Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Floods, gardening, and what were they thinking?

Remember how I mentioned that we had a lot of rain in March? I think it was actually the wettest month on record. In fact, for a few days our commute was really screwy. The way we normally go to work was flooded and then our alternate route had flooded as well. One night it took us over 2 hours to get home after sitting in bumper to bumper detour traffic. Not fun at all. This photo was from our normal route the day the road finally reopened. As you can see, it's till pretty flooded. Not fun. This photo was taken April 5th. By now traffic is back to normal. Rivers and lakes are starting to return to normal levels. Unfortunately there was a library near this intersection that is still closed. They've already filled multiple dumpsters. And they may even still be pumping out water.

On the home front, to make the garden all nice and pretty we ordered 4 yards of mulch. In hindsight 3 yards probably would have been sufficient, but we found places to lay it down a little thicker, etc.

The largest bed that we put it on is in the front of the house. This first photo is what it looked like when we bought the house. A patch of grass completely surrounded by beds with perennials. How exactly are we supposed to get in there and mow it? Yeah, we thought it was pretty stupid. So we ripped it out. :) We planted more perennials. It looked horrible all fall and winter. Basically a big mud pit. I tried to put down some wood shavings to act as much and to keep the mud under control, but the wind ended up blowing a lot of the shavings away.

With the delivery of the mulch, we finally were able to make it look nice. Ah, so much better and no longer a huge eye sore. I'm sure the old owners thought we were crazy. Turns out they had just redone the landscaping before they put the house on the market, and then we tore it all out. And I'm sure they weren't pleased with how the mud pit looked. But finally it looks good. I'll probably add some more things- maybe some perennials, maybe some annuals. Who knows. The only annoying thing is that some of the stuff I planted hasn't come up yet and I'm starting to think it may not. I know I planted 2 more peonies, I transplanted a calla lilly, I think only 3 of 5 day lillies have sprouted, and I think there are even one or two other things that haven't come up yet. Hopefully they are just slow, but I may have to see what kind of guarantee the plants had. Or dig around a bit and hope that maybe I just planted them too deep. Either way, in a month or two it should look nice.

We stopped at the grocery store last night on the way home from work. My food desire of the day was hot dogs. We had the dogs but didn't have buns. We also needed charcoal. And then we agreed on spicy curly fries to go with the hot dogs.

I have to say, being pregnant is good for getting what I want for dinner. :) Chris has been good about going along with my desires, even when it included sloppy joes, which he dislikes.

Anyway, as I was sitting in the car while Chris went into the grocery store I looked over and saw this sign at the cart corral. Really? Have we gotten so addicted to text speak that we can't write out the word "for"? And it's not as if there wasn't space for it on the sign. Blech.

Back on the gardening front, remember my earlier post where I said we planted the asparagus? Well that was about a month ago now and every time I looked at the bed I saw nothing. Well not tonight! It's probably because I was looking at the bed from the deck or from across the lawn. But last night while we were grilling our hot dogs we went down and actually looked at the bed. Out of 20 crowns that I plants, about 5 or 6 of them have now sprouted. Yay!!!! I really don't understand why, but this makes me very excited. I've included a picture with my finger next to a stalk to show you how skinny they are. But that's ok. They'll get better. I can't wait until next year when we really can start harvesting.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

New additions...

A new addition to the family is coming this fall! This ultrasound was from back in mid-March. Baby was just a blob then, hence the arrow and the text that the tech added to the photo.

Baby Bredford is due November 4th, although I would happily deliver 5 days early and have a Halloween baby. :) Feel free to go here to follow along as Baby develops.

The past few days have been filled with telling people. Thursday and Friday I started to tell people at work and yesterday I announced at skating (only 1 more lesson and then I'll stop for the rest of my pregnancy) and at a family reunion.

Announcing at the family reunion was interesting. No idea why I was so nervous, but I was shaking when I got up to announce, and for a few minutes after I sat back down. We apparently have a dowser in the family, and he came over and offered to tell us the sex of the baby. (He claims that he generally is correct about 80% of the time.) I kind of thought about it, but we declined since we'd already decided that we aren't going to find out the gender of the baby.

And one of the final announcements came this morning when I announced on Facebook.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Really?

I just looked at the forecast for this weekend. Didn't the weather gods get the memo that it's mid-April and we'd like nice weather?

Saturday Night

Rain in the evening...then rain showers likely with a chance of snow showers after midnight. Little or no snow accumulation. Lows in the mid 30s. Chance of precipitation 80 percent.
Sunday

Mostly cloudy. A chance of rain and snow showers in the morning...then a chance of showers in the afternoon. Highs around 50. Chance of precipitation 40 percent.

Monday, April 05, 2010

Spring has sprung!

I'm probably jinxing myself by saying this, but it definitely feels like Spring has Sprung! After a few weeks of rain, we've had fabulous weather for the past 4 days or so, and it looks like it will hold for most of the week.

A few months ago I planned out my garden and ordered plants/seeds. The seeds were shipped at that point, but all of the plants are shipped out when the company thinks is the appropriate time for them to be planted in your region. Imagine my surprise when on March 13th I got an email saying that my asparagus has shipped. Eek. We weren't ready. We hadn't built the bed yet where they would be planted. With rain in the forecast for the coming weekend we took the 17th off to get the bed built. Of course these things have a way of taking longer than you imagine. Luckily the rain held off for the weekend and we were able to get it finished and get the asparagus planted. The photo shows the asparagus on rows of compost. It was then filled in with more dirt/compost/llama-poop-fertilizer.

It's a good thing we got the asparagus in when we did, because we were then met with another week of rain. This is making our commute interesting because many roads are flooded. But the rain ended last week and we had a weekend with temperatures in the 70s. Saturday I spent some time picking maple seedlings out of the front flower bed. Wow, there were a lot of them. I was putting them into a paper grocery bag as I pulled them out, and I probably got at least a half inch of the bag full. That's a lot of trees! Now I just need to get some mulch ordered and delivered so that we can get that spread in the flower beds.

We once again hosted Easter this year, with a mix of family and friends. There were 12 of us, and it's a good thing the weather was so nice. I wasn't really sure how we were going to fit 12 people in the dining room, so I decided that we should eat out on the porch instead. Perfect! Wish I'd gotten a picture of the table. It was a little tight, but not bad. Brunch consisted of French Toast (with strawberries or syrup topping), bacon, quiche, deviled eggs, cinnamon rolls, and ham.

And the house is starting to look like a florist shop! I had bought a couple of bouquets on Saturday and then other people brought flowers with them. Some of them were absolutely gorgeous!


Joining us for Easter were Mom and her caregiver Iko, Dad, Liz, and Hanna, Andrew and Gentry, and friends York, Desta, and Kristin. After eating we played some badminton, and then after the "adults" had left, we played Telestrations. It was interesting since we had some repeat words this time from when we've played before. Photos of everyone are below.