Garden Status

I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, unless I talked with you in person, but Jake ordered a lot of seeds this past winter for our garden.  Up to this point, he had only ever had tomatoes, jalapeños, and bell peppers growing.  As of Saturday, our back yard is now 3/5 vegetable garden.  Poor Slate, I foretell a lot of scoldings.  

An attempt at combining 2 pics to show all our veggies...mostly...because I could : )

Jake's orchard is kind of camouflaged but he has 2 apples and 2 pears along the back fence, 2 peaches in the middle of the spinach and peas (an accident), one cherry by the jalapeños and another cherry in the front yard.  Our pineapple plant is out front, still growing, and our basil and cilantro are inside dying.  I MAY have over watered them…  He also brought an ice cream container home from Gpa Joe full of alfalfa and you can see where our test plot is.  Dad thinks the alfalfa is to old and that it might not sprout.  Guess we will see.

We set up drip irrigation to every plant in the 4 rows by Jake (first picture) as well as the trees and then all the other crops have netafim between the rows.  His gardening is pretty hands off from what I am used to… aka what I would have been used to had I ever had a garden before. : )  I am excited to start harvesting!

Time Rolls On

Last weekend we went back to Kiowa.  Mike had a minister rotation and it made a good excuse for Jake and I to go home again. A year and one week ago, we were also back in Kiowa for Lee and Chel's wedding.  I bring this up because I was thinking about this and then had a moment stimulated from my view on my work desk that really struck me...

Who are these strange men in pictures with my sisters?!?  

I don't believe any of us would have thought 2 1/2 years ago that so much change could happen in such a short time. Yes, having lived in the same town for 18 years and then being in college for 4 and nothing really changing, 2 1/2 years seems like a blink.  It's curious to find myself at a place where the activities of the last two years have snuck-up on me in to a single "What happened?!" moment. Especially when going back to Kiowa seems normal to not have sisters around. I don't really have much more to expound on, just that I had a moment.  And then I moved on and realized that it's been raining really hard outside for the last half hour and I'm going to get really wet on my bike ride home.

Our route going back this time was through the town of Campo, located in the SE corner of Colorado.  Some parts of Colorado have had 300% of normal moisture.  That county has had 0 to 25% over the last 2 years!  It's BARREN.  We really enjoyed the new sights and lack of traffic though.  The route we took also "weaved" us through the beautiful Gypsum Hills of KS.  I always have to smile and nod thinking of the many unknown areas like the Gyp Hills when people laugh at how boring the state KS is.  They have no idea.

It's always exhausting going back, lots of travel and communication in such a short period of time.  But walking through a pasture budding with spring beauty and being startled by a jack rabbit or sitting on the back porch under a starlit sky or around the dinner table for hours makes my heart feel free and thankful that I get to come home to such a backwoodsy, off the beat and trail place.  I love the quiet.  I love the familiar peace that settles in.  I love going home.

I think the fohawk changes his looks completely : )

Firsts

We attended our first Employment Fair on Wednesday.  After going to all the huge ones in college, when we had our prep meeting, I was thinking projector, candy, and all kinds of exciting things to catch attention.  We walked in to a cafeteria...to a table...with flowers on it.

Needless to say, I did not know much about the college we were invited to.  It's actually a tech school working with mostly high school students or kids that dropped out of school.  They see the word landscape, think grunt work, and move on.  For the most part, it was a good first experience; super low key, we now have a better idea of how to present ourselves, bad school food, and getting rid of most of the chocolate tootsie roll suckers.  : )

For the first time, we had a truck stolen and recovered in the same day.  It was stolen, then somehow in 3 minutes, the thief managed to lose the trailer and drive in to a mud hole. The police said he was driving along the railroad tracks and lost control and slid down the hill.  (We've had lots of rain lately so it's very muddy.)  A witness saw the guy run in to a house and when the police got there, he was covered in mud up to the knees but "I didn't steal a truck, I was just out for a walk and fell in a puddle.." Good try buddy. And thanks for ruining our truck.

Our renters planted lots of tulips last fall.  We've had a lot of late freezes, so they said every evening they knew it was going to freeze, it was like an army drill.  All hands to the burlap sacks and cover the tulips!  Their work paid off as they saved their tulips.  We are very thankful that we were so blessed with great renters for our first experience renting out a house!

Blessed

We are coming off a weekend full of friends.  There are times when I feel very alone and cling to scriptures that encourage not to feel abandoned because God is there.  And then when I stop and reflect, it's very clear that I am selling so many wonderful people short by believing they don't care.  Our Bible study group is reading "Unglued" by Lisa TerKeurst and she has commentary that was a humbling reminder.

"We forget most of our random thoughts that are not tied to an emotion.  However, we retain the ones we think often that have an emotion tied to them.  Taking thoughts captive and being transformed by thinking new ways isn't some New Age form of mind control.  It's biblical and it's fitting with how God wired our brains.  I can't control the things that happen to me each day, but I can control how I think about them.  I can say to myself, 'I have a choice to have destructive thoughts or constructive thoughts right now.  I can wallow in what's wrong and make things worse, or I can ask God for a better perspective to help me see good even when I don't feel good.' Indeed, when we gain new perspectives, we can see new ways of thinking."

So to begin this post, I am thankful and blessed to know a lot of wonderful people.  My prayer is that I can keep taking steps towards a purer perspective and desire a non-self pitying attitude when I don't understand an action of a friend.

Now returning back to our weekend full of friends.  Friday night we biked over to Haef's for burgers.  They had grown sprouts, so we brought over avocado's and tomatoes.  (Speaking of tomatoes, I found out for the first time that in Spanish jitomates are the tomatoes we think of in the states, not tomates, which are green and have an outer layer. Such enlightenment!)

Jake had to work again on Saturday, all this snow is making his weeks about 72 hours long.  I was advised to stay home and catch up/clean as we were to have overnight guests.  While I enjoy cleaning, procrastination happens a lot because if I don't have time to do it perfectly, other things like baking cinnamon rolls takes priority. Random I know! But lately I've been in this 'find the perfect cinnamon roll recipe' mode.  It stimulates from Jake's brother Caleb bringing us some of Caleri's famous cinnamon rolls and me trying to emulate them.  It ended up being a wonderfully leisure day of cleaning and tasks and I only had to leave the house once to get powdered sugar for the rolls.

Left is our thriving "green roof." Jalapeños, cilantro, wild flowers, aloe, shamrock, PINEAPPLE, and I think basil.  To the right is Jake planting a bunch of roses he pulled off a job site while I watched : )  I did go help him install drip irrigation to each plant, but I was also enjoying the view from the roof.

Anyone want a jitomate plant?? I'm serious, there are 22.

Tyler and Whitney came down the mountain for Brianna's graduation and we were able to get together with them on Sunday.  Haefs also came over and brought their sprouts (one tablespoon made a LOT) so we had avocado burgers again!

It was hilarious watching Graham and Harper!  Here they are sharing a seat.  Even though it appears Graham is not happy with this arrangement, they were both delighted.  A scenario that captures this is when Harper tried to sneak my camera.  He got in trouble and as the camera was being placed out of reach he said "Bye" to which Graham responded by waving with one hand and continuing to stuff food in to his mouth with the other. 

To end the weekend, last night we met up with the Hubers again and got dinner at Lucky Pie Pizza downtown and then went to Iron Man 3.

Again, thankful for wonderful people in our lives.