TREES!!!

With all the gardening that we were doing we decided that trees should be planted as well. We decided, of course, on getting two pear and two peach trees. We love fruit and we have a vegetable garden so the next thing was fruit. Micah did such a good job! He was so tired... I've plum worn him out lately! He loves it though I'm sure!

This is Micah hitting one of the stakes in so we could tie the tree to them so the wind wouldn't blow over. It gets a little windy here.
Here's a picture of all four trees in the yard. Well, 5 if you count the one that was already there. The trampoline is to the right. You can't see it in this picture though.

Pear tree number 1.

Pear tree number 2.

Peach tree number 1.

Peach tree number 2.

I'm praying great things come out of these trees! My husband did great with getting them in the ground, now I have to water it enough so it doesn't die.

More Gardening Pictures

I would've posted this earlier but I had the whole post ready to go and I hit Publish and it didn't go through. The page said hit the back button so I did and my post was gone! I went to edit posts since it's ALWAYS saved there. IT WASN'T. Anyways, at least I'm getting this posted now. This post is on my gardening that I've been keeping busy with. But first I decided to post a picture of my front yard.

Meems is on the right side of the picture letting the girls go down the driveway in the wagon. They have so much fun doing that. I'll post pictures later if I have time.

The green beans coming up, when they first started.

The green beans... these have been my favorite because I can SEE them growing the best!

Micah came home from work the other day with another garden box for me so I decided to go ahead and fill it up too. Here is my garden thus far.

This is the new box. I ended up moving that middle plant (squash) to the middle so it would have more room to grow. There's another picture of it towards the bottom of this post.

This is my purple tomato plant. The girls got a little carried away with the water the other day on the tomatoes in the pots so this one doesn't look too good. Hopefully it will turn around and do better.

This is the yellow pear tomato plant. It's got 5 little tomatoes on it. It's doing pretty well except that the leaves look kind of funny sometimes.

These are my green beans!!! They are getting so BIG! So excited about these... and Samara said last night that she likes green beans now... hopefully that's not just talk but that she's actually going to start eating them.

Oregano, Basil, and Parsley that the kids started growing.

Natalie has been a huge help with watering the garden, she loves it!

Carrots (I've been told that carrots, onions, and regular spinach are out of season so we'll see how they go. But vine spinach is okay.) You may have to click on the picture in order to see them. Same for the onions.

Onions

Peas

Green Beans coming up in my second garden box.

Bottom right, Elite Squash; Middle, Sweet Dumpling Squash; Top, Vine Spinach (I need a treillis for that!)

Baby Butter Lettuce

Red Bell Pepper

Green Bell Pepper

PLANTING

Over the weekend we went to Lowe's to get a few things for the yard. Alyssa and Samara were playing on a cart and it bumped Mara's chin pretty hard. Hard enough that a trip to the urgent care center was in store. She ended up getting her chin glued together, thank God she didn't have to have stitches! Anyways while Micah and Grandpa took her to the urgent care clinic Grandma, Alyssa, Nattie, and I stayed at Lowes to get all the stuff we needed. So I ended up deciding that now was as good a time as any to plant a garden! Yes, last minute decision as far as buying everything for it but I'd wanted a garden for a long time. My husband is amazing! He goes with me on these things... I think he has had a lot of fun building a garden with me.

The ground in our area is ROCK. So we decided to build an above ground garden. This meant that we'd have to buy a lot of dirt.

At the farmer's market we bought some tomato plants and a red marconi plant, along with some garlic flavored chives. This is our purple tomato plant. We decided to put two tomato plants in pots near the house.

These are yellow pear tomatoes. I'm excited about these. Maybe because there's already some growing on the vines.

Micah started tilling the ground where the garden was going to go. He had a hard time doing it. Like I said before our ground is rock. Here is the proof. These rocks came out of the ground. We tilled more than what the above ground garden was going to take on purpose so we could buy another above ground garden at the end of the season and put it up. I want to start out with something I feel I can keep up with first and then get bigger.

Old Grandpa telling Micah how to work the tiller. Micah struggled, the thing just bounced everywhere. He is such a good sport though! He did an excellent job getting it done the way I wanted it.

