Wednesday, May 05, 2010

I spend most early mornings curled up around Benji with my feet hanging off the end of his toddler bed.  He wraps my hair around his fingers and twists it around and around to soothe himself back to sleep.  Sleep is much different now than how it used to be.  I've successfully managed to night wean Ben, but he still requires my presence to get back to sleep.  He loves to have company in that little bed.  For a while, Chris was able to get him to sleep, and he slept well for my mother in law while I was in the hospital.  Since then, he has decided that I'm the only one who will get him to sleep.  I've decided that I don't mind this too much.  We've made progress, and this is good.  I'm sure we'll keep making progress, however slow.  That's all that matters.



I've started my gardening efforts of 2010.  Well, sort of.  I haven't actually tried to grow anything yet.  The frost risk in my area isn't quite gone yet.  Last weekend, my brother and his family came to visit from Utah, and they helped me with some yard work.  Like scooping dog poop and filling in holes my lab has dug (hey, thanks, guys!).  We also dug out all the dirt and weeds from one garden bed, and filled it with some deliciously wonderful soil for my future plants.  Uh, delicious to said plants.  I didn't taste it, or anything...  I think I'm just going to start this year with one bed, and if all goes well (meaning, I don't kill everything), then I'll do the other garden bed next year, too.  I'm planning on doing a square foot garden.  I've had the book since we lived in the trailer.  Chris got it for me as a gift because I really really wanted a garden, but our yard was so tiny.  I never did anything with it because our yard was still too tiny for a garden and two big dogs.
But this year, I came across this site, and decided to give gardening a shot.  I'm! so! excited!
But before I can plant anything, we have to put a fence up around my garden beds to keep the dogs out.  To do that, we also have to cut down the apple tree.  Before you go lamenting my apple tree, I will tell you that it has been very poorly kept.  It probably hasn't been pruned in five to ten years, so there are a lot of branches that shouldn't be there.  It also hasn't been thinned properly through the years, so there are a lot of branches that have been weighed down and broken by the fruit.
I'll also throw in this disclaimer- I don't know anything about growing apple trees other than what I just told you.  The plum tree, on the other hand, can still be saved from its previous neglect.  It really just needs a good pruning this fall.  I thinned the plums out last year, and we had a fair harvest from it.  Those plums were yummy. 
Anyway, when I say that *we* have to cut down the apple tree, and *we* have to put up a fence around the garden beds, what I really mean is that Chris has to do it.  I would try, but I would do everything wrong and then Chris would have to redo it anyway.  Except, I probably would not try to cut down the tree.  I would most certainly destroy property accidentally.  And Chris won't be able to do it for a couple more weeks.  So I'll be cooling my heels on the gardening front for a bit.  But I may plant some seeds anyway.  They probably won't sprout to be big enough for my dogs to bother them until Chris can put up the fence anyway.