+ JMJ
I haven't written in a month but it seems like so much longer!
My seeds never came in the mail. 
Sad days man! So all I have is my corn. But they are doing so well so that's awesome. And I finally came to terms with the fact that my other seeds aren't coming (after 2 months!) and today I emailed the seed company I ordered from online and I am asked for a refund. It's ok though, I guess, because I was over ambitious with the size of my "farm" anyways. Who knows though, sometimes I think if I had the seeds there and started them in peat moss and had seedlings waiting for plots, I would've actually done it. But I went on a few weekend trips and as weekends are my only prime times for farming I didn't get too far with fixing up any more plots. And plus, like I said, I had no seeds there waiting for earth to be planted in so it's like Ihad no motivation. But I am going to plant some more this weekend hopefully. But what can I plant in late May? Tomatoes and zucchinis and stuff. That's boring though. I wanted fun vegetables. Can I still plant the okra?
So I am getting a second job for the summer. I'll be waitressing at nights and working full time during the regualr work week schedule at the insurance company I work at. It'll be crazy and I'll be so tired all the time, but I want to save up a good amount of money because I have BIG PLANS for the fall! I am super excited about them and I will share them in another entry. Tomorrow I will show you how tall my corn is!! But I am getting tired now. When does corn bear fruit? I might not even be here to see it....that would be sad, but my family could eat corn in memory of me. Hip Hip - Hooray!
So yeah - even though my farm didn't turn out to be as big as I was planning, it was still awesome. It seriously saved me from the depression of just being in the city and working in an office. It was so great to have all that work to do in the garden for all those weeks. I've become so much busier lately though. And now with a second job I would never want to do all that work. But I will get to watch my corn grow and whatever else I decide to plant this weeekend. Sorry to all my fans out there who were wanting to see the progress of my huge project. It's just gunna be a small farm now. Corn and perhaps 3 other vegetables. Maybe it will inspire my mom and my sisters to work out there though!!! That's be awesome!
Anyways - goodnight. Until tomorrow (hopefully!)
Bethany
Sunday!!
I was in Vegas with the family this weekend. I visited my Grampa which was glorious. He's the cutest man and I love him so much. AND! me and all my sisters and my mom all saw BARRY MANILOW for my sister's 21st birthday! It was so so fun. We all love Barry! It was soooo fun.
YAY!!!!!! We are fannilows 4 life!
So anyways...that was totally fun. BUT! I didn't get to garden at all this weekend, obviously, since I was gone. But I came home and guess what I saw!!!!
My corn has sprouted!!! Happy days!!! I can't wait to prepare more plots this weekend. I love love LOVE the digging and laborous part for some reason. I better have my seeds by then as well so they can get started growing while I continue to work. I ordered them online over 2 weeks ago and they're still not here!!! Bad news man.
So yes. I hope to blog again soon with more progress on my garden.
Three cheers for BARRY!!! (HIP HIP HOORAY!)
Three cheers for CORN!!! (HIP HIP HOORAY!)
Hehe. God bless everyone, Bethany
I have to wake up super early for work tomorrow so I don't have much time to write about my farming this weekend (yes, I call it "farming" and not "gardening." It's much more exciting that way). But I am waiting for my laundery to get done before I can go to bed anyways.
My sister sister Kristen came over on Holy Saturday to farm. Before she got there I was super lazy and didn't start anything. I think I was so tired from all the Holy Tridium services and extra prayer time. Let's see...what did we do? We just continued to dig!! We dug out the grass, dug a shovel deep. Sifted out the grass weeds. Tilled the soil underneath. Mo came over and thanks to her I have Pictures. Thereare pictures of Kristen and I digging and sifting the dirt.
I also took a break to put on some lip gloss. A girl's always gotta look glamorous, no matter what she's doing!
The girls are so cute, and they loved Maria. She was so cute with them too. It was a really good day with Mo. We went to Home Depot and bought some soil after all the digging we could do was done. It was Becky's birthday so I went to Thrifty's too and bought her her favorite ice cream (Chocolate Malted Crunch) and a blue bow to put on it. Then Mo left to go to the Vigil. I wondered if I could make it to St. Peter's Vigil. I probably woyuld've been a lazy bum but Mo somehow inspired me to go to the Vigil. And I'm so glad she did!! It was so awesome and so beautiful. So glorious and joy-filled! It's sad days that I went alone and none of my fam was with me. But what can you do?
The next day of course was Easter!! Here's a few cute pictures of the kids getting eggs, as well as Joseph in his Easter outfit.
And here's Joe's outfit....
So cute, eh?! Those kids are my favorite.
So after Easter died down and almost everyone left, I went out and worked some more. It was very good. I got the area for the first melon hill all fixed. I will plant two hills with two melon plants on each, and each plant will be a different melon. Yum! I will have to start those as seedlings though. And I still need to cover that area with black plastic, so they will be real warm. I guess they grow a lot better that way.
And I finally planted something! I'm still waiting on a lot of my seeds but I had corn and carrots so I planted those.
In the picture below, tha largest roped area is for the corn, the second largest is for Okra, and the smallest one is for carrots. And over to the left is my melon hill, still under construction.
Like a proud parent, I am!
It was a good weekend. I'm just sad I have to go to Vegas this weekend. Well, I'm happy to be going witht he fam and for Kayla's birthday, but I'm sad to miss out on gardening for 2 whole weeks!
That's the end of this! I'm off to fold my laundry!!!!!
Happy Easter!!
He is Risen! He is Risen indeed - allellua! (That was for you Zeidler =)
+
JMJ
Palm Sunday
I won't go into detail about all the lame stuff we did before we finally figured out a system - that would be too exhausting and I shouldn't type for too long.
