It's Finished!

My dear, sweet husband is finally done with his classes at school. By Friday we should know whether or not he graduated and what his final grades were, though we're pretty sure he got A's and will definitely be graduating. It's finished! Two years of non-stop school is over. Discussions, assignments, papers, projects, late nights doing homework, high stress when the computer freaks out, racing to the computer after work to keep working on homework is finally over! Let's all take a moment to shout HOORAY at the top of our lungs for him!

Everybody now:

HOORAY!!!!

He's so happy. I'm so happy. It's going to be nice to have the time to spend on other projects that had to be set aside while this took precedence. It's over. ~sigh~ I'm so glad.

On a separate note, our garden is not looking so great any more. It has been overrun by a swarm of grasshoppers that seemed determined to eat everything. They ate our marigolds first (they really had no chance). I miss seeing that pop of orange sticking out from all the green in our garden. They then took out the potatoes (our lovely potato plants!), the carrots and the onions (they were eaten down to the ground). Now they have attacked my brothers broccoli and our bush beans. They have tried to take out the sunflowers, and I'll admit they aren't looking so good, but they are strong and keep growing. They keep putting forth the flower heads and keep trying to survive. Our squash, zucchini, tomatoes, pickles, corn, watermelon, horseradish, and pole beans are still hanging in there, but any hope we had of having a grand crop is kind of gone. We have big plans for next year, though. Big plans.

Here are some pictures of the garden we took last week (the 16th of July). We went out to the garden a couple of days ago and the bush beans were practically gone. They don't look as good as the picture below looks.

I wonder what the garden is going to look like this week. I hope they don't start eating our tomatoes.

Garden update

James and I have been driving up to the garden every week for the past two months. It has been quite therapeutic and relaxing, and we find ourselves looking forward to it more and more. It's been wonderful to spend time with each other as we drive out there wondering and dreaming about what our garden looks like, and then being so surprised at how big and beautiful it looks when we actually get there. The drive is nice; long stretches of roads with newly growing farmland on both sides mixed in with small towns that force you to slow down. It's nice. Here's the latest picture of our garden from Saturday. For comparison I've included a picture from the garden from the beginning of June. Isn't is awesome?!

Our garden on June 4th. Ours are the three rows in the middle of the picture by the sign.

Our garden on July 2nd. Look how much our garden has grown (and the weeds from the neighbors!)

The sunflowers are almost up to my waist now, and one of them has a flower forming. They are Mammoth Gray Stripe Sunflowers and we hope to get a bunch of sunflower seeds from them. If not, well at least they'll keep the birds and insects from bothering our other plants. We also have zucchini growing. There were at least seven flowers and some actual plants, but whether or not they form into zucchini is yet to be seen. We'll know better next week. Our potato plants are doing awesome, so are our carrots and onions. And we were so excited to see that one of James' pumpkin plants had survived whatever was trying to eat it in the first place! Woo-hoo! We got a couple of transplants last week, and we planted them out next to the other pumpkin plant to keep him company. The pole beans and Sweet Crimson watermelon is showing, too, and I really hope they take off because I want to taste some homegrown watermelon. :)

For some reason, the first ten feet of our garden does not like to grow anything. First we planted strawberries and they didn't grow, so we pulled them after a while. Then we planted cauliflower, but we may have been too late for those to take off. After a while we dug up the ground and put marigolds on the first and third rows and planted pepper seeds in the middle. The peppers are supposed to take between 10 and 20 days to emerge, but so far there has been nothing and it's been over 35 days and nothing has come up. I don't think they are going to grow either. So next week we plan on digging up the middle row and planting a different kind of watermelon. We are only going to plant two seeds together and then thin it down to one plant after the seedlings pop up. There just isn't enough room otherwise. Hopefully that will grow there. It could be that there's too much water in that area and nothing is growing, so I think the watermelon plant would do just fine there. However, I'm not sure that's what it is since the marigolds are doing really well. At first we thought they weren't going to survive, but they have come back really strong. I'm not sure why nothing is growing in the first ten feet, but I'm glad everything else is doing well.

I hope hearing about our garden isn't boring you all. We are just so excited about it. We are first time gardeners, so those of you who have planted gardens before might understand our excitement at our first real gardening experience. I'm not sure if the novelty will wear off after a few years or not. I kind of hope it doesn't because there's just something very cool to me about throwing a tiny seed into a bare patch of dirt and watching it grow into some of the most beautiful plants and tasty vegetables (and fruit) I have ever seen or tasted.

Maybe Not

I'd like to think that I was a lover of all God's creatures; that seeing them in their natural habitat makes me smile and wonder at their complex natures. But then I open up the blinds in my apartment and watch all those creatures fly and flit about on my balcony and my thinking changes drastically. It takes me a little bit to realize that maybe I never was a lover of all of God's creatures but only the soft and cute ones, and maybe the big and powerful ones too. But bugs? Well, bugs are another matter all together.

My balcony seems to be a melting pot of bug species; a sort of "Insectopia", if you will. There some flowers and some freshly sprouted green herbs for them to use. There's also moist soil and maybe a puddle of water that they can play in. As if that's not enough, there are thousands, if not millions, of tiny little spaces just big enough for them to squeeze into. It's awe-inspiring to watch a wasp wiggle itself underneath a crack next to the dryer vent that is invisible to the naked eye. It's mesmerizing to see spiders no bigger than the top of a nail head weave the most intricate webs around the most open of areas. It's addicting to follow the flight pattern of birds, butterflies, and teeny tiny gnats.

True, I can do all this from the relative safety of my apartment behind a thick sliding glass door, but when a ginormous wasp hurls itself into the window over and over again, I can't help but shudder. These wasps look like they drag their bodies around with their little wings and appear top heavy. Today I found out that these are not your ordinary yellow jacket wasps. These are actually Colorado Mud Daubers. (Read more about them HERE). They rarely sting people, and when they do it is more than likely due to being handled or trapped next to the body accidentally. They form cylindrical nests and stuff it to the max with different types of spiders, orb weavers and crab spiders being their first choice. They are solitary wasps, and after a long days' work they usually retire to nearby vegetation to rest. This explains why they are found in the tree next to my apartment (I found them last year and found them again this year) and why they look like they are ready to topple over when they fly (really elongated bodies). So, even though I don't like bugs (especially the flying ones), it's good that I was able to do some research on these ones to see that they are good because they should get rid of the two spiders I saw hanging off the balcony today, and they more than likely won't sting me when I'm out watering my plants in the morning. I'm still not a fan of bugs, but I guess these guys can stay.