August 12th, 2011 by Busy Mommy

During and after hours.  Things at the convention turned out better than expected this year with Nolan.  I thought he wouldn’t nap all day because he usually never sleeps when people are around so I was more than a little worried that it could be a stressful weekend.  However, it really went pretty well.  We had the ergo baby carrier and after lunch I just walked around the top tier where you can still hear the speakers and swayed back and forth fairly vigorously and it put him him to sleep all three days for his nap.  We took breaks with him so he could move around and stretch his legs and all in all we’re both pretty proud of how Nolan did.

August 12th, 2011 by Busy Mommy

Well, maybe not blood, but definitely sweat and a lot of it.  The backyard plants got started a little late this season- that’s because before I could even think about planting vegetable seeds I had to first make it not look like this:Or even before that:
A gradual procession of improvement:

First I built the veggie beds with redwood from the salvage yard which made it extremely cheap- I ended up using a handsaw for all of it because Nolan was still pretty little and I didn’t feel comfortable operating power tools like that with him under food- instant workout! There was also a lot of are to clear of VERY tall weeds and uneven ground that I had to even out.How to fit all those weeds into one green bin?  Hop in and stomp away of course!  In the end it took way more than just one green bin’s worth to haul away- but it still helped to compact it all as much as possible.  We ended up having to take at least one trailer-load to the dumps.For between the vegetable beds we found a tree company that lets you take their wood chips for free!  It’s fairly lightweight as well which was a good thing to start on for me and my first time shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and spreading cubic yards of material like this.  Nolan followed me around and we took breaks to have fun.after emptying woodchips into the back, Nolan got to have a ride back out to the driveway! Then in order to fill the vegetable beds we had some chicken manure compost delivered- 6 cubic yards worth- what was I thinking???  Do you know how much 6 cubic yards of material is? I moved every last ounce of those 6 cubic yards all by myself!  Do I sound proud?  Am I bragging?  You bet I am!  In a world where I’ve always let Ben take care of the yard and do all that stuff, I feel like I’m coming into my own learning how to do this stuff too.  I’m not sure if anyone else but me is going to think it’s “cool” that I was shoveling chicken manure though….taking a break to pose with my manure…..whew that was hard work.

After getting all the veggie beds built, hauling in the woodchips, filling the beds with manure and topsoil, it was time to paint those suckers- some salvaged wood has a nice “patina” that looks nice as is, but I just couldn’t see it on these pieces, so they all got 1 coat of grey primer and 2-3 coats of red paint- a Nana garden has to be colorful!  It just wouldn’t be a Nana garden if it wasn’t!


I actually just built a 4th bed two days ago which is the photo where you see me painting- the wood from the salvage yard for that 4th bed, which is 10.5′ long and 3.5′ wide, and about 15″ high, was $28.00- and I had leftover that could be used on another bed (if I had room!)- the other three beds are in full swing with growing plants.  As you can see we have corn (first time for us), a tomato, red cabbage (another first), cucumbers (both asian and regular), butternut squash (another first), lettuce, several varieties of carrots, and onions.The trellises for the butternut squash and cucumbers I built using some ideas I saw online and in the seed catalogs.  So far they’re working great.  I feel so satisfied to look out my bedroom and see all this growing now- the corn is so beautiful- as the corn silk get’s pollinated it’s covered in these beautiful pearlescent pink particles from the top of the stalk- it is so striking.Before it’s pollinated it has this beautiful sunny green-gold color.A baby butternut squash:Baby cucumber:

August 11th, 2011 by Busy Mommy

Our Garden is back and better than ever this year…here’s a few highlights.  This is my first time growing watermelon radishes.  I actually forgot that I planted them- I just couldn’t figure out why next to my french breakfast radishes were these huge radish greens growing and yet when I pulled one out the actual “radish” was only the size of a pea still- so I left them in another month and was rewarded with an awesome harvest of watermelon radish.  They almost look a little like turnips and are definitely in that size range.

Oh so that’s why it’s called a watermelon radish!
Next up is my normal french breakfast radishes- I think these are my favorites when it come to looks and how fast they are ready to be eaten- as little as 20 days!This year was also our first planting and harvesting  of potatoes- we did it a little mindlessly in that we basically just threw them in the veggie bed and left them there- I think Ben threw on a few containers of grass clippings, but that was pretty much it- and look what we got out of it!  9 potatoes were originally planted, and on June 22nd we harvested 88 various sized yukon gold potatoes, all together weighing 19 lbs.  Not bad for almost zero effort!  They are super good as homemade hashbrowns which is about the only way we prepare them right now (key for homemade hashbrowns- get a potato ricer).