Peas glorious peas

I always sing that in the spring.

Finally got the peas in the ground after soaking them and innoculating them! I planted 4 kinds and hopefully this year I can keep track of them and then tell what kinds I like. Super sugar snap and Cascadia sugar snap, Little marvel and Wando (shell peas).

Also I've got seedlings! Whoohoo. squash started coming up first, and some melons (I think), and now little tomatoes are popping up. I'm going to get some wall o waters and some little night hats once they get big enough to put outside. I don't think the last frost date is until May.

Anyhoo i'm so excited for spring. I still have tons of work to do but I'm happier knowing the peas are planted. I'll probably plant some letuce and spinach later this week around the peas.

This zuchinni sprout got too tall for the covered container so I cut out the peat pot and moved him to his own pretty bowl.

Speaking of sprouts, Malinda had her little Peter yesterday afternoon. Happy Birthday Peter!

new project

I took these pictures on a grayer day so the crocuses are closed. I should've re-taken them today as they were all open. Oh well I'll maybe get them tomorrow!

So this weekend I was supposed to get it all done. Did I? nope.

its ok though, i got some things done that I didn't really need to get done!

I put together a worm bed. I love the worms. I want to check on them all the time, and they don't really like to be checked on, so I'll have to learn some restraint.

they are little guys.

I needed to plant the peas. So I checked all the black hoses, figured out that half were broken (this happens when you bury the hoses, and then stick stakes, or tomato cages into them), and figured out where they go. Then I got cow poop down on the bed for the peas, changed my mind where they were going, and then started to get the stuff out of the compost pile. After taking off the top layers (boy were they stinky!) i found that the bottom had actually composted and it was rich, black, not smelly compost! WoooHoooo!!!!! I think the pvc ventilator pipes helped compared to last year. I settled the uncomposted layers into a better situation to continue composting. And then started to put the compost on the pea bed.

I had already decided that I wanted to do better composting this year, and I did some searching on worm composting. I found out I should use a "red wiggler" worm and these could be purchased since regular earthworms don't work. I asked at the nursery if they sold them and the lady said no, but if I have a compost pile I could find the red wiggler worms in there. I had seen some last year so I figured I could get what was in there and hopefully "cultivate" them to where there was a big enough colony (around 500) to do some composting.

So, when I was getting the compost stuff to put on the pea bed, I found some! had to stop and shift through every spade full for wormies. I made a bed (newspaper strips soaked, and a couple handfulls of dirt). At first it wasn't very encouraging and I only got 30 worms before taking a break. When I went back I hit worm jack pot, and by the time I quit I had over 240 worms (i lost track a couple of times, but I think this is about where it is). I gave them some food but didn't have their new home ready until today when I got them bedded down proper like. I have another home ready for when in a 6-8 weeks when they will have composted down their food and bedding and hopefully multiplied!

After I got the bed for the peas ready I realized I had done the wrong one. :( Since I plant peas first every year I figured thats a good way to give different beds extra care every year, but instead I've done the same bed twice in a row. Oh well. There won't be quite enough of my own compost to do the whole new pea bed so I may buy some instead.

Cathy and I hung out on Friday afternoon. We went to a couple of local museums (only one was open). Went to the grocery store, and just got to talk a lot. It was fun!

Here is a display of woven Indian shoes. They must have been pretty tall because the shoes were bigger then Cathy's.

In honor of St. Patricks day (yes that was last week) I made corned beef, cabbage, and onion. YUM. I forgot to cook the potatoes and carrots to go with, but we were hungry and ate the cornedbeef sandwhiches and were satisfied :)

spring is comin and i'm not yet ready

hew. I was able to get the tomatoes, squash, sweet peppers and melons planted tonight during biggest looser. I ran out of the peat pots so I'll get some more of that tomorrow and finish planting cucumbers and whatever else I want to get a jump start on.

I will buy only two, ok maybe three, tomatoes from the nursury: Brandywine, cherokee, and lemon boy. The seeds i planted today are: Sweet 100 (cherry), white tomesol

, wheeping charley, pineapple,

pink grapefruit, trip-L-crop, delicious, sara black, rose, woodle orange,

fireworks, mama leone, green zebra,

and thessaloniki. Also a regular and purple tomatillo.

The squash was 2 zuchinnis (black beauty, elite), baby blue hubbard, butternut, and kabocha. I'll probably buy a spaghetti, bananna, and hopefully thats it.

The melons are Jenny Lind, Honey Rock, Charentais, vine peach, cantalope, and sugar baby water mellon.

I really didn't feel that well today so I didn't go back to my office after my later visit and came home. It was sunny and that made me feel good so I got two grapes settled in, finished clearing off the last parts of the big garden so its ready to till (if I can borrow someone's), cut down more dead stuff, and pulled up all the black hoses before it was dark.

