Mother's Day Weekend

As I am sure you know, this past weekend was Mother's Day. If you are expecting to read a loving treatise to motherhood, you are out of luck. Yes, I love my mother. Yes, I love my grandmother. Yes, I love being a mother, but much to the chagrin of some of my family members, I am not sweet or sappy, so you're out of luck if you wanted to read a love-in today.


Friday:

Our family spent the evening at a local park with Curly Girl's soccer team to celebrate the end of their season. For a first year team, they enjoyed a great year with a 6-6 record. Even better, I can't say enough positive comments about the coaches and girls on the team. Everyone was kind, supportive, and welcoming. I also never had to worry about inappropriate language or conversational topics from anyone on the team. We had a great night at the park, even though Curly Girl couldn't play kickball with everyone else because of her knee.


Saturday:

Patrick took Curly Girl and Car Guy to Teach a Kid to Fish Day, so I had most of the day to myself. Sponsored by our local Parks and Rec Department, Teach a Kid to Fish Day was fabulous, and even better, it was free! The kids were taught how to tie a hook, put worms on hooks, cast, and then spent several hours fishing. In addition, each child was given a t-shirt and tackle box, and Curly Girl and Car Guy both won fishing rods in a drawing. Hopefully, Parks and Rec will host another kids' fishing event in the fall, and I can't recommend it highly enough.



Sunday:

Curly Girl and I began the day taking in a fabulous piano concert by Randall Atcheson. He sounded truly amazing, and I could have listened to him play for another hour. Since it was Mother's Day, we also went to lunch with my parents and grandmother.

Now comes the not-so-good part of the weekend. If I had to pick how to spend Mother's Day, I would certainly not select working in the yard, but this load of mulch was most certainly not going to move itself.


Grumbling under our breath, Car Guy and I trudged outside to load the mulch into the wheelbarrow (I don't even want to know how many loads we moved), haul it to the garden, and spread it between the rows. I really despise schlepping mulch around the yard, but I hate pulling weeds more, so we spread the mulch thickly in hopes of keeping down the weeds. Yes, in this picture I may be smiling on the outside, but on the inside I am cursing this shovel and wondering how many blisters I am going to have on my hands.


To treat myself, I wrapped up the weekend by downloading some songs from iTunes. Rooting around the garage the other day, I ran across some old mix tapes from forever-ago. I've had so much fun singing these long-forgotten songs this week (It's amazing how you suddenly remember lyrics to songs you haven't heard in 15 years) that I just had to add them to my IPod. If you have your volume on, you should be listening to them, too.

Have a great week!

Gardening at Night

I'm gardening, but not at night. I just happen to like the song. It is the time of year to start thinking about what I want to plant in my garden, though. When I first broached the idea of starting a garden with my husband four years ago, he wasn't exactly thrilled with my suggestion. He said, "Fine, but it belongs to you and the kids. I don't want to mess with it." So the kiddos and I started with this space:


Guess what happened? My husband loved the garden and added this area the next year:


So now we have a larger garden than I ever imagined, and we really enjoy it. I never thought that I would actually like having a garden, but it is completely relaxing and rewarding to walk through the space and harvest what we have grown. I have even learned how to use a tiller and have a not-so-lovely scar behind my left knee from a run-in with the apparatus last summer.

We have enjoyed some notable successes- green beans, lima beans, and tomatoes; some big failures- very thin carrots that never grew more than two inches long and lettuce that closely resembled clover; battled a mole that bit our corn off at the base; chased squirrels who swiped our pumpkins and watermelons; and tolerated some so-so producers that I am not sure about trying again, like peas and okra.

I'm getting a bit bored with the garden, though, and want to switch things up this year. Earlier today I dug out my favorite gardening book (Yes, I know it's a children's book, but that is about my gardening comfort level) for some inspiration.


After perusing Green Thumbs, perhaps we'll try a bean tent. Car Guy would love that. I would also like to grow some herbs that I could use when cooking. I would really, really love to devote part of the space to a flower garden so I could keep cut flowers in the house all summer long. Our lilies look great, but they make a huge mess if I bring them in the house.

Please let me know if you have any great gardening ideas or tricks. We could use some inspiration over here.