Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Night at the Park

Groveland Rec Center has the best park ever!! Here's Rose #3 enjoying the part of the park that is meant for children 18 months and under. Sigh.


And Rose #2 on the swing. I had to bribe her for a smile - I exchanged a big starter push on the swing for a big smile for the picture!


And Rose #1, with hat akimbo.



We're closing in on the last few weeks of summer, then the Roses are off to 3rd grade, 1st grade, and 4-year-old kindergarten!

Garden Bounty

Every night before dinner in mid to late August you can go out to the garden and see what there is to eat! Tonight we had a goodly number of cherry tomatoes and one cucumber:




The cucumbers are funny. We only got one plant but we don't have much room, so the one plant is scaling the pine tree that borders our garden. The cucumber pictured above was hanging about 3 feet above my head. This is a good thing, because many of our other vegetables have been overrun by SLUGS. Slugs are nasty. Slimy. No eyes. Horrid little antennas (antennae?). Stupid slugs - you didn't go to the garden store and buy the seeds and sow the seeds and water the seeds and watch with wonder and glee when the seeds sprouted. No, you just crawled your slimy little way onto all our green peppers - there were slugs HIDING INSIDE for pity's sake - and even onto some of the cucumbers notwithstanding their spiky skin.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Overheard tonight

Rose #2 (sitting next to me on the couch): "When are you going to be home, Mom?"

Me: "I'm here right now!"

Rose #2: "No, I mean when are you going to be home all day long?"

Me: "Saturday?"

Rose #2: "I mean when are you going to be home all day long on a regular day?"

Me: "Maybe if I get FIRED from my job!?"

Rose #2: Silence.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Rose #2 Graduated from Kindergarten

On Monday, Rose #2 graduated from kindergarten! She finished a fine year in Mrs. Webster's class. She made a lot of progress this year! She learned how to sit criss cross applesauce "for like two hours in a row, Mom," and she learned how to READ, and she lost four teeth.

Here's the proud graduate with her diploma and her teacher, Mrs. Webster:

We are going to miss Mrs. Webster a lot. She was Rose #1's kindergarten teacher too. Their school is a year-round school, which is too hard for us to mix with the academic year schedules Rose #1 and Rose #2 will have next year. So, Rose #3 is going to our neighborhood school and won't have Mrs. S. for pre-K and Mrs. Webster for kindergarten. We will miss them!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Most Exciting Thing From Last Week

On Thursday evening last week, I ventured out to our postage-stamp sized garden with Rose #3 in tow (Rose #3 is always in tow!). We were browsing around - looking at the tomato plants, looking at the (pathetic) pepper plants, mourning the fact that our carrots did not sprout.

We planted about 8 cucumber seeds in mounds of dirt - as they recommend on the package. Given the size of the plant we got, I guess I should be glad that only one plant actually sprouted and grew. Still, I was worried that we wouldn't get any cucumbers bigger than my pinky finger.

That is...until we started moving the leaves around, and found...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

The most exciting thing that happened to me last week...

A REAL CUCUMBER!!! My triumphant yell hearkened Rose #1 and #2 to my side, where we all admired its beauty, and then...



...we picked it immediately, took a photo, and then ate it. It was very, very tasty. I love it that you can eat garden cucumbers with the skin on. Yum!