Garden Edition...

Longue Vue Garden, New Orleans


Many of you may be in the same position...Grandpa/Dadio helped us get some great gardens started and would like us to share the latest news and updates. I would say we could start another Garden Edition blog but perhaps it would be fun to share on the family blog if we dare...the latest pictures and info...or tips would be great, too, since I am an amateur gardener and this is really our first year trying it out on our own since we now have a yard. Anything you've learned about growing a good garden or fun ideas?
Also, our yard has proven to be almost a bigger task to tackle as things down south tend to grow faster than you can keep up with, weeds and bugs in particular, and my husband has little interest or time to help out on such menial tasks:). Not to mention the leaves drop year round and if you cut anything that grows naturally, five sprouts grow back in its place! So, any tips on trees and lawns and weeds, pest control, etc... would be wonderful!

Elle helped Grandpa water a few tomatoes on the trellis, then we planted the rest after he left. Our front yard tomato has done the best and is now 2 feet above the cage shown below.



Joseph and the kids looking for a "palm leaf" from the weeds behind the garden. A small portion of the vines and branches we started cutting back and Joseph hauled away in 5 loads yesterday (pictures to follow). Our three trees sprouting.




Our garden a month ago in April. The squash type and cabbage are doing ok despite a few nibblings. The fruit kept disappearing but after a few re plantings are starting to survive. We also find two inch holes often in the grass around and sometimes in the wells with the plants every week or so and think it might be squirrels or rats.



Some of our garden pests...Elle wanted to keep the caterpillars as pets but around here they are called stinging caterpillars and burn like poison ivy if you touch them.

If nothing else, it was fun to post about our daily garden adventures. We have already had a dozen tomatoes along with the twenty or so green ones Hyrum likes to pick, some may never ripen:). Now the weather is very hot and everything seems to be drying up. We'll post those pictures in the next Garden Edition and could use any suggestions:). Thanks!

It’s been a while

Perhaps because I hate it when people don't update their blog or because I'm bitter that it was mentioned in the Priesthood session that we shouldn't waste our time doing blogs when we have more important things to do, but I have decided to write another blog post.

So can I tell you my new idea for my thesis? My past idea hasn't been working out so well with logistics. The problem is that I was planning on studying the meaning individuals hold with the home, how they dealt with modernity in how they constructed home. I was planning on spending hour after hour this summer interviewing, transcribing, and analyzing the rich data I would gain from bugging dear kind people. Problems?

• I have become a hermit since my mission and find interviewing people terrifying, especially perfect strangers.
  
• People would probably feel pressured to clean their houses when I was coming, and I would hate to encourage any of that.
  
• IT would take FOREVER in sandlot sort of forever way.
  
• Mormon living rooms all look the same.
  

Solution?

Do a content analysis of blogs, the new virtual living rooms, which may give me more information than a grand tour of an entire house. Also, I could gage my analysis and findings with a my blogging friends (you guys) and get your reaction to any findings.

• I can do it without talking to anyone, and if I do decide to, it can be through e-mail.
  
• I am not limited to gathering data from Mormons only because internet allows me to reach all sorts of kinds of blogs.
  
• An excuse to read people's blogs.
  

I haven't yet passed the idea by my thesis committee, and quite frankly I'm worried if it will fly. I don't' know if I should continue to look for effects of modernity such as multiple identities, individualization, or habits of consumption. I could also take a completely different method of analyzing the blogs for hyper-domesticity as a reaction against feminism, or expressions of emerging adulthood.

It's hard to say, and I'm still not sure if this idea would bore me to death in the end or if I would like it.

I thought I'd throw the idea out there.

The end.

me

This morning I woke up to James crying in his crib. Now that boys are sharing a room, I often Jonathan on top of him in the morning. Sometimes as I walk in, he will give him a kiss on the head to show he was being nice. Anyway, this morning, Jonathan was in the front room as I walked by and picked James up out of bed. I took James back to our bed and nursed him while Mike was sleeping. We hear from the front room:

Jonathan: “Mommy, Daddy, come in here guys.”
Me: “Come in here Jonathan.”
Jonathan: “I can’t move guys. I’m stuck.”

Jonathan has literally gotten himself stuck between the wall and the fridge before, so Mike got out of bed to help. It ends up he was just sitting on a chair- funny boy.

Cute kids

I need to be better about remembering all the cute things my kids say. One of the cute things Emmy has been saying lately is "Me no Baby, me Emmy" Because Gordon and I still call her baby all the time and are trying to cut that habit since she wants to only be called Emmy now. She also says it if we call her little girl "Me no girl, me Emmy." So we've been talking about who in our family is a girl and who are boys. Also I can't read a page on a book without her interupting and showing me all the words she knows by pointing and naming everything she recognizes on the picture. Also every larger creature or person in the picture is mommy or daddy and every little person or creature is Emmy.

Jacob is so inventive just give him anything you can connect and he'll make something. So our family room is often full of amazing hot wheel tracks, lego spaceships, wacky-wiggler creatures, plastic transparent connectors. He says so many cute things. It has been nice lately he is the one set on the routine. "one book, one song, one prayer, one drink" at night. Even if I want to read more books he says he is tired and repeats the routine for me. How nice.

Mary is learning responcibility and helping me with her siblings, cleaning her own room (though I still often will do clean up while she is at school so I can throw stuff away and simplify). She is fighting me less about doing piano and homework, starting to realize it is an everyday thing. She is in drama and enjoys reading Mouse and the Motorcycle with me lately at night. I still sing to her as well as the young ones at night. I might keep it up their whole childhood, it is a memory I hope they will remember.