The Great Outdoor Challenge

Have you heard of the Great Outdoor Challenge? It's hosted by Lisa over at 5 Orange Potatoes. Check it out and join in - it's super do-able!

This is Casey enjoying our favorite park. It's a perfect place to visit after school as it's on our way home. The first picture is of Casey standing on the root system of a toppled tree, stick in hand of course. The second picture is Casey pulling apart some rotting wood, looking for bugs - specifically, sow bugs. I've also heard them called potatoe bugs, wood bugs, and Casey calls them 'piddle bugs'. The third picture is of Casey's very grubby knees. This is how Casey usually looks at the end of any given day, which just affirms to me that it has been a day well spent! At about this time of the year, every year, Casey's pants are all becoming a wee bit short at the ankles, and/or worn through at the knee. It's perfect timing since we are well into spring - as Casey's pants wear out, he just moves into shorts and I don't spend any more money on long pants until back to school shopping.



Now here's Cody. This first picture is classic - this little boy loves peeing outside! If he needs to go, he'll find a spot and whip his little pants down so quickly I barely have time to protest, and then he's 'watering the plants'. Oh, the joy of being a boy! In the second picture, Cody is measuring how deep the pond is using a stick. This is something that he decided to do all on his own which I find interesting - the things children figure out all on their own, without prompting or input from adults. The third picture is Cody on his wonderful little wooden bike. This bike, without a doubt, is the single best thing I could have ever gotten this little boy. I plan on keeping this little bike forever - one day I hope to have grandchildren who can ride it!

The Joy of Gardening...

Well, we've got the first long weekend of the summer under our belt, and overall, I'd say it's been a pretty durn good one! The weather, for the most part, was fab!! So warm, so sunny...so much so that I didn't mind the rain today. It really felt like a 'warm summer rain' too...Ah, summer, how I've longed for your arrival! I did a significant amount of yard/garden work this weekend, and between the sun and heat, and then the rain today, it's incredible how much growing and blooming has occurred in just two days! Nature is truly amazing! I just love my yard and garden so much - I can't imagine what it would be like to own a house with a big yard in the front and in the back...oh the possibilities!! One can dream...

I've pretty much run out of room for any more perennials but I find it very difficult not to add something new each year...I think I'm going to have to invest in some large containers in order to fulfill my need to propagate.

Sidebar: When I first wrote that last sentence about 'propagation', I was going to be cheeky and follow with, "Stevie, honey, if you are reading this, don't worry! 'Propagate' and 'procreate' are not the same thing!", but then I looked 'propagate' up on www.dictionary.com and, lo and behold, it pretty much means the exact same thing! Oops! My bad! To me, propagate is a plant term whereas procreate is more of a human or animal term, but I was wrong! So just for final clarification, I used the phrase, "...in order to fulfill my need to propagate" in relation to my enjoyment of gardening and planting more plants! Nothing more! Okay. Sidebar over.

Finding more room for planting perennials is just one of the advantages of moving towards containers for gardening. The other advantage is that it makes it much easier to bring my beloved plants with me if we ever did end up buying a house. I hate the thought of having to leave any of my plants behind. I could probably transplant some of them, but others, like my Japanese maples and my magnolia are maturing and becoming quite settled. I don't know that they would survive any attempts made to transplant them. Oh well, for now it's a moot point.

One thing that I certainly fantasize about when it comes to owning our own home, is having my own vegetable garden, as well as a couple of fruit trees and some berry bushes. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of spending summers at my grandparents' house. They had a decent sized vegetable garden and I so loved going out in the afternoon with my grandma to pull up a couple of potato plants and some carrots, throwing the dirt-covered veggies onto the grass, hosing them off, and then bringing them into the kitchen to scrub, slice, and cook. My grandparents also had several fruit trees. My brother and sister and I would just pick up apples or pears or plums that had fallen to the ground and eat them where we were standing. I don't know that the raspberry bushes would have yielded enough raspberries to make a pie, but then again, we never gave them a chance to. We'd be out in the yard playing with the go-karts our Grandpa made us or building forts with lawnchairs and sheets and we'd frequently drop whatever it was that we were doing to run over to the bushes and stuff raspberries into our mouths - little bitty insects and all. We didn't care! We were children, it was our childhood, and ingesting small bugs was just part of the grandness of it all!

I want some of these experiences for my children. For now, though, as I said earlier, I really do love the yard and garden that I've got and I am looking forward to many happy days spent there this summer with my children!