Oops!

Well, I guess I forgot to say that we did return from our trip to Southern Oregon... two weeks ago! We had a great time with the family, went fishing, cut firewood, pulled weeds in the garden and built some patio furniture. Of course, the boys also found time to ride motorcycles, make new wooden guns and play some basketball.

While we were away, our garden kept right on growing, though we almost drowned it because it rained here instead of being sunny like it had been predicted, and we had set the automatic watering timer as if it would be hot and dry! Well, it's all growing fine and we're getting ready to plant the second wave of some of our crops. The flowers are doing well, also, and we're getting ready to plant 3 grapes. That will give me grape leaves for my pickling recipes this summer, and in time we'll have grapes to eat, juice and make into jelly!


our garden


our raised beds


the new grapes (Thompson Green Seedless, Concord Seedless, Suffolk Red)

Here are a few pictures from our trip south:


My nephew Sydney, Nathanael, step-brother Justin, and Mikael.


Nathanael, Mikael (with the snorkel) and Justin at Lost Creek Lake.


My dad, Syd, Nathanael, Mikael and Justin.


The view across Denman Pond to Table Rock at sunset.

And next time I'll share a little about why we're 'wide-row' gardening this year!

We're off!

We're off to Southern Oregon to visit family in about 5 hours. I should be sleeping, but there are always last minute things to get done, like planting more beans and beets because the first ones didn't germinate well, setting sprinklers on the flowers and the garden, programming the new hose-end water timers, adjusting sprinklers, more adjusting sprinklers, dishes, packing, making lists, paying bills, responding to emails, and now blogging, all starting around midnight! Whew... I'm tired just typing all that stuff!

Well... off to finish the bills and lists. See you in a week!

Ugh... It's allergy and cold season!

Well... other than the coughing, scratchy, sore throat, sneezing, stuffy head, running nose, itching, red eyes and the never ending "hack, hack, hack", we're doing just dandy! I think the boys started out as allergy driven colds, and I'm thinking that I just have allergies. Charles is the only one who seems well, which is good, since he's the one who has to go to work!

In spite of our sniffles and coughing, we've been out trying to get things planted in the rain. Last Saturday, May 2nd, as a family we attended the Clackamas County Master Gardner's Spring Fair! Despite the rain alternating between drizzling and pouring, and Nathanael developing a fever during the tour of all the vendors, we had a good time. Nathanael has recently developed a keen interest in bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis)

and therefore, it was his mission for the day to spend some of his saved up allowance funds on a beautiful specimen for him to plant at home. Mikael, on the other hand, had not really bothered with flowers and didn't plan on spending his money on anything like that until I just had to detour into this one little booth that had Japanese iris of a different color than what I currently have, so I bought the iris ensenata "Gypsy Queen"

and while I was paying, Mikael noticed the picture on the tag of a Dianthus "Eastern Star". Though we didn't stop and buy it then, all throughout our browsing and lunch time, all Mikael could talk about was "his dianthus." So, when we went back through and purchased everything we needed for the garden, ("we" being Mikael and I, since Charles and Nathanael went to the Suburban to get sicky-kid-Nathanael out of the rain) we also had to stop so Mikael could buy "his dianthus"

which is still in the pot and not in the ground yet!

Among the other things we purchased were garden starts of tomatoes, cucumbers (eating and pickling), peppers (hot and mild), zucchini squash, yellow crook neck squash, basil, rosemary and sage. I also purchased a flat of marigolds to plant around the garden to entice the good bugs to come and eat the bad bugs! I still have to find rhubarb, raspberries and strawberries. Then, I have to plant all our other seeds, but that will come when the garden isn't a marsh!

ah... ahh... ahchoo!

Has it really been that long?

Well, since I finally checked my blog and realized that it's been a little over 3 weeks since I've written, I decided that I better tell you all that I'm still alive and that we're all doing fine!

In brief: We traveled back to Southern Oregon the Saturday night before Easter and stayed through Monday morning, arriving in back in Gresham in time for Mikael's practice at the batting cages. Between baseball practices and games, we're pretty swamped, and then add in Wednesday morning Bible Study, Theology class and church service on Sunday, Friday School (homeschool co-op) on Friday:) and then occasional entertaining and play dates. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we're trying to get a garden in, meaning that we tilled up the sod and are trying to amend the soil, plot it out and also build 2 large raised beds and one large planter (2'x 2'x 12'), and then of course, plant it. Oh... and we're doing a bit of work on the back porch - installing a post and beam system from which we'll hang our porch swing.

I think that pretty much covers what has kept me away from my blog for the past 3 weeks. So, now a positive update. For those of you who know about our situation, you would know that it's tenuous at best. The Sandy Hatchery had lost all funding beyond June 30, 2009 and would be shutting down and we would be moving again to who knows where, yet, we know that God is sovereign and He can and will do what He chooses. It's our job to get our will in line with His and rest in His care. I'm sorry to say that I wasn't resting nearly as well as I should, but God is faithful always, especially when I can't deserve it! Tuesday of this week we found out that our funding is back and we will not be moving!!!!

In case you don't know me well enough yet, I really don't like the whole "move" thing. It just throws my life into chaos, and despite having chaos in my life at frequent intervals, I despise it.

Anyway, looks like I'll be blogging from Sandy, Oregon for a while. What a relief for me! The boys both cheered, as well, when they heard the news. Now I can garden and landscape for the long-run. The boys can make friends without fearing they will lose them shortly, and we can all heave a collective (might I add, faithless) sigh of relief.

Well, Friday School is quickly approaching and I still need to get everything loaded up, so I'll go for now, but try not to take 3 weeks to post again:)

So... my computer is starting over from 2005... Arggg....

Actually, I could go on and on and on about how in the process of trying to fix my drivers on my computer that I instead made things worse, and then about how I had to "wipe" my hard drive and start over from when I originally purchased this thing in 2005, but... I'll just skip all the part about staying up 4 nights in a row until almost 4 am working on backing up data and restoring my system and updating 4 years worth of programs.

Instead, I'll tell you that our trip to Southern Oregon was great. The weather was better than it had been predicted to be for the whole trip and everyone got to do a whole lot of nothing (very nice) and the boys also got to play, play, play!!! While we were down there we cut and wrapped and processed Nathanael's elk, put it in the freezer and brought it all home ready to eat! We also cut a load of firewood to bring home, getting our supply ready for next winter. The part about it all that made it fun is that we all caravanned out to the back of my Dad's place on 4-wheelers with trailers in tow, then as my dad fell the trees and cut them up, Charles split them, I loaded and we all trooped home. In two trips we had all that our stout, medium-sized trailer could haul home, and it was only a couple hours after we started!

The real bonus of the trip was Wednesday when Charles and I took a walk all around my old home (80 acres worth) and I related stories about the different times I did what silly things when and where. As we came down the hill towards the house at the end of our tour, I decided to stop at an outcropping of granite that overlooks the house and the small valley that my Dad's house sits in. The sun was shining, temperatures were in the high 60's to low 70's, we were warm after our walk, and we sat down on the rock to enjoy more of the sunshine. I'm not quite sure what overtook me, but I laid back... and that's the end of the story! No, but what we actually did was take a long nap on the ground in the Springtime sunshine! Occasionally we'd hear the boys yelling in the back yard as they played and we'd look down long enough to see that they were just having fun and then would drift back to sleep! It was such a blessing to just totally relax and have no demands on our time. I almost felt like I was 12 again, spending a spring day out and about, just doing whatever I wanted! And then on the way home down the hill from there, I went barefoot, and I felt just like a silly school girl again! Ooohhh.... I had a good time while down south!