I've been slipping lately. It's been a beautiful summer and I've been wooed away from the blogosphere by Facebook.
Dylan starts kindergarten in less than a week. She is incredibly excited. She can't wait to get on the bus, be at school, be away from the house. Her teacher is lovely, we met Mrs. Peters last week. Mrs. Peters gave Dylan a warm animated welcome and then excused herself to take another student somewhere. As she walked away Dylan stared at her in awe and said "I love her".
I've been working only on Saturday mornings for the last month or so, and before that I had a few weeks off. We went down to El Paso to visit Grandma (I'll post those photos in the next installment). The kids had a great time with Grandma and Tinkerbell - the fraidy-cat dog who decided on the last day that he actually liked us after all. We went to see "Up" while we were there. Both kids enjoyed it. Aaron has much more patience for long stints watching visual media than Dylan did at his age. The kids also did really well on the plane, and Aaron decided he was potty trained a few days before he left to go to El Paso. The kids really are getting grown-up now.
I've been doing lots of work in the garden this summer. It's a learning process but we're doing really well for the first year at it. I have so many big plans for next year's plots. I wonder how much we'll actually put into action.
Here are some photos of how things are going.
These were all taken in June when things were just starting to get moving.
This one was mostly lettuce with some beets, spinach, spring onions and a row of snow peas. We left 3 or 4 heads of lettuce which has now bolted and gone to seed. The seeds are almost ready for harvesting and saving.
This one had more lettuce, some carrots, peas and beans. Now it has some very successful zucchini, cucumber and our first butternut squash!
The potato box.

The pea tipi worked really well and was a hit with the kids. They actually ate their greens!
I'm now harvesting my coriander seeds, both for using as seasoning and for planting next year.

We finally have some tomatoes appearing
The cantaloupe vine is right beside our front door and trying to make its way inside!
A bright zucchini with its flower hat on.

We've had a few cucumbers so far, but it looks like we're about to be inundated.
The lettuce bolted and is now flowering. Time to collect the seeds.