Gavin's First Day!

Today was the first day of Kindergarten for Gavin.  

A little delayed because the school is brand new, rebuilt this summer, and just getting finished.  

Overall, I think he liked it! 

 As we were leaving for school, he showed me (as he does pretty much every time we leave the house) the little baby tree sprouts that we have in our yard.  When we met the teacher on Tuesday, she asked Gavin if he was excited for Kindergarten.  That got a smile and nod.  Then she asked how he was going to go home everyday, to which he responded, "Really excited!"

Here is the enormous backpack he picked out.  The first one he saw.  I wasn't going to argue if he liked it!  It is really cute to see all the kids lined up.  And, Gavin just got right in line and, of course, told the teacher right away that he had an electric train.  Cause, you know, that is the information most needed on the first day of school. 

In his class, there are 14 boys and 8 girls.  

A veteran teacher, thank goodness.

When he saw Graeme and me after school, he ran up to us with a big smile!  He was a little tired, but not exhausted and he seemed in pretty good spirits.  He said he had "a little fun".  And that is enough for me on the first day!  No major drama and as long as he learns when to sit and listen... which we knew would be an issue to start... he'll do quite well.  We're pretty happy parents. 

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.

Bikes, trains, and green things... oh my!

I've been delinquent.  My apologies.  My attention right now keeps straying to other endeavors... which I'll share soon.  Here is our life in pictures for the last month.  With a little commentary of course.

 Cute boys. On bikes.  Big and small.

 Basil from seed... these guys are doing the best of the seed bunch.  (I did buy some too.)

Our peas.  All snap pea varieties this year, but only half seem to be blooming thus far.  

Maybe it isn't warm enough for the others yet... waiting, waiting....

Back to front: Beans, lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, and nasturtiums. 

The boys went crazy planting nasturtiums (we saved a lot of seeds), so they are all over the bike track too.  Craig loves it!  

 Flowers with new bird bath.

Tomato from seed, though no idea which variety, and you can see that there are tiny blossoms just starting.

Sun!  We need you!  The sunflowers in our yard have gone crazy ad are kind of shading the tomatoes a bit, but so be it.  I've never had this many sunflowers, so it should be fun.

Raspberries finally starting to blush!  Yippee!

And this year we planted potatoes (on right), which have gone crazy.  

I've been told I need to cover them more, and will get to that sometime soon... peas and beans on the left.  

And boys with trains.

Gavin has a plan to engineer train track throughout the bike track in the backyard.  This includes a function where the train goes through the wall downstairs and then up onto the deck to bring in veggies from the garden to the kitchen.  At one point, part of the plan was to extend train track out to the driveway so the train could unload groceries.  Oh, and tracks to the laundry room so trains could do the laundry.  

Which would be fantastic.  

Ask him about it.  He likes to share his ideas.  At length.

Even though it was pouring today...

With a week of sun, the garden got its jump start!  The sunflowers tower over the rest of the fledgling plant already, and the hodge-podge of herbs that seem to be growing are (I think) scaring some of the slugs away (dill, parsley, cilantro).  The boys and I did, however, harvest a whole swim team of slugs and snails from the front and back yard.  They are still swimming in beer by our back door.  Gavin fed them a radish.  Forever hopeful.  (They want pets so badly.)

We harvested salad greens tonight, which is the most exciting thing ever!  And yummy french breakfast radishes.  Everything else sprouts and grows with whatever sunlight it can glean from the clouds.  The tomatoes are doing marginally well; I always doubt their ability to produce soon enough and buy some plants anyway.  We'll see if I can restrain myself and have confidence in my green thumb.

Don't let it go to your head

We had a lovely weekend with an impromptu visit from my parents - perfect for Mother's Day!  We visited with family and enjoyed the sunshine.  After they left on Sunday, we trekked over to the McCollum Bike Park for the BMX race.  Gavin raced while Graeme and I explored a river trail nearby.  Though I missed all but one race, Gavin ended up doing pretty well.... he'll get the hang of racing eventually... and, of course, he got a trophy.  (They like to encourage kids to come back.)  Since I was with Graeme, these pictures are actually from a practice session, but you get the idea.

Gavin wears my helmet, which fits him pretty well.  You can see, however, from the picture below, if he reaches too far forward, he can get a little top heavy.  Oops!

This gave the audience a good chuckle.  Gavin included.

We all have moments like this, right?

A Note to Our Guests

This post is sort of about our garden, but more of an apology to those lovely guests who took away cucumber starts as their favor from Gavin's birthday party.  Please do not attribute the death of your plants to your black thumb (if they died... if they haven't then you surely have a bright green thumb).   All but one of my plants that I set out have died, and I now realize that 1) it is too cold for cucumbers to be out, and 2) they don't really like to be transplanted if you keep them indoors too long.

I didn't want you to feel like you killed your plants, because you were really just set up for failure.  My apologies.  Next year we'll give out seeds or another start that has a better chance of surviving.