I've been frustrated with my lack of writing, but it is becoming more feasible as Will gets older. I was hunting through old blog entries looking for a picture the other day and it struck me that I had more of a zest for life when we were living in the barn. I was trying to think of what was so satisfying for me then. I was doing yoga regularly and writing in this blog regularly. I was also, at some stages, quilting and sewing. I realize that I can't expect to be doing those kinds of things with a new baby, especially with a husband who is out of town for two months straight, but it's got me thinking about what makes me happy. Of course, the baby and Aidan make me happy, but I think I have to be actively creating. Nursing only counts for that a little bit.
We have a big flat patch of sunny grass at the back of our property that faces the mobile home park. I've decided to make a big cut flower garden, with mostly sunflowers. They might afford us a little privacy back there and maybe I could sell them.
I mentioned my idea to my farmer friends who are going to help me till the soil there. They instructed me to put down newspaper with grass clippings over it to kill the grass and soften the soil for tilling. I got two contractor bags full of grass clippings and laid it out on newspapers with Aidan around 5:00 the other night. It's right along the drive to the mobile homes and there was SO much traffic on the road. It's very slow, there are speed bumps, but the whole park was watching us as they came home from work. I don't like having such a public home. Wes ran off a short ways while we were back there. He's been VERY good lately, but he just isn't used to us hanging out back there and it probably wasn't perfectly clear what his boundaries were to him. He disappeared for a few minutes and then came running back like he was in trouble. I gave him a little growl so he knew that he had done something wrong, but soon the manager from the mobile home park pulled into my driveway. It seemed he had yelled at one of his tennants about having an unleashed dog, but it was not the tennants dog, it was Wes, so then I was responsible for him making an ass of himself. He was very civilized about it, I apologized briefly, but didn't make a big fuss. I was on the ground with a baby and a four year old, a bunch of newspapers and grass clippings on a windy day. He finally said, "what are you doing?" I might have been making a pyramid of coffee cups or balancing a broom on my head, the way that he asked. "Making a flower bed."
The farmer friends came over that afternoon and I consulted with them about the size of it. They thought I wanted a nice civilized row of flowers. "What if I do, say, this much space?" I asked, gesturing toward the bulk of the flat patch. "You'd be crazy", one of them said flatly.
Well, this is all a bit embarassing to me. I mean, they run a nursery and a farm and a landscaping business on the side and one of them went to Cornell for horticulture. I didn't discuss it with them anymore. I'm just going to lay down my newspaper and grass clippings and make my flower bed as big as I want to. I think I need something crazy and big and colorful and impractical and outrageous. The other asked me why I'm doing this. It's partially for a privacy screen, but I guess more to satisfy my need to plant something. And a little row of sunflowers just ain't going to cut it.
So that's my big project for right now. I'm doing a tiny bit of web stuff - my design for our playgroup finally got posted after almost a year and I'm designing something for our farmer friends.
Steve is finally coming home today. He's been gone for about two months. We've seen him some weekends, but these last couple of weeks I just gave up on driving down there all the time. It will be so good to have him home, but I expect it will take a few days for us to all sync up together again.
I was having a really hard time with Aidan for a while there, but something shifted and it's better now. We had one big blowout night that was awful. I don't know if he shifted or I did or both, but I laid in bed that night thinking that that was not the kind of parent that I wanted to be - that I didn't want our lives too be filled with that kind of drama. I'm not exactly sure how we've been avoiding it, but we have.
Will is the most amazing baby. He is enormous. I can't fit anything smaller than 12mo over the length of him. And FAT! I don't think that Aidan was so fat. I keep looking at the depth of his belly button, which stuck out a little when he was born so that I thought it might be herniated. He is smiley and vocal and always has his tongue sticking out a little with his big smile. He coos and ahhs and will have a little baby gibberish conversation with you.
I'm out of memory on my hard drive so I've been reluctant to try to put any more pictures on it, so I haven't been taking many. I'll try to get that cleared up and post some. It will be easier with Steve here.
Comments
Hey C - glad Steve is on his way home! The site looks nice, BTW. Have fun with the flowers - when I had my farm stand in Ithaca zinnias, daisies, gladiolas, and esp. sunflowers were really popular. Hugs, Mama
Yeah - zinnias are on my list too - some multicolored ones and there's a chartruse zinnia I've always wanted to grow. The other thing I want is the little red globe amaranth - it's called strawberry something.
Have fun with your flowers!!
I'm having an issue with my email, so I'm using your comments to thank you for the cool pen you sent me. My kids think it is very cool and very spyish, and I really really appreciate it. No more squeaky things can drive me batty!
Thanks!!
You know, if you can get ahold of some compost/mulch/topsoil you don't even need to till. You can just leave the newspapers and grass clippings, and then add at least three inches of mulch or compost directly on top. The newspaper will eventually break down, but not before it kills off all the grass and composts it, and the grass clippings will compost, too. The benefit of this method (which is how I do all my beds and has worked beautifully for me)is not only less labor, but also you won't turn over the old dirt and expose new weed seeds to the sun. You can plant directly into the topsoil/mulch and if you're planting something deeper, just tear a hole in the newspaper and plant under it. It works really well and it allows for huge gardens with very little weeding. You just have to watch for weed seeds that blow in rather than the ones (millions) that are already in the dirt. Makes great topsoil. And next year you can just add more newspaper (which is great for the soil, too) and mulch and keep building up your soil. No more digging!
The other thing I have experienced is great frustration planting sunflowers if you have any rabbits around. They wait for them to get about two inches high and then just mow them down. But this is only true of the seed sunflowers - not the ornamental ones. I learned this the long and hard way. (And of course, you have to think about deer - if you don't have a fence or some sort of "liquid fence", deer will undo all your hard work in one night).
Have a wonderful time with your garden! I sometimes feel like my garden is the only thing that keeps me sane. This is the first year that I actually feel like I'm ahead of things with it. Other easy flowers from seed that could be planted right now include four o'clocks (though they don't make particularly good cut flowers) cosmos, morning glories, chinese lanterns (watch out, though they'll re-seed like crazy)moonflowers, and marigolds (I especially like the little single french ones).
I just put in twenty new rose bushes. Nothing like the satisfied feeling of a long, sweaty day in the garden!
That is so awesome how the garden keeps people sane. I met a wild and wacky lady last year in rural Michigan.. we were camping nearby (6 months of camping!) and we used to swim in the lake she lived on. Her garden was about 40'x60' which I thought was enormous but it brought all of us together. We would spot her from our campsite and wander over to help pick the over abundant tomato area. She also had a gazillion sunflowers that the deer did eat a few times but she figured out what kept them away (and now I can't remember what it was!) and the flowers were allowed to grow to be seven and eight feet tall.
Anyways, it was a pleasure to read your entry cuz it brought back those precious memories! And that's what I think blogging is for. .. to stir up those memories from our past - pretty and ugly - and brew our future over them. Just a thought!