Wow I just watched the slalom for standing paralympians and the guy who one was from Australia and has spina bifida. What was amazing was he feel, but he got right back up and he had been going fast enough and continued to push it so hard that he won!

boo to daylight savings time

Ugghhh I do not like this move to daylight savings. Icky. Blah. I am super tired. Cathy said its all in my head, and it probably is but I have a headache and I'm onry so I'll blaim it all on the time change. GRRRR to whoever's bright idea that was.

To celebrate Cathy's big win we had dinner together. Went to P712 which I really enjoy. Cathy seemed to like it to which is good. We had a pizza with nampa cabbage on it and it was really good. I love the thin wood fired crust. yum!

Then for our FON (friends out night) activity we went to costco. We browsed around and saw the fun summer stuff thats out and then said goodbye. It was a pretty easy going FON but Cathy hasn't slept in like 5 days and if you refer back to the first paragraph I may not be the most exciting outing today:)

I did not get the tomatoes started (see first paragraph again). maybe tomorrow? If not soon then the $60 spent on seeds will not really do me any good.

OK so I've been listening to some great 80's songs recently. Not sure where its from, but maybe from watching one to many of those "time life videos presents the best hits of the 80's" commercials? I generally listen to the songs from youtube and a lot of the music videos are, ummm Strange to put it mildly. One of the craziest is total eclipse of the heart. Janet from work sent me a link to a youtube vidoe called total eclipse of the heart literally. It. Is. Awesome. They change the words to match the video and it made me laugh out loud.

Its good to laugh at work. Today they made it so I can't access blogger at work. I don't spend a lot of time on it, but when I'm supervising a visit or something like that, its nice to be able to see if anyone loves me enough to leave comments. Also I have been refering some foster/adoptive families to good blogs on foster/adoption issues. Oh well. They might end up changing it back. Apparently the blocked and then unblocked facebook a number of times (I don't do facebook so I wouldn't know).

Sorry no pictures on this post, but I'm done because I'm watching the PAROLYMPICS! I get so mad that NBC, or the other broadcasters for that matter, don't even mention these going on. Have I mentioned that before? Anyways it is on tonight on the 2nd NBC channel (5.2 in this area) and its amazing! Like right now is sloalem skiing for the blind, I can't even do that sighted! and next up is US vs Korea in sledge hockey.

distraction and basketball

Today I was going to get my tomatoes seeds planted under the grow light. Instead I got distracted with.... you guessed it:









Dinner (stackups, yum!) was late as usual too because of this distraction.

I just went outside to pull a few for dinner, but it has been warm and I noticed that the ones I was pulling up were starting to grow again, so I pulled them all out. Mama came out to help too.

Here Mama is thinking of what to do with crazy carrots.

Two buckets full.

Lots of the little baby ones, but I don't think I'll plant that kind again.

I would love to find some purple seed, so everyone check out your local stores and tell me if you find any. I found those at Brolim's in Rexburg last year.

I forgot that I had planted a few "white" ones too. I love the color differences!

I don't remember planting this kind..... and yes its one carrot (and was pretty tasty I might add)

Hmmmm a baby monster carrot and a giant one.

So hopefully I can get the tomatoes started tomorrow. I got dirt so I'm all ready to go. I bought cow poop Saturday and I'm happy to say that my new car is very good at hauling poop. My old car would not be very happy coming up the hill from Walmart all loaded down.

It rained and then snowed on Saturday so I only got a couple more things chopped down, pruned the grapes, and filled in the hole in the front side yard where there used to be an irrigation stuff. And got mulch and poop around two raspberries.

I don't know if i'll ever catch up on the garden because there is still so much to do before spring: plant the peas and letuce, spinach, potatoes, and any other early crops that I decide to plan (maybe brocoli and cabbages again?), before that figure out the soaker hose situation, which means getting all the beds ready in effect (compost, mulch, poop, etc), mulch all the berries, grapes, other fruit bushes, etc, figure out if I need to prune the gooseberry and currents, cut down the dead stuff from last year, get some new beds ready, figure out what t0 plant where, get my seedlings started, buy annuals, etc, etc, etc. don't know that I will get any inside chores done in the next couple of months....

Ok sorry for that garden distraction. happens a lot.

Saturday afternoon was the championship game. it was crazy. even crazier then the last game. i felt positive about how the girls would do but didn't think they would win. However, they played really tough even when down by 18. I knew that if they pulled within 10 before the half they could win. They did, and they did. WHOOHOOO conference champs. Its been a hard season and its just great they can go out this way. Even though they are loosing some great seniors I'm also excited for next year as the young players this year can build on the experience. I can't believe bball season is already over and won't start again until November.

Congradulations Cathy! The guy standing up in white is her dad. I like to watch the games with Cathy's parents. She had a whole cheering section for this game. Family is great isn't it!

