it's all about veggies.

we've had a long few weeks of warm, sunny weather and our arms and faces carry the tanned shadows of our full days outside. the boys were so happy to be outside, and they all slept the whole night long, so tired from running, climbing, digging, and playing..

we planted our garden over the weekend. here's what we're hoping to harvest through the late summer, into early fall:


it doesn't seem like a whole lot when you're out looking at the garden, but looking at that list - wow - it seems as though we're setting up our very own garden stand.

here's the garden, chock-full of plants and seeds, waiting for the rain to come (it did a few hours after this picture was taken):

right behind the garden (where the boys are standing in the photo above) is a huge grapevine that yields lots of sour grapes. but this season, we found a robin nest inside:

mama sat dutifully on her eggs until they hatched yesterday morning (mama has since returned to the nest after i took these pictures):

and she's there all the time now that the weather has turned cooler. what a good mama robin. fortunately, mama robin picked prime location in the grapevine as our garden is right next to her nest, and she has first dibs on all morning worms. smart woman.

also, since the weather has been cooler, kenny had to hook up an extension cord from the barn into the chicken coop to put a light on them last night. by the winter, they'll be fully feathered-out, but they still have those bald spots on their necks and heads, so we don't know how warm they actually are. it's supposed to warm up in a few days.

the chickens turned a whole month old on monday. to celebrate, we moved them out of their brooder in the laundry room to their brand new coop in the yard. i couldn't be more thankful. they're SO BIG now, that they were kicking up dust from their bedding and it was EVERYWHERE in the laundry room. i spent the entire day (between diaper-changes, meals, naps, playing, and reading) wiping down the room and cleaning it two times over. remember these cute little fuzz-balls?

they are now not so cute. they're turning into chickens, and have scrawny necks with patches of bald waiting for their feathers. their feet are awkwardly too big for their bodies (just like in the 7th grade!). however, where their feathers are fully grown in, the patterns are beautiful, and there are glimpses of their full-grown beauty when they stretch out their wings. i am sure that in no time at all, they will be beauties.

here are our girls, all happy in their new digs:


a golden buff (front) and a buff orpington (rear) checking out the ramp:


feeding time:


three silver-laced wyandottes and a buff orpington:




did i mention how happy i am to have them out of our house? don't get me wrong, i love the girlies, but they really do stink. in ways you didn't think possible. and not like "dirty farm smell," it's more like something died in our laundry room on top of the dirty farm smell.

the chickens are still confined until our neighbor's dog is trained to stay inside his brand new invisible fence. how nice of our neighbor to set up an expensive system to keep her big pure-bred pointer dog from eating all 15 of the chickens.  i think the plans for the fence were already in the works, but when she heard our chickens were living in their coop soon, she got the fence buried and began training her dog.

if only we can figure out a way to keep hawks, foxes, and raccoons from preying on them.

the chicken-hobby is a big project, but one that we're enjoying. we have to keep the boys away from them most of the time "but they're my friends, mommy!" is rowan's excuse for wanting to hang out with them all day long, and what he repeats to us when we tell him it's time to leave them alone.

what do you do when you take your empty grocery cart back to the cart station in the grocery store parking lot and find an empty cart there with three full, (still cold!) gallons of 2% milk?

• do you leave it there hoping that the person who left it will come back soon and find it? (like i was going to do)

• do you walk into the customer service desk and tell them that someone left it hoping that the original purchaser will come to the desk and get it back? (like the man who asked me if it was mine as i was walking out of the cart station was going to do on his way into the store)

• or do you pull into a closby parking spot, start walking past it on your way into the story, and take them without a second thought and put them in your car and continue to head into the grocery store for your shopping (minus the milk on your list since hey - score! free milk in the parking lot!)? (like the man who pulled into the spot next to mine as i was beginning to leave)
  

three free gallons of milk is tempting, but i do believe in a form of good karma, and once i left a full box of diapers in a cart in the parking lot and it wasn't there when i returned 10 minutes later, nor did the customer service desk know anything about an abandoned box of diapers. and i was so sad about it for days.

i'm not tooting my own horn, but seriously...please tell me you wouldn't choose the third option (even though i agree, it's most tempting!).

i am enjoying a rare moment...a cup of HOT black coffee first thing in the morning.

because of a long and exhausting (but oh-so-much-fun) day the boys had visiting with their grandma and grandpa at a local state park yesterday, all three of them are still sleeping. it's 7:22 a.m., and there is not a peep from their room.

i tried to get a cute "mother's day family picture" taken at the end of our time at the park, and i guess we're at the "sticking out my tongue 24-hours a day" stage with the boys. so this was the best of the lot:

happy mother's day to my mom, grammy, and all my fellow mommy readers and bloggers.

i was blessed to share homemade crepes (ala kenny) with my boys this morning. and i was gifted with THE NEW MARTIN SEXTON CD!  ahhh...black coffee, lovely crepes, and martin playing all day long!! the perfect day!

and here are my reasons for truly celebrating today...
 

