Seriously, yall. I cannot believe I have not posted to my blog in a year and a half. I mean, how have you all been spending your lives without knowing what I'm doing all the time?! Oh yeah, I think I'm related to or friends with all of my readers, so... you see me on facebook. But in the off chance you are a reader that I don't know personally (for one thing, I love you- I'll just get that out of the way now), I know that this year and a half of silence has been devastating for you. I'm so sorry.
Obviously, I am alive. Thankfully, my family is, too. So I won't bore you with what's been going on for the last year and a half. Things are the same except the boys have all gotten bigger. Well, they've all grown developmentally, too. I guess not all of our family is still with us. Our sweet stinky Basset Hound, Buddy, had to be put down about a month ago. He was seven and a half years old. His health problems had accumulated to the point of him not being able to see, hear, or hardly smell, and he had a huge ruptured cyst on his side that was quickly on its way to infection. Even if we had managed to get that one healed up, another one had started growing on his back, and he had so many other problems. It was still a difficult decision to make. I feel bad that we lied to Ben and told him Buddy died on his own, but he didn't. We didn't want Ben to think that we killed his dog for no reason. He's not quite old enough to grasp the concept of putting an animal out of its misery. We'll tell him when he's older and he understands, though. I don't like keeping things like that from him.
This year, I've gotten really into my garden. I tried gardening a few years ago, and it was an utter failure. My dogs lay in the garden beds all over the plants. Buddy liked to eat the plants. I had false morning glory growing up all over everything and pulling it down. Oh, and I'm terrible at watering plants sufficiently. It was a spectacular failure. Every year since then (well, except the year Chris was gone), I've planned on putting up a fence to keep dogs and kids out of the garden when I'm not out there. I finally did it. It's a cheap crappy wire fence, but it works. I built it with me own two hands. Then I discovered that my garden beds were completely overrun with ants. I tore out the old rotting wooden beds and built new ones out of cedar pickets like so: http://ana-white.com/2010/05/hack-natural-rustic-cedar-raised-beds.html. Although, mine aren't quite as gorgeous because this was actually my first ever successful wood building project. They get the job done, though. I also attached pvc hoop frames like this: http://groworganic.com/organic-gardening/articles/how-to-make-a-hoophouse-on-a-raised-bed.
As far as the ants go- I was able to plant and everything in one bed without them totally getting in the way or me getting bitten too much. The other bed was really bad, though. I couldn't stick a spade in the dirt without an eruption of ants overwhelming everything. I ordered some very expensive organic broad spectrum pesticide and sprayed the crap out of the bed. It worked very nicely, and I was able to finish filling the bed the rest of the way and plant. As of right now, ants are back again, but I'm not as worried about it now. I do have a few more things to plant in that bed, but I don't think the ants will be back in full force by the time I plant them. Maintaining the plants doesn't require disruption of the soil, so the ants won't be a problem if they get really bad again. Well, not until next year, anyway. Mostly, I am grateful that we don't have fire ants here. That would cause a real problem. What I need, though, is some sort of beneficial insect that eats ants. I can't do the pesticide often because it'll kill all the good bugs like the ton of black beetles I have hanging out in there. Also, when all the insects are killed in an area, it's prime space for more ants to move in because there's no competition. I seriously don't know how to win against those things. I'm going to be in trouble if they start farming aphids on my plants.
I've also solved my poor watering problem with a drip irrigation system. It took a lot of time and effort to set it up and numerous trips to Home Depot, but it's keeping the plants alive and happy, so that's good. I still have to put up a couple of trellises (made of pvc) and start training my tomatoes to climb them. Oh, and I need to get some stuff for a cage for my zucchinis. I hope I actually get some produce out of my garden this year. I will be so bummed if I put all this work in for nothing.
As far as everything else goes, I am full of demotivation. I could be on a demotivational poster. You wouldn't even need a caption. Just me with a frizzy ponytail and sweat pants. I find it very difficult to do anything that I am not interested in doing. It sounds lazy, but I don't think I'm lazy. I have to clothe, feed, and generally care for three children. I spend a lot of time doing something. And these things I'm not interested in doing are things that I want to do. Like cleaning. But it doesn't happen unless someone is coming over, and then it's really done just hastily right before they get here. It's a problem that I hope to solve at some point. I need a clean house, like, for reals.
Hopefully, I will remember to post more often. Remembering is the key word. I hardly ever think of my blog when I'm on the computer anymore. So we'll see.
