May 18th, 2011 by Busy Mommy

From the looks of it, Nolan appears to be completing half the garden work himself.  In all honestly, it’s still just a tad stressful for this daddy as he learns to adjust his workpace to accommodate a little guy under foot, behind foot, in front of foot, to side of foot, on top of foot, etc. etc.  I try to remind him we don’t have a deadline, so working slower, much slower, is okay.  Not that I’m the patience queen myself- after the second time of dumping an entire bag of nails into one of the vegetable beds I built, I impatiently told him not to do that anymore as I laboriously rummaged in the dirt to find all the scattered nails and took the nails away to someplace Nolan-proof.  Poor guy is just playing cause and effect I guess, but it’s funny how tiresome picking up things and then re-picking them up and then re-picking them up again can get to a parent.

Nolan actually figured out pretty quickly that if he sawed with the smooth side down, he could actually, well, saw. Nolan is really into it all though and just loves to try to copy what we’re doing, whether it’s sawing or hammering, or pulling weeds.  The pulling weeds thing needs some work.  He managed to pull 2 kale plants up while my back was turned for only 2 seconds….. I guess they do look like weeds!  Of course to Nolan, everything is a weed to be pulled- if only we could teach him there’s a difference.  For now the only way to keep some homegrown food around here is to plant extra in preparation of the plant casualties Nolan will cause- why just the other day I saw a poor little quarter inch long carrot lying helpless and dead on top of the soil, another victim of Nolan.  It’s all worth it of course, because he is learning so much in the process.

November 19th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

Wow you have to love when grandparents start taking kids from you for 8 hour time slots.  My mom has been free on Thursdays lately and spending the day with Nolan- which has been just peachy for this mommy.  Today I did all sorts of things- but the fun thing I wanted to share was that I’ve made a little more progress on the garden beds that I’m building in the back yard.  Once upon a time our backyard was quite pretty.

In 2005… This was 5 years ago- man I look like a little baby!  To think it’s possible I could have had a 4 year old at this point since we’d been married for almost 5 years. Then in 2007… But by 2010 things have gotten into dissaray.  We had let things get overgrown as we had planned to turn it into a vegetable garden but hadn’t mustered the time or energy to do so…so it just sat and came to look like this…But today I got to work on making the 2nd of 2 large raised vegetable beds- they are 10’6″ long and 3’6″ wide.  I’m building them with reclaimed redwood lumber from the salvage yard-which not only is it really cheap this way, but this stuff is hearty!  They’re 2×8’s and since they’re old, they really do measure 2″ across, unlike lumber nowadays which totally skimps on the measurements.  Also they happen to be tongue-in-groove boards so they are fitting together real easily- another boon to this project.  Especially considering this is my first time building garden beds.  The boards are each only 7-8 feet long, so to create the length of 10’6″ on each side I cute a second piece to make up the difference and nail them together with these wide metal plates.  When stacking them 2 high to make the bed, I made sure to put the “joint” or break where the boards were connected on opposite sides of each other to make it stronger. Wow and I thought our little handsaw was so ugly- but in this picture it looks really cool. This is one completed bed I had made a few months ago.  The second one needs only to be nailed together now.  They are monstrously huge!  The cardboard is down to smother the weeds- taken from the book Lasagna Gardening.  The ground is completely uneven which is why the raised bed looks warped at the moment.

October 12th, 2010 by Busy Mommy