Hay!

We found a busted-up bale of hay on the side of the road the other day near our road, so we put it all in the back of the van (oy, what a mess!) and the girls are now enjoying some of it in their nestboxes. The new digs are WAY more popular than pine shavings, at least among our crowd. Izzy did not appreciate my timing, but she didn't budge. Usually they all lay in the one she's in, but someone was evidently moved to try this new stuff upstairs too.

our garden has grown!

Not so much the veggies, although what we have so far is thriving, but I mean our garden expansion. When we dug the garden, we found this enormous rock (see pic below) which was at least 4 feet-ish in diameter. I tried making it a sunken herb garden, but it was all subsoil and the plants didn't flourish.

So that is a photo of our garden back in April. Two piles (one topsoil, one compost) and lots of Lukepower later, we now have this:


We're starting to fill in some areas between the stones on the path and the bed walls with herbs, and got more today to plant that aren't in this pic. But it will probably take a long time for them to spread, so I might sow clover or other greens in the walkways. I'd like to find a nice edible groundcover that can stand light footntraffic. Rosemary has a small bed at the end of the path on the left. Basil will go in the area just past the last big natural stone paver, with thyme plants in each corner of the end of the path on the right, as well as around the belly of the bed. I've planted mint in a submerbed container, but am wary of it taking over the garden. We'll see.

Creeping Rosemary's little nook

The farther half of the garden, already planted. Sorry for the weird angle. I was standing at teh top of the playscape. Most of the clover didn't come back, but it was relatively easy to weed. The long bed extreme right has a back row of peas, the middle row is kale toward the top of the pic, and Early Girl tomatoes and genovese basil on the bottom half, and the front row is Bright Lights swiss chard.

Going clockwise, the next bed has a border of chard, with more dinosaur kale in the center.

Next bed with the big green swath down the middle is arugula, with a border of borage. The bed extreme left has broccoli and some arugula that didn't sow very well (having renegade chickens scratching in this bed shortly after sowing probably didn't help)

ignoring the new bed that hasn't been planted yet, the next bed has more kale and swiss chard, and the lush green bed is Dante's mesclun mix. We've already harvested a few pounds of lettuce from this thickly planted bed, but it's still going strong.

Mr. Toad's no so wild ride

up and down

The kids grab the camera all the time and I love finding the images they snap.

more birthday joy

Ecstatic at his ability to operate the lighter, Dante lights the candles.

Daddy got his Lulu a gi-normous cupcake from Whole Foods, and some beautiful purple calalilies.

As a result of the kildeer escapade, we ended up moving cake with Grandpa and Uncle Tommy & Co. to Grandpa's house.

New boots to splosh around in!

Lulu puts her sling to use for her new doll.

4 kids and a chicken

Chucky and Aleia, bearing birthday treats, dropped by for a quick visit and snack. Somehow Bandit snuck into the picture.

scrub a dub dub

after one particularly long and dirty day of play, Lulu and Gatlin hit the spa

Lulu's Birthday

April 23 fell in that gorgeous stretch of summer weather we had, so we got out the pool and had River and Gatlin over for the day.

After they left, Sparkle-Fairy blew out candles and had a piece of one of her heart-shaped marble cakes.

celebrating 66 years

Grandpa's birthday was on Sunday, so we went to Tom's for a not-quite-cinquo de mayo party. Julian, feeling unwell, had already gone to bed by the time we got out the camera, but he's in it in spirit, and on the wall behind.

slide rule

Grandpa took us to the big slide at camp ingersol in portland a couple of weeks ago. My brave girl went down all by herself!