Random thoughts & happenings.

Trying to figure out how to add pictures, so I'll give it a try here. Here's one of me & my sweet boy. Benny will be 7 in October. I can't believe how old (and gray) he's getting. For those of you who have never gotten to meet Benny, he's very much an alpha dog. He even growls @ Les when he tries to get in the bed and he has disturbed Benny. Benny only fears thunder. I know the kids are safe in the backyard if I have to go in and Benny is with them. He is very loving and protective as long as you live in our house.


Wow-this weekend really seemed to disappear even though we didn't really do much. We have "finished" the garden. Meaning, I've got everything planted that we have already purchased: however, I don't have everything I want in it. Maybe next year. We have 4 tomato plants which are loaded w/ blooms but they aren't pollenating for some reason. So, I have lovely, lush plants & no tomaotes. We planted two red pepper plants and they are overcrowded w/ peppers. Just waiting for them to get bigger!!!!!!! We also are trying watermelon & cantaloupe. These are a new experience for me but since LJ & Sierra love them so much, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try. Next year I'm adding green beans, zucchini, pumpkins & cukes for the veggies and raspberry, blackberry & strawberries to the fruit. (we already have blueberry bushes & fruit trees)

Our trees are working out well, at least all but one. The apple tree looks like it would rather be somewhere else. We had 4 plums develop but only one survived to maturity. It was tough splitting one plum between 4 people, but we all (except Ellie, who turns her nose up at anything healthy) managed to get a bite and it was sooooo sweet & juicy. Our peach tree is awesome. It it about as tall as Sierra & managed to produce about 20 peaches. Most of them are the size of fifty cent pieces but we have 4 that are decent. One of them succumbed to a neighborhood child and I can guarantee that won't happen again ;) I allowed Sierra to pick one today because it smelled so fragrant. It was rather hard & crunchy but suprisingly sweet & juicy. We were tempted to pick the last two today as well, but we are going to give them a few more days to see if they soften up any more. We also bought a pear tree but none of the blooms matured to fruit. We are spoiling ourselves with the homegrown stuff-store bought produce is just awful. We also planted a weeping willow & flowering pear. We only had one tree out front when we moved in just under a year ago.

We traded in our gas guzzling SUV in April and bought a Ford Taurus station wagon. Finding a car that would accomodate us all and was fuel efficient was tough. The wagon has a third row seat that faces the back of the car. It looks just like my in-laws car (same color) but the wagon version. We had looked @, gasp, a minivan. THe price was right & the fuel economy was great but they wouldn't give us a decent price on our trade in. They still have the minivan on the lot & the place we traded our SUV to has already sold it. HAHAHA.