The Green Fig Tree

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Vegetable Garden

So last year I set out with a plan to create a large vegetable garden in our backyard, with four raised boxes that were 8 ft x 4 ft.  We bought all the wood, and I even bought seeds to plant from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds.  However, the project got started too late (end of April) and required too much work in too short a period of time, and it was just too much altogether for us to get done.  This year, especially after reading books like In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and seeing the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc., I was really motivated to do something about creating a vegetable garden in our yard.  Andy and I discussed it, and it was decided that we would scale down the project to two 8 ft x 4 ft boxes, plus various stand-alone pots for things like mint that might take over the garden.

I called the seed company and they told me that most of the seeds I had purchases last year, due to keeping them in the house (cool and dry), should be useable, and I purchased a few more seeds to plant things I have used in cooking this year that I had never used at this time last year (like eggplant and zucchini).  So, two weeks ago I went to Green Mama’s Organic Gardening Center and learned about what I needed to do to make my nasty clay soil productive, and purchased a lot of compost, lava sand and organic fertilizers, as well as some herb plants that are more difficult to grow from seeds.  I started planting indoors (with Sophia’s help, of course) tomatoes, some herbs, jalapenos and bell peppers.  Last weekend Andy built the boxes to go into the yard, and we worked together to till up the clay soil, add all the Green Mama purchases and mix it together well.

Finally, today, we were able to start planting outside in the boxes.  My dad came and helped, which made it go real fast.  We tied off the boxes into 1 ft x 1 ft sections, to keep everything organized (sort-of like square-foot gardening, but not as strict), and started planting.  The list includes green beans, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, onions, romaine lettuce, spinach, a gourmet lettuce mix, carrots, as well as the herb plants that were bought.  The tomatoes and basil and other plants that were started indoors will go out in two or three weeks, once they have reached the proper height, and I still have sugar snap peas to plant, which can’t go into the ground for a few weeks.  However, I am super excited that this grand scheme is finally coming to be a reality.  It is so thrilling to see the tiny basil leaves poking up, or the teeny stem that will eventually become a tomato plant.  I have posted pics of the journey, and I will post more pics as things start to grow.

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Craigslist Backyard Playset

So, last weekend Andy and I were attempting to work outside in the backyard to get the boxes built for our vegetable garden, and we realized that Sophia is now too old to be stuck into the pack-n-play with a toy or two to occupy her while we do things.  In fact, not only does she not sit still for very long, but she wants to help.  The plan is to build her her own box to put dirt in that she can “plant” things and “garden” while I do my stuff, but that was not at the top of the priority list when we were getting our stuff together so we can plant this weekend.  We attempted to give Sophia a paintbrush and a bucket of water for her to “paint” the fence, which was fun for a while, but then she was back to helping us or messing with things on the patio.  We realized Sophia needs something to play with in the backyard.  We started looking at small playground-style swingsets and climbers with slides, but even the small ones were hundreds of dollars.  We scaled down and started looking into simple plastic slides, and thought maybe we would get a slide with some other things, like a big-wheel tricycle or something, but the slides were almost $100 and the tricycles were at least $40.  Andy got the idea to look on Craigslist, and we found an awesome smallish climber with slide from someone in our city for only $150.  When we went to look at it, the guy told us that they had only had it a year, and were getting rid of it because they were upgrading to something larger.  It looked in great shape.  We decided it was going to be an early birthday present, and Friday after Andy got home, he put it together and Sophia tried it out.  She is so thrilled, and now all she wants to do is play outside.  She is so grown up!  Check out the pics, some from Friday, some from this afternoon.

