Gardening, Gardening

Lovely. My house is full of carpenter ants. I just told Joseph that he is lucky to go to work. I have a creepy crawly feeling all over my skin. Didn't know that carpenter ants would go for the honey. How does that relate to gardening? Even though I didn't feel like it, I went outside today to get away from those gross BIG ants to dig.

I have to do this every year. I have lots of perennials and they look great, but I also have a lot of open dirt for planting seeds of annuals. By this time of year, there are tall grasses, seedlings from plants that seeded the previous year, dandelions, clover, etc. invading my precious free dirt. I have to dig through that dirt to get rid of what I don't want and prepare the ground for what I do want.

So, because of all the organizing I've been doing inside my house, the outside needs some work (last year's herb garden and vegetable garden):

Can you tell where the grass ends and the gardens begin?

And here they are again after two hours of digging. Notice that the regular garden hasn't changed one bit. Sariah wants a pumpkin patch, but I know that I don't want to keep all that ground free of weeds, so I'm not so sure. Joseph??

The birds have not yet found our feeders we put out a week ago.

I had no idea that the basil and thyme were perennials. There was plenty of dill grown from last year's seeds and also some cilantro. I found this cute little English daisy among the clover and grass:


Despite lots of insect repellent, there were plenty of mosquitoes and gnats buzzing around me AND when I was done I had to shovel at least an inch of mud off the bottom of my gardening shoes.


The promise of fruits to come later:

We're trying potted tomatoes this year as we've had a horrible time with tomato plants almost every year!

A Super Saturday--Bunches of Stuff

Lots of good things happening here today.

Last night, my super-hero husband made me my new laundry shelves. This will revolutionize laundry in our house:


So that we can reclaim this:


For it's true purpose!

I never, ever, ever thought this would happen to me, but I now have a library in my house! I've kind-of always mused about having a library and how nice it would be. When I was decluttering, I decided to pull all of the books out of the kids rooms so that I could see what books we had, which ones to get rid of and then reorganize them. They all ended up in the basement. As I rearranged the kiddos' rooms, I realized that they don't really have room for so many books in their rooms and we settled on letting them have book baskets in their rooms where they can keep the books that they check out from the local library and a small selection of our household books. That means that most of the books in the house are now in the basement and I spent a few hours organizing them tolerably onto the shelves (hated every minute of that!!). We are awaiting some bean bag type chairs so that we'll have comfy seating. I'm so happy about it!

The first peony of the season:


And some columbines:


There are either a lot of bugs in my house to support the spiders, or just a lot of emaciated spiders. I vacuumed up a whole lot of old, dust-filled spider webs today. Whenever I do that I live in mortal fear that the spiders will come and get me in my sleep!

And then there's this ant. I call this photo, "Ant's Last Drink" and I'm sure It'll make me famous some day! Ha!:



Either way, he was on his way out. He had almost reached the ant "hotel" filled with ant poison, when he drowned in a puddle. Did you know that my kitchen counter ALWAYS has puddles on it!!?

I still have one more room in which I need to wash the walls. I only wash the walls once in a blue moon, so this is quite an accomplishment and I'm going to insist on having a gold star for this one.

Speaking of gold stars, May is quite an adored young lady. Her teachers always pay the highest compliments to her. Her choir teacher gave her excellent marks and left the comment, "Can we clone her?"

Elijah and Brigham got summer haircuts yesterday, but not the usual quarter-inch or eighth-inch type that we used to give. Nathan has asked to grow his hair out like some of the kids at school. I told him yes and he's already practicing the bang flipping technique that he so admires in others.

Sariah went to a birthday party today. She's just ecstatic whenever she gets invited to a party. She has been going around this week telling me that she can't believe she's going to a party, which has shifted this afternoon to, "I can't believe that I got to go to the party." That's gratitude for ya!

That about sums it up for my day.

Joseph and Nathan are off buying lumber for the next exciting project for the summer!

