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All the Muppets are here - gotta see this!

Happy Halloween

Recovery

Well it's been two weeks since the hail storm and amazingly our plants are bouncing back.  There are flowers on the tomatoes.  The Swiss Chard is coming back as well as the Sweet Peas.  Now we did go out and buy another tomato plant at the farmers market yesterday that already had some baby tomatoes starting to form.  We just wanted to make sure that we actually have tomatos.  Fresh grown tomatos just taste so much better than the ones from the grocery store.

The Great Squirrel Hunt...

You may have to look at the full size of this picture, but there is a squirrel in the bird feeder.  Our dachshunds, Ruby and Roxie, saw this, tore out of the house through the doggie dog to get it...

...the squirrel leaped off the feeder and up the fence - but he didn't run away.  He sat at the top of the fence looking down...

...that squirrel was bold.  Every time the girls walked away, the squirrel came down to eat from the feeder, and Roxy would come chasing after it.  After a while, Roxy just decided to camp out at the bottom of the feeder to protect her yard.

By the end of the day, they were exhausted and snored the night away.

OH Hail No!

Today we came home to a mess - a huge hail storm shredded our poor garden.  Makes you truly appreciate what true farmers go through.

We have Salad!

   Today was quite exciting - we were able to harvest the first of our Sweet Salad Mix!  We were going to a BBQ at Mom & Dad's, so decided to take it with us to share our harvest

Looking Good

So a few more weeks into our garden and things are looking up.  It really is exciting to come home everyday and see what has changed.  In fact today, we were able to eat the first of the fruits of our labor - a couple of strawberries! 

Make sure to take a look at our continuing growing garden in the photos to the right - or click here

Already some casualties..

Well a few weeks into gardening and some of our sprouts have bit the dust.  We're not sure if they just weren't strong enough or if it was too hot too fast for them, but our tomatoes from seeds are gone, as is the basil.  Some of the carrots survived but not all of them.  But all is not lost, there is new growth on the Sweet Garden Mix and the Sweet Peas.  Our Cherry tree seems to be thriving and the Potatoes look amazing!

In continuing our gardening bug, we decided to move the river rock from a large section by the back gate so that we can plant several strawberries plants, a blackberry bush, and a couple of blueberry bushes. 

Download Garden diagram

Our Square Foot Garden - baby steps

Back in February, Glenn comes home with a book called "Square Foot Gardening" and thinks we should give it try.  He has never tried gardening before and this seems like an easy concept.  My Dad grew up on a farm in Indiana and we had a large garden when I was growing up, but I was too young to fully appreciate it.  So I'm certainly no farmer, but know that I have someone to call if we have questions (isn't that what Dads are for?). 

Anyways, we start looking through the book and getting the main concept down.  First thing, is to build the frame and get the ingredients for "Mel's Special Mix".  After you get that built, well the gardening bug just really hits.  We were finding that we were going to Lowe's often and looking through all the seed packets.  We decided that we also wanted to plant fruit trees, so we got a Pear and a Cherry.  And the weather was teasing us - we had 80 degree days in March - we wanted to plant.  So we went ahead and planted our seeds indoors - we figured by the time they were ready, the weather would be too.  We went ahead and planted the potatoes, because they are a cold hardy.  Of course, that's when we started to get the heaviest snow of the season - here we had these lovely sprouts and 2 feet of snow on the ground.

We planted the Cherry tree on April 26th, but it doesn't appear that the Pear tree survived that big snow storm.  And after hardening the sprouts for several days outdoors, we were finally able to plant them on May 2nd!  It was so nice seeing our beautiful sprouts actually in the ground.  Now the hard part will be watching and hoping that they grow!

View this photo

Summer Movies 2009

It looks like this summer is going to be quite busy with all the new movies being released. Here's a list of my MUST sees:

• May 8 – Star Trek
• May 15 – Angels & Demons
• May 21 – Terminator Salvation
• June 24 – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• July 15 – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Price

   

And here is a list of my "Looks really interesting/fun, should I see in theater or wait for DVD?"

• April 17 – State of Play
• May 1 – Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
• August 7 – Julie & Julia
• August 21 – Inglourious Basterds

Who's going to the movies with me and what's on your list?