Friends and fish

That’s quite a title there, isn’t it?  Those two things seem to be totally unrelated in life.  And yet for our family, there is a connection.

Let me take you back a little bit.  A few years ago, I was feeling very lonely.  It seems weird to be lonely in a house filled with five children and a husband who is your very best friend.  But I was lonely.  I’m sure I could analyze that and figure out the whole why behind it but I won’t.  I just knew that I wanted a friend.  Even more than that, I felt like I needed a friend.

I began to pray to God and asked that He would send me a friend.  And I just knew that this friend would be a homeschooling mom who liked to garden, sew, can food, music, etc…basically she would be someone just like me!

 

Now here’s where it gets kind of funny.  But it not only gets funny – it gets kind of cool too.

God answered my prayer.  But not like I anticipated.  It even took me a little while to see that my prayer had been answered but had been answered in a much larger way than I anticipated.

You see, I did not get a friend just like me.  I got many new friends and not a one of them is exactly like me.  Actually, each of my friends shares some interests with me but not all of my interests.  I have one friend who loves music but doesn’t care to spend time outside.   Some of my dear friends are homeschooling moms but one of my dearest is not a homeschool mom.  And another one of my friends is not even a mom!  All of these friends share pieces of my life and they encourage me along this journey.

 

  What does this all have to do with friends and fish?  It’s actually quite a stretch to try to connect the two but…perhaps one of the most surprising answers to my prayer for friends was being blessed to be friends with people who are much older than myself. 

Our family was blessed with becoming friends with people who are the age of our Grandparents.  This couple, the W’s, had four children.  They are also avid gardeners.  The W’s have been on the same journey that we are on – a journey that seeks to raise children for God and as people who love to spend time in nature.  They have so much to share…and not just worldly goods but  life experiences, love of God, and knowledge.  It is good to have friends who have been there/done that to help support and encourage you.

 

 

Last week, they called us and asked us if we wanted to spend some time out at their place.  We headed out on a Friday evening after David got home from work and we fished from their pond.  Then we roasted hot dogs and sat out under the stars as we talked about gardening.  All of the pictures in this post are from that visit to the W’s place.

 I am thankful that God sent all of these friends into my life.  Now my prayer is that I will be a friend to them also for I truly believe that you must be a friend to have a friend.   May I also reach out and share the life experiences, love of God, and knowledge that I have gained with others too.  That’s what being a friend is all about anyway!

 

 

Spring is springing in the deep south

It’s February 23rd, right?  As in the season of winter?  Did someone forget to tell the deep south that winter comes between fall and spring because I don’t know that we’ve seen winter yet around here.

Today we are experiencing a high temperature of 84 degrees!

I mentioned earlier that it is winter, right?  Crazy, I tell ya!

And I just can not stay inside.  The beautiful sunshine, the blowing breeze, the green popping up everywhere, and the warm temps call me outside often.

And if I’m outside soaking in, I have to get my hands into the dirt.  The dirt makes me happy.  Well, maybe not the dirt.  I don’t care for it so much when it is inside my house.  But the working in the dirt and growing veggies, fruits, and flowers – that makes me happy.

The weather has been so nice that I couldn’t  say no to a request from the kids for a picnic lunch outside.

I mean, who doesn’t like a lunch outside with a sweet, dirt-smudged face Sunshine Girl chattering away?  How could I say no to that?

While eating my lunch and chatting with Sunshine Girl, I watched my family enjoy the spring-like weather.

I laughed as my husband tried to start the weed-eater in his white shirt and tie (work dress code).  This still cracks me up every time I see it!

And I watched my kids working hard to haul the mushroom compost from the truck to the growing pile in the garden.

We’ve been working hard and enjoying this beautiful weather because we know that winter in the deep south is a mix of warm days and cold cool days.

  

So when we see spring in the middle of winter, we enjoy the blessing of sunshine and the beauty of spring springing.

