garden progress

Well, it ain't no Tennessee here, but it finally warmed up, and has not dipped below freezing for a number of weeks now, so the garden is shaping up to be quite the thing.  I see no signs of any herbs yet, which depresses me, but then again, the seeds did specify they were to be planted by 2006 ...  So, the boys and I have been weeding and seeding and praying and hoping.  We even enjoyed our own lettuce on the weekend.  The picture below is totally  "BEFORE" ... we sprinkled wildflower seeds on the part that looks like a telephone receiver, and planted four vegetables in each "square" of garden



this iris was a surprise from Neal ... and smells like the sweetest candy ever!



and a picture from a couple of weeks ago ...



I planted the "old lady", as Neal calls it, geraniums in the front to dissuade the bunnies from dining on my plants.  Oddly enough, this year anyway, they have decided to eat just the geraniums.  Perhaps that is still success.  It will be some time before I have tomatoes or peppers, zucchini or spinach, but when I do, I will have satisfaction and will have justified all the back-breaking work my husband endured to "go with" his wife's latest interest.  At least everyone in the family gets the benefit!

Now to fix up the "real" bed in the next room.  A bonafide actor is coming to rent it from us for the next theatre production in town.  He is coming from the big city of Toronto, and is actually famous, for real!  I hope he likes his room ... and I hope I can find a dresser between now and then ... ahhh, my family is famous for our experiments.  I guess we like to share.

what is happening to me?

I don't know what all you all have done to me, but just this hour, out with Neal at a tea room (where he happens to have a mini art show!)  I said the following:

" I'll have a hot tea, please."

good thing we Canadians (not Canucks) are bilingual.  heaven only knows what I might have had to drink if we weren't.

pictures of the chaos

You have heard it said that a picture paints a thousand words, so I will simply post the ones we took and let them speak for themselves.

this first picture was AFTER I was going to take photographic evidence, so it got worse before it got better (just to know)









Can anyone else see what some of these bags are labelled?  One is "stuff" and another is "random" ... does this give me licence to "stuff" as many "random" items I find laying out on the floor into said bags and, I dunno ... "bag" them for good?  At least they wouldn't find themselves back on these floors.  Boys, boys, boys, boys, boys.

my boys actually think they do chores

OK

I am not even sure where to start this post except that I went upstairs to do some more laundry (I spilled Alpha Bits on my white cut-offs.   White cut-offs because I could not find the jean ones in my size in the store Sarah recommended I check out while we were in Tennessee ... and I wanted to look just like her back at home, and Alpha Bits because I spent $5.99 on a light blue delphinium instead of on more food, and the flower got so rained on yesterday that it actually snapped in half and now all I have is a stem, some leaves and some potentially stained cut-offs)

anyway ...

I went upstairs to start the next load so I could hopefully salvage my totally current cut-offs when I stopped to actually look around me.  I was not surrounded by laundry ... I was surrounded by STUFF!  I do not even know who owns all this but it was vomitted all over the floor and all over the sinks and it MUST be Neal's fault because he tucked the boys in last night and HAD to have seen their room, too, but he said nothing!!

If I had the camera at home I would load you with pictures ... but it belongs to Neal's boss, and he kind of uses it during the day for work. (whatever).  Evan clearly is not wearing clean clothes today because he has a big target taped to the dresser drawers, and there are elastics and spongy disk things all over the floor and down the hall and in my bedroom.  His laundry bin (which was going to be THE thing that finally made laundry happen) is full of clothes, but they are usually just the things he didn't feel like putting anywhere else ... except it is on its side on the floor and I don't know what is clean or dirty because they supposedly do their own laundry (I do try to be firm).  His bed looks like it was hit with a low-flying tornado, but I think he slept ok last night.

While I was yaking to Neal on the phone, Evan walked by my room and announced that he has finally found his Abeka math book ... the last time he worked on math was last Tuesday he thinks.  Don't ask me ... I just live here.

Jonam had large, labelled Ziplock bags all over the bathroom floor from his Scouting canoe trip.  He filled the bags with clothes and necessities in case the canoe he was in tipped.  It didn't.  BUT his camping stuff is all over the place and someone is totally going to wipe out on the Ziplocks!  Someone has dragged a comforter into the doorway of their bedroom (they share a room which just makes everything look way more messy ... I think).  Jonam keeps covering himself with Calomine lotion for all the bites he got on the trip, and then whenever we ask him to do something, he yells "argghhhh ... mosquito bites!!!" which is code for something that Neal and I have yet to decipher.

Miscellaneous cups and bowls and spoons even though MY children NEVER eat anywhere but at the kitchen table.

All of Jonam's paints in the corner of his ... wait a second ... those are MY paints that I use to make my altered books ... and he is using them because he is going to be a special effects guy, making good, Christian movies when he grows up, and then he can always have yogurt in his fridge and he can finally be allowed to make that chocolate "toilet" cake that I never want to bake ( cake shaped like a toilet with stuff in the "bowl" part, iced white  ) Oh, yes, and the cheese will never run out and will always be for eating right now.

More clothing behind the door to their room ... cats laying atop the laundry I HAVE managed to get done so far ... I totally have to post pictures later, when Neal gets home because I am sure none of it will be changed from now until then (even though it will be 4 1/2 hours till we see his handsome face).

This all to say that I had a "conversation" with Jonam in the bathroom that questioned how it is that these disasters come to be in our home with such frequency when my well-trained son calmly agreed with me and said "I know, Mom ... we have such a high maintenance house"