Mattie is Born

Our beautiful daughter, Mattie, made her debut on Wednesday, March 27, 2013.  She was born at 11:56 am, was 19" long, and weighed 7 lbs 15 oz.  She has blonde hair and blue eyes (for now at least). She was 1 week early due to my scheduled c-section.  This experience was leaps and bounds better than my emergency C/S with Levi.  I didn't feel a thing this time (I pretty much felt everything with Levi - it was extremely painful), I actually got to breastfeed right away in recovery, and overall the hospital staff and my doctor were way better.  Now the bombardment of pictures...

 

Spring is in Bloom

Here are pictures of the garden taken today to show how much everything has grown.  Justin is going to have to be my gardener while I am recovering from my c-section later this week; I have faith in him to watch my plants for bugs and disease so we have a bountiful harvest later.  I can't wait to eat everything we are growing.

 One end of the big planter box with butter lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots.

Carrots

A bunch of baby carrots are just starting to sprout as well but you can't see them in the picture.

 Butter Lettuce

2 green butter lettuce plants and 1 red butter lettuce plant

 Tomatoes

One of the tomato plants, a "Bush Celebrity." I also planted a Roma tomato and I think the other one is a Sweet 100.

 Peppers

A jalapeno pepper (top) and Serrano pepper (bottom).

 Green beans

I also noticed this evening a green bean plant from the second round of seeds (2 weeks after these) is starting to sprout!

Corn

We decided to build an additional 4'x4' planter box just for corn.  We planted 16 "Gold Bantam" corn plants.  It's an heirloom sweet corn.  

 

 Squash

Zucchini squash (top right) and yellow summer squash (bottom left).

Strawberries

I also ended up buying a strawberry planter and planting 2 different varieties of strawberries.  I didn't think to take a picture of the whole pot but it has openings like this all around the sides so the strawberry plants grow out the side of the pot.  If you look close you can see the baby strawberry starting to grow. 

Herbs

My herbs have also exploded.  My sage is in full bloom (the purple flowers), the parsley has exploded, basil is doing well, the thyme is looking good, and my oregano is making a comeback after looking a bit brown and sad this winter. 

 I also released 2,000 ladybugs in my garden yesterday to help eat the aphids that I have been battling on my pepper and okra plants.  I don't have a picture of the okra plants because they haven't been growing much due to the infestation.  I've been picking them off myself and using some organic insecticidal soap which helped some, but I prefer completely natural (truly organic) methods to rid the plants of them.  Hence, ladybugs.  I didn't see any aphids on my plants today and I still have ladybugs hanging around!

 And finally, some pictures of my front flowers and the arrangement I put together for Easter.

Azaleas

Lantana

Violets

Easter arrangement

And stay tuned, my next post will probably be of a beautiful newborn!

Chickens, Sand, and Strawberries

This morning we went out to Blessington Farms to pick strawberries.  I wasn't really sure what to expect but it's just a small "field" of strawberries, a big sand hill for the kids to play on, and a small enclosure with endangered Heritage chickens, ducks, and a turkey.  It also has a couple of different tractor rides.  It's pretty small, but perfect for a quick family trip to wear out the kiddo, and just be outside and do something different.  Not to mention it's free to go there, you just pay by the pound for the strawberries you pick.  At $5 a lb, it's more than twice the price in the grocery store right now, but they are a heck of a lot fresher and taste a heck of a lot better.  Not to mention supporting a local business. 

It wasn't the prettiest day but I've been wanting to go and we're running out of weekends to do it before Mattie is here so off we went!

Levi kept saying "chee" for chicken, then "brock, brock".  And also "duh" for ducks.  All those hours of looking at farm animal books and making animal noises make this mommy proud.

Levi loves older kids.  He really liked this boy that worked/volunteered there.

 

The same boy with his chicken mask on. Levi wasn't scared, he just had a "what in the world?" look on his face, to put it nicely.

 I think this was the sister of the above boy, she was really sweet too.  They caught a chicken for Levi to pet and hold.

 Levi did great with the chicken!

These kids were so good with him to gently show him how to hold and pet the chicken.

 And off to the sand hill!

This was his first experience with sand and he was not too impressed at first.  He kept making faces and trying to get it off of his hands.

But as long as daddy is with him, everything must be ok!  Justin helped him up the big sand hill to get to the toys.

Both boys were having fun playing with the toys...

 And of course he had to slide down the big black tube!

 Here comes Levi!

It's apparently pretty funny when dad is wiping all the sand off of you.

Really funny. Even after he picks you up...

 And on to one of the tractor rides. They don't like for pregnant women to ride so mom had to sit by and watch :(

Passing by mom with a smile on his face.

 Levi was getting tired by the time we got to the strawberry picking so Justin entertained Levi while I picked out the perfect berries.  Red with deep recessed brown seeds were the ones I was looking for, as instructed.  As you can see, they aren't planted in the ground.  They use a technique called hydroponics that doesn't use any soil.  For the curious, you can read about it on their website here.

 Big belly!

I ended up with about a pound and a half of strawberries of which we've already eaten quite a few.  I finally had to hide them because Levi kept wanting to eat them all afternoon and evening!  What a great way to spend the day as a family.