It's gonna be worth it next year.

Quick baby update:  JJ will be seven months old on Monday.  *blinks*  He's getting heavy, over seventeen pounds now, and you can see it.  On both of us.  I'm putting on muscle from toting the little monkey around all day.  We've started in on the solids, and most things so far are going over just fine.

The broccoli was a big hit. :)

So... on to wider things...

When I was a kid (like, four), my mother had this really extensive fruit and vegetable garden.  Raised beds, separate asparagus and strawberry patches, trellis setups for peas and green beans and cucumbers, sapling fruit trees along the driveway, the works.

I had this little 3" deep section at one end of one bed, where I grew giant sunflowers and zinnias and radishes.  It was fun.

Twenty-five years later, I'm finding out just how much WORK went into establishing that garden, because I'm trying to put a similarly sized one in at our current home.  Not doing raised beds, since the soil is pretty good as it is, just planting straight in the ground.

That's the plan anyway.

See, right now, the yard looks like this:

My adorable son in the foreground...

... and grass, all the way to the fence in the waaaaaay way background, except for one strip of flower-bed about three feet deep that took a solid month to rescue from hip high weeds because I had to work around half a dozen peonies and several burdock plants.  The flower-bed is finally cleared, and I've gotten started on the grass.

THAT, my friends, is putting up a fight.

I don't have a sod-kicker, and can't afford to rent one, so my only real option (because I am so not soaking close to a thousand square feet in chemicals) is to actually dig out the grass.  

With a shovel.

One.  Square.  At a time.

This is grass that was laid as sod over twenty years ago, when John's grandmother got past where she could keep up with the garden.  Over the last two decades, it's gotten itself nicely incorporated into the underlying soil, and managed to get invaded by dandelions, three different kinds of clover, and even the occasional thistle.  So when I say digging, I mean that getting a foot-square chunk loose takes about ten minutes.

I can't do long strips or mats like you see sod in at the garden center, because I have to be able to manage them by myself.  Means I'm limited to about 18" wide and 24" long, max.  

So every day, once JJ goes down for a nap, I slather on the sunscreen, pin my sun hat to my hair, and head out to sweat some more.  

I've settled on a process of cutting the squares and flopping them grass side down onto the next row.  In about a week I'll start circling back to knock off the loosed dirt and toss the (by then hopefully) dead grass into the composter.  

Then, of course, I have to get the in between rows.

*headdesk*

Here's what it looks like now:

By the end of July I want to have the grass cleared out to where the composter is standing.  I've pretty much given up on getting anything planted this year, just going to get rid of the grass and focus on building the soil now that I have my ComposTumbler back.  Also ordered a few pounds of seed to put in a green fertilizer crop that will keep the weeds down, capture all that lovely nitrogen I'm stirring up, and loosen up the deeper layers of soil.  That way next spring I can just till the whole mess under as soon as the ground thaws, and have a nice big garden ready for planting as soon as the weather gets decent.

Big job... but it's gonna be worth it next year.

Right?  *whimper*

Tell me I don't exercise.

Go ahead.  Really.  I dare you.

See, I love to garden.   Absolutely love it.  There's just something about weeding that lets me get all my grumpies out.  (Someone remind me to vid that song ... according to my husband, it's incredibly cute.)

Then once the weeds are all ... *cough* relocated...  (Picture me attacking two-foot tall weeds with a mad cackle)... there's the peaceful planting and watering and waiting for stuff to grow.  Generally food.

Yeah... not really into growing flowers just for the sake of growing flowers.  When I do, it's things like Russian Sage that take pretty much zero maintenance. 

Oh, I have had my decorative flower beds, but they generally stay that way only as long as those few flats of "4 for $1" flowers manage to survive the summer heat, then they get converted to more useful things.  Herbs.  Radishes.  Carrots.  Stuff we can eat.  Because what is more awesome than realizing you want salad on the table for dinner, walking out into the yard, and harvesting all the ingredients ten minutes before you eat them?  Not much, I say.  Not much at all.

Where is this going, you ask?

Don't mind me, I ramble a bit when I've been out in the sun.  

Right, back to topic.

It's GORGEOUS outside today.  Moderate breeze, high sixties, not a cloud in the sky.  But JJ has had a rough couple of days, and I'm trying to give him one that's as obstacle-free as possible so he'll settle back to his usual nap routine.  This means no long walk in the early afternoon.  So once he's down for nap number two (right on schedule, bless his little heart), I grabbed my sneakers, hat, sunblock, and pestered John into finding me appropriate tools for attacking the weed bed that used to be his grandmother's garden.

Ended up using a Garden Claw.  Ever seen one of those things?  It looks like a garden fork/hand rake tool had an unfortunate encounter with a corkscrew, and maybe some growth hormone.

Yeah, that.

Don't let the commercials fool ya, that thing is WORK... but it's very effective.  I now believe that you can do everything from break ground to tilling to aerating to light weeding with that sucker, because I've done the breaking ground part, and that's the hardest, to my mind.  You shove it into the ground as deeply or shallowly as you prefer, and you twist.  Stand as close to it as possible when doing so, your back will thank you later.

That's what it looked like when I started, except taller, 

because I forgot to take a "before" picture, so this is actually 

the next section down the fence and it has different weeds.

That's what it looked like when I stopped.

That's about a six foot by three foot section that was two feet high in weeds, easy. It is now largely weed-free, loose, soft, and in need only of cleanup weeding, plants, and water. That nice rich brown stuff? That'd be soil. Not dirt. Soil. I officially take back anything bad I ever said about the midwest. It's worth the humidity and the unpredictable weather for decent soil and a growing season that's not limited to the latter half of June through the first two weeks of August.

So yeah... I'm tired... hot... sweaty... probably sunburned... and I have 18 square feet of plantable garden space.  Took me about an hour.

So go ahead.  Tell me I don't exercise.  

*snort*

Too Hot to Walk

It finally happened.  It got too hot outdoors to take my daily walks.

*pouts*

The universe is out to sabotage me, I swear.

"Yeah, always with the excuses."

No, seriously.  It's too hot.  I walk with JJ, it's been too warm for the Moby since mid-March, and with the canopy up on the stroller to protect him from the sun, he gets too warm, goes to sleep, and it throws the whole afternoon's routine off-kilter.  Off-kilter afternoon = late bedtime = CRANKY baby.

So for exercise, I am forced to resort to my stationary bike in the basement while JJ naps.

For outside time... *grins*

PHOTO BOMB!!!

Not even six months old,

and he thinks he's a CK model.

I mean, LOOK at that sprawl!

He thinks the laptop is fascinating.

Keeping those little fingers off my keyboard 

and trackpad is interesting, y'all.

He's watching his own image on the screen, lol.

Check out my little DUDE!!!

A "spinner" off the maple entertained him 

for a good fifteen minutes. 

Then he tried to eat it.

Nursing outdoors is SO relaxing.

Oh, chill, Mom, you can't see anything.

Heehee... it's cute now, but I can already see

that look coming at me dripping with teenage disdain.

"Mom... what are you doing???  Yeah, I'm cute.  So what?"

"Bored now."

(Tell me someone gets that and I'm not just a big nerd.)

The spray of dried up maple leaves he found next.

LOADS of fun!

And yes, the onesie reads "my way or the highway".