A New Cousin and Nephew

My brother and his wife had a baby today; we are so excited for them! (and for the little guy: David and Miranda will be great parents)

See details here.

A Patch of Our Own

Scott and I have acquired a small plot of land, a Pea Patch.  It was really my idea and to be my project, but after an hour of heavy labor (and less than a sixth of the way through our plot) My back rebelled and I decided that I had to find some other way of getting the soil ready.  Scott kindly took over, and when he pulled out as many of the rocks and roots as he could, he helped Susanna plant some carrots in her part of our patch while I planted some lettuces, carrots, and summer squash in the rest of it.

Here is a photograph of our patch (ours is only the left half, the plot on the other side of the nearly invisible piece of string is someone else’s).  And Susanna’s part is the small corner of the patch that is marked off by rocks (you can barely see it on the left edge of the frame, about halfway down).

Susanna has had a great time “working hard”: collecting the millions of rocks we fished out of our plot, throwing dirt around, and her favorite part, playing with earthworms.  Here she is with one of her finds.In this last photograph, she is going home after gardening with her baby (these days she likes to carry it around in this backpack fashioned out of a blanket).

It turns out that I don’t know anything about gardening (Liz, maybe I’ll enroll in your gardening class).  So I’m trying focus on enjoying the experience of gardening rather than its fruits, in case there aren’t any.