Gardening with Petitti's!

So!  It's planting season!

Or... yard de-shaming season depending on your point of view.  Our yard needed a whole bunch of de-shaming this year:

This house is vacant, right?

See we live on a super main road and last year(s) I've had completely non-trustworthy toddlers.  So I'd pull out one weed and then frantically chase a kid who was too near the road.  Nope.  Our front yard has strictly been only what you need to survive levels of maintenance.

SERIOUSLY DO RACCOONS LIVE HERE?

That changes this year.  I used to really enjoy gardening - you can dig through the archives and find lots of posts about salsa gardens and sunflowers.  But that was before the tiny humans ransacked our house and priorities.  They are finally old enough now to either help out or at the very least not flail towards the street while we're pulling weeds.  So this weekend with a little help from Petitti's we did this:

SO MUCH BETTER!

We replaced the edging which was a rotten mess with some bricks that match the patio we built.  Pulled 6 lawn bags full of weeds and spread a ridiculous amount of mulch:

BOOM, BABY.

But we wanted a finishing touch.  A new tree to make us excited about our yard again.  We've always wanted a fruit tree.  So we took the kids out to Petitti's in Strongsville to pick one out.  It was such fun!

I have never been to a gardening place this big before.  It was a ball.  The kids loved playing in the rows and rows of plants.  I loved being able to ask a knowledgeable person an insane amount of questions so that I don't immediately kill our new plants.

Although they come with a year guarantee and they've been raised in Ohio - so they are used to our winters.

After much debate we ended up bringing home a peach tree AND a pear tree. Because SPRING.  We couldn't decide and the kids wanted both, so... here we are.  Also a whole bunch of hanging baskets (they were on sale!). 

Our new Peach Tree!

We needed to move their playhouse a bit to put in the pear tree but I think it worked out.

 And it's amazing how much color and fun the hanging baskets add to our yard!

Anyways if you want to de-shame your yard, too, Petitti's has generously given me a $50 giftcard to share with my readers!     Here's how to enter to win:


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Yay for spring and gardens!!!

Disclosure:  I was provided with a giftcard to Petitti's in exchange for this post.  As always all opinions and shameful yards are my own.

Wordless Wed - What's Blooming.

So it seems like the end of May is the best time for my yard.  Everything is in bloom right now:

Life is not over. A Rant.

So it's been awhile since I've gone on an old fashioned rant so why not.... 

A few things have happened lately that have nothing to do with me and yet have frustrated me to distraction.  And I couldn't understand why situations that I have no stake in whatsoever would make me so angry.  By all accounts it made no sense.  But the more I thought about it the more I realized it had nothing to do with the situations themselves.   And what I'm angry about makes perfect sense:

I am so, so, SO sick of the thought that when you have kids?  LIFE IS OVER.

Um no.  NO.  No it's not. Yet this seems to be the prevailing attitude lately.  There are whole websites devoted to Before Kids Bucket Lists.  And even a whole advertising campaign devoted to this concept.  And it pisses me off.

Because there is an inherent insult in this way of thinking.  You know what?  I have two kids.  And my life is FAR from over thankyouverymuch.

Pictured:  Last Friday night.  I went out with the intention of having one drink.  Maybe two.  Then we made friends with the bartender, tried a new shot on the house, and hung out with the band.  A night that would have made even my kidless 27 year old self proud.

I'm not saying things aren't different.  I would never say that.  I joke all the time about how different things are.  Hell my little About Me on my sidebar is basically a paragraph about how things have changed.  But different is NOT the death of funtimes.

Pictured:  No fun at all, obviously.

The opposite of that, actually.  Because with kids - especially kids my kids' age - anything and everything can be a recipe for ridiculous funtimes.  Situations that suck as an adult become awesome adventures with a kid.  Even a random lazy Sunday lunch in our pj's can result in laughing so hard that you cry:


Video of our entire family cry-laughing at lunch today.  Over basically nothing.  Yet I laughed so hard my sides hurt afterwards.

And yes.  It's hard.  I'm frazzled.  I'm sleep deprived (I did the math once and realized that in the whole of 2011 I never had more than 2 nights in a row of 6+ hours of uninterrupted sleep.  So "sleep deprived" seems like a poor description of just how fucking tired I am.)  And alot of the times I'm also sticky.

