A garden Update

This is Alex's favorite dress.  I think it's hilarious and adorable.  While I cringe at the 90'sness of it, I'm glad she would rather wear this than something sleeveless and super short.

The garden is killing me.  Perhaps it's a mix of the garden, my bike and the heat.  I've set some goals for the summer and I've been doing really great, but I'm about dead from heat and exhaustion when the day is through.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday the girls and I head to the garden.  When I'm feeling crazy we bike (not because it's far, but because I'm always completely OUT of energy after a morning of gardening and it take 3 times as long to pull the kids home.)  We try to get there before 9am and are usually pushing 1pm. by the time we leave.
The main focus of garden time is weeding, although our peas started to produce about the same time they started to die from the heat, and so we have got to do some harvesting!  All winter I dreamed about planting peas so Alex and Heidi could pick, pod and feast on the delicious fresh peas.  I can tell you that the reality of it was better than all my dreams, although didn't last as long as I had hoped.
Using a hoe is exhausting. I've found that I can hoe all the weeds in a row in a matter of minutes but then I'm dead and useless for another 20.  Then the weeds grow back with thicker roots that are more difficult to pull and so I'm stuck hoeing which for me isn't a sustainable plan.  Most days I try to sit and scoot down 2 rows that are in emergency mode and then walk down a row or 2 that just need a few pulled to look good.  It's a cycle though and I can never stay on top of it.
The raspberry bushes are producing and so Alex is quite content to go from the peas to the raspberries picking to her hearts content the whole time.  I make her take a handful or 2 into grandma for each one she picks for herself- which she has actually been doing!  Heidi is content to stay inside petting the cats and ordering her Great Grandma around.

She was thrilled that I was taking this picture.  "It's like it's my garden and I'm standing in front of it" she said.

Friday's are watering days and thus become long and hard.  We use a well that pumps the water through a pipe and then into a series of mini ditches.  We then direct the water down each row by blocking off all other rows and forcing the water to go where it is needed.  The water then needs to sit in the rows for a bit so it can soak into the ground enough that we can wait another week to water.  Unfortunately we didn't do the greatest jobs on our rows.  The first row ditches are way to wide and shallow, so we are either flooding the plants or starving them.  The potatoes rows are wide AND deep and so they take the longest to finish.  It is hard and exhausting to shovel the rows open and closed and walk up and down the garden fixing broken patches and making sure the water is going where it should.  The kids LOVE watering day and are usually soaked and covered in mud by the end.  In a few weeks when the plants are bigger and we let them wander down the all the rows, they will enjoy it much more.
  This week we planted another row of tomatoes and a row of peppers- both sweet and hot.  We planted 2 rows of bush beans and then 3 or 4 rows of green beans in between the corn.  This way the beans can use the corn as trellises.  I also planted 2 cucumber plants amongst the corn for the same purpose.  The morning glory wasn't kept in check and has been strangling the potatoes.  My legs aches long and hard after 2 days spent squatting, ripping the the devil vines from among the plants.  I pulled up a dead potato plant to find a score of baby potatoes!  It was nice to find such a reward under something I had given up on.

Tuesday and Thursday are bike days.  The kid love being pulled around in the trailer and refer to my bike as their horse.  Last week we made a day of riding up the rivertrail and visiting all the parks between our house and Archie's.  The trailer acts as a parachute and so I was plenty exhausted after the 6 mile round trip adventure.  Each play ground was a castle that had been overtaken by dragons.  The children had to go and catch the dragons before we could move on to the next playground.  It was fantastic and I think it will become a tradition.
 This week a friend with a bike trailer and similar aged kids joined me and we extended the distance by riding to the library for story time and lunch and then riding up the hill to Kate's for swimming lessons! After the kids enjoyed lessons, we went to the grocery store for soft serve, and then the dollar store to reward good behavior.  On the way home we stopped by a park with a little stream running through a tiny forest.  It was a great end to a day.

It tickles my heartstrings to watch her pick raspberries in that hat and dress.  My little pioneer girl.  Oh and that hazy sky in the background, just about all of Utah is on fire.

Our new schedule makes the days go quickly and doesn't leave much time or energy for spontaneity, but it is very fulfilling.  I feel good with the exercise I'm getting, and the quality time that the kids are getting with me, and the outdoors.  Hot July is almost here and I don't know if either the garden or I are going to survive it.  I hope the girls look back on this summer with fond memories of time spent with their Great Grandma, and in the garden and on the bike with their mother.