Why · would · anyone · want · to · read · this?

So in the last few weeks, I've been very busy and very bad about updating my journal! I've made several status updates on Facebook, but I realize now that if I look at those in 6 months, I won't have a fricken clue what they mean today.

So, I need to get some details down before I forget! This might be a bit random, based on my stream of consiousness.

First, my vegetable/fruit gardens: About 2 weeks ago, the strawberries started to be ready to pick. We went out every day to pick whatever was ripe at the time, and I ended up with enough to make 12 jars of jam, and get another huge bowl of fresh berries to eat. Unfortunately, we also had about a third of the berries grow rotten, which according to my research means we have a fungal infection in the mulch under them. This is something we have to treat now and probably forever. Plans are: keep cutting off infected stems as we find them, pull up a few plants to allow more air-flow between them, provide support for the plants so the berries don't sit on the ground, and get an anti-fungal spray from Gardens Alive! next spring.

The veggies are growing well, too, even in spite of the huge hail storm that swept through 2 days ago and ripped the leaves up on every plant we have. One broccoli was toppled, so we'll be eating that one tonight. All the other plants look like they will recover. We've been harvesting radishes for about a week now, and they're yummy! The tomatos and sugar snap peas have flowers on them. The bush beans are falling over...notes for next year: almost everything we planted this year need some kind of support. Also, don't plant oregano behind broccoli. :) It is in the shadow and not growing as well as it could.

NJ's ballet classes are done for the year, but her recital is still coming up this weekend. Friday night is dress rehersal, and Saturday afternoon is the presentation. Also going on this weekend - Landsknecht, our SCA camping event at the Homestead. So, I've got to drive up to Lehighton, set up camp, drive down to the dress rehersal, and back up to Lehighton Friday night. Then Saturday at lunch time, head BACK to the recital (in Souderton), not returning back to the event until dinner time. Then pack up and come home Sunday morning! And poor DH is going to miss all this, keeping SA and Cleo with him at the event so they don't disrupt the recital. Oh yeah, I also need to organize the raffle going on at the recital. HA HA HA! Will I EVER learn to say NO?

My first book club meeting was REALLY fun. I love our club! We have such a diverse membership of great people! I can't wait for the next meeting. :)
The best part of the night was when my wonderful sis-in-law gave me her Princess House Vintage Garden tea set...pot, cups, saucers, cream/sugar containers and serving caddy. She is TEH AWESOME! :D Now I can't wait to have my next tea party :D

Speaking of which...I will be serving tea to our guests over the July long weekend. We're having a weekend-long party with close friends and their children...so it should be a fun-filled chaotic weekend, and I'm really excited about it! But it means that coming home from the event this weekend cannot result in our usual "dump all the camping crap in the house until the next event". Nope, we'll actually have to CLEAN IT UP this time. Can't have our guests think we're complete slobs!

I can't remember what else I wanted to discuss, so I guess I'll wrap this up now and come back later for more updates.

So I went out in the wet jungle-like grass to inspect my garden this morning. We've had nothing but rain for 3 months...er, days...and I wanted to see how over-grown the weeds had become.

I was very excited to see 4 neat rows of seedlings in the "Radishes" square. Hooray!!

Last week sometime - I now forget the exact day - I took the opportunity of being at home to get my eldest DD out there, and we planted 16 carrots and 16 radishes in 2 square foot sections. Last weekend, I also purchased (yes, I know - there was a mixup and the free ones I was supposed to get didn't materialize) two tomato plants. One was free from our local florist, and its called "Dan's Favorite", so who the heck knows what that will taste like. It is a regular old red, big, tomato style. The other is a sweet grape tomato which NJ loves. I also started four more sugar snap peas. Out of the first four, only two have started to grow. The other two are either very late, or aren't gonna make it at all. *shrug* Oh well.

The broccoli are doing great, there are four oregano and two parsley that have been out there for a while and are thriving, and one basil plant that looks a bit pale, but seems to be ok.

This weekend will be spent mostly weeding. I think the plan is to start another batch of carrots and radishes in about a week and a half. Then I also get to start the beans, cucumber and cantelopes. After that, no new plants will be added - it'll just be maintenance until harvest time!

