It’s time for one of those periodic “I don’t really have a project to show you, but honest we HAVE been doing stuff. Here: let me show you” posts.

Easter happened (umm….it was almost a week ago now! Hope those of you who celebrate had a great Easter!) Abe was the only one of my kids to hunt for eggs this year, because my big kids are so big (really, Gus is only eleven, but he doesn’t like to be grouped in with Abe instead of with Milo and Ari). But Abe made up for it by having three egg hunts: one with our homeschool group, one at preschool, and one at church. I procrastinated so much about getting him an outfit that I ended up ordering a Carter’s set via Amazon and paying extra for faster shipping. Target didn’t have anything I liked in his size. Also, he wanted a bow tie, which is not a request I’m ever likely to turn down.

And I got a picture of all of the kids in their Easter….finery? even though they weren’t looking for eggs. And weren’t willing to smile. Or put their coffees down:

Okay, so…house stuff!

I was going to do one big post with what’s been going on lately PLUS plans for the rest of the spring, but then that sounded hard, so I’m saving part 2 for next week instead. Have I mentioned that Dave and Ari are in a local theater’s production of A Few Good Men, and it’s tech week, and I haven’t seen my husband in weeks, and also that means I’ve been pretty much flying solo with Abe lately and that I’m TIRED?! Yeah. But I’m excited about seeing A Few Good Men, because I love Aaron Sorkin and my husband and son.

Anyway.

We’ve been spending a fair amount of money on house stuff lately, but, sadly, it’s all way too boring to blog about. We got the house pressure washed. And some trim painted. And some rotting wood replaced. There was actually a scare where we thought we might lose the cherub above the front door, but it worked out. Crisis averted. Phew! Christmas wouldn’t be the same without the Santa cherub:

And then, in slightly more interesting and fun to photograph news, we got a bunch of plants! We went to the nursery one day and, by total happy accident, they were having a 20% off everything sale, so we bought….everything. Or at least it felt that way.

We needed to replace some bushes out front that hadn’t survived last summer’s drought and heat (or my inability to remember to water things):

(our “lawn” is all weeds, but at least it’s green!)

The new ones are the smallest ones. I believe we ended up with two holly bushes, a camellia (or a gardenia? something that flowers), and then two blueberry bushes in the back there. So far I’m remember to water them, and I’m hoping that soon they’ll fill in that big empty space nicely. We also bought two more blueberry bushes for the planters on the front porch:

Then I realized that we’re going to be out of town most of the summer and it’s pretty likely our housesitters are going to be the ones eating all the blueberries instead of us. Oh well. One of them is looking kind of precocious and like maybe it’s going to produce some edible blueberries for us before we leave:

And then we bought fruit trees for the backyard! I’ve wanted to plant fruit trees ever since we moved in, but, what with one thing and another….but anyway, now they’re here!

It’s hard to see, but there are two peach trees and two apple trees. These were actually marked down from $30 to $20 on top of the 20% off sale, so that’s, what? $64 for four trees? That means we won’t feel as terrible if we kill them! But we also bought spray for them, and we’ve been watering them, too, so maybe we won’t kill them. We can dream, anyway. We have a giant, treeless backyard, so if these work out, there will be MORE soon. And more fruit bushes. So many things!

The internet said I should pinch off most of the first year’s fruit, so that the trees could focus on important things like growing roots, so I did, but it broke my heart. I left a few baby peaches:

I’m not sure if we or the housesitters are going to get those, either. But the apples at least are all ours.

You might guess, based on my ambitious fruit growing plans, that my big indoor gardening experiment has been a big success.

No.

The only thing that actually grew well inside, mysteriously, is this tomato plant:

I was thinking I’d transplant it outside, except that now I’m kind of curious to see what it can do inside.

The lettuce and spinach I planted on the porch back when there were still some really cold nights has done well, though. Next week’s post will talk a lot about the deck, but part of my plan out there is more of this kind of gardening….the kind that’s close enough to my kitchen that I remember to go water it and take care of it. Dave and Ari especially eat a lot of salad; I think it’d be pretty easy to grow enough more or less year round here that we’d rarely have to buy any.

So that’s what I’ve got for you right now. I have a lot of way too ambitious plans for the few remaining weeks before our big summer road trip, so I’ll talk about all that next time!

Save

Save