A New Variety

Remember last summer when I grew this Dogplant?

This year I decided to try adding a new plant to my garden. It is a variety of Catnip known as Princess Puffy.

I found it as a volunteer last year.

I took a start and decided to transplant it into one of my pots. Look how it's grown!

Mr Farmer Gets Funny

I will start this post by telling you that Mr Farmer would never say anything to intentionally hurt me. He does, however, say things that he never thinks would hurt me. He doesn't always see how his words can be taken in a different way.

This personality quirk makes for great fun on my part as it gives me something to pretend to "hold over him". I say pretend because I know he couldn't hurt me so I can't really be mad at him.

One such example happened last night. I can't remember whether it was a song or something on tv, but the phrase "Her body has more curves than a country road" was used. That's probably a paraphrase.

Anyway, I turned to my loving husband and told him, "My body is like a country road." To which, he agreed. I went on to further explain it was like a country road because of all the hills and curves.

And he responded...

" Oh. I thought you meant full of potholes."

Ummmm. What?

I laughed so loud I thought I'd wake the kids. I was still giggling hours later when we went to bed.

Then I told him today that I was writing this post. He said he thought of last night's conversation as he was headed down a country road today in the semi. He said he thought of how it was like me. He told me it was a beautiful drive, but full of potholes. And if he didn't take it slow it would beat him to death.

Just like me.

Now, now ladies, there's no point in fighting. He's all mine.

Beautiful Surroundings

I took a couple of pictures of the few blooming plants here on the farm.

These are some of my tulips. They were here when we moved here 10 years ago. I transplanted them to a better location and they are thriving. I've planted others, but they have all but vanished over the years.

These are some of my peony plants. It is the earliest blooming variety here and has a fern-like foliage. The flowers smell like roses and even look like an old-fashioned rose. I have divided and transplanted these to five different places around my gardens and they have grown beautifully. Mr Farmer was even upset when I removed the original plant to divide and move. He didn't need to worry as the original plant has popped back up and grown into a nice-sized peony bush. I find it almost impossible to kill or completely remove a peony plant! Another thing I like about this variety is that the blooms are so light they don't flop over with the slightest amount of rain like others do.

My Mother's Day Surprise

Yesterday I received the funniest Mother's Day card I've ever gotten.

It was given to me by my Baby. She and Sissy worked hard on their cards. They drew. They colored. They tried several times to give them to me before Mother's Day because they were so proud of them.

Each time I stopped short of looking at them, telling the girls that they needed to keep them for Mother's Day.

The morning came. The girls rushed to get their cards and present them to me.

Sissy's card.

Then. Then Baby presented her card.

The front says, "Happy Mothers Day Mom."

The inside says, "I love you dad. Love Baby"

Did you see it?

"I love you DAD"

Happy Mother's Day to me. She offered to change it for me, but I thought this was so perfectly her. She loves her Daddy!

Part of my job as a mother is to make sure my kids love their dad and that they know how hard he works to provide for them and what an amazing father they have.

I think I've succeeded with Baby.

Quotes From Baby

This weekend Baby produced two of my favorite quotes from her this year.

The first. 

"I want to ingest popcorn so bad!"

This was in response to a conversation where I was telling her she could smell popcorn and could even lick it, but she just couldn't ingest it. For some reason, popcorn makes her really sick almost immediately. She's learning how to deal with not being able to have one of her favorite snacks.

And second.

 "Mom, did you know dogs fart?"

That one came out of nowhere as we were planting some flowers.

Neither one of these quotes was said in a humorous way. I, however, found them extremely funny!

Garden Work Is Happening

The sun is shining. The birds are singing. 

But the soil is still quite cold. And I want to plant tomatoes. And peppers. And basil. And other stuff.

So, I headed out to the raised beds to get them ready. Sissy helped (and wanted to make sure everyone knew it). We tilled the compost into them and raked them smooth. We had to be careful not to get the sugar snap peas that are just emerging.

Then it was time to lay out the soaker hoses in their snakey patterns. I use a spool of wire and cut it to make long stakes. Once it was all laid out we connected the garden hose and checked to make sure all was working well. To tell the truth, I told the kids if it didn't work, I wasn't going to re-do it. My back was done by that point. And I wasn't finished yet. Lucky me, the hoses all worked.

Finally, we covered the beds with weed barrier. I'm hoping the black color will help warm the soil enough that I can plant next week. It allows water, sunlight, and air to penetrate. I again used the wire to make staples to hold down the barrier. I'm going to place a few bricks on top because we get some pretty strong winds out here.

I mowed before taking this picture, so the weed barrier is a bit messy. The lawn was so thick and long! Look at those windrows. The kids like to use the lawn sweep to clean it up, though. 

I've never tried this before, but our spring has been so unseasonably cold that I wanted to do something to help get things back on track. I'll let you know how it goes.

What Snow?

Remember this sight the day of our garage sale?

Here is the view the next day.

And now we're in the 70s for daytime highs. This is perfection to me. Windows open. Birds singing. Sun shining. The wonderful smell of warming earth.