It has been a long, wet, windy, cold Spring in this neck of the woods. Which translates to "Mother Nature is Teasing my Children." It is just warm enough to spend every waking moment outside one day only to be confined back inside with the furnace on the next. I don't know who is being punished more, me or the babes; I have officially run out of ideas to entertain rowdy boys inside...
During those few and far-between warm days we were able to get a jump on the garden. I love having a big garden, there is something delightful about going "shopping" for dinner in your own back yard, not to mention how much better it tastes.
Dusty built a frame for it, it is 12' x 16' and still not big enough! He just used 2x8's from home depot and we stained them our favorite dark brown. He screwed the corners together and screwed it to metal stakes in the center of each board to keep it from bowing. I love it, it is just high enough to keep the grass and the vegetables from co-mingling.
We started out by hauling in 5 yards of dirt... It's a lot, like a whole driveway full. We had all the kiddos in the neighborhood around for a week, digging and just getting dirty, I'm sure their Mama's love me. Once it was hauled to the back we spent the next day smoothing it out flat. Then the rain came, lots of rain, again, delaying my planting. In between rain storms the boys had a big time making it their personal sandbox. They put it in wagons and hauled it around, dug holes big enough to hide in, made mud pies, you know... boy things. Once it dried out and warmed up enough to plant I had to re-smooth the ground from my little gophers work. It was far from perfect but I am impatient and wanted seeds in the ground. This is what we ended up with
The seeds I attempted to start last month were a big flop so I bought tomato and pepper plants and used seed for the rest. I have diligently watered and whispered sweet nothings to my little plants hoping for a big and fruitful garden.And low and behold, today while watering I found this:
And these:
And look at all these blooms on one of the tomato plants.
I am a proud Mama!
Along with his new found Independence his personality is in full bloom, he chatters on endlessly (often without opening his mouth). He loves to play dress up and holds daily "treasure hunts" in the house where he finds one obscure item to be his object of affection for the day, anything from a spatula to an extra binkie, he carries it with him all day and incorporates it into whatever else he is playing with. 
He is communicating more and more, throwing kisses and showing me what he wants, he says "thank you" and yells "Grayson" he calls me Mama and Dusty Dada and tells me when he is done eating. 
