These Hobbits Love Strawberries

There is nothing quite so yummy as a freshly picked, homegrown strawberry.

This is our strawberry patch the last couple of springs. Rather overwhelmed with weeds. Very hard for strawberry picking. Not to mention choking those poor strawberry plants.

This year, with the help of a proverbial kick out the door on Jaired's part, I buckled down and weeded the strawberry patch. I think it took me most of three weeks of at least fifteen minutes a day to get it all done. And it isn't really done yet. There are a few patches that don't have any strawberry plants growing where I went ahead and left the weeds, I'll go pull them eventually. Then, of course, the weeds are still coming up, so I have to weed more. BUT the bed is actually predominately strawberry plants now!

It sure is easier to pick the strawberries. For the first time since we moved into this house our strawberry patch looks more like it is supposed to look. I know the pictures may not make the patch look like much, but there is a big difference.

Back in March, when strawberries first came out in the the grocery stores, I fed some to Jeremiah. Considering that the rest of us all LOVE strawberries, it was a bit of a surprise that he actually spit them out! I predicted that he wouldn't be able to say no to the little lovelies that came out of our own patch, and I was correct.

He would eat all the strawberries if I let him.

Spring is Here

Spring has pretty decidedly arrived now. We are having the usual mixture of sun and rain, cold, warm, and hot. I like it. It isn't likely that we will get many, if any, more frosty mornings, but even if we do they will certainly warm up to be quite lovely by lunch time. There is some heat, for example, on Saturday we went over to the family's for dinner and they got the pool out for the boys to play in. But the heat isn't too bad either, and the evenings cool off.

The boys and I are spending more time outside now. All three of them love to be outside, so it works out well. I am able to get some yard work done while they play and even when they are cranky they will play happily, then when nap time comes they are ready to lay down and take a good long nap. Sometimes when Jeremiah is having a fit at lunch and refusing to eat I will sit him out on the stoop and he will eat up all his food with almost no complaint.

Right at the end of February we bought a John Deere garden tractor. That, along with an extra wagon the family had from one of their old garden tractors, has been a great addition to our spring yard work. We have been spending the last several Saturdays outside working on a lot of the neglected aspects of our property. We still have work in the basement that needs to be done, but I am glad that we are spending these weekends outside. There will be plenty of time to work in the basement when the weather gets hot. In the past we spent a lot of days not doing anything because of not being able to work on the basement for various reasons, but at the same time feeling like, if we were going to be working we should do the "important" projects, instead of stuff like yard work. But now we are really enjoying the spring and getting work done.

I have been working on trimming plants, pruning dead branches, and in general cleaning up the place. I am at war with the wisteria, which is trying to take over the garden. Jaired has been mowing the field, tearing down fences, and building things.

I love this time of year.

Busy Days

This pretty little Crocus popped its head out the other day to tell me that spring is around the corner, even though we are still having many cold days.

I have decided that I don't mind the cold, as long as it is sunny outside.

We have a wood furnace that we have used most of the winter (we took a break from using it in February), that is really nice, when we make sure to keep the fire burning good and hot. We try to be frugal when it comes to heating our house, but I am definitely enjoying having a warmer house! I have a hard time being motivated to get up and do stuff when I am cold, and being pregnant isn't helping either, so the warm house and sunshine are essential to a productive day.

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A few Sundays ago on the way to church we saw one of these beautiful landscape pieces. Edmund asked, "Mama, what's that?" (A classic three-year-old question.) I responded with a somewhat vague, "Oh, that's a tower of some nature." His deduction -- a nature tower! Which is what he continued to call them for the next week or two; until Jaired decided that his son needed to be properly educated and told him that, "Mama made a mistake, those are actually cell phone towers." I think that Edmund is getting it sorted out. he still calls them nature towers if he forgets, but he has graciously accepted the fact that I had misinformed him.

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One of my pre-baby goals was to finish all of my (several) sewing projects. And I am happy to say that I have succeeded.
Along with outfits for myself, I have been making some things for my SIL Chava, like the dress above.
In the future I hope to talk more about my sewing, for those who might be interested to see what patterns I use, how I get through the hard parts, etc. This dress though, I had no particular pattern for. Chava has had "this" dress for awhile, but it needed to be altered, so I took the leftover fabric from when it was made and redid the bodice using princess seams. I also turned the gathered skirt into an A-line, to give it a better figure. The sash was just for fun because I had so much of the contrasting fabric left after altering the skirt, but it really adds a lot to the dress.

A Shower of Leaves

I love having several trees in our yard. In fact, in addition to the two maples, one crab apple, two somethings else, and several bushes that were already in our immediate yard when we moved in, we have planted six more trees! I love the shadiness of trees as well as their majestic beauty. And, yes, I love when Autumn comes and the leaves change colors and come showering down with the wind.

This is the first year that we have really been able to get out and enjoy playing in fallen leaves, and Edmund has been having a great time! The picture above is one we took the day we did our family pictures for the year.

These are our two maples. The big one (top) turns yellow and shed its leaves over the course of several weeks. The smaller one turns a beautiful orange, and one big rainstorm completely stripped it of its leaves.
All these leaves of course mean lots of raking, which I finally went out and did yesterday. As I raked I thought to myself how glad I was that I hadn't raked sooner. Waiting, though unintentionally, until all the leaves had fallen meant that we were not only able to enjoy the Autumnal beauty of a leaf strewn yard, but we will only have to rake the yard once this Autumn/Winter.

The job's not done yet. The piles you see here (two above and one in the picture before) are only three of the seven I raked up yesterday, and I still have to rake the front yard. But it is turning out to be a fun time for me to spend outside with the boys, instead of a tedious, seemingly endless task.

When do you rake your leaves? From when they first start falling until the end of the season, or just at the end? Or do you wait until Spring? Or maybe you never rake at all! :)

Strawberries!

Strawberries may be Jaired's favorite food ever. I really like them a lot, too, of course. One of the things we made sure to do every year in Virginia Beach was go strawberry picking at least once. We were very excited to hear that our new house here in Missouri has a strawberry patch. It is only a few years old, and last year we pretty much just ate the berries as we picked them.



The patch was rather neglegted after strawberry season, partly because of not having what we needed to care for it. In the fall it did not get its protective mulch blanket because right when we should have put that down Nathaniel was born and I was with him in the hospital for three weeks.


The patch had also become somewhat overgrown so we were not sure what would happen this year. As the days began to warm up Jaired started checking the plants for blossoms daily. We watched with growing excitment as the blossoms withered and strawberries formed. Finally our first strawberry was ripe! It was a little one, but a ripe berry nonetheless!




As you can see, there are quite a lot of weeds needing to be cleared out. The rows are also just about nonexistent. Hopefully (cross fingers), we can get the patch cleaned up this summer.

Strawberries!

We have made pies and smoothies, and have frozen several quarts of strawberries. The patch is starting to slow down, but at its peak we picked about eight cups a day. Berry nice, if you ask me.