If I can make it through the day...

It's my last day of May session before I get to take June off! I'm tweaking final writing projects, and I am so tired of looking at a computer screen. I have really enjoyed my class this semester, but oh how I am going to enjoy waking up tomorrow knowing that I do not have an assignment to do over the weekend!

Maybe I'll have more of a chance to write tomorrow. :)

Quotable Moment

"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see."

--John W. Whitehead

(Thank you to my professor at Lee for quoting this the other night. I appreciate the sentiment. The picture, btw, came from when Christianna & her mom had a sleepover at our house over Spring Break. She loves her Uncle Josh.)

Gardening...Take Two

First, I have to brag on my husband. He heard my pleas for a better way to water our garden, and he rose to the challenge! We bought a system that is automated. On it we can set times, days, length of time, and hose to direct the water through. Basically, for the areas that we have our system set up we can water them as needed without having to do anything manually. The hardest thing about it is setting everything up initially and spending the money needed on hoses, connectors, etc.

The garden (now with new plants in it) is set up with a sprinkler. The posts & wire are for the cucumbers to climb, btw. If you look closely, you can see Homer in the left corner of the picture.

The front of the house has sunflowers. The hose in the shot leads to a box that holds a hose that I can use to water things in the front and a side bed (because the spigot is in the back). This is practically the only place for me to have to manually water except for my new bed around the light pole.
The front bed is snaked with double soaker hoses. Not pictured, the back bed also has a snaked soaker hose. My hubby did that and used u-shaped things to hold them in place.
On Saturday I planted some new vegetables and all of my flowers, and I created that new flower bed. On Sunday, I planted some more vegetables, our herbs, and tomatoes. Below are the herbs.
Here are some cherry tomatoes in Topsy Turvy holders.
And, so I don't completely bore you with the garden (which is pretty much finished for a while except for weeding and mulching), here are some family pictures from yesterday.

The beautiful Christianna reaching for her new Bible at her baby dedication. It's hard to believe that she'll be 7 months soon.
Me and my mother. She's wearing the corsage my sister got her for Mother's Day. Some people say I look like my father, and some say I look like my mom. What do you think? I look more like my mom than my sister does, I know.
Me and my hubby, Josh. He's awesome. ;)
I'm going to head to bed soon. I start back to school tomorrow night. Although I think I'll like the teacher and the class, I'm not looking forward to going back to night classes. Sigh.

Wacky

I'll have to share some of the more sentimental pictures from a great Mother's Day later, but for the night, I'll share my wacky pictures from the day.

A critter that climbed onto a bag while I was gardening.
Rolling about in the dirt and also begging for love.
A sweet little girl, looking upside down at her Aunt Amanda.

Weekend Update

Since I'm about to watch some SNL, I thought it appropriate to give you a "Weekend Update." :)

I won't write much tonight though, since it is rather late.

Today was spent running errands in the morning and then gardening most of the afternoon. We stopped by a local nursery this morning, and we retrieved some replacement plants for my seedlings that did not make it through the frost. I planted some seeds to replace others that weren't available at the store.

I have had TONS of flowers that needed to make it into various parts of the garden, so I spent a long time figuring out where to put those, digging some holes, and getting them all set and watered in. One of my creations from the day was what you see below. I dug a trench around a light/electric pole in our yard, filled it in with about 6 1/2 bags of topsoil, and planted some flowers in there. My mother will be happy to know that some of those flowers are Black-Eyed Susans, some of her favorite flowers. I thought it was appropriate to be planting those the day before Mother's Day. :)

When I haven't been gardening (or doing homework), I have spent some time making jewelry. There was a local bingo night fundraiser that I donated some of my handiwork to. The fundraiser is for scholarships in the memory of a 3-year-old boy who was killed by a hit and run drunk driver. Very sad story. His parents couldn't have children, and he was adopted as a baby, but was tragically killed a few years later. They raised $1450 for the Brady Singleton Memorial Scholarship. The parents award two scholarships each year to local students.

