Here I Am!

Hello again, blogger world! I know it's been almost two months since I last posted anything, but sometimes I think I really don't have anything new to share with you all so i don't write anything. However, these last couple of months have been busy!!

In May, James' sister Cheryl got married and we had a fun and family-filled weekend helping and participating in that. It was so awesome to be around James' family again, especially the ones who are from out of town and we don't get to see as often. Of course it was a beautiful wedding, and we all had a great time.

Then it was my birthday, which was pretty much uneventful because I had a vicious migraine that day, but James made me a cake the next day and took me out to lunch and a movie. We went to Ruby Tuesday's and watched Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. It wasn't the best one of the four, but it was fun to see a movie in the theater again. We haven't been in so long.

Then we had to get ready for James' last term for his second Bachelor's degree. We are so excited for this and have been working hard at updating his online portfolio and applying for jobs within his field.

And along the way, we have been working hard at the garden. What? I didn't tell you about our garden? Well! Let me tell you. Uh, James and I have a garden. :)

Seriously, though, James and I have had the fortunate blessing to use some farm land up north to plant a garden. Our church has a welfare farm that they open a part of it up to some of the members to plant and grow a garden if they like. The farm fertilizers the land and waters each week, and we just have to plant our seeds and take care of the rows we are given. We went to an informational meeting about it in early April and began planning from there. And I must say, it has been so stinking fun! The farm is about an hour away and we go up every Saturday morning and see what new items are growing. We have three rows that are 15" wide each and 60' long each, so we have about a 4' x 180' square foot piece of land that we are using for the growing season.

James and I have had a blast figuring out what to plant, purchasing the seeds, and working hard in our garden to get rid of weeds. My brother Jake is using part of our section to grow some of his own vegetables and he has planted sweet corn, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. We have the rest of the area and we have planted potatoes, horseradish, carrots, onions, bush beans, sunflowers, big boy tomatoes, cauliflower, bell peppers, squash, zucchini, pickling cucumbers, sweet corn, pole beans, watermelon, pumpkin, celebrity tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, parsley, basil, and oregano. Each week we take a picture of our garden after we are done weeding and plating, and it has been really fun to go back through them and see how things are growing. So far, at least as of last week, the only things we have showing right now are the potatoes, carrots, onions, horseradish, bush beans, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, sunflowers, and corn, and they all seemed to kind of pop right out of the ground at the same time, except for the potatoes.

At first we were worried about the drive up there each week, but it has turned out to be such a nice drive where James and I can (and have) talked about all sorts of things, though the majority of our conversation revolves around what new plants might be poking out of the ground this week. We aren't sure how well our cauliflower is doing. We planted it a few weeks ago and it doesn't seem to be doing anything. It may have been planted too late in the season and just won't grow now, so if the cauliflower isn't showing this week then we're certain it's just not going to grow. We'll till the ground and then plant some herbs and flowers there. We also have an herb garden starting to grow on our deck. We planted parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and basil last Saturday and just this morning we found thyme seedlings coming up. James was so excited. I was, too.

I know you're probably thinking that we are growing a ton of stuff, but we are sharing it with our families too. We are going to be canning a lot of the food, and then feasting on some of it during the summer. When the fruit and vegetables start growing then we'll probably need to go out to the farm two times a week, but it'll definitely be worth it. I can't wait to taste our first vegetable or fruit from the garden. I bet it's going to taste delicious. :)