This is going to be another gardening post, but I guess it’s that time of year.

Yesterday…I went out to plant seeds into my garden, to go along with the 40+ plants I had planted the day before. I was not happy to find 13 cauliflower GONE and all but about 9 cabbage broken off at ground level, the leaves scattered around.’Was not happy’ is putting it mildly!

In all the years I’ve gardened, I’ve never had a fence around it or had problems with aything being destoyed. Yes, I’ve had occasional squirrel theft or rabbits munching on lettuce, but I was willing to share as long as they weren’t greedy. But, yesterday this was a little much. I did proceed to plant my seeds…mostly lettuce and spinach…so if it was a rabbit, or a family of rabbits…they will be thrilled.

But, I’m tending to think the damage was by the neighbor’s dog. The dog is very friendly, but never on a leash like it is supposed to be. I’ve had one shrub die already because of his ‘attention’. The large dog footprints in my garden, some right in the middle of a plant, made the dog rather guilty in my mind.

So, I did call the police yesterday and report the owners, something that I’ve been threatening myself to do for the past 6 months. For some reason in our little town, you have to get the dog control officer through the police station. I do hope the problem is solved.

Now, what should I do with the owners of the dog coming over and letting their three children play on the swing set while their dog was running through the garden?! I’ve never talked with these people, don’t know them and our swing set is postitioned very close to our house. They had to walk a ways up into the yard to get to it.

Now, THAT’S AGGRAVATING!

That may be a strange question for some of you…but those of you that garden and enjoy it probably don’t think it too odd.

I was thinking about this because of my son’s reaction when he was helping me plant some shrubs the other day. I should say transplant. I ‘talk’ to my plants often as a matter of fact. No, I don’t think they are going to answer me back literally…but they do ‘answer’ in their own way. I think that a ‘happy’ plant responds by growing. They are happy from being watered, fed and put in a good location. I know I’ve read studies about plants that had certain kinds of music played for them and how they have responded. And yes, I’ve been known to ’sing’ to my plants too! No, I’m not a fruitcake…and that is how my son was looking at me. But for me, gardening is a kind of ‘give and take’. I plant, water, feed, provide a good location and the plant responds by growing, giving me shade, beauty, fragrance…whatever I’ve planted that specimen for.

Gardening gives me pleasure…a time to relax while doing the work of it and then reaping what I’ve sown when I sit on my stone terrace in the cool of the evening…smelling the roses and herbs…making a salad from the vegetables that I’ve grown. It is one of those simple pleasures of life…there for the taking if you only want to put a little bit into it.

I’d had a couple comments here on gardening when I’d asked about other people’s gardens. I was rewarded with two great blogs on gardening. They make my gardening look pretty simplistic. They were very enjoyable reads. Since I have only just checked out these blogs, I won’t provide links as of yet since I don’t know if that would be agreeable to them. It was just nice to read about what other people are doing in other areas of our world and I learned so much!

I have been gardening for awhile. I’ve had a garden wherever we’ve lived for the past ten years. Moving so much has made it more difficult because I’m always getting a new plot ready…but I have had great success anyway. This is the second year here for a garden, but I moved it to a more sunny location at the end of the yard. So, in essence, it is another first year. I did move a lot of the dirt from the smaller plot I had last year to the larger plot and I did a lot of composting over the winter. The soil looked good when my father tilled it…but ‘the proof is in the pudding’ so to say and I won’t know how good the soil is until mid-summer.

I do hope to be here for awhile and get more into organic gardening. I don’t use any pesticides or anything like that anyway. But, I don’t know what has been on the ground here. So, it will be a few years before I can say I have a totally ‘organic’ garden. I would also like to start saving my seeds for the next year.

I also love to plant shrubs and landscape my yard. I’ve built rock walls and paths in previous houses. Both skills I learned from my grandfather. He did beautiful work and was a real craftsman in so many different areas. I do hope to get started on my stone terrace here fairly soon. This one won’t be true stone, but I think it will look great anyway. I’m planning a herb garden next to it and hope to practice some of the things I learned in a herb class many, many years ago! I also have plans for a rose hedge next to the herb garden, mainly because I hope to use the rose hips in different things. But, I will have to read up on that some more!

The climbing roses I planted last spring made it through the winter very well. I need to get the picket fence up that I started buying last summer, pieces at a time so it wouldn’t cost so much at once. I do a lot of projects like that. Sometimes it is very frustrating when I want to get something done…but I think it is also much sweeter for me when the project is finally done because of the anticipation of it. Kind of like Christmas morning when you are a child.

But, I’m going to close this post because all this talk about projects is making me worn out!

Have you ever noticed that it’s the little things in your children’s lives that really make a difference? Or even your spouse’s life, for that matter.

