Raining irony, and not much else.

Isn't that just the way it goes.  This morning we set out to tackle five errands, all at local vendors, on one round trip in the car, expecting thunderstorms and rain in the late afternoon and evening.  Our first stop, to the Dexter Farmers' Market, was fun and successful.  Our second stop, to the Dexter bike shop, produced only bad service (and no tire pump, since we finally got frustrated and walked out).  The early arrival of rain on our way to Turner's Garden Center to buy a rain barrel rendered that stop a bit disappointing, but at least the service was friendly and prompt.  The rain slowed in time for stops number four, to my parents' for transplant plants, and five, to the pumpkin field at Wing Farms to load our car up with free rocks (we can't wait to show you what we've been doing with those), and had stopped by the time we reached home at noon.  Still expecting storms and showers all evening I immediately set to the job of installing the new rain barrel, working straight through lunch, lest the threatening storm clouds should decide to produce a deluge with the downspout in pieces.  The installation was more involved than we had envisioned (meaning it required more tools) but was not difficult at all, the hardest part being the leveling of the the blocks we put the barrel on, and as I stepped back to take in my hard work, the sky cleared to a brilliant blue and the sun came out of hiding to reward us for our hard work and conservationism.  Not another cloud dotted the sky all day, let alone a drop of rain fall to test our new barrel, and ten days of forcasting don't predict any, either.  Mother Nature is truly a scornful omniscient.

All our frustrations aside, we are very excited about our new rain barrel.  Want to know more about them?  Try here.

Fireworks, grilling, and mud wrestling

What do you do with a three day holiday weekend if not scads of back breaking yard work?  Or maybe that's just us, but it has definitely become a trend this year at our house.  Memorial Day weekend saw us ripping sod and moving bushes, and the Fourth of July weekend found us digging a massive mud pit in our backyard.  A massive mud pit, you ask?  Well, what started out as a not so dry creek routing the downspout and sump pump water in the direction of the drain in our back yard quickly went from a two day project to what I can only assume is going be at least a two week project when we decided to add an 8x16 (that's feet, not inches) rain garden at the foot of said not so dry creek.  It's a well meaning effort, meant to lessen our contribution to the polluted rain runoff in our waterways while beautifying our backyard view, but the process can only be described as dirty and exhausting - removing sod, digging down eight inches, building up a berm, hauling rocks, hauling compost, sand, and dirt, all while the sump pump continues to send water in our muddy direction - and the project is as yet unfinished.  Now that the three day weekend is drawing to a close... we are definitely ready for next weekend to be here.

Of course, we did get in our fair share of partying, grilling, and great company this weekend, too, which are probably the more common Fourth of July activities across the board.  We partied Friday night with our family, Calvin's second cousin Iris and her family, a frog pool, a golf set, a T-ball set, some great grilling, and strawberry shortcake.  That was so much fun that we repeated the celebrations on Saturday with our family, our friend, Patty and her family, more water fun, more great grilling (smoking, actually), and more strawberry shortcake.  And we topped both nights off with sparklers and fireworks, which Calvin found to be "banging banging eek banging banging" fun.  Now if only we could manage at least one three day festive weekend every month...

More pictures in the July 2008 album.

A garden to grow on

You may think that this post is mis-titled, and that for the sake of wit I should have titled it "A garden to grow IN" but, no, that isn't a typo, and I will tell you why.  Today we planted our first ever vegetable garden, and when I say that I use the term "garden" rather loosely.  We have friends who actually plant gardens, and to avoid any laughter at our meager setup, we just want to point out that we know the difference, but that doesn't mean that we, Calvin especially, aren't exceedingly proud of our own (miniature, 3'x5') backyard food bearing plot.  This is something that we've wanted to do for a long time, and with a little push from my encouraging mother we finally took the plunge.  Of course, any plunging that occurred was on the part of our hands, which first ripped into and removed more sod, then broke up the sandy clay ground we have, before finally plunging into the beautiful, dark, composted manure we added to our box.  Calvin not only helped pick out the plants in an afternoon shopping trip with Gram, but actually helped plant them, carefully taking them from the packages and setting them into the waiting holes.  We planted five tomato plants and four zucchinis, and we plan on expanding the area this weekend so we can give them more room, and perhaps add some different vegetables, as well.  Next year we see an entire bank of gardens that will home to many different foods for us to enjoy, and that is why I call this is our garden to grow on.

A touch of irony.

Sooooo.... raise your hand if you need a long week to recover from your long weekend.  And now, if you're raising your hand, you can put it down because you look silly - we can't see you.  But if we could, we'd be all for commiserating.  We fully understand that the long Memorial Day weekend is a time to commemorate and remember, and we spent Monday morning doing just that while sitting at the side of the local parade route and watching young children maul each other over thrown pieces of candy, but the rest of the weekend we used to get started on the plans we have for our new yard.  We started this task at ten in the morning on Saturday, armed with a couple of shovels, and finished our work just before dinner on Monday after putting away the pick ax and sledge hammer that we'd added to our selection of handy tools.  If we've learned one thing this weekend it's that clay, especially bone dry clay, is not a digging friendly medium.  But even taking into account such breaks as the pizza party with Jon's family on Saturday, the BBQ ribs party with my family for Sunday dinner, the bonfire with the neighbors on Sunday night (have we mentioned how much we love our new neighborhood?), and the parade on Monday morning, we have a long list of accomplishments to tack on our refrigerator door before bed tonight.  We ripped out two to three feet of sod all the way around the house, and improved the grading where needed;  we extended our sump pump pipe by five feet, dug a trench, hauled in a trunk full of free rocks from a local farm, and installed a dry creek to disperse the flow of water; we removed a large area of sod from the SE corner of our backyard, added a property defining garden, then transplanted two bushes and one tree from our overcrowded front garden to populate it and hauled in ten 40lb bags of topsoil to mix into it; and we removed two rather large and rather dead bushes from by the front walk way.  It may not sound like much, but ask our muscles and I'm guessing they'll disagree.

And what about the above mentioned irony?  We spent hours upon aching hours chopping at the sod with such inefficient tools as shovels, trowels, and even the aforementioned pick ax.  Then the very last thing we did on Monday night was ask our neighbor if we could borrow his lawn mower again (since ours is still at the old house that we are still mowing), only to have him ask if we might also want to borrow his sod ripper.  Say what?  At least the parade was fun.

Garden pictures in the Yard Transformation album. 

Parade and other new pictures in the May 2008 album. 

Everything is fascinating...

...to a two year old.  Especially worms.  We have a wonderfully landscaped garden plot in front of our new house, but since the home was vacant for nearly a year it had fallen into some manner of disrepair.  With the beautiful weather about to come to an end we decided we needed to get a handle on the encroaching grasses and weeds before the coming rains gave them a power boost, so the three of us spent the evening in the garden:  Cortney weeded, Jon cleaned up after her, and Calvin pointed out as many bugs as he could find ("worm, more worms, more worms," "spider, more spiders, more spiders," "tato bug, more bugs, more tatoes").  He also talked a lot about how prickly the rose and fir bushes are ("ouch," "picky," "no no no don't touch picky ouch").  And in case you were wondering, no he's never quiet at home.  Never.  Unless he's in trouble.