my garden - weekly update. and a couple lessons in weather watching. first of 2 posts today. but they're different, so make sure to read both.

garlic! i have 9 sprouts!

pickling cucumbers. doing great!


i have 2 yellow bean sprouts

hot banana peppers. still doing well!


pumpkin's doing nicely, too. starting to spread!


that's right, folks, there is progress and growth in my garden this week. i'm not kidding when i say that the garlic has grown noticeably just this afternoon! the plants are loving this heat and humidity (they'll learn, lol). i wanted to show you our tomato plants, but my camera died, so i have to recharge the batteries, and i'll try to get pics for next week. but they're really growing! in fact, not only is the plant doing well, but we have about 7 plants starting, too, from the seeds that blithe planted in there. so exciting!

i wanted to take these pictures and post them this afternoon, you know, just in case. we've got a severe thunderstorm warning and tornado watch here at the moment, so i thought i'd do this before we lose power or something. (i didn't think it'd be fair to asher if i used up the power from the solar generator so i could update the cyber-world on the garden when i should have been using the generator to, oh i don't know, feed him. lol)

but, you know, we're ready for the big storm now, if indeed it happens and is as bad as "they" predict. mom and i put everything thing away that we could. all the herbs (which are also doing wonderfully, by the way) are in the kitchen, all the tools, toys, balls etc are in the shed (the last thing we need is a pitchfork to come flying through the kitchen window). if the weather gets really bad, we'll probably bring the barbeque inside, too. keep it safe a bit, in case we need it later for cooking. we have a few extra mini-cans of propane somewhere (i'll have to get ed to dig them out for us, or at least tell me where they are). we've stockpiled some water, and we've got cans of beans and rice already cooked. we pulled out the candles, and have the lighters and matches present and accounted for. we couldn't move the sandbox, so we put the picnic table over top of it. i think we're good (or at least, as ready as we'll ever be).

i also gave blithe a little lesson in meteorology this afternoon. she's worried about the storm, so i took her outside and told her a little bit about clouds. i explained to her the 2 types of cloud (yes, uncle ed, i know there's more, but she's 5, and read on to see how i explained them). i told her that the great big ones that look heavy and fat, the ones off in the distance that are kind of grey, those are rain clouds. they dump rain on you. the two or three little one overhead right now, those are "pretty clouds." know what they do? they look pretty. no rain. just prettiness. there you have it: Meteorology 101. i told her that the weather man isn't always right, sometimes he's wrong, but we have to be prepared when he tells us things like today. but the best way to know the weather is usually to look up. if the sky is blue, it's not raining. if you look up and get water up your nose, it's raining. mom also suggested we make a weather rock. i'd love that, but i don't have a big enough rock. i'll have to keep my eyes open for one. so i'm on the look-out for one now. lol

anyway, that's our life at the moment. the kids are stocking up on some good ol' fashioned TV time (we'd have to turn it off during a storm, and it's too humid to play outside right now). but it's Thomas, so the boys are happy, and it's a welcomed distraction for blithe, too. so, i should go. i have to post a video of asher on his blog, then maybe i should spend some time with my family (novel idea, don't you think? lol) ttys.