Saturday, May 9, 2009

Peppers, at last.

Hooray!!!
The hot peppers were apparently just taking their sweet time sprouting. Now the only thing now growing in our spare bedroom/greenhouse is the mix of sweet peppers. I've given up on them though. I'll just buy the seedlings from the nursery in a few weeks. However, Steve is FINALLY getting to till today. Which means onions will be going in post-haste. We planted a few strawberries by the patio the other day and already they seem bigger. I'll be transplanting the sunflowers soon too. They, along with the overabundance of zucchini, are taking over the table in the bedroom. We've actually started giving away the zucchini seedlings because they are so plentiful and MASSIVE. Apparently they will grow anywhere. Geesh. Steve has a few barrels of topsoil dug for me to make the zucchini hills (far away from the main garden.) So if you plan on visiting this summer, plan on leaving with an armful of squash. Our tomatoes are doing quite well despite being told by numerous people "Uggggh. I never have any luck with tomatoes! Just buy them at the farmer's market." But our 50 roma and 50 big boy plants are doing just fine so far. I can't wait to have a crack at my great-grandma's spaghetti sauce recipe, as well as my mom's tomato soup (which is the most amazing soup in the world. )

Finn has started organizing things, putting stuff back where it came from (except for Steve's cds, which he rips off the shelf with wild abandon and then just plain abandons them for someone else to pick up). The other day he was playing in the spare room while I was transplanting some of the squash into larger pots. I turned my back for a split second and BAM! He had overturned a pot filled with soil. While I scooped the soil back into the container, he grabbed another empty pot and picked little fingerful of soil off the carpet and placed them inside. So helpful. He also helped out Steve with our new fire pit. While Dad was hard at work, digging dirt out of the ground, Finn stood by and fistful by fistful, put the dirt back in the hole. Hahaha. He's too funny.

Oh! And we just found out that our friends Daryl and Jess and their handsome little guy Jonah will be staying with us over Memorial Day weekend. We've never met Jonah and they've never met Finn, so it should be fun. If anyone else on this planet has a dancing baby like Finn, it would be Daryl and Jess. Maybe it'll be a baby dance party. Steve and I have finally tossed aside our dancing differences (he does Lindy and I, gasp, do a "boring" triple-step). After Finn fell alseep, and after the Pens kicked some Washington ass, we threw on some music and faked something halfway between the two styles. I think he might even finally be willing to teach me Lindy. It's only taken three years for him to get over his annoyance with my ballroom training, but he's gotten there. Haha.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Time sure flies.

We've been in our new place for a month now. Finn is growing and learning like crazy. He has 45, that's right, 45 words. We keep a running list on our fridge. My personal favorites are "pickle", "baby" and "belly button". Just now he came in and informed me that he saw a bug. He's such a smart little guy. And he dances. Oh, how he dances. He grooves to any music, even random noises set him off into a fit of bum shaking. This past week we had our friend Liz and her 18 month old daughter Melia visiting us. They had such fun. On Friday we took them to the Children's Museum. And even though they were both beyond tired, they had a blast playing with each other and the other wee ones. Worst point of their visit (and it wasn't terrible) was Melia getting into the bath last night and we discovered a tick stuck to her thigh. It was easily removed, but we definitely need to get our backyard treated now. Finn went for a walk with us a few weeks ago and came back with a tick on his neck, but we assumed that it had come from the deep, dark woods. Not from our sunny, warm, wide open back yard. Yuck.

The garden has yet to get tilled up. We've been waiting,and waiting, and waiting for our landlady's tiller to come back from getting fixed since she had said we could borrow it. She finally called us today and reported that it would be back any day now, though this is what she said two weeks ago. I suppose we shouldn't panic though since our seeds just started sprouting last week. They've moved from our cellar shelves to a nice sunny table in the spar room. All our sprouts are doing nicely except for our peppers. Both our sweet and hot peppers will NOT sprout. Very mysterious. I may give them another try, but we'll most likely end up buying seedlings from a nursery. If anyone has any tips for starting these little buggers from seeds, it would be greatly appreciated.