Chickweed
Daffs peeking up
Starting winter sowing
Forcing paperwhites from Mary's Garden Patch
I said that I would show pictures of my gourds in my last blog.
Yes, that was a month ago, but who's counting, right?!?!
These are the gourds I have left over.
I just love the stained ones.
The painted ones are fun.
People loved the little snow girls.
The Painted Ladies are Dave's favorite.
Here are the rest of our oldest son's lady bug houses.
I spent the day getting caught up on my projects.
Since it is cooler weather, I'm shipping essential oil soy candles, whipped mango body butter and my peppermint foot cream. Large bars of Lavender & Cream soap are back in stock, and by request, my Gardener's Hand Soap now includes pumice stone and is ready to ship. All available from my store.
All of that, and the baby decided that now is a good time for him to start cutting teeth and start sitting up. Who gave him permission to grow up, anyway??
Hi everyone!
Oma brought up one of my past blog posts over on Cubits, and things got a little chatty. I thought I'd move the conversation over to my primary home so we can all chat together :)
Here it is November- where on earth has the year gone??
Fall is in full swing here on the hill, and we're busy bees preparing for winter. All of you who are already under snow- please don't throw snowballs at me! Here's a little bit of what's been going on:
Dave with his little boys:
Our second annual field day: Around the last of October every year, we have a field day. It is an entire day affair! We have marathon and sprint races, long and tripple jumps, sling shot, .22 shooting, and bow and arrow competitions, balance and endurance and bubble gum blowing :) There are lots of treats and prizes and is a highly anticipated event
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I had several events that I was invited to sell my handmade goodies, so I spent a lot of time filling up my soap supply and working on my gourds. Saturday is my last event of the year and then we get to slow down until seed starting time!
This week has been beautiful weather and I'm taking full advantage by rearranging some of my gardens, and doing some sheetmulching in anticipation of spring. Between my events and school, I haven't had as much time as I'd like, but slowly plugging away nets some good results! I'll show off those pictures in my next post.
To the Best Daddy-
From teaching life lessons to the oldest, to snuggling with the newborn- you are a fantastic Daddy to them all.
I love being by your side as we make our way down the Parenting Road!
Love,
t
We've had quite the ongoing saga here in our household regarding water.
When we first built our house, we had a well dug at the very beginning- almost a year before we moved in. When we finally finished building and moved in, we noted that the water was a very light tea-ish color, something that we couldn't really see before filling up bathtubs or some other means of a lot of water. Since we had had our water tested, we knew it was safe, and we worked with the well driller to find a solution. We were told it was everything from "not cycled" to "tannins"...meanwhile it was annoying, but not unbearable.
However, the problem ever so slowly got worse. After the huge drought last year, in the fall when we finally got our first rain, we saw that the water was a little worse. Then we got more rain, and the water was really worse. Then, every time it rained, the water turned black. First we were told this was impossible- rain had nothing to do with the well water (it's a 750 foot well), yet we had clear evidence that this was indeed going on.
Meanwhile, life without water certainty became very inconvienent. By mid Feb, we were dealing with lots of rain (yippeee), which also meant that the water coming out of the faucet was not drinkable more days that not. To further complicate things, we were working closely with the well digger (who now saw that we certainly had a problem) trying different things to fix the problem. Also, we live 1/3 mile off the road, so piping in community water was no simple or inexpensive task.
To make a very very long and drawn out story somewhat shorter, From late Feb through today, we've had 2 more wells dug, and water varied from the best at cloudy, to muddy, to black clay, to just none at all. Every day was an adventure (no, it was just a challenge), because you absolutely didn't know if you were going to have any water at all, or what the quality of said water would be.
Personally, I've been stretched and tested in ways I didn't know was possible! Such a "little" thing that one takes for granted. Trying to run a household and cook and clean without clean running water was not something I was prepared for. But we managed. Day after day.
There finally came a point when we knew we had to cut our losses, decide that these "fixes" weren't ever going to get it done, and get community water to our house. We had been more than patient. However, even that was no simple or quick task. We live in a very small town that is not in a hurry for anything.
Anyway, as of today, as Dave said, "our water nightmare is finally over".
We've been working all day to try to clean up some of the effects of this mess- sandy toliet tanks, sludge in dishwashers and washing machines, bath tub jets that lock up due to sand and mud. There's a lot to clean up, but we all stand around an open faucet and marvel that the water is clear. Imagine that!