Happy pie day everyone (ok so mama made pinapple upside down cake, but thats kind of like pie).

ps Anyone who would like some carrots (who lives in this area), please stop by, or call. I will even give you the fairly normal shapped ones :) although I may make you take some squash too.

Saturdays a comin

wow been a long week, thank goodness tomorrow is Saturday! I need to prioritize my list for tomorrow so I can be productive, but instead I'm just going to sit here and blog. Guess thats where my priorities are :)

I missed Cathy's game yesterday because I had a last minute not fun thing come up with work. Sad for me:( BUT, they won there game. WHOO HOO.

that meant I was able to make all but the first 10 minute of todays game. AND they pulled of a WIN, from behind, it was AWESOME!

anyways they are now in the championship game tomorrow.

Thats about all I was going to write about. Then I did remember I went to the eye doctor today. Its been 3 months since:

and if my eyes were stable we could schedule the "adjustment." I've been going pretty frequently, and its been stable until this time. One eye is a little better with the nearsidedness, but the astigmatism shifted axis which is really odd in the other. So I'll check again in a month to see whats up.

(if you want to see something gross you can click on this picture to enlarge it)

I was not happy with my lasic at first, but even though it didn't "take" the way I had hoped to I have gotten used to my 20/40 vision and only occasionaly do I miss the clear 20/20 I had with contacts/glasses. So while it would've been completely awesome if my vision had been perfect, I am happy that I had it done. It will be great when its all worked out.

(don't you love those big ol sunglasses that they give you)

my exciting life

my life is lame. i went to the local petsm*rt because, i'm the local crazy cat lady, and feed the feral cats in my neighborhood. I enjoy outtings to this fine establishment. yep, my life is lame. But I think its fine to walk by and look at the pretty fish.

Sometimes I check out the lizards, but today just walked by after checking out the beta fish:

Here is a pretty one.

to the birds.

Hello Bird

Check out the dogs in training. Wish I had one.

Play with the cats for a minute. Stinky in there sure wish they had better venilation!

Whoohoo one exciting evening :)

Blueberries

This week I learned that I like blueberries. I know its crazy that I just figured this out because I like blueberry flavored things, such as Aaron's famous chocolate and blueberry shake, blueberry muffins (with those wild blueberries), etc. But I did not like the whole goooshy berries in pancakes, or home made muffins, etc. The difference is the goooshy texture that comes from frozen berries. If they are blendered up thats fine, but just like frozen strawberries, icky, they are goooshy. I always avoided the whole berries on fruit trays, or in salads, but I had some and was pleasantly surprised. As long as they are fresh, blended, or still frozen I think they are very tasty!

If you have to have frozen berries, I usually prefer raspberries or blackberries as their texture doesn't get so icky. Speaking of those berries, I sure hope I get some this year off of my bushes. They are still just one or two canes for each bush so I probably will only get a handfull :(

Right now I'm listening to Erasure's "respect." Like the song, but wouldn't recommend any videos :) been on an 80's kick lately and its fun. Gotta love Youtube.


I forgot to put this video with the last post. Its singing after the nativity play, so maybe its not a good idea to post.

Church and Carrots

Today I taught my primary kids for the last time :(

I've taught them for over a year, and I'm going to miss them. I am moving to senior primary, the 10 year olds. I'll miss the wiggle songs of junior primary, but its nice that these kids will be able to read.

In the spirit of putting my pictures from christmas, I thought it was appropriate to put the pictures from Luminarios and the nativity. Those are both about Christ.

For those of you who don't know about Luminarios, they are small candles that you use to light the path to your door Christmas Eve. Signifying that although there was no room in the inn, there is room in our house. Candles would blow out, so we fold paperbags (to keep the tops open) and put in some sand to hold them down and line our front walk/driveway, etc with the bags. When its dark we light the candles in each bag. Its cold, quiet, and I always feel fairly reverent. Its one of my favorite Christmas traditions. Lighting and Guiding the way for the Christ child. I love that we get to talk about this with the little ones while doing all the steps. - i had to borrow some pictures from Melanie since I didn't have any of the lighting ones.

I took this picture from another web site since we didn't get a good picture of what our house looks like with the luminarios lit.

On to the Christmas Pagent. We did this a few days after Christmas, and it was great!

pregnant mary

Grandma was the star (she is holding one of Melanie's crocheted ones).

Mary, Joseph, and some shepherds admiring the gifts the wisemen brought: gold, frankenSENSE (or old spice), and Myrr.






And in the spirit of carrots, here are the ones pulled up today. I really like the purple ones, they are so fun!

To go with the carrots, I made that sweet/spicy pork that mom has on her blog, along with Jamie's famous mac and cheese, and some asperagus that needed to be used. All together very Yummy!

This was the setup at my house with my favorite nativity set, and the poinsetta that Cathy gave me.