it is still not quite sure how to grow, and I'm not sure how to help it along and make it look more full.  We'll just have to see what the next few years bring, I guess.  But the blossoms sure are are beautiful!!

{happy}

Gardening has been happening around here, despite a piecemeal approach and a complete overhaul of my original plan due to pregnancy laziness.

 

Here's our garden bed from last year (getting weedy around the edges already).  I turned this completely into a "brassica bed" since those are the most frost-hardy so I was able to put them in late April.  You can see the kale on the right (with a couple of brussels sprouts at the end of the row) and cabbages in the middle that I purchased as established plants are already doing quite well.  The end of the middle row and the third row are cauliflower and broccoli which we grew from seed-- we put them directly into the ground about three weeks ago.  They have sprouted but they're still pretty tiny!  This bed is partially shaded so I needed some cold-hardy veggies which will (I hope) give us a longer growing season.  We did plant a few cucumber seeds in the far row.  Our cukes did fairly well in this bed last year... we'll see how it goes.

Daddy cleared the weeds out of our other, smaller bed for me (thanks!) and the girls picked out some seeds to plant there: watermelon, pumpkins, butternut squash, corn, sweet peppers and mint.

We put some weed barrier down and seeds were tossed into the rows somewhat willy-nilly by the girls, but it seems we already have a couple of watermelons sprouted

and some corn shoots coming up

(amongst the weeds of course)

This bed is also partially shaded by our willow tree (you can see how it has pooped its leaves etc. all over the bed!) so I'm not sure how well things will do, especially where we're growing them from seed, but the girls seem happy regardless!

I had great plans for creating a third bed on the southwest side of the house which is the sunniest location on our property, but... I'm pregnant and lazy.  So we just moved our existing strawberry plants up there to a pre-existing bed that we cleared last year (plus bought a few more strawberry plants and planted them-- a couple raspberries too)

and stuck in two cherry tomatoes, a hybrid tomato, and three red bell pepper plants in the beds below.

These plants have all been thriving in the full sun here.  We've already had several strawberries that the girls have enjoyed as snacks!  The only problem is... without any fencing, the bunny rabbits (and birds and squirrels and skunks and whatever else comes along) have been readily enjoying our crops as well.  I'm too lazy to put up a fence or netting right now, so I'm seeking alternate solutions.  My YouTube gardening research tells me that sprinkling cayenne pepper on the plants is helpful, so that's the first thing I think I'll try.  Any other advice?

{funny}

Two things funny.

1) N has been delving into her new Bible quite a lot lately... it's been funny to hear some of her remarks as she discovers new things.  The other day she said to me, "Today I'm reading from the book of Genius, Mama."

2) We got the Reading Rainbow "Mummies Made in Egypt" episode on DVD from the library, and then of course the girls wanted to find the book by Aliki-- as luck would have it, our library has two copies!  We checked it out and the girls have been reading and re-reading for about two weeks.

This afternoon I noticed them embalming L on the porch couch:

Performing some kind of ceremony over her.

My kids have always been obsessed with all things creepy, and mummies have been no exception.  They aren't obsessed in a terrified way, like I would have been as a child.  They're just really fascinated.  So I roll with it, as long as they're not having nightmares.

{real}

(Sorry, never got out of my running clothes today.)

I feel like there has been a real jump in belly growth lately.

I'm certainly hungry all. the. time. so something must be growing in there.

I also feel like I'm in that phase where, when I wake up in the morning, the belly is a reasonable size, but by the time I go to bed at night it feels stretched out and huge.  Like the feeling you get when you had too much pizza or something.  It's a weird pregnancy thing.

N also said, the other day, "Only 3 months until the baby comes!"

Gah!

I'm really excited!!!! but it does feel like there's a lot to do and decide on and organize before September.  I'm kind of in crazy nesting mode now that we have more time with activities being done, and I want the whole house to be completely organized before baby girl comes because I'm pretty sure nothing like organizing is going to happen for quite a while after the birth.

Realistically, I'm not going to get absolutely everything done.  And that's okay.  A little mess and disorganization is good for the soul, right?  Please keep reminding me of that.  ;-}

Linking up (kinda late) with Like Mother, Like Daughter.  And also, since I gave you a full {boring, rambling} garden tour, I might as well link up with Clan Donaldson for the May Garden Tour.