So now that hubby is gone, I can shake myself off and start again! Thanks to all your kind words and a "me night" last night, today was a better day. Last night I vegged out in front of the TV, painted my toenails, gave myself the "gardeners manicure" (short cut, dig out dirt, sugar scrub, cornhuskers lotion, lol!), had a glass of wine and enjoyed the quiet after the kids went to bed. Today I didn't do much outside since it was hot as hell and humid, but I got my kitchen organized, which I had been putting off since it has been nice out up until now. The past week and last weekend were very busy, however, and we got alot done although much of it was overdue chores and general cleanup. I ripped out the peas the other day and am so in love with the empty clean raised bed that I haven't put my edamame in there yet! This weekend I will do that.
One beautiful not-overgrown raised bed in the foreground...Enjoy while you can!
Here's a pic of the purple grapes which due to the birds, I am sure that I will not get to see turn purple...
And, as promised...the torched Rose Finn Fingerling Potatoes... oh, yes - this was an "accident"! Sailor/Husband thought he would help me weed by using his flame thrower around the cages FILLED WITH STRAW!!!!! I may have to send him to some kind of basic training for gardeners, right after he finishes fire safety class...! I will let them be and have camera in hand when I try and harvest. Who knew you could grow BAKED Potatoes??? This is one of those things that definitely was not funny when it happened, but thinking about his face when I saw what he had done makes me chuckle now - he was a'scared of me that night.
Here's the gates hubby finally finished. Yay! There's another set just like it on the other side of the house. He built a big overhang so I can grow hops or some other vine up and over it. Kinda reminds me of "Southfork"! Ooops, there I go showing my age again...
And here is the border I finally finished along the fenceline. I planted some evergreen Clematis that should provide complete coverage/privacy by next year. This time I was smart and used landscape fabric instead of just cardboard. The BermudaGrass here is awful and will grow through almost anything.
So now I am going to get those kids in bed. I am going to go out to the garden armed with a glass of wine and bug spray and pull those shallots...
Now, looking at the calendar, I realize that he will be home a total of only about 6-8 weeks this summer/fall, mostly in 2 week spurts before he leaves for the real deployment in November. So now that I am faced with enough produce for a family of 50 (no kidding!), I am once again cursing myself for falling for the "denial stage" yet again. My husband had to work on our fence/gates all weekend just to finish them before he left, so the kids didn't get any "dad time" before he left. I even let a bad one slip, it went something like "if you want a home to come back to, you will finish these - TONIGHT"! Yeah, ooops... This is something he is quite used to in the weeks/months leading up to deployment, and then again at his return, and you would think that after all these years & deployments we would be able to deal with this better, but nope! In my defense, at the time I made my comment, he had just finished setting my potato cages on fire so I was a little tweaked already! (Yeah, he did it by accident, more on that fiasco in my next garden update!) Since he left on Tuesday, I have sunk to bad mommy levels not seen around here in awhile...the past 3 days dinner consisted of McDonald's, Pizza Rolls, and tonight - frozen pizza! I had every intention of cooking dinner this evening, but just finished mowing the lawn in heat & humidity and after cleaning up dog puke, Legos, and wet swimsuits from the floor, I am done! I even yelled at one of my kids today before he could get anything out past "Mommy....." Ugh!