So, guess what happens when you go away for five days, it's gloriously sunny for all that time and you have your sprinkler on a timer? Weeds.
WEEDS
The garden is OVERRUN with weeds. I spent half of Friday yanking out weeds and I still have some to pull. And that's just the vegetable garden.
On the up side, all that water and sun also brought up the parsnips and carrots in force and warmed up the soil enough that the kids and I set out two kinds of potatoes, sweet corn and popcorn (in seperate parts of the yard) and 16 bok choy plants that I planted in the seed started the day before we left and were already 4 inches tall when we got back.
My tomato seedlings are also going strong so in a few weeks we can add them to the patch. I see gallons of tomato sauce in our future since I started 24 tomato plants and almost all of them sprouted. I always seem to start too many tomato plants and then I can't bear to kill any so we have, over the years, had many summers with way, WAY too many tomatoes. But hopefully I have enough sense to stake them all this time, unlike in my first garden when they overtook an entire 4x8 foot bed in a giant tangled mass of tomato vines. That year I used an old screen door to dry, literally, hundreds of tomatoes (Sweet 100's really do make hundreds of tomatoes as it turns out). Humm, I wonder if I could coeruse Will into building me a dehydrator in the yard....
And in other news,
This is what a broody hen does when you try to take the (unfertalized you silly hen!) eggs out from under her. Although we are thinking of using her broodiness to our advantage. Watch this space...
And best of all, our dear friends Sean and Alicia welcomed their first baby, a girl name Arya Louise, into the world this weekend. Welcome to the family little girl. We love you already!