So far, my experiment is going well. It hasn't really taken too much time to care for this garden, and the fruits (rather, vegetables) of my labour are well worth the investment of that time. Hopefully the weeding necessary to keep this bed growing won't make me change my mind. :)

So, I got the "job" at the library. I'll be meeting with the director this afternoon at 2 to discuss "possibilities". Nothing fancy, my friend! Just whatever free HTML template I can find that I like, a few pictures (which I'm asking DH to take today while we're there), and basically the links that are there now. Plus a new calendar. (Thanks to Google, I can embed an actual calendar in the website, without working with HTML tables).

We've also been getting quotes for installing a fence in our backyard. I'm not really sure we can actually afford it. First quote came in at about double what I'd like to spend. Still waiting on the second, and the third consultant is coming today also. With taking a few days to make a decision and then booking it, we're probably looking at June for an installation by now anyway.

Yesterday we managed to spend some time out in the yard, despite the lack of fence, with the dog and kids. Got the grass mowed, mostly...looks like this year we'll need yet another new weed-whacker...does anyone have one that has actually lasted more than 6 months?? Every one we buy dies in no time. Very frustrating. Anyway...I checked the veggie garden: Broccoli is still alive, nothing else is sprouting yet except a few microscopic weeds. *sigh*

I decided I definitely need more early-spring flowers in my garden. I'm so desperate for some COLOUR! We had a couple of brief days of crocus, and ONE batch of daffodils are up. Other than that...its all just green. I'm okay with that, at least its not brown. But still, some pink would be nice. :)

The rest of this weekend will be spent getting ready for next weekend's SCA event. We're not camping, but we will be sleeping in an outdoor cabin with no furniture...so we need to pull out a few things. Great part is, we won't have the kids with us (just way too cold for them to sleep outside yet!), so we'll be able to stay up late, or go Geocaching in the morning, or separate and do things we're interested in without "saddling" the other parent with them, or whatever! I'm really looking forward to it, especially with the addition of our bestest friends being there, too. :D

Veggie garden is ready for plants!

NJ took this picture for me from the top of her playhouse ramp:

This is how the veggies will likely be planted:

Wish us luck! :D

I don't know why, but I FEEL hungover this morning. I'm not...I had one drink with alcohol in it yesterday, at about 5pm. No way am I hungover from THAT. But, my head aches, my body aches, and I feel like crap.

Anyway, if the weather cooperates, I'll be outside a while today, prepping our veggie garden. I need to turn the soil, rake it flat, and then measure out 1-foot squares. Last weekend I planned out all the veggies we want to grow, when they would need to be planted, how much room they would need - all according to "The Square Foot Garden" technique. If this guy knows what he's talking about, we'll have a lot of fresh-grown veggies this summer, in our tiny little plot (6x7)! If it works well, we might expand it a bit next year to have enough for canning...but that's really getting ambitious.
I sat down and wrote out all the things we need to do each weekend on the family calendar. A lot of items clash with SCA events, birthday parties and other travel plans. I suspect our garden won't do as well as we'd like, unless we (and I mean mostly DH) do a lot of work during the week (weeding, tranplanting, harvesting). Luckily, too, my MIL does a lot of her own gardening, and tends to start more seeds than she needs, so we'll be getting a lot of transplants from her...which saves me a lot of time and work!

I've also been slowly working away at my pile of sewing projects. I found out that many dresses I had made for NJ will fit SA with only slight modifications needed (mostly hems). So YAY! for not needing to do as much. However, the flip side of that means, of course, that NJ needs bascially an entirely new wardrobe to get through Pennsic...that means at least 7 distinct outfits to last 10 days. We found 2 that fit her now. I also wrote down a list of what I wanted to have next Pennsic right after we got home from last Pennsic - smart of me, eh? - and so I've started working on the 5 new chemises and 3 surcoats. My cloak is lined, finally (after 8+ years of wearing it without lining or clasps). I fixed up my rust-brown dress, which is the first dress I ever made. While it has many "not right for medieval re-creation" things about it, I think it is still my favorite item to wear. I get many compliments from it, and its warm, and I can "change it up" with surcoats over top of it. I just need to figure out what kind of headgear would be most appropriate to wear with it.

Anyway, today I want to get a few minor details on these projects taken care of, so they can move upstairs to the attic in the "ready to wear" garb pile. I also need to do laundry, clean up the house in prepapration for the party we're throwing next weekend, and keep my tabs on what's going on at work today (major application upgrade that I've been working towards for 6+ months now).

Guess I should start with another cup of coffee and a shower...

What comfort means to me:
I'm so happy and content with my life, that I have nothing to write about in a journal. ;)

Sorry its been so long, LJ! I've been busy, but in a non-frantic way. We have been making plans for the future, and I am happy to do that.

