Odds and Ends – Volume 1

Our past week, in summary:

• This past Friday, Monster received a lawn mower from his Great Aunt J. He’s barely stopped playing with it since we put it together Saturday morning. If we let him, I’m positive he would sleep with it.
• I’ve written previously about making more of an effort to take technology breaks. Some days I’m better than others, but this past weekend, I think I only got on the computer once a day to check e-mail and Facebook. It was wonderful! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this trend up.
• This past Saturday we painted our garage. And by we, I mean P and my dad. Monster and I watched. I forgot to take a before picture until they were almost done painting the first coat. Whoops! It was yellow and now it’s white. It looks so much better now!
• Our tiny garden is basically non-existent at this point. Our cucumber and pumpkins got blight and our hot pepper plant was eaten (by heaven knows what). All that is thriving is our sweet basil, although now that I’ve written this I’m sure something will eat that as well. 😉
• Along those same lines, last week we found out that the farm we get our CSA goodies from has tomato blight. The farmer and her assistants put in a ton of time last week trying to save what was left of the crop. They picked all the green tomatoes and put them in storage with the hopes of them ripening up. I guess we’ll find out later this week if they were successful, but what a bummer! As the French saying goes “C’est la vie.”
• Monster is getting his canine teeth. According to his baby book, he only needs his 2 year molars now. Woohoo ! We can almost see the light at the end of the teething tunnel.
• I’m battling yet another cold. Weather changes + teething baby + even less sleep than usual + too much sugar = cold. You think by now I would have learned my lesson and started going to bed earlier and cut back on the sugar. Apparently I only learn some things the hard way.
• P’s fall semester starts on Saturday. Commence freak-out! I apologize in advance for any whining that may occur over the next couple weeks. It was so nice having him around a lot this summer. Oh well, all good things must come to an end.
• It looks like fall weather may have officially arrived. Wippee! My favorite season! J
• Since I’m on the topic of fall – did you know the stores are already promoting Halloween? Sheesh! But now that I’ve seen the costumes out I’ve been busy thinking of costume ideas for Monster. Last year he was a lion. Some idea’s P and I have been kicking around: Tarzan, Yoda, or a monkey. I still haven’t decided if we’ll take Monster trick-or-treating this year or not, so if he doesn’t go, it’s not like he really needs a costume…but it would be fun to dress him up! Thoughts/suggestions? If you have small child(ren) have you started thinking about costumes yet?

Pictures from this week:

Ohh – water fountain!

This is FUN!

Goodbye yellow wall…

…hello white wall

That was our past week in a nutshell. Hopefully now that my cold is slowly dissipating I’ll be back to posting more frequently. This past week I’ve been skipping writing posts in favor of going to bed earlier.

The Joys of Home Ownership

The Monster household recently purchased our very first house! While we’re very excited, we’ve quickly learned that the old adage about there never being a lack of work to do around the house is so true.

The previous owner’s attempts at lack of home maintenance has meant that there’s a plethora of home improvement projects for us to work on. P has been great and has done a TON of work already.

 In the less than a month that we’ve been here, P has already cut down multiple trees, dug a trench, and begun drafting designs for a raised garden bed for next year. Our yard has a drainage problem (hence the trench), so P has been busy devising a plan to fix-it. He’s still working it out, but we’ll be leveling out and re-grading the yard later this summer, in addition to removing some more trees to fix the drainage problem. More to come on this topic as this project progresses. 🙂

This unsightly tree is no longer, thanks to P

Monster loves the trench

Seriously. He would play in it all day if I let him.

Since P has already volunteered to take care of all the heavy-lifting projects for the yard (much to my relief!), I’ve taken on the task of improving the aesthetic appeal of our yard. Sadly Luckily, no matter what I do, I can’t make it worse – it can only get better from here!

My first goal for the summer is to remove all the small trees that have been growing in the “flower bed” areas for the past several years. Next up is to prune all the dead branches off the trees and bushes as well as remove the “shooters” from the bottom of what I believe is some kind of apple tree. We’re also going to plant some pumpkins, watermelon, and hot peppers in the flower bed next to the sidewalk, just need to pick up a bag of topsoil. I realize I’m not planting any of these items at the appropriate growing time, but we figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

There are at least 4 small trees just in this tiny patch!!

Anyone know what kind of tree this is?

Looks like we have lots of weeds…

I’ll then spend the rest of the summer plotting and planning what to plant in all the flower beds in the fall. Since I won’t have lots of time for planting and weeding anytime soon (especially since we’re planning on planting a vegetable garden next year), I’m going to plant a lot of perennial plants. My mom has a ton of irises in her yard – and I absolutely adore those flowers, so she’s agreed to give me some of her iris tubers this fall. While I’m at it, I’m also going to take some of her mint – it’s supposed to be a “natural deterrent” for ants, so that will get planted by both the front and back done. Now that Monster is mobile and curious about everything, I’ve had to throw away all our ant traps, because I didn’t want those toxic chemicals anywhere near him. And if the mint doesn’t work we’ll at least have plenty of mint of readily available next summer for mojito’s . 😉

 I’ve also got a clipping of a P’s mom’s lilac bush. Assuming I can keep it alive through the winter, that will get planted outside next spring as well. 🙂

There is a HUGE patch of tiger lilies already in our flower beds. I’m planning on digging those up this fall and spreading them throughout the beds.

The rest of the perennial plants will be most likely be determined by what’s on sale/clearance this fall. Need to do some research on what will grow best in our combination of sun and shade.

What are some of your favorite perennials?