Yard Sale

I will clear the suspense, first off, by saying that I DID make enough money to buy the wheat grinder. My neighbor can't even fathom that I would spend my money that way. "You're buying a WHAT?" I have also located a generous sponsor who is willing to support me in the purchase of a mixer so I don't have to knead my bread by hand any more. I can hardly believe it! And having recently cleared a bunch of counter space, it only makes sense to fill it again, doesn't it? Thanks, J!

This year I had a yard sale, not a garage sale. I don't know how it works for most people, but for me, it's a garage sale if I park myself in the garage and a yard sale if I sit in the yard to help the customers. It was such a beautiful day, how could I not sit in the yard and have a Yard Sale? For some of the day, I sat in the shade of this tree:


And worked on my current afghan project which I'm making for our living/family room.

The publicity department did an excellent job this year. Signs were posted on busy intersections and just forget about the lousy newspaper ad which not only costs too much, but doesn't bring around any more customers than the signs do.

My brother wanted to know just how often we do garage sales and are they popular in our neck of the woods. Well, yes, they are pretty popular. There are people around here who have an annual yard sale. My first sale was about 3-4 years ago. The next one was last August coinciding with my basement flooding. And finally, the current sale which started and ended on Saturday. I'm kind-of hoping it will be my last, but I forgot how interesting it can be to talk to lots of people of all walks of life. I have promised myself that I will go through all of my possessions again in 6-12 months to make sure that I'm really done getting rid of things. It's easier to let go of things with each sweep through the house, but it takes a lot of self-discipline for me to carry out this grand scale de-cluttering project. Ideally, I would do it this November though so that I can really accomplish my one New Year's Resolution which was to declutter, organize and start living a simpler life.

Here's a run down on some of the interesting folks I met yesterday:

--one guy told me that he can do five yard sales in thirty minutes, but has to wait for his wife to go through each object. He talked politics to me in a very quick fashion speaking of oil prices and presidential assassination.

--one lady asked me if she could use my bathroom. Ummmm, I'm not very comfortable with that!

--one little boy drove a hard bargain and bought a little car set that had been marked fifty cents, for five cents.

--one man came and started cleaning out my videos and books and was talking about cutting a deal, even though my videos were only 25 cents and my books 10 cents. I felt I should go and ask him why he wanted so many. It was a great lesson on why humans need to communicate. I had felt a little annoyed with him at first, but then I found out that he owns a book/collectibles store and does free book day once a year. He told me that he always runs out of children's books. Of course, I cut him a huge deal after that so that he can give books to kids. What a great cause! And in some small way, I'm now part of it!

--a lady showed up near the very end and we started talking a lot as she was the last customer and wanted to go through all the clothes. We got talking about religion. How I love it when people will talk about religion with me! I learned that she was a Baptist and I had a long held fear of mine dispelled...that all Baptists are anti-Mormon (too bad I was so stereotypical, eh?). By the end of talking with her, I felt that we should see each other again and she mentioned that maybe she'd stop by. I hope she will.

--one neighbor from down the way talked to me about when things were better for him. He's got a major disability and I marveled at how he keeps his spirits lifted and keeps moving forward.

--one woman was so genuinely thankful for the deals we gave her and asked her grand-kids to say thank-you as well. I like that feeling. Even though my prices were already very low, I tried to be even more generous with people and like to think about them taking things home and using them.

--a lady bought May's puppet theater (which she and I were sad to let go of) to donate to her church. I thought that was so nice of her and told her so.

--our neighbor friend (age 8) came and bought our toy kitchen and play food to give to his little nephew with his mom's money. With his own money, he bought a car racing speedway for that same little nephew. How thoughtful and sweet!

Here's a funny story. Sometimes I put things out in my sales that I don't really think will be purchased. Such was the case with the cloth diapers I put out. Nathan used cloth diapers briefly and I had kept them as part of our storage, just in case we needed them again. Brigham will potty train in the next year or so, so I decided to let them go. I figured that just the right person would need to come along. I offered them for 25 cents per dozen. I was shocked when an older man asked about them. It made more sense when he told me that he was buying them for rags in his garage! Not at all what I had pictured when I set them out!