But I am happy.

Deeply happy.  Soulfully happy.  The type of happy that only comes when you know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be.  When you are no longer living towards some dream of a hopeful future.  When you are actually in it, giggles and stickiness and all.

But don't get me wrong.  I would also never say that "life began with my children" or "I never knew what love was until I saw her face" or "There's nothing more beautiful than a child's laugh" or any of those awful platitudes on the other side of it.  They make me equally insane.  Because kids are absolutely NOT a requirement for happiness (neither is marriage or travel or any other life choice people are intent on being judgy about) But I will tell you this:

I wouldn't trade my kids for any awesome trip, amazing time with friends, or ridiculous night out in the entire world.

(and I know from awesome trips, amazing times with friends, and ridiculous nights out)

In other less rant-y news we finally have a grown up patio set a mere 6 years after we built our patio!

 My kid in typical her fashion immediately asked "Are we having a party?"  I explained that no, this was going to be a permanent fixture in our backyard.  Her reaction?  "We should have a party"

Yes.  Yes we should.

Edited to add a line of clarification.  I do NOT believe that kids are the only road to happiness any more than I believe that they are the death of it.  Just wanted to make that clear.

Planting a Garden

So this year I'm hopeful that I can actually have a garden.  I used to plant all sorts of things.  But the whole pregnant/newborn cycle of the last 4 summers has totally derailed that.  Also last year we had our yard fenced in which meant that halfway through the growing season we tore everything up.  Before that we knew it was going to happen so we did nothing.   It basically looked like our house was abandoned.

But!  This year will be different!

At least in the back yard where I"m already excited to watch new things bloom:

Our new Cleveland Pare tree for our Cleveland Pair.  My fav detail is the yarn drying in the background.

I'm trying to include my kid in as much of this as possible.  Watching things grow just teaches so may good things - patience, that food comes from the ground not the store, responsibility.  So on either side of their tree we planted a blueberry bush.  One for each kid:

They LOVE blueberries.  And can eat an alarming amount.  This poor bush doesn't know what's coming.

I also let my daughter pick a bunch of flowers from the grocery store:

And the other day we got our seed starting on:

She helped plant all of these.  Even though it involved getting her fingers dirty.  This was, of course, an issue.

 Since then we've been checking every day and finally overnight this happened:

She is So. Excited.

I can't wait to actually put them in the ground with her!

Stuffed Peppers and the last of the garden

So I’m in Maine right now but thanks to the nifty new “post ahead” feature in blogger I was able to set this up to post while I was gone! Neat!

My garden this year was pathetic. Seriously. In May/June I had such grand schemes. I watered every day, weeded with no mercy, and was completely babying all of the seeds I planted. And this year I planted a lot of seeds. But then at the end of June I got pregnant. And by mid-July I was asleep/throwing up/in migrane hell all the time. By now even my houseplants are looking pretty worse for wear. So much for my grand schemes…

Anyways this past weekend we pulled everything out – it was all overgrown and weedy and just a mess. But I did manage to salvage a bouquet of Dahlias:



And enough peppers to make our annual “end of the garden” stuffed pepper feast.

So very tasty! Here’s what I did (recipe from Carolyn and then tweaked a bit):

Stuffed Peppers

Four small or two big green peppers, or Hungarian wax, or yellow, or whatever you have growing: slice, clean seeds and cut ribs out and set aside
1-2 extra peppers chopped up for the filling – I used a hot pepper in addition to a green one
1 lb. ground beef (ground round is fine)
½ cup-ish of uncooked white rice (just eyeball it)
Shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 onion, shopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
salt
pepper
paprika
all purpose seasoning
can of campbells tomato soup
8oz can of tomato sauce


mix meat, rice, chopped pepper, cheese, onion, garlic, parsley, and seasonings in a bowl:

stuff the meat/rice/ingredient balls into the peppers, but don't pound it in, make it fluffy
put the peppers in big soup pot
put any extra filling around the peppers in the pot. I used it to make my peppers stand up
put a blob of tomato soup on each pepper
add the can of tomato sauce to the rest of the tomato soup
pour around the peppers:

bring up to a bubble over low heat (you don’t want to burn the meat or peppers to the bottom of the pan!)
put lid on
cook for about 45 minutes to an hour

check while cooking, re-pour on soup to keep moist
during the last 5-10 min of cooking add more shredded cheese to the top of each pepper and let it melt.

