Misc Thoughts

I dug up the radishes in my garden a few days ago. The spinach is going tomorrow. Cold weather crops don't do very well in 95+ degree weather. Happily though, I think I harvested enough spinach to cover the cost of all of my seeds and part of the plants I planted. Organic raw spinach sells for about $5 a bag, and I had about 4 large bag's worth plus the equivalent of about 10 jars of baby food. I'm sad though that I'll have to start buying lettuce and spinach again, at least until fall. We've been harvesting peas, but we only had about six plants grow successfully, so there's only enough for some raw on salads - not even enough for one whole meal. Ah well. Chloe has enjoyed watching the process. I was shelling peas this evening with Cora sitting next to me. She was eating them almost as fast as I was shelling! Just goes to show, if you raise a kid on fruits and veggies, it won't take long for them to learn to love them. :o)

In other garden news - I have several green grape tomatoes and a few big beef. Nothing on the roma plants yet. I'm hoping for 30 pounds of romas, which is rather unlikely, but I want to can spaghetti sauce. 30 pounds of roma tomatoes makes about 7 quarts of sauce. Crazy, huh? My peppers have lots of blossoms, my corn (what's left after the dog trampling incident) is almost a foot high, and there are pole beans coming up beautifully all around each stalk. My bush beans all have yellow mosaic virus. I've lost about 10 plants to it so far, with the rest likely going soon. Nothing seems overly happy in my garden. I've come to realize that it's the soil, and lack of organic matter. I've been obsessing a bit, checked out some books on organic gardening, reading articles on the internet... I have next year's garden all planned out. LOL

A great side-benefit of this new obsession with gardening: I'm starting to get over my ridiculous fear of insects.

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I haven't made much lately. I'm on a decluttering kick, and realize that I really shouldn't be making clothes for my little girls anymore (or myself, for that matter). I could haul off trash bags full of clothes to the consignment shop all in the sizes they are in, and not miss them. Sad, huh? And then my aunt's MIL gaves me a bag full of yarn, fabric, and awesome little girl's clothing patterns. Adorable little vintage Daisy Kingdom and other vintage patterns - 60's, 70's and 80's, several in Cora's size right now. :::sigh::: I love to make things.

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Cora's working on extending her bedtime. I'd love to say I have complete control over my children and dictate exactly when they go to bed, and I suppose I could say that, but I'd by lying through my teeth.

Cora's smarter about it than most babies though. Other kids just cry and scream and generally refuse to go to bed until whatever time they deem appropriate. Cora, on the other hand, just stays up a teeny bit later every night, thinking, I'm sure, that I won't notice if she does it that way. Bed time used to be 8:00. Last night, she was finally asleep around 10:30. When she finally does fall asleep, she's at least kind enough to provide me with 8 or 10 inches of space on the very edge of the bed before she sprawls out between her father and I, spread eagle and arms every-which-way. Generous, isn't she? ;o)

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I filled my van up with gas the other day. I don't usually do that - Andrew does it for me. Therefore, I didn't realize just how much it costs to drive around. $72 to fill up my tank. Oh my goodness. I can think of a lot of things I'd rather do with $72, than use it up driving around town running errands. Sheesh! So I have a new goal for myself - I'm only going to fill my van 15 times in the next year. Hopefully by next Father's Day, I'll be able to look back and say I only filled it a little more often than once a month. That actually won't be that hard for me to do. Most people I know average about once a week, or 50+ times per year. We just don't go that many places. I'm not including any trips we take though. During the summer, we can walk just about everywhere, except maybe to the mall - it's about a 6 mile round trip walk, and that's sort of intimidating with two little girls. It's all a matter of planning things though - if I'm going to walk to one store, I need to visit every store nearby while I'm there.

On the subject of such things, Chloe is all about "saving the earth". We saw someone's Taco Bell trash in the parking lot at Wal Mart, and she said "That is NOT saving the earth." Same for any time she sees trash anywhere, really. And then she said "My dad doesn't save the earth. He has trash EVERYWHERE." LOL, Nice.

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