Memorial Day Weekend

Once again, the obligatory holiday post that always takes me forever to write because, despite all the fun we did have, it never seems terribly noteworthy since it's all about the same thing every year... We did spice it up just a bit by having TWO barbeques instead of just one--one at our house, and one at a neighbor's. During ours, Jane and Megan entertained themselves (and everyone else) while getting a little exercise in while the food was cooking.



And that's about all I have as far as barbeque documentation. We did, however, plant our garden, which is more noteworthy. Or at least more picture-worthy.

I tried to find a "before" picture of this particular section of the backyard, but this is as close as I got. Not quite as wide as I'd hoped.


The ironic thing about our garden is that I was fairly certain we had decided not to have one at all this year, considering my current and continuing level of pregnant-ness, to be closely followed by a newborn who would occupy most attention during harvest time. So, rather than Chris having to run the entire show all by his lonesome, we just weren't going to do it.

Until, that is, Chris's parents offered raspberry starts. Chris started the whole garden process just so we could get those raspberries planted where we will forever want them and we'll be able to get the fruit in the next year or two.

It turned out to be a bit more involved than anticipated...well, I didn't anticipate it. Chris probably knew it from the beginning.

Step 1: Dig it up. That included railroad ties, paving stones, two tree stumps, and several dozen water pipes, most all of which appeared to be extremely excessive. The previous sprinkler system was not so well laid out.



Step 2: Till the ground. That was complicated because it included going through quite the chunks of live grass. One corner of the garden area was also about nine inches higher than the rest, meaning it all had to be leveled as well.


Step 3: Plant the raspberries. Ah, such a cute bonding moment between Jane, Megan, Grandpa Craig and Grandma Janet.


Step 4: Decide that if you're going to do it, do it all. So, dig a new trench for the railroad ties to nicely edge the garden. Put up a fence. Lay down weed mat. Plant tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. Buy seeds for (and intend to plant...) lettuce, carrots, onions, broccoli, and chives.


Step 5: Start taking daily time-lapse photos. If we keep remembering, we'll have a cool summer-growth slideshow/picture flipbook when all is said and done. Or we'll forget and have a few pictures of what it looked like at the beginning, so we can at least have before and after.


I look forward to eating fresh produce in a few short months. And by the way, we'll have way WAY too many tomatoes, so don't buy any in August. Just come to our house.