If you couldn't tell, the above earring and bracelet set are the colors and mascot symbol for our school.

Below is a bracelet that is a Mother's Day gift for my mother-in-law, Mary Jane. I can safely post it online because she doesn't do internet stuff. My mother, on the other hand, will not be privileged to her jewelry spoilers. :)
So, that's a very quick update from my week and weekend. Once the garden is a bit more finished and mulched, I'll get some pictures taken of it as well. Time for bed. I can tell my Benadryl is kicking in. *yawn* Tomorrow will be a fun day filled with family, and my niece's baby dedication.

Hindsight is 20/20

I've been flexing my green thumb this year, trying my hand at not only starting all of our vegetable seedlings from scratch, but also most of our flowers.

I've watched, waited, and checked the Farmer's Almanac, and I decided that the much awaited day to put the vegetables in had come. I worked for hours yesterday to get everything in the ground. It looked great. I had plans to take pictures today of yesterday's hard work.

I guess it really is my own fault for not looking at the weather, but I really hadn't even thought to do it...It's just been such nice weather lately.

So, when we awoke today we found that our weather dropped below freezing last night, and there was a nice shiny frost covering all our ground this morning. I put off surveying the damage until this afternoon...

As I wandered through my garden this afternoon, my heart dropped, and sadness turned to anger as I'm pretty sure I uttered a few words that I won't repeat here. I'm a very easy going person, and it takes a lot to make me mad, but seeing that my bell pepper, cucumber, and possibly even other seedlings that I have slaved over for the past few months were frostbitten and on their death bed, brought me to such a high level of irritation....Ooooooooh.

I haven't quite finished venting, and again, I realize that it is partially my own fault for not checking for upcoming frosts. I figured we were past that by May 5th. Sigh. Hindsight is truly 20/20.

We're going to buy a few seedlings this weekend, and I'll plant some new seeds again on Saturday, and we'll see where that gets us. Don't worry....I've already checked the weather tonight for my survivors. Having a garden has been a learning experience for me, and I'll certainly remember this for next year and years to come.

For the purposes of frightening my mother...

As I am walking out of our bathroom, I look towards the front door and hear my husband (who is standing on the front porch) say, "Hey baby, did you see this snake? Come here."

I proceed to walk outside, look to my left, and see an over 2 foot long, beautiful reptile stretched out on our porch. My husband says, "I think it's a Copperhead."

So, we proceed to call his co-worker, who knows something about snakes, and she said we could send a picture to her to see if she could identify it. Sure enough, she identified it, and she added, "It's a big one." We decided to kill it, since the bite from a Copperhead snake will most definitely send a person to the hospital (and probably mortally wound our cats). She warned us that it can strike within half the length of it's body (in our case, probably a little over a foot). As Josh went to get a shovel, it crawled into some wood we had on the porch, so it ended up kind of defensive once we moved some of its hiding place.

So, my husband, my hero, successful killed it with a shovel. I watched the entire time, praying to God that he wouldn't miss. Now, we're as nice as it can be when it comes to trying not to kill wildlife outside our home, and if we see black garden snakes, which are very beneficial in eating rodents (and I've been told, Copperhead snakes), we leave them alone, but when it comes to poisonous snakes, we don't play very nice. Interesting enough, this snake belongs to the family of pit viper snakes that account for the largest number of snake bites in a year. As far as I can tell, bites from this snake are not deadly to adults, just extremely painful, swollen, and nausea inducing. Mr. or Mrs. Snake, is no longer with us. I'm sure some snake lovers out are gasping in horror now, and others might call us a bit stupid since many people get bitten while trying to kill snakes (this one's defense mechanism is to stay very still unless someone encroaches upon his/her personal space), but I will sleep a little easier knowing there is one less poisonous snake in our yard.

And, just so I don't induce nightmares with the scary little guy, here are my babies, resting after a jaunt in the hot sun the other day.

Athena, looking regal & a bit snooty.

Homer, being his usually adorable (and needy) self.
Back to homework now! I'm trying to unburden myself from the last throes of my Spring semester. So close....