Life at the McGuire Zoo...: November 2010

Monday, November 1, 2010

Catchin' Up - Spring Gardening and Fall Veggies

Yes, I know it's fall now, but going through the camera and trying to decide where to start I couldn't pass this set of cute pictures up!

We decided to let the kids have a flower runner box along the front of he garden fence and had to plan flowers right away! Of course, all but one stubborn little flower bush plant died over the summer and is now happily residing between the purple "Green" Beans. (I commandeered the runner for the 'purple' beans. Riley helped plan them though)

19 'purple' bean plants in all! The makings for a great Thanksgiving dish!

The stubborn flower.

Second one's almost ready!

Riley's baby watermelon.

The first watermelon!

Riley likes to go say 'Good Morning' to the baby watermelon...telling 'him' to keep growing.

The watermelon plant is huge!

Household Current Projects...

Jennie's
* My online Dragonball clubs on Deviantart.com keeps me extremely busy...especially now that I've been promoted to co-founder of one and Founder of another! Alot of new responsibilities but enjoying every minute!

* The ebay bug has bitten hard...both buying and selling off garage sale type items. At least anything I buy is only coming out of my selling profits!

* Re-typing all my recipes. (The pages somehow got wet and moldy...now they're going in page protectors!)

* My ~many~ DBZ fanfiction stories. (I think there are 8 I'm working on...)

* Designing Kindergarten / Pre-school worksheets for Ivy and Riley to work on at home along with Ivy's speech therapy at school.

* Scrapbooking and makin' cards here and there.

* Getting through another short growing season. The watermelon plant finally decided to grow some fruit! !'s ready for pickin' and two more are pumping up nicely. The "Purple Queen" Green Beans are also growing fast. Yeah purple beans that turn green when cooked...this should be an interesting Thanksgiving veggie! Now that the weather has cooled...time for more broccoli!!

* Working on my food storage...I figure spending $20 each month will be a good start. It's even easier now that I've been going to the LDS cannery with my dad and the Walmart close to home carries food storage items! (Psst! Let me know if anyone wants me to pick up storage items for them the next time I go!)

John's
* The summer grass for some reason died rather unexpectedly, so we'll wait for fall to sow again.

* Figuring out how to spray paint 6 dining room chairs a textured black to match my dining table...without leaving black marks on my walls!

* Building shelves for the awkward space in my pantry for food storage. 1 of 2 down! Also in the proccess of building collapsable pvc shades for the side gardens, changing out the light fixture on the stairs and making a new top or our coffee table.

* The rotating/tumbling composter for the garden area is built and already being used! Posting of garden progress is soon to follow.

* The potato box was coming along quite nicely...until the temps got too high. We'll try again this fall.

* Part-time side work for a computer game company...the man's a work-a-holic!

Ivy's and Riley's
Ivy's working on speech / pronunciation in school and at home working on letter sounds and Dolch words. She loves practicing her handwriting and learning the concept of more/less than too!

Riley got all his shapes and colors down pat...and most of his alphabet. Although he's not in pre-school yet, we're working on matching items, letter recognition and learning to write.