Too Hot.

As in, I should be doing more yard work, but it is already 80 degrees outside. You could almost stand to be in our backyard if we had ANY shade at all--but we really don't. Someday we will and it will look so nice.

The garden is in.
14 tomatoes
8 peppers
6 basil
sage, cilantro, chives, oregano (had to transplant it into a pot, it was taking over the world!), mint (more transplanting and a couple hours of root removal--it already took over the world and was on it's way to other planets), nastursiums (my favorite edible flower!), rosemary
50 onions
2 tomatillos
2 pickling cucumbers
2 butternut squash
1 acorn squash
2lbs of zinnia seed
black-eyed susans, shasta daisies, yarrow, iris, chinese lanterns, rudbeckia, catnip (of course), sunflowers, forsythia, spirea, black-eyed susan vine, california poppies, lamb's ear, snow-on-mountain

AND, my cross-my-fingers...it's looking good so far, Scarlet Runner Beans. I even built a tee pee so that the vines could fill it all in and make a "house" for the kids. If it works I am going to make a permanent structure next year. I saw them at an agricultural conference in CA last summer. They have the most beautiful red flowers and the vines are so thick with large leaves...oh, I can't wait!


The yarrow was looking great until Ernst decided to take a nap in the middle of the plant! aauugggh. :(

We also had curbing put in around our lawn in the backyard. It was only a slight nightmare. The chickens never got put in the coop and they walked all over a whole section of wet concrete. There were chicken tracks everywhere! Such a mess, we had to redo that section so that it wouldn't crumble. The chickens have been a slight disaster this year. They are first of all, nuts. We've never had such wild birds. We tried to catch one to keep it out of the wet concrete and it flew over the fence and was last seen headed northbound. As the rate that bird was moving it's probably just outside of Boise right now. Good riddance, I say. Stupid bird. The other two are slowly realizing that we will not chase them down if they choose to "go it alone"--we'll see if they last through the summer. They are digging machines. I have been terrified to let them get anywhere near my new plants. I already had to replace one of the pickling cucumbers. They dug it right out of the ground! The good news is that they have beautiful eggs. Some of the best we have ever had...and Lachlan has been doing her part to get them eaten. She requests a hard-boiled egg at every meal. Jeff indulges her for breakfast, she'll eat at least two--sometimes as many as four. Four hard-boiled eggs. It makes me sick just thinking about it.

Oh, which reminds me. Her soft-spot is finally filled in--as in--she doesn't have a hole in her skull. Jeff thinks that this means that her hair is finally going to come in...we'll see.

We also finished the office and the laundry room in the basement. I love the office. It looks like Ikea blew-up in there, but I don't care...it's very comfortable and I am in love with the wall color. My basement laundry room is the best thing that ever happened to my kitchen. I used to have NO upstairs pantry, now I have a walk-in pantry (where the laundry used to be) and a full storage room in the basement. All of the shelves aren't quite up in that room, but they have all been purchased--which is the biggest part of the battle for me.

My new laundry/storage room.

My new cold storage

The new office. My favorite part is the three clocks in different time zones, oh, and the map of North America. I love that map.

Amidst all of the chaos, I've managed to also paint a portion of the fence we share with the neighbors. I've had to change it to an exclusively AM/PM job--I just can't stand out there in the heat of the day. It's too painful.

AND, I did sing with Donny Osmond on Memorial Day. It wasn't much of a holiday. Just hours and hours of rehearsal, showtime and Aleve. It was fun, but I'm afraid that my jaw is going to have permanent damage. I never expected that it would be a long-term injury. I have good days and bad days, most of it depending upon how much I have done the day before. I spend a good portion of my time planning what I'm going to eat and or say--and if it is really worth the "jaw" effort. The good news is that a feel like it is getting better, very slowly, but better, I think.

Jeff is taking Jack to the church "Father's and Sons Campout". If you ask Jack if he wants to go camping with dad he says, "No, me want to see crocodiles, and whales, and dolphins." If you ask him if he wants to sleep in the tent, he will say, "No, I will sleep in my big boy bed. No crocodiles will get me. The whale ate Pinnochio, him stay at home in him bed." As you can see, we've moved on to a new phase of weirdness. Everything revolves around him seeing a crocodile, getting away from a whale or petting a dolphin, oh, yeah, and Curious George. "Mama, you know him a monkey?" Yup. I know.