We're going to be attending at least 5 SCA camping events this summer, so I have a lot of sewing to do for the girls. I'm sure they've outgrown anything that fit them last year! I also have a bit to do for myself, as I want to have a few more comfy and cool dresses for Pennsic. Since sewing is my absolute favorite hobby, I'm really excited about all the projects I have planned!

We're also planning a vegetable garden this year, which I really need to get moving on before it's too late. I think we need to start tomatoes now...gotta look up my book again :) Since gardening is my second favorite hobby, this is cool, too!

We're also discussing schooling plans for NJ, visiting family plans, other hobbies like geocaching and woodworking, and when are we going to go back to the Jersey shore or Disneyworld? Whew, busy! :D

Work is also going well. My project is still not officially funded, but we're probably within 2-4 weeks of having all the contracts signed and funding allocated. I met with the President of IT on Monday, and it was a very positive meeting. He told us that my project will be one of only 6 across the entire company (J&J Pharma sector) that are above the 10MM level, which means that ALL levels of management will be watching its progress. That was the not-so-subtle message to not F*&( it up. :) My IT VP (whom I love) also complimented me highly in that meeting - saying that she's seen my previous work and relationship with our business partners, and feels that I am "the best choice" for running this project successfully. (She was including the Program Manager, C, in this as well, but she definitely meant it for us both).

Anyway, life is good and exciting and fun so far...so I'll be back later when I find time, or something to bitch about, again! :D

Upon my return home from Canada on Tuesday, I realized that I had not been handling the stress of the last month very well at all. Verge of mental breakdown, and all that. So I called in to work to take my Condolence Leave (3 days). The last 3 days have been wonderful to relieve much of my stress.

We've been working on the house, cleaning up the yard, gardening, getting ready for planting new strawberries, etc. I even started lifting weights with my DH, and I'm now at 2 days in a row (yay me!).

Yesterday we started talking (again) about my wishes to replace the patio. The railroad ties are so defunct that they are posing a hazard now. If someone stepped on one in the wrong spot, it could mean broken bones or chemical-laden splinters requiring an ER visit...which I don't want. We've been wanting to replace them for 2 years now, and something must be done. However, we just cannot afford a whole new patio to be built.

So, DH came up with a (frankly) brilliant idea. It may not stay forever, but we're going to instead replace the broken slate tiles with grass. We'll just have the ties replaced by the stone wall this year, hopefully with the wiring for some low-voltage lighting. We will use our Stimulus Package check for most of it, which means we won't have to scrimp and save for very long. Hopefully. This all depends on what the quote comes back as, of course.

Then I came up with another brilliant idea. I found out that Big Lots had a screened gazebo for $200 (10x12 feet), which was the cheapest we could find after searching all other gardening places. So DH went out, bought it, and a few more solar-powered lights for around the garden and walks...and a cute little surprise for me. It's a solar-powered set of dragonflies. Its cute by day, and at night, the lights come on at random times. It twinkles!! We decided we need about 15 more of these ;) Now my $10,000 patio revamp should cost less than $3000 total.

Tonight was only slightly too chilly to sit out and enjoy the scene past 9:30pm. Please make it summer soon!

Last weekend, (not this past one, but the one before), hubby and I spent about 40000 hours on our gardens. At least, that's how our muscles felt afterwards.

First, Saturday. We dug up the front bed which looked kinda like this:
( not a real before picture, but close )

It contained something in the order of 800 (not exaggerating) daffodil bulbs. I know we only had about 50 flowers this past spring, cuz I counted when I dead-headed them. Very over-crowed and choked. We gave away nearly 200 bulbs, and replanted about 100 in this bed. (  Now it looks like this: )

Sunday we were talking about how we want the backyard to look after our patio is done. For some reason, we got to talking about replacing the fugly privet hedge, and DH got it in his head to try to pull out the bushes by hand. Surprisingly, they came out quite easily (at least, the first 2 he tried). To my utter astonishment, we proceeded to rip out the rest of one side of the hedge in one afternoon, and replace it with lilacs. We filled in the rest with lilies that we had growing inconveniently next to the garage, and I planted another several hundred daffodil bulbs in there. Next year we hope to have daylilies and other colors.

( Here are some before shots (sorta in the background) )

( And here is how it looks now )

I realize it's really open to the neighbour's yard now, but in a couple more years it'll fill in nicely. :) I can't wait to have a party in our backyard soon!!