Island Mama

I finally figured out a way to make a swing using two of our trees and some rope. The hammocks are holding up well that way, so I sort of started looping and tying and with no real plan, wound up with a rope swing. It needed a seat so I stole a log from the firewood pile….

And hey, it seems to be working well enough!

Now if he could just learn to swing himself without needing pushed…

Growth has been happening at a crazy pace out there. During the week we were gone, it seemed like everything just exploded. And in the two weeks since we returned, even more so!

Before we left:

April-planted potatoes; salad beds 1 and 2 (planted three weeks apart).

Salad bed 1, for scale.

The day we got back:

April-planted potatoes; salad beds 1 and 2 (planted three weeks apart).

One week later (weekend before last):

The early-planted half of the garden: potatoes, peas, salads, fava beans, kale and chard.

And now:

April-planted potatoes, newly-trellised peas.

The excitement of watching out the window: “Plane! Plane!”

This was on our recent trip to Iowa, which has taken me a while to catch up and recover from. Six hours after these photos were taken, all four of us were throwing up in the first hotel we could find an hour into our planned four hour drive. We recovered, gradually, over the course of the week.

We’ve been back for over two weeks, but between the sickness of the trip and lingering blahs, and the must-plant-vegetable-seeds vibe going on since we got back, I’ve just not been on the computer much. There’ll be some more photos from the trip interspersed with more current stuff over the next week or two, I hope.

Picked for me by my oldest son. (Actually, pruned for me by my oldest son. He was desperately looking for things he was allowed to prune because he really really loves to use the pruners.)

We were having a frustrating morning. We were all getting grumpy with each other. We needed to go do something different.

I put a long piece of easel paper down on the ground and we splattered paint on it.

My idea was to run some of our outside cars and trucks around in it to see the wheel prints.

But that didn’t last long….. and then the shoes came off.

And my goodness did they have fun with their feet!!

And their hands. It quickly turned into a full body experience.

And after the first three sheets were filled, they wanted to do it again.

It’s May 1st, today we enjoyed our first garden salad of the season. A lettuce blend, baby spinach, baby chard, overwintered arugula, thinnings of early Walla Walla onions, and baby radishes.

It was good.

I’m thrilled to be starting to eat from our garden, and excited to know this is just the beginning!

Just for comparison to the last post… scale pictures of the salad stuff before I harvested:

The garden is growing! Despite the wacky weather we’ve been having, our salad mix and spinach are going to be providing us with our first (admittedly very small) salad of the season in a week or two!

The peas are coming on nicely too.

We also have fava beans, chard, kale (that was overwintered), onions, radishes, and potatoes planted. The potatoes are the only ones not doing anything yet.

Soon we’ll be planting some more of the long season stuff, and then we’ll be planting warm-weather crops: tomatoes and corn and zucchini and things. The salad and spinach we’ll be planting more of every few weeks, so we have a fresh supply all summer long.

Pink. And flowery.

I love ‘em.

I guess I’m getting more girly in reaction to all the boys in the house.

Well, almost a quarter. This is 8 squares of 17 across. There’ll be one strip down and across the center that is almost black except for the center square, which may be the same purple as the outside corner, or may be something as yet undetermined.