Easter day

Playing by the rose bush in a little sprinkler stream

 

Corn coming up in the garden

This is some of last year's field corn cobs replanted

a big frog that came to see the sprinkler

 

planting dahlias and lillies

We brought Esme's Easter cake up to Grandma and Grandpa's house along with some barbeque Daddy made.  It was all quite good.  Grandma came for a walk with us to see the kittens and the garden and the lake.  I am getting some rest today but mostly Esme wants to play outside.  The kittens seem to have taken to the wet food and are exploring the whole house. Misha dog is taking care of them some.  It looks like they might make it just fine?  It might be too early to tell, still - but I have a lot more hope now for them.

garden note:  planted zephyr summer squash, a zucchini and marigolds
We are predicted to have another 'near frost' on Tuesday.  I have started my transplant tomatoes and peppers in the potting mix flats inside - we intended to start them later and put them in the ground as backups to the determinate Romas.  They should be 1 to 2 weeks to come up and a bit more to get large enough to transplant into the garden.

run by posting

This is my last day of six for the week - and everything has been very hectic this week.  The cold temperatures, Esme's coughing again, Mark not feeling very well, cat disappearing leaving baby kittens behind, etc... and I have just felt very tired every night when I come home.  Hopefully we will get some rest tomorrow on Easter.  Esme's basket is hidden and waiting for her.  The kittens ate a little yesterday - I don't know if they will eat enough to survive.  The mama cat is definitely gone if she is not back by now.  The sweet corn is just starting to come up.  The cold temperatures have not yet hurt anything in the garden... off to work now.

I've shrunk or the shirt has...

my mini me demonstrating how to make a dress...

I've shrunk, or the shirt has.  Actually, the shirt has.  I made it smaller so it would fit Esme - after both of the sleeves ripped nearly clean off at work the other day.  The tears were so symmetrical - and Mark indicated where they tore it would probably fit Esme.  He was correct!  Esme indicated to me it was my job tonight to sew something for her - so here it is.  I used a basic dress pattern, split the front instead of the back and used the original button band shortened up on the front of the shirt.  It has no collar.. but it looks a lot like the shirt did on me.

Further garden notes - both the blue and red field corn are coming up, some of the white summer squash, and the wax beans and some more of the pole beans.  We planted watermelon and cataloupe in Grandma's garden today.  It is due to get down to 39 degrees Friday night, and 36 Monday night.  I hope our plants are not damaged by that.  Miss Pogo cat went out and did not return yesterday or all of last night.  We fear the worst, as she does not stay out long at all.  Her kittens are not old enough to eat by themselves.  Misha dog is trying to help with other facilities for them - but they seem to not even recognize milk or meat as food.  We are seeing what we can do for them but it may not be enough to prevent an unhappy ending.  This has happened to us once before many years ago - but the kittens were old enough to take quickly to other types of food when offered - and that is not the case now.

Note: The other day Esme picked up a bath soap container I have and said 'EWWWW Mama, soap for brains.  Eww... Mama, why you do that anyway?'  I had no clue what she meant until I looked at the container.  It had a picture of a large raspberry on it.  I had to laugh.  'That is a raspberry, not a brain.'  She insisted it was a brain, and I was going to use a soap made of brains, and it had to smell BAD.  I told her it smelled like a strawberry, and the picture was like a strawberry, but very big so we could see all the pockets of juice.  She looked hard at it.  I took some out and held it out for her to smell.  She looked like I was offering her a terrible rat on my hand and asking her to smell.  Then she sniffed very tentatively and said 'Oh, yea!' and laughed about it.  'It does smell like strawberry!  It is Good.  I can have some on my belly?'  I gave her some to wash up with and she was happier about it.  I told her how silly I thought it was she thought that was a brain - but that yes, it did sort of look like the pictures of brains in her body book!

planted flowers and a few thoughts

I planted flowers today in the tires in front of the garden, and along the fence.  Morning glories, moonflower, cardinal climbers, scarlet runner beans and other things along the fence, hollyhocks, marigolds, lupines and gaillairdias in a few other places.  In the garden I planted chamomile, savory, sage, lina sisco beans and a single solitary zucchini seed.  The sisco beans are all along the front edge of the corn on the house side of the garden.   The pumpkin seedlings from yesterday seem to be doing well and taking to their new home.  And - the lima beans are up!  I was happy about that - as that was the only one I used all of my seed on.  It is the Florida speckled lima beans and there were eight seeds total. I need to redo my map again now - as there were lots of additions.