So tasty!!!!

Random Catchup Post

Just a list of random because writing an actual coherent post kindof makes my head hurt right now.

1.) I am 13 weeks and 3 days pregnant. Yes, I’m still puking. Yes, I know that should have stopped by now. It hasn’t. But it’s less frequent so let’s move on.

2.) In other pregnancy news….Our kid is the size of a peach.

3.) My fantasy football team kicked serious ass this week. Like 120 points of solid ass whooping. I now in first place in my league. Matt’s in first place in his league too but his team isn’t anywhere near as awesome as mine is (120 points!!! Michael Turner is my hero)

4.) Vampires rule. If you don’t have HBO and haven’t seen True Blood you have failed at life. Go get it now and try to catch the pilot before the next episode on Sunday. It’s totally worth it. So far show is amazing – every bit as good as the books. Although I’m reserving my complete judgment until a few weeks from now when we get to meet Eric. Mmmmm… Eric.

5.) The new 90210 was AWFUL. As my friend texted me “The only use I have for this show is to find out who Kelly’s baby daddy is, otherwise it’s terrible.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the baby daddy will be whoever they can convince to make a guest appearance first.

6.) I’m a bit obsessed with the Large Hadron Collider. It’s fascinating. And it worked! Crazy. Makes me want to be a physicist. The most hilarious article I’ve found on it is here:

The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World

7.) Despite my best efforts to kill it my garden isn’t doing too terrible. Since for the past few months I’ve been asleep or puking going outside in the heat to weed and water was not on my priority list. So we have a pathetic amount of homegrown produce this year – It’s sad, really.

But my flowers are actually surviving quite well. Especially the sunflowers:


Zinneas:

And Cosmos which are as tall as the sunflowers!:

My Dahlias are blooming like crazy:



And I’m pretty sure my morning glories are too although I haven’t been outside in the garden in the morning at all to enjoy them … I’m hoping that next year I’ll be able to get back into the garden thing.

8.) We went camping last weekend with about 30 of our closest friends. It was SO much fun. But I’m going to try to write a whole other post on it… that may or may not happen.

9.) I have been feeling well enough to do a bit of dying… so a shop update and new colorways should be coming soon!

10.) Dexter continues to be Sultan of the Couch.

And that’s about all I’ve got for right now…

Remember that garden thing I used to do?

Sadly because of the new business venture and all of the life that’s been going on lately I haven’t spent nearly as much time in my garden as previous years. Parts of it are looking really sad… But I still have some pretty pictures to share:

Tomatoes – I just have to make sure pick them before Dexter does!

Zinnias – grown from seed. They are finally, finally starting to look good!

Sunflowers – the chipmunks didn’t get them this year!

Dahlias – I can’t wait for these to bloom. Partially because I forget what color I bought.

Coneflowers – these are growing in the no man’s land on the side of my house by my neighbor’s drive. So are these:

No idea what they are, though. Just that they are pretty and low maintenance.

Cilantro – also grown from seed. I’ve given up the dream here and just let it bolt. It will reseed itself and in a week or so I’ll have more usable cilantro.

Lily – So when this bloomed I though - I’ve never seen these before in my life. And then I checked the blog for garden pics from last year and lo and behold it did bloom last year! Crazy, that.

Cosmos – grown from seed. I actually bought one of the seed packets when I was in San Antonio. They are super-special Texas Cosmos. Or something like that.

Rose of Sharon – I have a giant bush of this flower – I love it. Pink and red? Perfect combo for me. And it goes particularly well with the cosmos growing next to it!

Really everything I grew from seed/tuber is rocking it and everything I planted – like the inpatients and peppers – looks pretty sad and pathetic. I’m not sure why this is but I’m guessing it has to do with my less-than-perfect watering habits. Hmmmm….

Knitting content to return, triumphantly, tomorrow!