This past week was spring break. Since I home school, I usually do not allow my children outside during school hours and I don’t go out to the store and run errands with them. We do go to school activities with other home schoolers or field trips, but generally they are busy doing their own school work and chores during school hours.

Anyway, since it was spring break, I agreed to take my two middle children swimming at our local gym. I used to be a very avid swimmer during my pre-teen and teen years. I took all the swimming courses up to getting my life-saving certification. I never did for some reason…and don’t remember why now. But… I haven’t been swimming, I mean really swimming in almost 25 years. Of course most of my reasoning and excuses were centered around not wanting to put on a swim suit, which most of you women would probably understand. But, every summer and each time we’ve stayed at a motel with a pool and my children have wanted to go swimming, I’ve declined. My husband, whom doesn’t even like to swim has taken them. Unfortunately, most of the excuses were probably centered around my pride and what other people were going to think or say.

So, I took them swimming. We went early in the morning, before anyone was there for the sake of modesty and we had a great time! I actually remembered how to swim and got a few laps in! My children were absolutely thrilled…and what did it cost me? Absolutely nothing. Just a lot of years about making up excuses and in the process missing out on a lot of fun and good times. Something that took so little from me, made my children’s day. I can’t wait until the next time that we go!

What areas of your life are holding you back because of fears…real fears or ones we’ve made up in our minds? Are some of the areas keeping us from real joy?

I don’t see many people blogging on gardening…one of my favorite topics, as you all know by now. Maybe I’m just not checking out the correct blogs for gardening! So, if any of you garden, please let me know and share what you do or plant.

Anyway, on to this post. My father came over yesterday and tilled the garden for me. (Have I mentioned what a great help it’s been to have my parents living right here in town?) He worked on it for several hours and now I have probably about the best garden area that I’ve ever had. I’m so excited to start planting!! I did plant some Yukon Gold potatoes yesterday, just one row. The garden is big, but not big enough to get everything in it! But, I’m ahead of schedule and that makes me really happy! I’m hoping to have everything in before we have some spring rains.

I was reading in an organic gardening magazine last summer and I’m going to try a new way to grow tomatoes. I’m going to erect a wire ‘cage’ of sorts at each corner of the garden and then plant my tomatoes around the outside of this cylinder. I can probably get about six plants around the outside of it. Then I put my compost material on the inside of the ‘cage’. I use salad scraps and fruit scraps, but no animal anything. Sometimes I do use farm eggs, for the shells, but I wash them first. I also put our grass clippings on the garden and I will put this in the compost bin too. The article in the magazine said this compost in the middle keeps the tomatoes roots cool and moist…plus I will have someplace to put it. I usually put the grass clippings between the plants and this keeps the garden moist and I have virtually no weeding! I love that part!! It also helps our lawn and of course I don’t put anything on the lawn since I mulch the garden with it.

So, I’m off and running on another spring and ahead of schedule too! That puts me in a great mood!

To those of you that visit MInTheGap’s site…http://www.minthegap.com…you may have seen this header before if you check out another blogger there. Stephen Kingston comments at MInTheGap and he has a very interesting blog at http://safle.org/ I have learned a lot from some of his posts.

Anyway…the first time I visited Stephen Kingston’s blog, I commented on how much I loved the header. I thought that it might be a picture from the area he lives in. But, he said it came with the theme he chose. Well, I was looking at some different themes the other day and low and behold, there it was! I was wanting something a little different and more like spring and this theme fits that. I really do love the picture. It does seem like ‘morning breaking’ with the muted sunlight and mist. So, I hope you don’t mind Stephen!

I have been doing some of the gardening that I blogged about the other day. Transplanted 8 shrubs today and yesterday. They all made it through the winter…last spring was when I planted them. I also dug up an old tree trunk, so I can expand the garden by a few feet on two sides. I planned the garden yesterday…on paper and now I’m really excited about getting some plants and seeds in! I also planted some grass seed. We are expecting some weather tonight in the form of thunderstorms and rain. So, I’m hoping it won’t be too bad and everything will survive!

Because of the beautiful weather outside, my blogging may take a back seat for awhile. Atleast until the weather becomes too hot to be outside! But, I will try to check in here every now and then, and visit you all too. Have a great day!

I don’t talk much about my writing. I guess when you haven’t been published and you’re just starting the process…you feel a little awkward about telling people that you’re a writer. Atleast that is the way it has been for me.

I started writing my first women’s fiction almost ten years ago. I wrote almost continually for about two weeks. Yes, my four children did survive and my husband was driving for JB Hunt at the time. Anyway…I wrote until I was about half way done on a 120,000 word manuscript and then I set it aside. But, the story that I had dreamed about just kept popping back into my head and it was there…almost as real as my own family. (For those of you that don’t write, that may sound a little strange.) Anyway, a little over a year and a half ago, I started to really think about writing again and finishing that story. I had typed the first part of it, so I put it into our computer, doing some rewriting because I wanted it to be from a Christian, Inspirational view instead.