The other day in the car Esme was describing all of the things she was seeing - and Mark turned to me and said 'see, you were worried about her language development, and you got her speech therapy for it.... and it's working.'  It is working, and it hasn't been much more than a month, with classes once a week - but she has more to talk about, and more she wants to do, and just a larger pool of communication to draw upon.  The teacher called it 'auditory bombardment' which is tech speak for 'she hears more - she'll talk more.'  And she still mixes some things up but it is getting so much more understandable.  She gets so serious sometimes though we fall out laughing at her - which she hates.  She also still has fits where we want her to do something and she pretends to be too little, falls on the floor, and then screams 'don't leave WAIT' when we walk away.  That is just being four years old.  We tell her she is not too little, she can pick up her toys/use the bathroom/put dishes in the sink whatever it is - and she should do it or she will have to just stay there on the floor while we go about our business.  We've put the 'very unhappy' foot down on the PT again and she has gotten much better with it - there were days there she thought she could go through eight pairs of pants and not be yelled at about it.

Yesterday I told Esme she was not being sweet - and she did not understand.  She was 'Esme' not sweet - not taste like juice.  *roll eyes*  OK.  So I explained it was when she did nice things, nice like sweet things, like drinking juice makes her happy.  She understood that in context.  And that we like to "be sweet" and do nice things.  So - point is, when I told her we had to go to sleep early and she did not like it - she came back from pouting near her bed and stood by my ear.  I was trying to sleep, and she says to me 'Mama.  This is not sweet.'  HUH?  'What is not sweet?' I asked her.  'Bed.  I don't want to sleep.  This is not sweet.'  Well okay then... I told her I could tuck her in and give her a kiss goodnight and that would be sweet.  She agreed but was sad about it - yes - that would be sweet... but she was still not happy.  She did go to sleep knowing that the sun would come back.  She is so happy that she is 'strong' and can do things like open the doors for the dogs, and get things off of shelves at the supermarket.  She was 'helping with the getting of the foods' at the grocery store, pushing the cart (very slowly and not so accurately) and taking directions of where to go and helping to get the food into the cart.  It was a bit tedious - but she was very happy to be helping.  She has also learned the words 'It is my job', although she says 'it is me' sometimes for this or 'it is you' instead of 'your job'.  She really wants to do her 'jobs.'

Today we were waiting for dinner to be ready and she was dancing in front of her reflection in the patio screen door.  She said she was little, but she goes to school, and the kids at school like her, so she will grow big.  She says 'people in the big town don't like it' when it is something someone at school has told her not to do or to do differently.  However, she will also say it about things like not bringing your food outside the kitchen or having a bath etc. because the teacher has told her to please not play with her clothes at school, and that they do not take baths at school (but I doubt she has really explained to her WHY in context.)  She also told Daddy once that he should not take a nap in the bed during the daytime because the people in the big town don't like it - 'adults' do not take naps at her school, either.   She still has not learned that rules at one place and one situation are different than rules at another - but that is a lesson she needed to learn as well and would not 'get' just at home.  The other night when I was going to give her a bath she asked 'You wanna wash my hair, dont'cha no?'  She would not get in the bathtub unless I promised no hair washing.  I really hope she doesn't ask that next time I DO have to wash it - as I will have to tell her yes.  She is always thinking about something - although she will never admit she is 'thinking' - for some reason she hates that word.  She is not going to school tomorrow because of spring break - but I have not told her that.  She will be very mad when she realizes too many days have gone by.  She already argues when she goes to bed that it is Wednesday tomorrow - and we say no, it is (whatever day it is) and then say Friday, Green, Three etc.  She does not like that game at all!  She is getting more understandable - but sometimes we still have to guess.  She wanted her kitty cat sprinkler today and we thought she was talking about a movie inside.  She said she reached for it and it went round and round and then it fell and oh no.  We got worried - thinking she had knocked down a pile of DVDs or dropped a folder etc... But then I realized she meant the sprinkler that went round and round - and she had dropped it off of the wellhouse where we had put it up from the dogs.  She is explaining to Daddy right now about how he needs to get the toy that goes fly on the hands and spin spin spins and goes UP.  She pointed to the toy she meant and it is charging on the batteries.  She is telling it needs to get ready and be blinking and pretty until it can fly up.  She knows I have been planting 'food' in the garden - but it will take a long time to grow, and it is corn and carrots and 'Mama' foods and flowers :)  She just told me to 'come on Mom - you have work to do - you have to sew something - over there, cmon, I'll show you.'  Then she decided we needed to play kitties instead.

