Fun around the house

Audrey and Kate just hanging out on the front porch. I can't believe they're getting so big. Hopefully Kate can avoid getting eaten by all the stupid ants!



Audrey has learned our address thanks to a clever little song that Jeana taught her. We went for a bike ride one day and while I was unloading Audrey from the burley, she said "11121, that's our address." I was shocked - then Jeana told me they came outside and talked about the numbers on the house.



I found my softball mitt in a box the other night while I was looking for screws to build our gardens. Audrey humored me for a few minutes and threw the ball around. It felt good to be doing something athletic. I just passed on an opportunity to play in the IBM softball league because the games are on Monday nights. Hopefully they won't be on Monday nights next year



This picture was taken a few days ago when we only had one garden. Now we have three! Audrey is such a good little helper. I can't wait until the vegetables start growing and Audrey can experience what it's like to harvest something. Jeana and I were saying last night how smart our parents were to have gardens, and how thankful we are that we had gardens growing up so we can learn how to be self-reliant.

More gardens

Jeana and I built 2 more gardens last night. These were much easier to build since we've already done one. We were really efficient and got them done pretty fast. I think Jeana ended up with 18 million ant bites and I suffered through a couple myself. Here is a photo of all three gardens.



The plan is to plant only corn in the farthest garden. The middle garden has tomatoes in it right now, and I think Audrey planted some squash. We'll put more lettuce in the middle one as well.

The next project is to come up with a vertical attachment to help the tomatoes grow properly.

Edwards Newsletter for Fall 2006

Jeana just sent out the latest edition of the Edwards Newsletter for Fall 2006. I have posted it to my web site at http://www.scottsbaldwin.com/newsletters/. Look for the "2006-09" link.

Starting our Garden

For family home evening last night we decided to start our garden. Jeana was introduced to a methodology a few years ago called Square Foot Gardening (see http://www.squarefootgardening.com/). We did it at our house in South Jordan, Utah and having done it once, we learned some good lessons for doing it the second time. Jeana picked up some 2" x 12" boards from Lowe's yesterday, and we built a 4' square box. After we got the girls to bed, we dug up the grass by our back patio and got the box ready for dirt.



This morning we woke up to dark clouds and were just hoping it would rain. We dumped 14 cubic feet of gardening soil in the box we built last night and marked 16 square feet in the soil. It did start raining and felt so nice outside (we were working from 6.30am to 8am). Audrey woke up and came out to help us plant the seeds. Before I left for work this morning we had a newly planted garden with:

• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Peas
• Spring Mix (I can't tell you how excited I am for this)
• Basil
• and more!

We're really excited to go get more wood and build the next garden. We are planning to replace the grass with tan paving stones all around the gardens.