How’s the weather where you live?  Anyone else experiencing a very warm winter?

 

 

 

The garden in March ~

I love to be in the garden.  I really love it.  I could just stand there and do nothing at all and be perfectly content. 

Every morning I have to take a load of clothes out to the garage to wash and every morning, I will wander back to the garden and look around at the plants emerging from the soil.

I plan in my mind (and later on paper) what I want to plant in those new boxes that David built for me.  He cut down some trees so the garden would get a little more light which enabled us to add 4 new beds (with one more in the works). 

I count all of the strawberries and wonder if any will even make it into the house.  This will be our first year to actually harvest strawberries and we are all very excited.

I make lists of what soil in which box needs some compost or manure.  I pull a few weeds.  I remind myself to buy some more pine straw mulch to help cut down on weeds.  I know to others it may look like I’m just walking around in circles but my mind is busy the entire time.

I plan what yummy foods we will be enjoying with our garden harvests.  And I try to figure out what in the world I’m going to do with 160 onions!  (And if anyone local would like some yellow or red onions, I’m sure to have plenty if my crop continues to do well.  Well, maybe not quite 160 since the fallen tree took out a few.)

The kids often join me and they say things like this:

“Daddy must really love you to build you all these pretty things for the garden.”

I know David does love me and he truly speaks my love language because he has built all of the raised beds, the herb and strawberry beds, the trellis pictured above…actually, he has built it all and he is even working on a new…

arbor for the entrance to the garden.  I’m so thankful that I am blessed to be married to such a wonderful man.  {smile}

Most of the garden right now is on paper and it will probably change again before it’s all said and done. {click photo to enlarge} (And I can not figure out where to put those sweet potatoes that I want to plant this year!)  But so far we have planted:

radishes

sugar snap peas

snow peas

lettuce

potatoes

carrots

basil and dill

strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and herbs (returning from last year)

onions 

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, we need to wait until April 5 – 7 for the next planting of above ground crops.  Until then, I’m just planning, dreaming, and rearranging.  And I’m loving our little garden in the city…

My first harvest from my garden…

I just wrote a post on my weight loss blog about my first garden harvest.

Look what’s waiting for me…

I can’t wait!

~Birthday pictures coming soon.  It’s been a busy picture day around here! ~

The garden this week

I had a request from a real life friend to do a garden update.  I love talking about the garden but I’m sure that some find pictures of plants boring.  I think they are beautiful but …to each his own.  ;0)  I do have a pest problem which I will talk about at the end because I’m not sure what it is.  So here is the garden this week:

Please excuse the weeds!  I’m working on it a little at a time.  I don’t particularly care for weeding and I always let it go on for too long.  We are also hoping to go out to the house of a couple from church to get some pine straw for mulch…soon, I hope!

Everything is growing like weeds in the garden…even the weeds!

• Row 1 ~ Red potatoes
• Row 2 ~ Red potatoes
• Row 3 ~ Yukon Gold potatoes
• Row 4 ~ Broccoli
• Row 5 ~ Green cabbage
• Row 6 ~ Purple Cabbage
• Row 7 ~ Rainbow chard and yellow squash

In the front half of the bed, I planted strawberries.  I’m not sure if they will make it or not.  The large part in the middle holds raspberries and blackberries.  I’m not sure what I will put on the other half of the bed.  I plan on planting flowers too because I want my girls to be able to pick flowers often.

  I try to garden organically so I use flowers to help protect my vegetables.  We usually have marigolds around the tomatoes.  Here we have nasturtium that is planted close to where I will put the cucumbers.

I plan on harvesting some lettuce and maybe some baby spinach leaves today for my lunch.  My first harvest of the season!

We planted two blueberry bushes.  Right now, they look like twigs sticking out of the ground.  So I had to make these cages to protect the plants from little feet.  I’ve not seen any green on these yet but we’re hoping for a few blueberries this year.  Fresh blueberries from a bush are YUM-O!