I tried just tilling right away, as in, starting on the top layer of the grass. that's what my mom said to do. But I realized that it just didnt till deep enough - not even close. I realized that all the work I did yesterday was in a sense pointless and it was mid afternoon on Sunday by now.....that's when I got discouraged and soon after that Becky came out. But anyways, here's what we are going to do from now on:
-Dig out the grass, a shovel deep. Have a big container on the side with a sift over the top (Aaron made a sifter for us with hardware cloth) and sift out the mega roots and grass but save that soil.
-Then when we have an area dug up, we till that cleared out ground, a foot under the surface.
-Then we spread out the sifted soil over that and add fertilizer, then till again.
That's sort of the way we did it by the end of the night and that's the way I want to do the rest of the garden next weeknd (we only got a 9' x 8' area all prepared - the rest we have to do next weekend. And on that 9' x 8' area I'm planting corn, okra and carrots). I regret to say that I didn't take anypictures today but I am going to take a picture of our little plot tomorrow.
Before the digging I went to Home Depot to use the gift certificate I had from my birthday. I bought a 7 or 8 foot pole, 8 stakes, some twine (all that's for the pole bean teepee). I also bought 6 bags of MiracleGro Organic soil, I already had 4 (the combined number of bags wasn't nearly enough) and some turnip seeds.
Tomorrow after work I need to put in the edges to keep out the grass. I feel like they won't go deep enough....but I don't know what else to do.
I need to buy big containers for next weekend, unless Aaron has some...?
I have blisters on my hands from shoveling. That's exciting. And OH MY GOSH, I am soooooo sore!! My back, my stomach and my arms mostly. It's great.
My sister said something cool today. It was during the time we were going through trial and error trying to figure out what was best to do. It felt like we were digging and digging and then putting all that dirt into a mountain and then just putting it back where it was before - it was so ridiculous! And she said, "Now I know why the Lord said 'Don't look back from your plow.'" If you stop and look at all you have to do your mind might go frozen and you'd become paralyzed, discouraged and give up. I agreed with her heartily and was reminded also of what Jesus told St. Faustina, which just proves Becky's point. He said something like, "Know that the greatest obstacles to holiness are discouragement and an exaggerated anxiety. These will deprive you of the ability to practice virtue."
I want to make a sign for my garden that has 3 scripture verses and then the words "The Rule of the Garden: Consecrate all work to God for His greater glory. Offer it all to the Virgin Mary for the salvation of souls."
Okay I gotta try and sleep. I have been trying for 2 hours, but I will try some more.......Here are the pictures
I am so proud of my plot!!!
+
JMJ
Sooooooooo, I am planting a garden and I am starting an online journal to record my progress. I decided on the garden a few weeks ago. Today as my sisters and I were digging someone commented that she was happy to be doing this, and I exclaimed, "Me too! It was born from my heart and from Kristen's brain." And that's so true. I was longing for farm life, so much so that I was getting down in life, and my sister Kristen said, "While you're waiting, plant a garden!" Happy days are here again. I don't know why I didn't think about that!! My spirits have been raised so much since then with all my planning and stuff.
Last weekend Kristen came over and dug up the wrong part of the yeard. She's so funny. She's so different than me. She just wanted to jump right into it without any planning - just dig and put seeds in the ground. But I knew I had to plan it out, even meticulously. I've never had a garden. Growing up in southern California I haven't had anything close! Yet it's in my heart - and I want to do it RIGHT. I am a perfectionist I guess.....but it's just more that I really want to feel ordered and confident in my garden. I had been reading about vegetables and there was all this stuff about spacing, and soil pH and the right time to plant for any specific vegetable. So I wanted to plan it all out. I did a lot of work on my garden planning...
Finally this weekend I got the rough dimensions figured out. I needed at least 8 feet of the back of the yard, all the way across. So we went out and tilled the ground and we're trying to prepare the soil.
It was a great Saturday, but short, because I slept in and then Gran came down from Las Vegas and we all went to dinner.
I probably got half of the ground tilled but I still have to pick out all the roots from that dang crab grass. That stuff is the worst!! I might have to till like 2 feet for all those suckers. Tomorrow I will do it more. Even though Sunday is a day of rest, gardening is NOT work for me. It fills my heart with peace and joy and it is a great way to praise God on a Sunday. Man, I gotta get to bed. We're going to Mass en la manana and then I am going to work hard. I just have to comment though that I LOVE the way the activity we did today brought us together. The girls were out there (Sam and Katie, 3 and 2 respectively) and even little Joseph (3 months) was out there. Becky and Aaron (my sister and brother-in-law; parents of the before mentioned kids) were out there too, it was great! Kristen came over from Laguna Niguel and her little 7 week old baby who, by the way, is still just a bun in the oven! It was a wonderful day with sunshine and family and dirt. I loved it.
I ordered seeds tonight. Hopefully I can plant the corn and carrots tomorrow because I already have those. The dimensions of my garden are 9 ft by 33 ft as well as some garden space along the wall on the side of the yard.
We will be harvesting corn, okra, carrots, beets, lima beans, black beans, kidney beans, green beans, watermelon, honeydew, cantelope, Yellow canary melon (never had it!), bell peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, swiss chard.
Yep, those are the spring/summer crops. The cole crops we'll plant in October....maybe sooner than that. I don't know. I cant wait for kale and cauliflower. that'll be so fresh and tasty.
I made a to-scale drawing of my garden tonight. I hope to till the rest of the earth tomorrow, go to the store and get some fertilizer and till that into there too, as well as buy a few small things, with the gift card Becky and Aaron got me for my birthday for Home Depot.
I gotta go to bed!!!! I hope I can put pictures up on this thing. Can I? hey cool...it says "add image" up there. Faaaaaaantastic!
