Our first veggie garden disappointment (and some cute pics)

We're been working outside...Cadie's work basically consists of keeping her hat on and carrying her Elmo ball around. Matt's working on redoing the beds at the front of our house.

I've been working on my veggies. My tomato and pepper sprouts are doing great; the zucchini looks good. I'm not really sure how everything else is - we've got sprouts but they don't seem to be growing as quickly as they should.

It was time to harvest the radishes this week. I dug them up to find...nothing. All scraggly roots, no radishes. Seriously disappointing. See? We had a couple of weirdly hot days that I think must have messed them up. Boo.

Cadence discovers PlayDoh

We needed something new and different to do after breakfast on Wednesday. Cadence had gotten some PlayDoh eggs during the egg hunt at our friends' house. I was hesitant to get them out because I made some play dough a couple months ago and she did not get it. But she was very interested to see what was in the eggs and once I showed her how it worked, she had a great time.

Her future's so bright, she's gotta wear shades

She's a cutie, our girl. And we certainly believe her future will be bright. We just have no idea where that future is going to play out. It's looking unlikely that Matt will find a full-time job in the area we live now. At least not anything anytime soon. Understandably, he's hesitant to take a church position that doesn't feel totally right, so he's already turned down one full-time position that we really felt he was not the guy for.

Maybe he can string together enough part-time stuff for us to get by and not have to move - that would be fine. He's got a job parking cars at the Furniture Market next week. And Matt's really enjoying helping out with the music ministry at the church we've been attending. The pastor would love to have him on staff, but they have very little money to pay.

Matt does however, have some prospects outside the area. He's interviewing this week in Chapel Hill and a church in Washington state would like to fly him out for in-person interviews. (I am not in favor of that. It's very far away.)

I know people are faithfully praying for us. Please continue. We want to make the right decisions.

Easter 2010-pictures of Cadie

Cadence loves the ducks

Seriously, she's become a little obsessed. We visited the park by the lake that's close to our house one day last week. She likes watching the ducks so much, she doesn't really care about the playground with the kids and the swings - which normally would command her attention. It looks like she's feeding the ducks, but she's not. She's just eating her snack while we watch them swim. The city has very strict rules about not feeding the wildlife.

There's a little retention pond in our neighborhood that we've been visiting too. There's some ducks there, but mainly geese. They honk very loudly whenever we visit because there is a mama goose sitting on some eggs by the edge of the pond. So, Cadie calls them the honk-honks, and she really likes to talk about them whenever we are outside.

sprouts!

Today we have radish and tomato sprouts! (The radishes are outside; the tomatoes in.)

Our adventures in growing veggies begins!

Last year I was really excited to have a garden. Really since we bought our house with a biggish backyard that gets good sun, I've been daydreaming about it. But I got really serious last spring, and I read two books that really helped me formulate a plan - Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew (there's also a pretty helpful square foot gardening website) and The 20-Minute Vegetable Gardener by Tom Christopher and Marty Asher . Both books advocate building raised beds with a special mix of soil so you don't have to do lots of digging and weeding to grow veggies. Last spring we just couldn't find the time with a little baby and both working full-time. But this year, with me working at night and Matt unemployed, we could do it!

So last week with Dassa here to help entertain Cadie, Matt dug out a 4 ft by 4 ft patch in our lawn, built me this raised bed, filled it with the prescribed mix of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite, and then made a nice square foot grid with nails and twine. Cute, huh?

Today we got started planting seeds. Don't worry, Mom, I checked the frost date and we only planted the stuff that can tolerate a little cold. Here's the list of what's in the ground now: spinach, broccoli, carrots, radishes, cilantro, lettuce, basil, and cucumber. (The tomatoes and peppers are coming later.)
Here I plant carrot seeds while Cadie plays with the dirt.
She really liked the dirt. I know it looks like she may be eating dirt in this picture, but she wasn't, we promise. We did let her hold the little spade for a minute and she licked it (I guess it looked like a spoon?). We were both right next to her when she licked it and quickly took it away and said "Ew - not for eating." By the look on her face, I don't think she'll try that again.

Tomorrow is supposed to be 65 and partly sunny

So we will be planting the first of our seeds in my brand new square foot garden. Pictures tomorrow - hopefully!

Saturday - just us girls

It was just me and Cadie today and we had a great girls' day. We went to the library and played outside before it started raining. We read books - Cadie apparently likes having 2 going at a time, as demonstrated here. She comes by this honestly. (I talked to my Dado today and he said he had at least 12 books going in his reading nook right now.)

Just a bit later, she was playing with her babies, giving them water, hugging them, etc. Then, for some reason, she got a mop and went to work on the floor, while still carrying her baby. That cracked me up. Multitasking already.

Cadie's been feeling domestic...

Been pretend cooking (sorry the picture is sideways - still having some computer issues and I'm just too busy to take the time to fix it). I am on the lookout for an affordable (very affordable as we're on the unemployed husband budget around here) play kitchen, because I think she would really like it.
And, all on her own, I turned around yesterday to find her pouring tea for her babies. Cute, huh?