We were watching a semi-scary robot movie the other day - and she was watching it with us.  It was quite mild, cheesy scary stuff.  She saw a spider on the floor and freaked about it.  We told her it wouldn't hurt her, it was okay, but she was serious about getting rid of that spider before she could rest.  So, we told her to step on it if she seriously thought it was a bad spider - she said NO I'm too little it will bite me!  We laughed - and then told her she could hit it with a shoe.  She got this weird little smile and said 'OH. haha.  Yea. I could.'  She put on one of my shoes and went over to where she had seen the spider and said 'Oh, I'm not too little now, I am STRONG, but it is gone and I no hit it.'  Then she put the shoe away and went and sat with her knees up on the bed and made sure she could see any spiders that might come by for the rest of the movie.

some seeds are up

I have some pumpkin seeds up from a batch of 'glop' from my storage room.  It had been a pumpkin from last year -- and then it wasn't a 'complete' pumpkin anymore before I found it again.  I threw it out into the forest but marked where I did - just in case something was viable.  Now, the next generation has sprung from it.  I will see if I can transplant any of the little seedlings from the 'glop pile' in the forest into the garden.  There are also radishes, carrots, beans, sunflowers and okra up from seed.  I was worried it was too cold, but obviously not!  Our little garden is on its way.

I think the zinnias are up... seed list

First seeds up this year look like the zinnia flowers.  And I am here on the last day of my weekend off going through all of the saved seeds and freezer seeds from last year and trying to see what to do next.  It is still mighty early for most things - and I hope I did not plant the beans too soon.  If I did - they were not the last ones of any of those varieties, and it can be tried again.  A lot of the seed I am listing will stay in the freezer packets.  We also like to stock up on the (29 centers) cheap seeds especially for flowers  - I grabbed a lot of the squashes and carrots and herbs that way last year - for this year - as well.

Note to self:
I need to plant the radishes all around the zucchinis this year - it was just after it became too hot for the radishes to grow well that the bugs took off in there last year.  Mark suggests leaving the last crop to bolt so the sharp tasting greens are still in there when the bugs hatch out.

I also have some lavendar and tomatoes which need to be started in the garage.  But, I am not a great one at watering seedlings when they are not in front of my face every day.  Just ask my houseplants!

These are the seeds in the freezer bucket - some are just a very few seeds, half-packets and some are what we bought last year in anticipation for this year.

Beans
Kentucky Wonder pole bean
Black Shackamaxon beans (planted some already)
Dragons Tongue
scarlet runner beans (ornamental)
Lina Sisco's bird egg beans
Mountaineer Half runner bean + co-op pack says 'half runner' and looks similar
Mississippi silver hulled cowpea (package + saved seed from crop + co-op)
Mayflower bean (package + saved seed)
 Pawnee shell bean
Dwarf horticultural beans
last of the purchased 'whipporwill' cowpeas + saved seed from crop
 King of the Early bean
Hutterite soup bean
Maria Amazalatei's bean
Dapple grey bush bean
Bosnian pole bean
Dragons Lingerie bean (prob same as tongue bean above)
Pinto beans
Goldrush wax beans

Corn
Blue Jade sweet variety
Ornamental indian corn variety 'rainbow mixed color' (planted last year) 
strawberry popcorn
peaches and creme corn
yellow jarvis field corn
saved seed from last year 6 divisions

Herbs
Wormwood (to plant near other things for insect control)
Dill
summer savory
Joe Pye Weed
Oregano
Lavendar (start inside)
sage
Marjoram
chamomile
basil
lemon basil

Tomatoes
Amish paste tomatoes - just a few seeds in one packet
Black Plum tomatoes from seed savers
Roma tomato seed

Other
watermelon
cantaloupe
sunflower chianti / sunset / last years mix
pansy
white popping sorghum seeds left over
broom corn saved seed
morning glory (blue, pink)
canary climber + several unpronounceable climbers
cockscomb
cardinal flower
coleus
gourd mix, bottle mix, dipper mix, saved gourds
lupine
moonflower
Grand Rapids lettuce (freebie last year)
calendula (29)

orange/ yellow marigolds (29)
giant marigold (29)
red and yellow jester marigolds (29)
red and yellow french marigolds (29)
cosmos
zinnias
gaillairdias (29)
green lentils
dipper gourds
turnips
Pickling cucumbers (29)
scarlet nantes carrots (29)
short zahoria carrots
chantanay carrots (co op)
dixie butterpeas
giant english peas
California black eye #5 cowpeas (29)

Cherry Belle Radishes
Salad Rose radishes
Spanish black radish
Trial Summer squash packets
Black Beauty squash (pepo type)
Ingot summer squash (pepo type)
Waltham butternut (moschata type)
Table Queen squash (maxima type) (29)
Small sugar pumpkin (pepo type) (29)
Connecticut field pumpkin (pepo type) (50)
Jarrahdale blue pumpkin (maxima type) (29)
Grey Zucchini heirloom (pepo type)  (29)
Red Jalapeno peppers (29)
bell pepper mixture seed
Spinach (1/2)
Painted Daisy two packets - never came up last year at all

Planted today:
lemon basil, saved basil seed, dill seed, calendula, dragon's tongue beans, grand rapids lettuce
conn.field pumpkin (3) pepo
table queen (3) maxima
waltham butternut (3) moschata
ingot summer squash
peaches n creme sweet corn
gourds (saved)