I finished my second fiction book in the Spring Reading Thing  earlier this week and think it's worthy of a review.

If you are not one to enjoy a slow-moving book, don't read this book. If you want short, succinct sentences to lull you to sleep at night, don't read this book. If you don't find comfort in reading about simple pleasures, this book is a waste of your time. I can't think of any other metaphor/simile for a book like Housekeeping but this: this book is like a conversation over a cup of tea on a warm, firefly-filled summer night; the cool grass tickling your feet while the words from your conversation will tangle lightly through your hair as you fall deeper into the chair like dead weight and slowly. fall. to. sleep.

That's probably why it took me so long to read. I can really only read now in the 20 minutes before falling asleep at night (since we've had such amazing weather, and when it's sunny outside, you work outside) and the writing in this book is so rich and intricate that it feels like i was reading a lullabye. In a good way.

Not that this book is boring at all. The story moves along comfortably, but it's enough to keep you reading and wanting to know what happens next. It's a gentle book with a big story. A sad story. A story that doesn't end with the last page.

I wanted to include a short excerpt of Robinson's writing. This is from the end of the book, and it won't give anything away, except the author's writing style:

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it. God Himself was pulled after us into the vortex we made when we fell, or so the story goes. And while He was on earth He mended families. He gave Lazarus back to his mother, and to the centurion he gave his daughter again. He even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail. Yet this was no more than tinkering. Being man He felt the pull of death, and being God He must have wondered more than we do what it would be like. He is known to have walked upon water, but He was not born to drown. And when He did die it was sad - such a young man, so full of promise, and His mother wept and His friends could not believe the loss, and the story spread everywhere and the mourning would not be comforted, until He was so sharply lacked and so powerfully remembered that his friends felt Him beside them as they walked along the road, and saw someone cooking fish on the shore and knew it to be Him, and sat down to supper with Him, all wounded as he was. There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word however chance, wirtten in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair wthl dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.

look ma, no hands!

i was wondering why all of a sudden there is a ton of spiderman stuff in the stores. i thought it was because i was noticing it only since rowan and sawyer's interest in "things-spiderman" has grown in the past few months.

and then i drove past a movie marquee yesterday and saw the words, "spiderman" on it. it STILL hadn't hit me. i thought perhaps they brought one of the first two movies back to a cheap theatre for whatever reason.

and finally, it hit me this morning HALFWAY THROUGH gene shallot's review of the latest spiderman movie as i was waiting for the Today Show to give me a weather forecast.

i'm just not as razor sharp as i used to be....

it's regurgitating its young!

doesn't this...

...look eerily similar to the alien in Alien?

it better end up being a pretty little plant, or i'm packing up and leaving this joint.

last night, i pulled weeds. it was totally by choice, and it was a fabulous way to spend an hour or so in the evening. kenny and the boys were just over the hill walking the grounds and playing on the jungle gym, so i could hear the fun they were having even over the music playing on my ipod.

as i stated before, we inherited three larger-than-life flower gardens. if you'll remember, i was rather pregnant when we moved into this house a year ago, and then spent the summer with a newborn attached to me, staying in the shade. so gardening was the least of my priorities. but those flower beds grew and grew. the weeds overtook the flowers and we were left with huge weedy messes by fall. i vowed not to let that happen this year. so we're already starting. a bit late...but we're weeding!

by chance, the previous owner stopped by today and i asked her about a few of the flowers that are popping up already and what i should expect. i was hoping she wouldn't notice that i spent some time already digging up all the tulip bulbs that haven't produced a flower for the past two springs...and the daffodil bunches that also didn't bloom. i guess some bulbs get old? this seasons' weather wasn't much of a help either. but tthe cold and rain/snow didn't stop the weeds!

as i was happily weeding in the bed between the house and garage (something tha ti can see from teh kitchen window, so it willb e nice to have something lovely to look at this year!), i came across something very odd. i knew that moving to the country would increase our chance of seeing wildlife, but i never imagined i'd see something straight out of star trek.  i unearthed the most unearthly-looking things. kenny assures me they are merely perennials called "jack in the pulpits." here is what they look like right now:

here is a closer, more freakish look at these perennials:


i pulled all the surrounding weeds to allow sunshine and rain to water down on these alien horns. 

i pulled and scraped and raked and weeded some more and then i realized that i could be pulling out the beginnings of flowers and plants that i thought were weeds. i'm a novice gardener. (mom, if you're reading, please come up and help me soon.)

