A Tour of the Garden

I thought I would take you on a tour of our garden this year. This year I planted three raised beds of yellow potatoes, lettuce, beets, pumpkin, asparagus, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelon, green beans, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, celebrity tomatoes, Big boy tomatoes, and one green bell pepper.

When you walk out of our door this is the garden you see.

I had made a flower bed here, but need to put down the mulch. This part drives Matt crazy. I put a layer of cardboard and newspaper as my weed barrier. This is called the lasagna method.

This is the first of my garden green beans and tomatoes.

The green beans didn't do so well. Too dry. You can see the small chicken wire fence around the bottom. That is to keep out the rabbits and other critters. The rabbits are abundant here and eat my garden.

You can see the tall tomato plants next. The tomatoes have done wonderful! I planted 16 tomato plants and the cherry tomatoes just popped up on their own.

Here is my harvest for today. I have probably gotten four or five loads like this so far and will get two more.

Here is the pumpkin vine. I see three small pumpkins growing so far. My pumpkins have typically not done very well so far. I need to do some reading to see what I can do to get bigger pumpkins.

Then to the left of the pumpkins are my watermelon. Last year I planted about sixteen seeds and got 12 watermelon. This year I only planted six seeds. I see 3 growing.

This is the back of my tomato bed. The smaller roma tomatoes.

Watermelons again, can you see the little green striped watermelon?

The raised beds are at the back of the garden near the tree line, so I plant colder weather crops there. The tall feathery plant is the asparagus.

Here is the cucumber. They will grow up the trellis. My viney plants in this area are getting eaten by bugs. Only two cucumbers harvested this year so far.

These are hard to tell what they are because it just looks like a sea of green. I know, I know I need to weed my garden. The left are the zucchini and right are the cherry tomatoes. I planted them last year and they just came up on their own this year. I didn't know tomato plants did that.

The raised beds are suppose to be easier to weed and manage, but honestly I can get into the regular garden easier and can till it until the plants get to big.

See the orange pumpkin peeking out?

The back beds have potatoes. Here are a few. I learned this year that green tomatoes do not mean they are not ripe yet but that they have peeked through the dirt and have been in the sun. So I am way over due to harvest my potatoes.

 So, I could spend way more time out here and weed my garden and make sure the bugs don't eat my garden, but as I always say, I'll do better next year.
This has been a tour of the Murphy farm all tips will be appreciated as you pass by the bucket.

The last of our lazy carefree summer vacation

So I don't know if I would really call them lazy days, but for some reason they go hand in hand.

I wanted to spend our last few days before school started doing a few fun things and of course that included going back to the zoo and going swimming. Monday we spent the day here. I was canning. I will do a post on canning. Tuesday we went to the zoo. Wednesday (the day before school) we went to moms (a.k.a. Nana) to swim.

We have been trying to get  together with Tracy and Ashton and go to the zoo all summer. Right after we made plans to go the heat wave hit. Who wants to go to the zoo in 95+ degree heat anywhere outside? Well, this is our last chance before school starts. I believe it was low 90's but they did have water.

Corbin was trying his hand at photography. No, literally he got his hand in the photo. He wanted to take a picture of King Julius from Madagascar. We may have a budding blogger on our hands.

This is the crew of kids that met up with us. Ashton is up front and her cousins are to the left, but I must have been on the wrong side of the buffalo.

These are Corbin's favorite animals, and the ones we didn't get to see the last time we came to the zoo.

Addie pouting in the van. She never remembers that the door will not shut. She thinks I am the one not letting her shut the door. Silly girl

The water was a heavenly relief. Ashton loves to hold Aiden whenever she can. Who wouldn't? Babies are so much fun.

The kids had a ball and loved being in the water. There didn't seem to be too many kids there but the line for the slides was huge and my kids did not have the patience today to wait in line, so Corbin was ready to leave and get ice cream.

Addie in her tutu swim suit. She loves this swim suit, She dances around like the "12 Dancing Princess'" (that is one of the Barbie movies)

I was very surprised that with the heat the animal we kept seeing were the cats. The tiger was out...

We saw the Puma, we never see him out...

we saw the snow leopard... Corbin said this is in Kung Fu Panda...

of course the smelly Flamingos were out. They are so pretty.

There were three Orangutans out today. One in this room and two more in the enclosure. This is in our top five animals to see.