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Zoo with Friends

Last Wednesday, Sophia and I went to the Fort Worth Zoo for the second time ever, and met our friends Kathleen and Andrew, and Kathleen’s dad.  Unfortunately there were too many kids from school trips there for Sophia and Andrew to run around the whole time, but they both did great in the stroller, and were still able to see quite a bit and have a good time.  Here are some pics:

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

It’s the Arctic Avenger (according to the weatherman)

I am so excited that we have been having a real winter this year, because as much as I hate the cold and being cold, I dislike the cold with no purpose (which is what I see cold, unproductive weather as).  So, for the first time since we moved to Texas twenty or so years ago, we have had a real winter, with real snow, multiple times.  It was so beautiful, to walk outside and be transported to a different world.  It makes me long for Canada so much.  Here are some pics of Sophia (and Andy) having fun in the snow:

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

Christmas Pics, Part 2

Plus, D/FW was graced with a beautiful (and chaotic) snowfall for Christmas for the first time in about eighty years.

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Merry Christmas

“But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’ ” — Luke 2:10-11

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Gingerbread Cookies, Anyone?

Andy and Sophia made gingerbread cookies this evening, and she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Snow!

It snowed unexpectedly this morning, and Sophia insisted on checking it out.  Here are some pictures.

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Enjoying Autumn

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Halloween and Other Things

Sophia was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz for Halloween yesterday, and it was our first attempt at trick-or-treating (last year we just hung out with friends who also had babies too young to walk around the neighborhood).  We went around the block to our friends’ home to join in their large trick-or-treating party.  Sophia’s little red shoes were not very sturdy, so she went in her socks, with her shoes in her basket with “Toto” until we got there.  She knocked on their door to get candy, but was a bit overwhelmed by the mass of children who emerged.  When we went up to the next two houses, she started crying as we approached the door.  She did not master the phrase “trick-or-treat,” but she did manage to say thank you in sign language after she received a treat.  By the time we got to the fourth house, we had held back a bit to let the older kids go ahead of us, and she didn’t cry like she had before, but it was obvious she wasn’t sold on trick-or-treating, in spite of the treats now populating her basket with “Toto.”  We decided that four houses was enough for the first attempt, especially since the type of candy she can eat is minimal with so few teeth, and she enjoyed having a Twizzler red licorice.

The seventeenth month has brought more understandable chatting, more energetic dancing, more independent playing and more determined actions.  She loves going to school, and usually does not deign a good-bye to Andy or I, whoever happens to be dropping her off.  She has decided she will only eat crackers or bread, fruits and cheese, with a smattering of chicken nuggets.  I have a hard time even convincing her to eat tomatoes and avocado, which were once favorites.  She has learned that “uh oh” means trouble or something negative, and will shout it before she launches something across the room.  She can sing “A-B-C-B-E” of the Alphabet Song, though it is usually repeated a number of times until she claps her hands and yells “yay” (which ends every song).  She has discovered that the word “no” means something, and will tell it to the animals when they are being naughty, or Andy and I when she is being naughty.  She likes to watch football, and can recognize it on tv.  She likes to be in charge of things, and hates to hold hands in the parking lot.  She has gotten better about sitting in the cart at the grocery store, but still has to “help” by holding things and then putting them into the cart.  She is doing great in her big-girl bed, and still loves to take baths (or showers with us if time is short).  She attempts putting her clothes on, and can occasionally get a shirt on her head, but doesn’t classify tops and bottoms and will sometimes put shirts on her legs, or pants on her arms.  She has started calling the animals by their name instead of all the cats “kitty.”  She gets very upset when our one temperamental cat hisses at her (or the one at Grammie’s) and Andy imagines her thinking “why kitty hate me?” a la that silly American Airlines commercial.  She recently discovered a picture of Andy and I on a low bookshelf, which she drags around the house, pointing us out in the picture.  She has also gotten her own email address (thesophiacolvin@gmail.com) because she asks to check her “email” any time one of us is on the computer.

Below are a few pictures of her costume that Grammie made for her.  There are also pictures of her “helping” make biscuits, one of her being a tv-zombie to her all-time favorite movie “Oz” (which she requests to watch no less than three times a day, usually as soon as it goes off), putting on my shoes, taking pictures with the camera and her wearing her new coat and scarf cause it was a bit chilly this morning.