Entropy Lives Here

Hey Grammy!  Look what we had for dinner last night!

We are having a good time this week even though we miss Chad a lot, but I am too tired to write about it. Instead, enjoy some pictures of Noah in the yard from last weekend.











What a photogenic, delightful little boy. He loves the yard and is happy to participate in the photo shoot.


Or not...

Noah is starting to be able to eat puffs (dry baby cereal) with reasonable success. They are just so darn difficult to pick us and put in your mouth!


Once he gets them in there he mashes them with his gums reasonably well. Sometimes the fingers get in the way.




In addition to puffs, Noah is currently eating the following: beef, chicken, (plain) yogurt, chickpeas, green peas, green beans (but not crazy about the green beans), carrots, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, spinach, zucchini, yellow summer squash, butternut squash, winter squash (no idea what this means, it came in a jar with "winter squash" as the only ingredient), tomatoes, corn, bananas, blueberries, apples, apricots, avacado, rice cereal, oatmeal, mixed grain cereal, and as of yesterday one bite of strawberry. It seems like a lot, huh. Mostly this list was a fun excersize for me, as I realize that soon it may no longer be reasonable for me to list everything he's ever eaten.

He's getting about 1/2 jarred stuff and 1/2 stuff we make for him at home, and seems to like it all well enough after he's had it the first few times. He definitely protested the first few times he ate something with a wierd texture (avacado or beef, for example), but didn't bat an eye over things I had assumed he might not like (plain yogurt, for example). Overall it's been really fun introducing him to food. Here's hoping he continues to eat anything we put in front of him!

And for today's totally random picture, I give you the following:


Yes, that is a tomato plant growing out of our compost pile. I had thought that the big plastic box would prevent this sort of thing, but apparently PA volunteer tomatoes are determined. Also, the vents in this model composter are big enough to grow tomatoes out of. Who knew? Maybe we should write Gardener Supply Co and inform them. At any rate there have been no actual tomatoes on this plant as of yet...

We are either the world's best gardeners or we are so awful the gardening gods have grown impatient with us and are doing things themselves. Either way, yay tomatoes!

-- posted from the phone

Another beautiful day, the day after our bbq. The petals keep falling.


We took the opportunity to plant our garden.


With Noah's supervision, of course.



"Hey mom, you missed a spot. Oh look - a leaf! Oh look - my hand!"

OMG! Compost! How astounding!


Noah showed off his advanced head control in the morning, and helped us assemble our new composter in the afternoon.


By helped, I mean stayed asleep and/or happy in the stroller for long enough for us to get something done.


We found a bunch of tiny snakes while moving the pile - they're pretty cute as long as Chad doesn't bring them too close...


I was going to take a "before" picture of the compost pile, but it was so gross I was too embarrassed to put it on the internet. We have a pile of beautiful finished compost to use when we prepare the garden, and put all the half-digested stuff in the composter.


And finally, our nasty compost pile is properly contained.

I had some great friends help me paint our baby's room this weekend. I love the way it looks now - all warm and fuzzy.


In fact, I think that Winnie the Pooh might live here.


I think the color scheme also does a decent job of tying the things we have in the room together so far. I think the bookshelf and the lights look nice, and the sheet set (in the bag on the corner) looks like it belongs as well. Coming soon, luxuries like curtains! And a place for the baby to sleep!

In other news, it is frigging freezing here. It frosted last night, and will definitely frost again tonight. Due to the plunging temperatures, we decided to pick the last of our tomatoes. Figured there might be just a few stragglers on the vine.


Huh.

Seems that the last of our tomatoes is considerably more tomatoes than we had anticipated. Apparently our tomato plants love October as much as I do.

A few months ago, I got about halfway through the lawn and was so exhausted I had to quit. Chad has done most of the mowing since then, but we've been so busy lately that it's gotten a little bit out of hand. Our lawn was bad enough that we've been talking about buying a powered lawnmower in order to tackle it. I tried to capture the mid-calf grass photographically, but I'm not sure it came though:


It was beautiful beautiful beautiful this weekend, so I figured I could get my exercise for today pushing the thing around our backyard. Yes, this entire post is about how I was able to mow our lawn by myself. After getting up early to paint the trim. And after mowing I had enough energy to do yoga, finish up the baby's room, and cook a real dinner. After a full day yesterday (doing engineering with 6th graders, painting, staying late at friends' for dinner). This may not sound all that astounding but please bear in mind that the first five months I was pregnant I had to spend the entire weekend laying on the couch. Max liked it, I found it clashed with my personality.

So now I'm officially 3rd trimester (when did THAT happen!?) and feel like myself. Woot. Bring it on, 3rd trimester!

P.S. If the posting suddenly stops for a long time, you can go ahead and assume that the 3rd trimester has, in fact, brought it on, and I am laying on the couch.

P.P.S. You have to wait for pictures of the baby's room. Chad gets to come home from Boston and see it first. :)

This is what I picked from our garden this afternoon. Notice the other junk intentionally left on the table for context. These suckers are HUGE!!! We picked a zucchini as big as the large one less than a week ago (last Tuesday, to be exact). We had two friends over for dinner, had grilled zucchini AND zucchini bread, and only used half of the giant. Clearly our garden is out of control.

Anyone need some Zucchini?

I picked the first vegetables from our garden today:

Radishes! They looked great, and I soon had them cleaned up.


We had one radish casualty - This radish was slightly above ground and it looks like an animal or bugs got into it.


Otherwise, we had 8 great looking radishes, one of which ended up on tonight's salad.

aka time to spend some time working outside. We got some tomato seedlings and added them to the plot. Also in this picture you can see the basil that seems to be popping up quite nicely

The beans are doing great - I had to thin them down around the poles.


Also thinned: lettuce, spinach, radishes. The zucchini and cucumbers are also looking good, but we planted those few enough and far enough between to not really need thinning.

Check out our new sunflowers:


Ok, they're not much to look at yet. Hopefully by the end of the summer they will be big and beautiful, and you know I will keep you updated on their progress.


Also the garden on the side of the patio is doing very nicely. The mums are perking up, we're seeing lots of leaves on the lilies, and one of the azaleas is almost blooming!
Time to do some work outside!

I mowed the lawn the other day, for the first time of the season. It was a jungle out there, but now that I know how to use the mower it's just great compared to the last time. Other fun things going on in the back yard: the beans are growing like crazy!


We have enough sun to make some delicious sun tea:


And everything is just getting greener. Yay springtime!

BEANS!!!


Look at the little guys. Up they come! They can handle it if we go away for their crucial first few days in the ground. They're tough! And they have lots of friends. Please look at all of the things in our gardens I thought would be dead but are clearly NOT DEAD!

**note: today's post has been brought to you by the simple pleasures department**

Now on with the show (some things look kind of brown in the pictures, but they're nice and green in real life):

Lettuce! (We'll have to thin it soon)

Spinach!

Radishes!


Zucchini!

Cucumbers!

And from the side garden, some of our perennials are coming back. We are very happy to see them, especially since we weren't great about clipping down their pathetic dried corpses from last season.

Black Eyed Susans!

This picture shows the beginnings of the crazy red and white lillies! (I didn't realize those would come back at all!) as well as the return of our mums! I am happy to report that we have not had any additional mum thefts.

And finally, a newcomer: mint! from Grandma. It seems to be quite happy on the side of the house, next to a hosta! that is also noticeably NOT DEAD! Woohoo!