Ashton and Tracy... The Blackburns are in our Life Group. We love them. They are always in our core four. We can depend on each other.

Aiden was so happy today through the heat and no nap. He did fabulous.

My pretty boy. He is crawling all over the place now and even pulling up to the couch.

My friend... Tracy worked this last year and half as the Preschool Director at our church. She is so good with the kids. I love watching her lead the little ones in worship.

On Wednesday we went to my moms to swim. Here are the two sweet ones.

Aiden likes splashing in the water. He really liked O'Bannon where you can sit in the baby pool and the sprinklers.

Gracie in the pool with all three.

We always play on bikes and scooters when we come over.

I got Aiden this push car. Here he is riding it for the first time. He was so cute and giggled and tried to stand up. Such fun

This is going to be great for going on walks.

This was a great week to spend with the kids before our big school year. What fun and new things lay ahead.

From First Christmas to First day of School

In Every Season Turn ....Turn....Turn

Matt probably asked me three different times today how I felt about getting up early, making breakfast for our new student, and packing lunches. He asked how I felt about Corbin being gone all day and how I would have to be there for him when the bus came. How do you feel about all this change. This new chapter of your life. "our life" I replied.

Yes Matt is right we are now parents of a student a child in school. We are responsible for Corbin in a completely new way. He is growing from infant to toddler to preschooler and now to student! 

So the big question. How do I feel? I think I still feel in shock. I texted my friend Rachelle and said how I hadn't cried yet today that I was in shock. It's true. I thought how am I going to respond to the bus coming up the road for my kid, and letting him climb on the bus and watching it go away. All of those things happened right before my eyes in such a flash I couldn't believe it was happening. 

No time for the warm loving embrace. Not that Corbin would have complied to such a mushy display.

Here we are....Corbin not able to quite smiling and me very anxious

Matt is still learning how to take photos. :)

Matt decides 2 minutes before the bus comes to give Corbin a pep talk about who is in charge of him and how he should be good. Luckily Corbin and I have been discussing this for a couple of weeks.

We went two weeks ago and meet his teacher (who was going out of town on vacation with her husband, who had won a trip from work). She is wonderful. I am very relaxed now that I have met her. At every question she would say "well, I'll be at the bus stop on bus duty, and I'll be in the lunch room on lunch duty." while the parent in me was relieved at the transition times for Corbin, the teacher in me was feeling sorry for this poor woman who would be with all the children all day and what seemed like little to no brakes from the children. She may get a little annoyed with my son after all day and no brakes.
But anyway we had taken his supplies to school and forgot his backpack there, no worries nothing to take in the first day except his lunch.
The mom in me worried that he would get his lunch taken on the bus or would forget it on the bus. Should I follow the school bus there to make sure he arrives safely and gets in class with his lunch? Did I mention I am anxious about this day?

The bus comes

and just like that Corbin is gone.

I am very thankful that he is not the boy who clings to his mother and cries to go to school. He was very confident to go and I am happy for that.

The other children in my home had a great day. This is Adaline with no boy to chase her around the house. I think she changed clothes five times before we left for the grocery.

Here she is shaking her shoulder and batting her eyes.

She says she is a pretty princess and I quite agree

I couldn't get enough of my pretty girl today. I made sure to give Addie some extra hugging time and held her on my lap for awhile.

I am not putting Addie in preschool this year. She will be at home with me another year.

3:15pm came soon enough. Well, that is the normal time for drop off. He didn't get home till about 3:45
It had thunder stormed and rained pretty hard around 3. Which may have been the reason for the delay. I came to meet him with the umbrella. (or sumbrella as Addie calls it)

 Corbin had a fabulous day! Which relieved me. Mrs. Mathes had called in the middle of the day to confirm that he was a bus rider home today. She said everything was going okay.
In Corbins planner home he had a note that he had been moved to yellow today and earned his way back to green. When I asked Corbin about this he said that he had yelled during class time. Eveyone has to learn the new rules. I'm glad he likes his school.
He wanted to eat his lunch after he got home. He said he wasn't fast enough to eat it during lunch. But maybe a small bowl of yogurt, a pb&j, celery sticks and pretzels were a bit too much to eat at school.

 I don't have any baby pics to compare my little man to on this computer. I'll have to dig up some to show how very much he has changed. My little guy is growing up so. I enjoy his happy heart and tenderness to new things. I love you Corbin