And it continues...

The train track.  Really.  It's all over the house (via Gavin and Graeme's paper, electric, AND wooden train tracks), and now it's expanded  out the front door, down the stairs, and into the driveway.  They even tried to continue the line into the gravel, but that didn't work so well.  We had a little help from some friends, but the boys drew most of this while I picked the endless supply of weeds in our front yard.  Thought you'd enjoy!  It should last a few days as the rain might stay away for the week.

year of the sunflowers!

After a whole week without the boys, I'm ready for a little more noise and chaos.  They have been at grandma's house, and Craig and I have had the week to ourselves to go out to dinner, go biking, and get a little break.  I vowed not to do any cooking or cleaning.  And, it turns out, I didn't do much gardening either.  

This year the theme for the garden is the Year of the Sunflower.  

They are massive.  Some I think are volunteers and others I planted, but they've never really done all that well in previous years.  I wasn't expecting this.  I think the sunflowers were so established before everything else arrived, they ended up sucking away the nutrients first.  As a result, I have very small tomato plants with tiny tomatoes, and little smatterings of other veggies here and there.  Although, that said, I still think we've had a fair amount to eat from the garden.  And that is always very cool. 

One of the smaller sunflowers.

Happy little cucumber blossom... they are trying their hardest to get some sun and attention from the bees!

      

Tiny beans.  I bet they'll be ready to munch after the weekend.

Here is a picture of the sunflowers.
You can see that they almost reach the height of our deck.  

And there are more to the left of this picture. Seriously crazy.  

I hope the bees don't forget the veggies down below all those flashy flowers.

One thing new this year... potatoes!  This is the first potato I unearthed.  

I felt a little bit like a raccoon looking for dinner, but I found four of these little guys pretty quick. 

They are weird plants though, as it doesn't even seem like the potatoes are connected to the plant.  

They just appear.  It's odd to not be able to see the growth at all.

And then chopped for dinner.  Yum!

As I watered the plants today, I noticed a little brown shuffling something in the strawberry patch.  It got away before I could see what it was... and I'm hoping it wasn't a rat.  Could be, but that would be gross.  There was, however, a very cute furry bird that was perched on the fence close by a few minutes later.  He looked young and not very quick... well, he actually looked like a furry grandpa bird with hair coming out of his ears, but I'm pretty sure he was learning how to fly.  I hoping he was my mystery guest.