I price things so that no bargaining is needed (dirt cheap), but still people want to bargain and so I let them. I held on to the price of $15 for our futon, though. Sometimes people don't know when to stop!

I was so tired by the end of the day that I hardly wanted to clean up. I was sad at how full the garage still is with stuff. But thankful that my Sunday is a day of rest!

Where are Memories Stored?

Joseph and I really like to conjure up ideas and build toys for our kids. Over the years, we've done some pretty neat things. We made a whole set of wooden blocks. We made a ball pit. We made a puppet theater. We made a doll house plus many of the fixins' (clothes, bedding, furniture etc.) for the dolls (see this previous post). For Nathan's fifth birthday, we threw him a Thomas the Tank Engine party and made these trains for each of the kids who came:


I found the extra trains that we had the other day and let Brigham play with them. I went back and forth deciding whether I would keep them or not. In the end, the face fell off of the Thomas and that decision was made easy.

All in all, I'm working to get rid of things even in the face of my version of practicality. For instance, why get rid of boy clothes that Brigham will eventually grow into? On the other hand, what is the price to store them for another five years until they fit him (and the elastic waistbands are likely shot)?

I also want to get rid of a lot of things that I think my memories are tied to (like the Thomas trains), because we just can't keep storing all of that stuff. (Do I sound like a broken record? Probably!) I was on the phone the other night with a lady whom I hope to get to know better (hi Jenny!). She talked about not letting the things that are in our homes define our memories. I thought that was wise. Somehow as I look at these things, it seems like the memories are captured inside them. If I remove the object, it seems like I remove the memory. In reality, I believe I just project the memory into the object. They are really stored inside me.

I haven't figured out how to keep memories differently. Maybe I do know how, but I've not effectively done it in the past. Surely pictures and journals are a big part of it. Sadly, I haven't done a very good job in the past of taking and making pictures available or of writing things down. My friend mentioned sending me the letters I had written to her over the years. I'm grateful for that because my journals are a desert during that time frame. (Wish I'd thought of sending people their letters before I rashly threw them out!)

My memories are important to me. I don't want to lose them.

P.S. For some bed-making fun, check out Lara's blog!

Trying New Household Tricks

I've been reading a great blog fairly regularly. It's called "The Lazy Organizer" and it's got lots of ideas for...well, organizing (home, time, etc.)...but also it's a place where people share ideas about lots of other things. I like it a lot and I've been gleaning some ideas that I'm trying to put into practice.

One idea came from the blog writer herself, Lara Gallagher. She said something to the effect of "If Momma's working, then everyone is working." I liked that idea and started watching what was going on in my home. I realized that even though my kids do chores, there are lots of times when I'm the only one working. Many times I'm working and still being pulled in several directions at once and it's very draining.

Lately, I've tried to be aware of times when I'm working that one of the kids could be helping me or doing a job in the close vicinity. One of those times was this past Saturday. My husband had just finished sanding the wall so that he could prime it and had vacuumed up a lot of the dust. I turned around and there was the vacuum, all dusty-dirty, and there was also a son in need of something to do. I immediately enlisted him to start wiping down the vacuum (isn't it funny when we have to clean the things that clean our house?? I've always thought it an oxymoron). I also grabbed a cloth and started working. It was great! My son didn't mind helping at all and we got to accomplish something while having extra time to interact on a more personal level.


We also took Lara's idea of a Mom's bank (I think she calls hers a credit union.) You can read more about that here. So, we've separated out the kid's allowance from their jobs. They have to do jobs simply because they live here. They get their allowance with some stipulations. 20 percent to savings, 10 percent to tithing, 10 percent to their charity of choice, and the rest stays in their "checking account." For now, they are all responsible for buying their shoes and socks plus whatever toys or extras that they want. This is all done on paper and makes things so much easier than having all the cash around. We're just in the first month and I'm sure we'll have some kinks to iron out, but I'm glad for the new system.

To read more from Lara, click here!