Bridal Veil Falls!

One our trip to Utah, we took a day to go into the mountains and hiked and picnic around Bridal Veil Falls!

It was an enjoyable day!

The mountains were green and trees were blooming.

Isn't Victoria just the cutest baby!

Sveta's friend Elena came with us to spend the day with Sveta.

The best days are spent with family!

Caleb did some rock climbing!

Beets grow in South Carolina!

Growing Beets (and carrots) in the south is something I have not ever tried. Having clay soil, we don't have the proper drainage and then we have the heat to deal with. It stays too hot too soon in the spring and stays too hot in the fall.

But with Sveta here and loving to use beets in several dishes like borscht, last fall I tried to grow some. They didn't do too much but wintered over and kept growing. I also started some in February outside this spring to see what they could do. Here are my results!

I'm excited that they are bigger than an inch! In fact, some are quite large. We had a wonderful sweet and sour beets dish with dinner. (I'm also pretty tickled about how the carrots are doing as well!)

Rhododendrons!

Boy I love our rhododendrons. In Oregon they were all around growing up and I wanted to have them in my own yard.
After ten years, here is how big ours have gotten!

After ten years, here is how big ours have gotten!

First strawberries!

We picked three gallons of strawberries today - April 20th!
There are plenty more coming where these came from! Even with our cooling off weather we are still having early berries! Earlier this week we picked a half gallon, just enough to enjoy our first shortcake! Yum!

In memory of Big Boy April,1997-April 17, 2012

Our beloved pet, Big Boy died after declining for the past month. We had Big Boy since he was about six weeks old and he had been with us for 15 years.

As a young kitten, he was very sociable and stayed that way throughout his life. When just a kitten, he would play hide and seek with Adam. He would actually tag Adam and then run and Adam would chase him and tag him back. He was happiest when he was around family and thought he owned the house!

He was a very gentle cat. As the grandchildren were very young, he would lay down so they could pet him and endured many hair pulling without lashing back at the children.

He loved packages arriving at the house. He thought those empty boxes were sent just for him.

Of course his favorite person in the world was his dad! If he heard the garage door open, he would go to the back door and wait to greet Michael almost every day. If Michael was sitting in the living room, Big Boy thought his place was on his lap.

In the summer time, he loved to eat cantaloupe with Michael. He loved the rinds and when we brought in a cantaloupe, he would cry until he had a piece.

The last month we made a kitty hospice for him in the house. For a couple of weeks, he wanted to be in the living room closet but the last couple of weeks, we made him comfortable in my office under my desk. We tried to make sure he had water and offered him food but he just refused to eat and gradually declined. He still would try to meet Michael when he came home but became very wobbly on his feet as he weakened.


We thought we were ready for the day of his death but yesterday was a hard day, especially for Michael. Michael prepared his grave and wrapped him up in one of his shirts. If Michael had a shirt on the bed, Big Boy would always want to lay on it. Eric and the kids, Ryan, Sveta and I all joined in to say goodbye to Big Boy in our short funeral service.

You would not have asked for a better pet. We know there are pets in heaven and we hope to one day be reunited with our faithful cat.

First squash!

We are always trying things to extend our growing season. We both love squash so I decided to try 3-4 squash plants in the greenhouse to see if we could get them to produce for us. I started these the first of March and on April 14 we picked our first squash. Here is a dish with four squash! It's great to eat it and we have several smaller ones out there growing.

Project finished!

Michael and I have worked for the past month redoing our beds in the upper garden and heavily mulch the rows to hopefully finish eradicated the Bermuda grass that has plagued our new upper garden.

It sure looks good to see it done. Can you believe we picked our first ripe strawberry on April 5th! They are loaded with berries so we can't wait for the season to come. We covered our last area with black plastic and will probably store some mulch on it until we are ready to finish up that part of the garden and hopefully can start without the grass.

I also started several different herbs in my quest to learn more about using herbs in cooking and medicinal needs.

I have them in pots on our deck so they are close to the kitchen. Boy, I love the smell of fresh Basil!

Spring is here and the garden is growing!

Spring is here! We are establishing an asparagus bed and have had one meal so far! It is so good to cut it and bring it into the house, cook it and eat it!

With the warm winter and early spring, we set things out much earlier than normal. Here's a bed of cabbage that is growing phenomenal.

Our upper garden has all of our early plants and they are growing fast and look so dark green. Our new strawberry plants have come to life and are blooming.

We set out broccoli out the first of March and as of last week started eating it! They have dark green wonderful heads.

On Monday, we planted two beds of our tomatoes. I started several varieties of heirloom. These varieties are Watermelon tomatoes, Cindy's West Virginia, Arkansas Traveler and Beefy boy.

I started the tomato seeds the first of February. After they got to a certain point, I put them in the tubes to get nutrients. These are some Cherokee Purple tomatoes that we are going to put in one more bed. I actually saved these seeds from last summer! I wasn't sure how they would do so I planted a lot of them and they all came up! I hope to do more seed saving this year.

Peppers can actually be perennials and so last August we dug this pepper plant up and put it in a pot to winter over in the greenhouse. We had a big batch of banana peppers in November and it has begun to bloom and set more peppers!

The first of March I decided to try to have early squash since it was so mild. So we started these in pots and they are about to bloom. I'm not sure how good they will do in pots but who knows, maybe we will have squash in April!

Redoing the upper garden!

We made our upper garden a couple of years ago. However, we have been battling the previously established Bermuda grass. That grass is vigorous and this shows the extensive root system that is everywhere.

Last summer to battle this matted mess in the walkways and it kept trying to work its way into the beds. So in August, we covered a lot of the upper garden with black plastic and kept it there throughout the winter to try to smother the grass.

We have uncovered it and to get it out before this grass starts to grow, Michael has been digging out roots and then we are putting down cardboard and a heavy mulch.

We have also redid the beds by taking out the soil, lining the beds and putting the soil back in! It's been a ton of work but we are keeping our fingers crossed that this will help rid us of this problem and we can get this garden established as well as the lower garden is. (Our spring broccoli is beautiful).

I've also cleaned out the lower garden from Henbitt, which is an edible winter ground cover that dies out as it heats up here in the South. It looks much worse than it was to clean out the beds. Underneath, I found some blooming strawberries already.

Smiling baby

Little Seth was born November 30, 2011. He seems to be a colicky baby and has had some issues with reflux.

That has made him cry and have fussy sleepless times.

So, it's great to see these smiles and laughter the other night during family home evening!