Taking a break... I am quite the slave driver! BACK TO WORK!!! ;-)

We had to put these metal things around the tomatoes so they wouldn't fall over. If you look closely (click on the picture to enlarge it and then click the back button to come back) you'll see the little tomatoes on the vines.

Micah got done tilling pretty late. Thank you baby you are awesome!!! We put the edging stuff around it to keep the grass out. Hopefully it works. It works pretty good for our bush bed out front so I think it will be fine.

This is the finished product. I didn't take any in between pictures... maybe because my hands were all dirty trying to get the 7!!! tomato plants planted, they're in the back. (We thought there was only two but in the two containers one had 4 and one had 3 in them so now we'll have a TON of tomatoes!!!) The two you see up front are a red bell pepper and green bell pepper. These were all already growing and we transplanted them into the garden bed. Then I planted seeds for carrots, green beans, peas, butter lettuce, spinach, and onions. I'm super excited to see how these do!!! Hopefully I'll reap a good harvest out of them! And I planted marigolds all around the edges of the box.

My BIG helper. She's growing up so fast. Nattie loves to use the house or her watering can to water the garden, the tomatoes and the grass, oh and the tree. She walks around with the water on and just waters whatever she feels like. I tell her to make sure she doesn't spray in the open windows!

Such a good girl. If you see the garden in the back you'll see to the right that there's nothing over there. That's where I'm going to put the other box when I get it. Maisy (our dog) learned pretty quick already not to go near the garden. I thought it was going to take more but she's really learned quick.

This is a blossom on the purple tomato plant.

The tomatoes growing on the yellow pear tomato plant! I'll have to take pictures of these when they're done. I've never had them before so this should be interestingly fun.

If you look very closely I noticed today that my Marigolds were already sprouting. These aren't in the garden box but around the edges of it. I'm super excited about them. I kind of goofed though. I planted these all around the box and now have no room to stand to garden. I may have to pull some out and maybe transplant them. I'll do it different next year!

These are the garlic flavored chives... yummy! I just go and get what I want when I want.

So that's one of the projects I've done lately. Hopefully it will turn out well or what doesn't turn out I hope I'll learn from so I can do better next year. I'm loving trying new things out!

Thanks Meemo, Old Grandpa, and Micah for being such big helps... oh and of course thank you to Syssa, Mara, and Nattie!!! They are helpful too!

This is what happens when tired girls watch one of their favorite movies!

They are my precious sleeping beauties!!!

Grandpa Ozzie's Surprise

The last month or two have been quite crazy! There have been a lot of little things that have happened and lots fo big things too! One of the HUGE things was a surprise visit from Grandpa Ozzie (who lives 22 hours on a motorcycle away, that's how long it took him to get here). It was a good time!

His goggles are starting to fall apart. I guess that's what happens after riding on a motorcycle for so long.

He decided to try on Nattie's hat.

When Ozzie comes he is famous for going to restaurants that have an enormous amount of food or he goes to a regular restaurant and buys an enormous amount of food. This time was no different. We went to Big Lou's pizza parlor. The pizza was HUGE!!!! We had about the size of a regular large pizza left over.

Samara getting ready to EAT! She ended up eating the same amount as I did (a whole piece of pizza!!).

Nattie taking a drink waiting for the pizza.

Daddy with the three girls waiting for the pizza.

Mommy eating the HUGE piece of pizza.

Look at the size of that thing!!

Our friend Eric getting ready to demolish his piece.

Mara amazed me.... she was really going after it.

Erin eating.

The girls love Grandpa Ozzie's motorcycle. They won't let him rest until he takes them for a ride. Alyssa went first. She kept saying "I wanna go on a motorcycle ride!" over and over again until finally Ozzie took her. She spent a month with Grandpa Ozzie and Mama Jay one summer riding the motorcycle around so she is a BIKER CHICK through and through now.

Ozzie and Alyssa getting ready for a ride.

Samara going for her ride.

Nattie's turn.

We always have a good time with Grandpa Ozzie! He is such an awesome Grandpa! Wish he could be here more often, with Mama Jay too (she didn't get to come because she had to work).