The back half of the garden is just now starting to sprout.  Here are a few of the little baby plants:

 

 

corn and zucchini squash

Not pictured:  crowder peas, purple hull peas, green beans and wildflowers

The grapes are growing and wanting to trellis but the trellis is not built yet!  I guess I’ll have to let them trellis the fence.  I may not have a choice right now!

  Every spring, we find bird egg shells in our garden.  I found this one yesterday and added it to our nature table.

Now for my problem:

I am finding these holes in the back half of my garden.  The first ones that I found were on top of a row but now they are on the sides of the rows.   My boys said that it may be armadillos.  A friend said maybe moles.  I’m not sure.  Any ideas?  I’ve not seen any plants affected yet and I’m hoping that I don’t.  I have to fight the birds and squirrels every year for my sunflowers.  (The stinkers all ready got into my seed starts!)  I’m really hoping that it’s not something that I’m going to have to battle all summer. 

And before I forget, here is what I’m going to use for my new gardening journal.  I’m hoping to get some colored pencils to make my drawings and I plan on pressing some of my flowers in it too. 

I love gardening!  So how’s your garden this week?

Our preschool ~ U is for umbrella

~ Sunshine Girl is 47 months until next week! ~

Letter of the Week ~ U is for umbrella

Umbrella idea from No Time for Flashcards ~ links listed at the end of the post.

Sunshine Girl spent last week learning about the letter U. We always start our week with an art project using a template from DLTK (link at the end). I had watered down the paint so she could “rain” onto the letter U but Sunshine Girl asked if she could just paint it! She is so much like her Mommy! We glued a cotton ball rain cloud on the top.

Sunshine Girl also did a crayon resist project. She colored a design on the umbrella using crayons and then painted over it with watercolors. Since she used dark colors, it didn’t quite work out but that’s ok. She had fun anyway!

We read Rain by Robert Kalan. I thought this page was neat with the white house and all! We were going to play in the rain with an umbrella too but the only day that we could was on a Wednesday night as the family was heading out to church. Not to mention, there was thunder and lightning. So I nixed that. Hopefully we’ll have some gentle showers soon so Sunshine Girl can play in the rain.

Game from Home Grown Hearts ~ link at the end of post

Eating Scrabble Cheese Nips (& searching for our letter U) while completing umbrella ABC book from Childcareland ~ link at end

Theme of the Week ~ Weather and Rainbows

Our Weather Graph with pictures from Making Learning Fun. Our graph didn’t get much further than this because Baby Boy kept removing our pompons.

Sunshine Girl’s older siblings also learned about weather and made a tornado in a bottle. She tried her hand at making a tornado.

Color Mixing while we learned about the colors of the rainbow.

Catching a Rainbow experiment

Making rainbow crayons.

I used an old muffin pan and I’m glad I did because had I read the directions, I would have seen that you needed to use aluminum foil to line the cups.

If you’re interested in doing these:

Use old crayons and soak them in water overnight to remove the paper. (That only worked for about half of them.)

Line a muffin tin with aluminum foil and place crayon pieces into the holes.

Place into 300 degree oven for about 5 – 7 minutes. Watch closely to avoid colors from running into one big ugly mess!

Allow to cool about 30 minutes and remove from pan.

To remove, I had to tap the bottom of the tin with a knife. I also placed them into the freezer to help the wax release since I didn’t follow directions!

Directions found in Disney’s Family Fun Crafts

Even though we talked a lot about rain, most days our weather looked like this:

And we enjoyed every second of the beautiful spring weather!

Links that helped us this week:

No Time for Flashcards ~ Letter U

DLTK ~ Letter U template

Home Grown Hearts ~ Letter U activities ( I saw where she has recently posted more printables that could be use for this theme also.)

Making Learning Fun ~ Weather

Catch a Rainbow Experiment

Confessions of a Homeschooler ~ Rainbow printables

Childcareland.com

For other Tot School posts, be sure to visit 1+1+1=1.