garden

Evie Update Monday

/ Shane / 1 Comment

“What color is Evie’s hair?”
“Blonde”
“What color is mommy’s hair?”
“Grey!”*

*Disclaimer, Sara is forcing me to write in here that she does not actually have any grey hair.

And P.S., it’s my blog and I can write grey with an ‘e’ on it like a filthy redcoat if I want to! Take that world!

Over the weekend we got our garden all set up. We bought our plants from the gardens of Gethsemane – no joke, that was the name. It’s not as good as the garden of eat’n’, but I was still chuckling over it for a long time. It took Sara and I about 3 hours in the garden and another hour or so on the back porch, but everything looks beautiful. Looks like we’re going to have even more stuff than last year, as every square inch of our garden is accounted for, including plans for what goes in when certain things are done.

Evie went on the potty for what I think can be counted as the first time. She has gone a few times before, when she was younger, but I think this was the first time where she did it consciously, knowing what she was doing and why. That’s a big step. We’re not really potty training her per say, but we do let her sit on it whenever she wants to. Usually she will sit forever, but never go. So hopefully she will start to do this more and more and then we can try to potty train her for real. It certainly would be nice to be able to leave the house without all the diapers, etc.!

Sara found an article that says morning sickness increases the chance your child will have a high IQ. She thinks that people are just saying that as a consolation prize for the people who have a rough time with morning sickness, but anecdotally I will say that Sara had really, really bad morning sickness and Evie is really, really smart. You be the judge.

Since I began with a funny story about Sara, I feel I should end the same way; bookend-like. The other night I was sleeping blissfully when Sara forcefully pressed her arm against mine and yelled triumphantly, “They’re finally together!” I woke up rather confused and looked at her, but she wasn’t awake. I guess I’ll always wonder what the heck she was dreaming about.

Exciting Garden News (speculation only)

/ Shane / 1 Comment

As reported in our local newspaper (I would post a link but they only have the latest issue, so the link would be inaccurate in a week) our Alderman suggested the empty lot that is more or less across the street (sort of kitty corner, but a little farther) from our house as a potential new location for the garden.  This would be great for two reasons, 1) I didn’t think the garden could possibly be any closer, but across the street is pretty dang convenient, and 2) that lot is currently full of trash, broken bottles, etc. so it could only be improved.  The downside is that the lot is much smaller than where the garden is now, so we could potentially be pushed out of a spot. However, with such a convenient location, I would think we could wait as long as it takes to get a spot.

So perhaps something that seemed so dire could actually be a benefit! Clouds with silver linings and all that.

In tasty hamburger news, CNN had 5 Tasty Burger Joints Worth Visiting and good ole Triple XXX and the Purvis burger made the list! For those of you not in the know, Triple XXX is a sort of hole in the wall, iconic Purdue restaurant and the Purvis burger has peanut butter on it. That sounds kind of gross but it is surprisingly good. I usually got something else, but Sara was fond of the Purvis burger. Still, I can’t deny it exceeded my expectations.

Why they shouldn’t take away my garden

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Just when I start hearing all this talk about “recession gardens”, we have to deal with the bittersweet-ness of working on our garden for the last season. Over the course of a few weekends, we managed to get the old junk all cleaned out and get phase 1 planted, which consists of some lettuce, spinach and carrots.

A couple of details have come out about the reasons for removing the garden, and two points really bother me.

  1. The building which is being built is not actually being built on the site of the garden. Instead, the garden will be the “staging area” for the construction crews working on the new building. This is kind of annoying because you are removing this nice fixture of the neighborhood for something that is inherently temporary. At least if they were putting the building on the site of the garden I could come to terms with the fact that they really just needed that space.
  2. There is quite a bit of irony in the fact that the new building will be designed as a “green” building. So they are destroying a unique urban environment so they can build an “environmentally friendly” building.

I even heard somewhere that the occupants of the new building were told it was a nice location due to the close proximity to a community garden, though I can’t prove that. Oh, the irony.

Anyway, here is a nice article about the garden, including a lot of history.  Of particular note, check out the slideshow of garden pictures. These pictures remind me of how awesome the garden is in summertime and are what kept me going when I was standing in the cold, seeing my breath and breaking up dirt to get ready for planting.

Oh well, it is what it is. At least our garden will rock this year.

Garden Season II – Potential Hiatus

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Just when I write a nice post about the garden, we hear word of its ultimate demise. I mentioned before that there was some doubt about its future and, according to the most recent transmission, the garden will be closed in the “fall of this year” to be used as “staging during construction” of a new building. The semi-good news is that the University “would be willing to help relocate the community garden to a new site”.  This is only semi-good because A) there’s no where that could possibly be as convinient for us as where it is now, and B) who knows what that means in terms of our plot personally (i.e. the garden may be smaller and we may be bumped, the individual plots may be smaller, etc.)

On the other hand, someone made an absolutely awesome webpage for the garden! As a programmer, it does my very soul good to see such a beautiful, clean, focused, professional website. And it contains everything you could ever need. Including the wiki for gardening tips was a stroke of genius! I didn’t see anything to indicate the identity of the creator of the webpage, be it an individual or company, but I would certainly recommend them based on this web page alone.

The Garden, Season II

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Spring is in the air, quite literally since I woke up this morning with itchy eyes and a vague tingling in my allergy sense.

And with all this nice weather comes another attempt at gardening! Our garden received a stay of execution for another year. We still don’t know if they are planning to build a building on top of it, but I think with the economy as it is, it is safe to assume it will be some time before the University gets around to breaking ground on a multi-million dollar new building.

We were out on Sunday cleaning out the leftovers from last year and even a few new things that had already taken root.  Last year we didn’t get our garden until pretty late since we were on the waiting list and everything, so hopefully getting started earlier on it this year will mean less weeding, etc. We even plan to plant some lettuce and other things that come up early to maximize the gardening potential. Did you know there is something called Grand Rapids Lettuce? Well, there is.

We haven’t got the layout planned yet, but we did buy all the seeds over the weekend. I am also going to attempt to grow cucumbers on the back porch to start my own pickle supply. I have my grandma’s recipie which I am on record as saying is the food of the gods. Hopefully they will grow better than the porch tomatoes did last year. Does anybody know if cucumbers need a lot of sun? I don’t need big ones. They are supposedly a kind that is conducive to growing in small spaces. Ah, who am I kidding I only bought them because they were called “Spacemaster Cucumbers” and I’m hoping they float or grow in the dark or something.