First, we went to a pepper and tomato show. It has tons of different varieties of peppers and tomatoes! Too bad we had already bought and planted almost all of the tomatoes and peppers that we needed. I did pick up one more tomato than we needed, mostly because I liked the name: Elfin. It is also a small tomato on a small plant, like an elf! I know, strange, but I liked it.
My dad, who loves to buy plants, and is actually the reason why we have a pepper farm on our lattice, bought 50 different varieties of tomato plants! And no... his backyard isn't that big, he just fills it with plants! Although, two of those were ones I asked him to grow for me. One was called Lisa King... and who can resist buying a plant with their name in the title. The other one was White Beauty (I think) and it was a white variety of tomatoes, and it sounded interesting.
After we bought our 6 plants, we went home, and ran various errands for the rest of the day, including a trip to Lowe's to buy some rose plants for our front planter.
When we got home, I put some of those 6 plants in pots, while Blake dug out the sago palm that was in the front planter, and then we planted three rose plants in its place.
The rest of the pictures above are of the garden currently. Blake took more earlier, but he took them all from farther away, and I prefer chronicling our plants growing with a much closer view. The best things happening lately are our first green bell pepper growing, our first tomato growing, and probably the best looking strawberry that we have ever had (already eaten, and it tasted as good as it looks!).
I love seeing all of our plants grow from day to day, and I cannot wait until summer so that I can pick all of our fresh produce!!! We are planning on being more ambitious this year than previous years with making our our pasta sauces, pickling peppers, making cucumbers, and drying both pepper and tomatoes, and overall trying to make sure that we use all of our crop (some got wasted last year), and extend how long we can enjoy the produce.
I intend (though we will see how well this goes) to keep up with posts about the garden, because I truly take a lot of pleasure in seeing the growth and looking back on where it was before.
So... I created this blog to keep tabs more or less on myself so that someday I can look back and see what life was like at this time in my life.
It isn't a very productive tool if you only use it every blue moon. Sigh.
I have meant to post for forever, but I just feel like I have nothing of importance to write, to share, because I feel like life is the same as it has been for the last few years, and it is just the daily grind, and the exciting future that I thought I would be having by now, is not here yet.
But there was a song on my ipod that I FORCED myself to listen to today, and it helped me decide that I should post something about my life here and now. It was the country song "You're gonna miss this." Basically, it follows a girl's life, as she complains about being 18 in high school, her mom reminds her she'll miss it later. Then she is just married, and looking forward and talking about her future with a house and kids, and again, gets reminded that she's going to miss the time she is in. Then it fast forwards to when she has a couple crazy young kids running around, and she has everything going wrong at the house at once, and then someone whose kids are already grown reminds her that she is going to miss this too. The chorus is "you're gonna miss this, you're gonna want this back, you're wish these days hadn't gone by so fast, these are the good times, so take a good look around, you may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this."
I guess what I am trying to get out is that although I definitely look forward to kid time, and I sometimes focus too much on it, I need to enjoy the time I am in now... because once we have kids, I will miss this time of just us.
Highlights of the year so far:
- In September, I started attending Joyful life for the first time. I have talked about going for years, and I always have attended church, but this is a Bible study with homework, but then after the study the group meets and talks about our homework for the week, and prays with each other and generally hangs out.
I am really glad that I made the decision to finally join. The regular group at our church is on Friday mornings, and I had always talked about how once I had kids, and wasn't working, I was going to start going. But at some point this summer, I realized that I shouldn't delay doing this group till then when they have a Thursday night study specifically for women like me who work.
I have gotten to meet a great group of women who all love the Lord, and who I get along with really well, and I have made a point of going to all of the extra dinners and events that the group has outside of Bible study too. Definitely a great new thing that I am currently doing.
- Other news this year: Blake has gotten in shape. I have to get a new picture on here, but he really looks incredible. He is down to 163 and only 10% body fat!!!!! For reference, he started at 240 with 26% body fat.
A part of this is that we have become faithful gym goers. I go every Saturday and Sunday morning, and most Tuesdays. He goes Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays and some Saturdays. He has a personal trainer, but more of it is that he has been eating much better. I really am enjoying my Saturday morning class, even though it is torture too! It is called Body works plus abs (at LA fitness) and oh my goodness do I feel the workout! But I also feel like I am really getting stronger too, and so I keep dragging myself there on Saturdays, which is a big deal because I used to only go when Blake went. I still weigh about the same... but its definitely still the healthy range, so that's fine with me.
- My class this year is the hardest year EVER! In my past three years, I tended to take care of all discipline problems within the classroom, only involving the principal in extreme cases. This year, I feel like I have a child in there every day. (More than literal the last two days, between today and yesterday, I have had three kids in to talk to him).
I have been finishing my BTSA program and will finally be able to say its done in May, and I am soooo thankful for that. I have made my focus this year on behavior for obvious reasons, and overall, I think I have made huge improvements in my class. All the same, I am looking forward to summer.
-Blake has embraced working outdoors (a nice side effect of his weight loss is that he has a lot more energy and drive to do things around the house and in the backyard), and our garden this year is looking like it will be even better than last year's, and I am sure I will have a lot to post about it later too.
We have a lot more different plants, and a lot more varieties of plants that we had last year like tomatoes and peppers. We also are adding to what trees we have. We have already added a blood orange, and we are soon planning on adding an avocado tree and a citrus salad tree too (its a really cool tree that has a bunch of different citrus fruit trees grafted onto the same tree, so that it produces some of all sorts of different fruits! See the video below if you're interested)
We have a couple blueberry plants too this year which is new as well. Blake even extended our "garden" space to on top of the lattice on our patio as too. (Picture to follow in a future blog).
Heh... I guess I had a good amount to write about. And plenty more updates to come on how our garden is doing, and on my two trips in April, my birthday coming up... there is a lot going on right now... and life really is good.
Sometimes it takes writing out what you have going for you to realize it for yourself. Now I just have to get it from my head (my logical side), into my heart (those pesky emotions).
