The crocuses are in bloom, so we've all got the itch to prune and dig and plant! Two Saturdays ago we put in our spring garden. We planted peas, lettuce, carrots, beets, and radishes. And a golden delicious apple tree. Everyone participated and it was a lot of fun to be outside working together.        Bryn thought it was super cool to till the garden bed up. Everybody helped hammer in nails to string twine between to mark the rows for the seeds. And the hole. Asa has been working on digging this hole for at least six months, and it is so deep! Only one person has fallen in accidentally so far.      Trimming back the raspberries.   Also, our forsythia is in bloom!

Yesterday we spent just about all day getting our garden ready to go. We'd already transplanted raspberries and filled a box with cold-hardy plants, but Mother's Day weekend is always the time to plant the summer vegetables. It seems like every year we have big plans to add on quite a bit to our little garden plot, but then right around the time we're ready to do it, some dreadful and expensive catastrophe occurs. This year, that came in the form of a last-second trip to Georgia for me, a new dryer, a new dishwasher, and two new tires on the van because the old ones were down to the cords. So we added one box this time around, and were grateful to be able to do that! It was a lovely day, and a delight to be together getting work done. The girls came with Nate and I to Lowes to get wood.   We borrowed a neighbor's truck and piled in with the boys and Emmie to get a scoop of garden soil. Nate did some weed eating and got the box assembled, and we wor...

I am surprised that we did any canning this year, what with the arrival of little bit in the middle of the summer. But can we did! We did plum jam, from our plum tree, salsa, tomato sauce, peaches, grape juice, and applesauce. Nate and the kids were big helpers. It's fun to can all together as a family. I especially liked grape juice day. Picking all those grapes off the vine together reminded me of back in the day when I was a kid and we'd can beans. We'd sit out on the porch for hours snipping and snapping the beans and getting them ready to go. Our sweet neighbors offered us all the apples we wanted off their tree. We filled up two five-gallon buckets and a cooler! Such big helpers.

This past fall was beautiful and seemed nice and long. Here are a few of our highlights. We took a trip to the Corn Maize. It's great bang for your buck. They've got a great maze, and lots of other activities - a corn pit, "train" ride, bounce house, zipline, slides, etc. This thing was Nate's favorite. He could've watched it all day. We made jack-o-lantern cookies. Asa made a graham cracker ghost snack for everyone as part of his preschool one day. Also, we made a witch hat. Shoulda gone out and bought the real supplies. But he was so darn cute anyway. Leaves! We had so many of them! I didn't remember having so many last year, but man. We raked so much. I love this part of our yard. It's a little wild, and so pretty. We filled our garden boxes with leaves. Hopefully the earthworms are hard at work on 'em. One of those magical afternoons. Our black cat, giraffe...