Gutter Gardening

I saw a clever idea on Pinterest called 'gutter gardening' and decided to give it a try. We have a small garden on the side of our house, I wanted a larger one and this seemed like the perfect solution.

We bought 8 metal gutters attached them to our fence, drilled holes every few inches in the bottom so they would drain well, and added Miracle Grow, and planted 100 strawberry plants in  (4) 10 foot long metal gutters. 

I ordered 50 Honeyoe June bearing Strawberries and 50 Eversweet Strawberries.
I planted the Honeyoye on March 17, they are looking really healthy as of today.

 My EverSweet I planted today. 

 I put them on the fence that gets sunlight most of the day.

I also planted some dwarf carrots and spinach, I will get the  radishes, green onions, and some herbs planted this week.

If this works I have really doubled my gardening space.  

The cost of this project -  the gutters were about $6 a piece, and you need the end pieces, I think they were about a $1.20 each, but it was the brackets that were really pricey about $12 for 4.  I put 5 brackets on each gutter this may have been a bit over kill but the weekend we planted the first group of strawberries we had a snow storm and I had about 6 inches of snow sitting on top of my gutter, and they didn't budge. I also bought (2) 50 pound bags of Miracle Grow.

This weekend I am hoping to get my other garden rota-tilled. Hopefully all this work will amount to lots of veggies and fruit this summer.   

Road Trip

 

Road trip...

Now that most of my kids are married, and everyone has moved out, it is quite the accomplishment to get us all moving in the same direction.  Not that we don’t want to, but with work schedules and school it can be almost impossible. 

But this weekend was important for all of us, we wanted to go and support an extended member of our family; Ryan, who will be leaving next week to serve a mission in Korea for the next 2 years.   

My kids have always known that they can bring anyone over for family dinner, and through the years we have grown to love so many of them!   Sean and I really love them all, and feel like they are truly an extension of our own brood.

On this trip a lot of their old high school buddies came as well to support Ryan, our Saturday was spent passing around a very large bag of jelly bellies, swimming, laying out, and playing ‘draw something’ on our phones with each other, later that evening Ryan’s family had us all over for an evening of good food, and more games.   Brandon set up a slack line which is harder than it looks and everyone took their turn trying to make it across. 

A great meeting on Sunday, I don’t think there was a dry eye after the meeting. As usual I was grateful for the gospel in my life.

On the way home I was looking at all the pictures I took, and I realized a few things; Pringles are the perfect road trip food, jelly bellies still taste terrific, playing phone games is a great way to waste time, St George weather is perfect in March, my kids make me laugh and cry at the same time, and I would rather hang out with this crew than anyone else.  Life is good.

 

 

Spring is here, and I have a new lease on life.  I don’t have to get up and go to the dreaded office anymore.  SO this week I did what a lot of us do in the spring.  I cleaned, and I do mean I cleaned.

All that deep cleaning that I ignored in the past year I have completed in the past 2 weeks. 

Now that is done, I have also tried to make some really ‘good for us’ meals.  For the last year my husband and I would greet each other at the front door as we both got home from work, hungry, and too tired to think about cooking dinner, we would then head out to eat, sad to say mostly  fast food,  Taco Tuesday at Taco Bell knew us well.

So as I spring into this new found freedom, Taco Tuesday has been replaced by Tilapia Tuesday. We have tried 2 new recipes so far and both have been great.  French fries have been replaced by Quinoa and rice.  A fresh salad with every kind of veggie that I can squeeze in replacing the... oh wait we haven’t had any veggies to speak of.

 A big improvement, and hopefully there will be some added bonuses like me losing some much needed weight.  (Losing weight could be a years’ worth of blogs by itself, but the very subject makes me grumpy so I am just going to make some life style changes and if I happen to lose some weight along the way, well good on me!)

Since I have been actually using recipes again, I decided my next project is organizing my recipe notebook, as you can see from the picture it is in pretty bad shape, recipes written on paper plates, scrap paper, and most of them have batter of some sort splattered on them.  So I am going to invest in a new 3 ring binder and dividers and spend a couple evenings fixing up the cook book and along the way make some good dinners.

 I have a good collection of cookery books. This is not so much because I like cooking, but because I like eating.
  ~Louise Brown

A little about me, I am 47, I got married to my Sean when I was 19,  having known him for a lengthy 7 months.   It was one of the rightest things I have ever done in my life.

I never wanted to head off to college, for as long as I can remember I wanted to get married and be a mom.

And that is exactly what I did.   Ten months after we were married I had our first son, when he was 3 weeks old we loaded up our Toyota Celica and drove across the United States to Utah so my husband could start his first year at Brigham Young University. 

We were as poor as church mice but so very happy with our little family. 

When my son was 6 months old we found out I was pregnant again, yes, I was the 1% that got pregnant while on the pill.  So before we had even finished our first year in college, we had 2 kids and lived in a very small 2 bedroom apt.  My husband worked and went to school; I waited tables in the evenings.

Our third son was born 2 weeks before Sean graduated from BYU.   Sean worked hard, got a job, and we were on our way.  We built the home that we still live in today and had one more baby… finally a little girl!

When my second son was 16 we took in his best friend and now we have a 4th son, a handsome red head. 

My job was my family.  I loved being  the ‘Kool-Aid Mom’.    We went to the park, had picnics, made tents in the living room, had story book time at the library, and created master pieces of artwork from pasta and finger paints.  As they grew up I think I held every position there was in the PTA, I worked in all of their classrooms, and made my fair share of cupcakes and sugar cookies.  I was able to go on every field trip, sports event, band /choir, drama, event that any of my kids were participating in.  We went on yearly trips to Disney, went on a couple cruises, got scuba certified, and tried to create as many fun filled memories with our kids as possible.

So as far as fulfilling my career as a mom, I did it! I have the best kids in the world and can say truthfully that I enjoyed the journey.

Today I have 4 married sons, with 4 fantastic daughter in laws, my (baby) girl is a freshman at a local University.  I have a 2 year old grandson, a 7 month old grand-daughter who live in Georgia while my son goes to grad school.  For the first time in 28 years Sean and I have no children at home!  My Sean would say I have been married to the mother of my children for a long time… now I get to have my wife!

 I took a job last year that I absolutely hated from day one, and after a year of watching my health and sanity go downhill … decided to resign.

So here I sit… a 47 year young, happily married, with amazing adult children… saying to myself, ‘now what?’

What do I choose to do with my next 47 years?

Decision number one, I think I will start to blog; I have no idea about what, because…

It’s still being written…