i’ve spent the last two days working on a slight overhaul of E’s blog; checking for broken links & making some small changes that he asked for. i think we’re both reasonably happy with it for the time being. go check it out if you want to.
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i don’t think i will be posting a picture for Wordless Wednesday tomorrow, because i don’t have any pictures that are just screaming to be posted… but, something might change at the last minute.
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i’m so happy that Spring is finally here. i’ve been able to open doors & windows to let in fresh air & sunshine — glorious. i have seeds that i need to start sprouting soon. i can’t believe that it will be time to get back to the garden soon! i don’t have my raised beds like i was hoping for, but things will be alright. *must remember to put a pot of catnip on the balcony for the kitties.*
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2009 Called
Well, it’s been not quite a month since the last update on my little fledgling of a garden. Where I once had tomato plants, I now have tomato trees!
yay, we're huge, but we don't have any tomatoes...
I'm getting big and I might just make a zucchini after all
the slugs have eaten almost all my leaves, but I have this one lone pepper for you, but you might need to pick it soon, because it threatens to topple me over
sorry I'm so small, but tomorrow you'll see both my flowers open and a bee flitting about both of them -- I promise to make you a baby acorn squash
Sorry, about the quality of these pictures, but it was raining & I was shaking. The guys who were not pictured are still there, except for the Lime Basil, which was used for some pesto. The slugs have decimated my pepper plants. In fact, I picked about half a dozen off in order to not get them in the photographs!
This year I have two things working against me with the garden (besides the slugs)…I didn’t get seedlings into the ground until about one month AFTER I should have, but I didn’t want to worry about things being trampled when we had our huge ice cream, jazz, waterballoon & champagen party. The second thing is that I haven’t seen that many bees. This is mainly due to the fact that I don’t have a lot growing this year in the garden or the yard. But, with a little luck, when we get back from the Northeast Unschooling Conference, we’ll have some baby tomatoes & maybe a zucchini or two.
I believe this tiny baby snake to be an Eastern Ribbon Snake. He doesn’t have the black lines/marks on the side of his lips like a garter snake, but he does have the spotted pattern of a garter…any ideas out there folks? For what it’s worth, I have seen mostly Eastern Garter Snake adults around here, but I have seen a few E Ribbon adults…this is the first (of either kind of) baby for us though.
what a sweet tiny face
Glistening in the sunlight
Lovely spots & stripes
In the last picture it is in the bottom of a 1/2 pint mason jar to give you an idea of just how small this little guy is. I have yarn that is thicker than he is! Very sweet, tiny and fragile baby snake. We spent some time together this early morning and then again in the late afternoon — I found him in the same spot almost both times. Elijah and I thought about keeping him, but we don’t have anything to keep him in — though, feeding him my slugs from the garden would have been nice 
Looking over the balcony rail at my wee little backyard garden.
L to R; Zucchini, Purple Calabash (tomato), Black Zebra (tomato) & Purple Calabash
L to R; Acorn Squash, Asian Eggplant & diamond arrangement of peppers (Red Bell, Hot Banana, Sweet Ethnic Red, Ruffled Pimento). I used to have Basil & Lime Basil at the far left, but my sometimes-lawn-guy totally took a weed-whacker to them!
I also have potatoes, but they’re not in the raised bed. And to the far right of the first picture, past the tomatoes, I have a rose bush, which right now is covered in morning glories (which threaten to take over the whole raised bed – I have to keep them ‘in check’, but otherwise, I just let them do their thing).
Elijah lost his other bottom front tooth earlier today (I’ll have a picture up soon). He proudly come running downstairs and showed me. Now, what to do with the tooth since E doesn’t believe that a fairy would want his old teeth and I don’t ‘do’ the Tooth Fairy. Any ideas?
We’ve had some wonderful weather lately. It’s been nice to have all the windows open and to breathe ‘real’ air after the long Winter of stale air. Being able to go outside without coats and layers has been divine. This means I have to go make my garden bed ready for seeds and plants…I’m trying an adapted ‘lasagna compost’ for the garden bed this year.
We’ve acquired 3 new games for the DS. Garfield’s Nightmare, Hi! Hamtaro: Ham Ham Challenge and Lego Indiana Jones. I have enjoyed Lego IJ more than Lego Star Wars for some reason. Elijah REALLY likes Hamtaro, but anything that is bubbly, cute and Sanrio-esque makes him happy — I personally think the game is quite below him and was afraid it would be too boring, but the bubbliness of it all overrides the fact that there is NO challenge in the games. Garfield is a 3D platform game…is there much more to be said…I’m neither happy nor upset at the purchase, but it will probably go into the pile for trading or selling when we are done with it.
I recently remixed all of E’s sweats into fun mix-matchy pants and two tops all complete with huge pockets for stashing stuff. They make him happy and now I don’t have to look at boring old sweats everyday!
We got our tax return money and promptly registered for the Northeastern Unschooling Conference and finished paying off our bill for the Unschooling Cruise 2009 to Bermuda. We are excited and hoping to meet some really awesome people. That’s where our tax return money is going this year. I think next year, we are planning on going to California to Legoland and possibly staying and working for a week at Arcosanti before we end up at Legoland.
I’ve found myself overwhelmed with emails and discussion board topics relating to children and their eating and sleeping habits. I’ve already shared some on these topics here, but I’m forming some more in depth looks at why we fret so much about what our children are eating and when they are sleeping. Just let them eat and sleep as they need already…oh, I guess I can’t get away with just saying that…if only the rest of the world would accept that idea.
I think that’s it for right now. ha!