so i need to find some perennials to fill in what i might have pulled up. any suggestions? i love perennials. all you need to do is keep the weeds away and no replanting each spring and summer. here is our row of peonies that pop up without me doing anything (except plowing over them in the fall with the lawn tractor). and they're gorgeous. in a few weeks, they'll be full and green with light and dark pink flowers:


i am told this is primrose. whatever it is, i want more of it in this garden and less of what is growing around it. the color is not captured in this picture...they're stunning.

so...fill me in on what is in your perennial gardens. i know of a few...like the easy-peasy hostas and lily-of-the-vally. but i'd like to fill in these beds with color. so...hit me with your best suggestions, please!

a month ago, i signed up at OrgJunkie's blog for a whole room organization challenge. today we have pictures to show the final product - and even a bonus area where "organization happened."

i love that this project happened during spring. it was a great way to spring clean clutter from these areas and other areas in the house!

without further ado, here are before and after pictures of our very high-traffic areas: the enclosed backporch (playroom) and the office.

Before

the coat and shoe "area":


bookcase in the office:


After



all the toys put away!


a shelf and cloth bins for the boys' books:


their "craft" table with toy bins on each side:


their "thinking chairs" (if you watch Blues Clues, you'll understand why Rowan and Sawyer named them that) in their little "book nook area." they enjoy a good book and a cup of milk and snack in these chairs:


this is my favorite change to the room. i brought a hardly-used bookshelf down and put it in the corner with a reading lamp, and the magazine rack. kenny and i spend a lot of time in these chairs while the boys play, or while we all read. so now there is an "grown-up" area for books, magazines and a table nearby for a cup of coffee:


the new coat, shoes, and "muck boots" area:


each shelf in the office has a purpose: reference shelf, cookbooks, bibles (between the two of us, we have a lot of bibles), and learning-type books:


And...  as an added bonus, and through inspiration from this organizational challenge, i organized my cleaning closet from store-bought chemical-laden products...



...to all natural (mostly homemade) cleaning products:


1. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and were you able to overcome it?
it took me a while to wrap my head around what to do with the stuff, and the piles and the unused, old and broken toys in the playroom. i finally just started chucking everything into piles of "keep," "give away," or "storage." fortunately the winter coats and boots went away to their proper bin in the attic.

2. Tell us what kind of changes/habits you have put into place in order for your area/room to maintain its new order?
two rules:
(1) we have a LOT less stuff in the playroom. there is only enough toys that will fit in the toy bins with the lid on (that is a hard and fast rule. if we can't close the lid, then something has to go). we don't store piles of old mail and old papers on the table in the playroom anymore.
(2) there is a place for everything...so if it doesn't have a "home" in the playroom, it doesn't belong there. clean-up is so easy now that we can put toys and diapers and books in their proper places.

3. What did you do with the "stuff" you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?
we took a trip to Goodwill where i unloaded a lot of winter clothes, coats, toys, and books that we don't use any more. i found an empty bin in the attic where all the winter boots went, and i stored away the winter coats.

4. What was the biggest lesson you learned from this experience?
less is so. much. more.

5. Now that you have completed the PROCESS, do you think having and keeping your space organized will make a difference in your life?
i tend to get really antsy when our house is a mess. and since we spend the majority of our time on the back porch in any season, i would prefer it to be clean and orderly. i'm much less stressed when our house is clean. and that's a big job. so keeping at least the few rooms that we use the most ordered will make me so much less-stressed out.

i'm a neat-freak. and i've lost the OCD side of that since marrying and having kids. because other things take priority - like reading and playing with the boys, making meals, and spending quality time with each other as a family. 

well, in my world at least.

i know i've mentioned him before, but he has just released a new cd (i still write "album" instead of "cd." i'm a child of the 80s, what can i say?), so he's due more accolades from me. because he's not going to make "the today show" and "the view" rounds promoting his new cd. he's just not that type. so for all three of you who read my blog, take it from me: you're going to want to buy his latest cd.

martin sexton can sing. he can write. he can sing back-up. he can do it all. but what he does best is perform in front of a live audience.  i've seen him live twice. once at a free outdoor concert at the andy warhol museum in pittsburgh whilst he and other artists (kim richey, for one) taped shows for the world cafe inside for WYEP members. this is where i was introduced to his music.

i have his music and i love listening to them (usually when i'm driving alone so i can turn it up really loud...the boys don't appreciate the finer points of martin just yet), but his live performances are perfection.

you might be thinking that i'm using a lot of hyperboles in my descriptions. to me, they're dead-on. the man is the perfect singer-songwriter.

go here for a great little clip of "the making of" his latest single, "happy." it's one of those songs you listen to in the spring, when the world holds promise again of warmth and sunshine; when you're driving with the sun beating down on your arms and you could care less about not having any sunscreen on (because it's only april and you start to freak out about that around may 4); when an ice cold beer replaces your favorite glass of red wine. "happy" makes you just that.

i can't wait to hear what kenny has to say about this entry since he's not the biggest martin fan at all. remember, we have fairly different views on what is good music.