This past Saturday, I finished the fourth book in the series that I’ve had in my head all these years. I now need to start the process of rewriting each one and cleaning them up. I am starting to get excited about that. But, I had to get over the sadness that I felt when I finished writing. It was like I was leaving a dear family behind. Almost a sense of mourning.

Ten years ago I was not ready to pursue publishing. My children were all under the age of eleven. Now, I feel as though I have a little more freedom and I am more ready, more assured. I pray that I am able to be published, but I know it is going to be a long process. I guess the fact that I’m willing to share this with other people says a lot!!

So far, other than a fifth book that will be historical, I have no other stories in my head at this time. I don’t think I will write the fifth book unless the other four are published, but that could change! At this time I don’t really even want any other stories, but I know if I think about it…they will be there. Even as a child, I was constantly writing poems and short stories, illustrating them too.

So, there’s a glimpse of a little more of me. What do you feel passionate about? What dream do you have, or what do you enjoy that would be a wonderful way to help with your family’s income?

This is one of my very favorite times of year! I have probably mentioned that before. I start going through my plant and seed catalogs, planning what I’d like to do in the yard. I spent a peaceful 1/2 hour this morning walking with my toddler, just wandering through the yard, making plans for new plants.

My plans for this summer include moving our driveway to the back yard…off the alley. We may need some heavier equipment for that. I would then like to start a ’stone terrace’ off the stairs my husband put in last fall. Home Depot has a neat little form that you fill with quick crete, or a cement mixture and it makes it look like bricks or flagstone. I’m going to do the flagstone look. That way I can work on it a little at a time. I’d like to get my picket fence across the entire front yard so the roses I planted last spring can start climbing up it. I would like to make a small herb garden off the terrace where I would have easy access to it. It would also smell lovely! I also have plans for a Wisteria arbor near the terrace and a row of hedge roses that are good for rose hips…eating and pot pourri!

I also have a much larger vegetable garden this year and I have the seeds to start planting that. I would also like to put in a hedge running along it to give us some privacy from the alley. I have planted a Chinese Elm hedge in past years and it does very well, grows very quickly. It’s very inexpensive too! Always a plus!

Those are my major plans and I will keep you updated as to how many of them I get accomplished! Maybe at some point I can post some pictures so you can see the ‘work in progress’.

What are your gardening plans?

It is very late for me and I don’t usually stay up using the computer. But, there was just something hard to resist about the quiet and solitude of the house tonight. It seemed like I shouldn’t let it go to waste. Now, I should be writing…but my brain is probably too tired to tackle that right now. I would be doing a lot of rewriting tomorrow!

I think back on the years when my husband and I were first married. It seemed as though we just had hours and hours where we could just sit and relax. It was always peaceful…almost lonely for me at times since I had come from a family of four children. Now, I find myself really cherishing these quiet times when I can actually hear myself think!

So, just a couple thoughts before I shut this down for the comfort of my bed and hope for a few hours of sleep before my toddler decides to join us. I’m still trying to figure out how one small body can take up so much space in a king size bed! Oh…the joys of parenthood…and the tranquility of alone time!

It’s time for church…is your world falling apart and are we all stressed? When our hot water heater started flooding the bathroom last September, it was on a Wednesday. The night that we have AWANA at our church. Yes, my husband was able to take a shower that night and we headed off to AWANA, a couple well-placed buckets by the hot water heater. Yesterday, when the kitchen sink backed-up again…an ongoing problem since the plumbing was not installed properly…I did what I always do and plunged it, used Draino. Well, when it started backing up into the bathtub, and a lot of black gunk with it, that was not good. This time, my husband could not take a shower obviously since the tub looked like something out of a horror movie. So, I went to AWANA with two children, on parent’s night no less. My husband spent the evening crawling under our house, taking LOTS of that black gunk out of our pipes!

Why does it seem like all the emergencies, bad weather, arguments and car problems happen on Wednesdays or Sundays? Or is that just my impression because church is supposed to be an important part of our lives? I try hard to make it a priority, have everything ready and yet something always seems to happen anyway. Is this really a Satanic influence or me just not being vigilant enough to keep it together in times of stress. I remember the pastor of our last church preaching on this one Sunday when he was in James. He was talking about the mouth and all the trouble it can get us into. He said he could remember so many times when his four children were growing up that they would all be arguing on the way to church…and then of course have to be happy and smile as you walked in the door! I know I’ve been guilty of that one. I usually do get back in fellowship during the first chance that I have and the rest of the day goes beautifully. How do you all handle your Sunday morning rush or the Wednesday night panic to get dinner, home-work and out the door in time for prayer meeting? I’d love to hear your viewpoints on this!

By the way…my husband did get the problem fixed at midnight and was able to take a nice hot shower. The bathtub drained better than it has since we moved in!!