My First Fruits

Yesterday I harvested my first two zucchini from my plants. I was pretty dang excited about the whole ordeal. I actually managed to grow something! Crazy! Last year I couldn't even keep my tomato plant alive, so this is definitely an improvement. Do you think it has something to do with me talking to and petting my plant? I kid. Kind of.

Tonight I made dinner with my zucchini. So exciting actually eating something you grew yourself!

I hear that zucchini plants produce like crazy...I can only hope. It would be so fun to eat fresh zucchini from the garden and even have some to give away. And my tomato plant has tomatoes growing all over it. Fresh roma tomatoes from my own backyard. I can hardly contain my excitement. I can't wait to taste one of those babies!

With the taste of success fresh zucchini in my mouth, I am thinking I will have to expand the garden next year.

Gardening

This past weekend we decided to add to our garden (if you can call it that...we have 2 blueberry plants) and got two wine barrels to plant some plants in. In one, I planted a roma tomato plant and in the other I planted zucchini and red bell peppers. My friend came over to admire my work and informed me that zucchini plants are massive vines and the 4 that I planted in one small barrel will probably take over my whole backyard. Slight exaggeration, but you get the picture. Oh well. We like zucchini, so it will all be good.

After planting our plants, I discovered Connor found them a perfect spot to play in. He kept driving his trucks over my newly planted plants and I couldn't allow that, so off to the store I went. I picked up a storage bin, dumped the rest of our potting soil in it and bam, instant play place for Connor...that will hopefully save my little plants from him and his trucks!

Oh, boys and their dirt...and their trucks...and destroying everything in sight! I would have it no other way. I love my little man.

Moving on Up

Ian and I have been living the ghetto life for a little while now. We are in charge of taking care of the front yard at our flat (there are 3 other flats in our building). Why that would be left in the hands of a tenant is beyond me. Then, to make matters worse, we weren't even left the proper tools to deal with our yard. We have the crappiest push lawn mower this side of the Atlantic. Plus, we don't have a weedeater. Thus, the grass on the side of our lawn is about 12-18 inches tall (no joke). We have used scissors to trim it, but that is beyond ridiculous.


There is a shed behind our flat. For the past 9 months, we have been unable to get into it. We have a key for it, but it doesn't work. We have had other people try the key as well, to no avail. We asked the landlord about it and she was no help either. Yesterday, Ian took matters into his own hands. He unscrewed the hinges and removed the door. Inside the shed we did not find better lawn tools, but we did find a nice outdoor table and chairs as well as a gas BBQ.

So, we did what any normal Californian would do...we cleaned them up and drug them out front (our front door opens to the kitchen so it just makes sense to have that out front). Then, we went to the store and bought a bunch of plants to at least make our patio look decent...it looks better than decent. Our crazy neighbor was impressed and told us she would pull the weeds from the front yard, as we can't tell the difference between weeds and plants (most of the things we thought were weeds are actually plants). Then, we will bark the plant areas.



This is all happening in perfect time. It was in the 60's this weekend! Perfect t-shirt and shorts weather for Scotland! We have enjoyed our new found BBQ for the past 2 days and even ate outside. Makes it feel a little bit like home.


P.S. How freaking grown up are we?!? Caring about our yard!!!

The Baby & More

At first I thought I wouldn't bore all of you (my fans) out there with constant news and details about the baby. Then I realized that NONE of you get to see me or be around during the growing process of this bundle of joy. So, out goes the idea of not talking about the baby all the time, and in comes more baby information for you!

I got a surprise baby present in the mail on Wednesday. Someone buzzed our house...I didn't answer it at first (still dodging the TV tax people!). But, the guy buzzed again, so I decided to answer it. He said he had a package and I said, "who for!?!". When he said "Ian and Jessica", I was shocked. No one ever sends us anything! I was even more surprised when he came to my door with the package and I opened it. It was baby stuff from my wonderful friend Chandra.

I feel like I am growing by the day, but I think that is the plan, so I am okay with it. Thankfully, I haven't seemed to gain any weight in any other places than my bump. And I haven't gotten any stretch marks yet...though I do use the cream twice a day. I realize I still have a ways to go for all these "fun" side effects to take place, but I am happy that I have made it this far without them. My insides are starting to feel quite smooched. This makes it really had for me to bend over, so I have to do the whole squatting thing. But, it is impossible to do this when putting on my shoes and things like that, so I just have to bare the unconfortableness for a couple minutes while I do things like that. My friends over here have been really supportive of me during the pregnancy. They get mad at me when I over exert myself and help me be careful. My boss is so afraid of me getting swine flu that she has made everyone sign a document about taking precautions and there are bottles of sanitizer all over our work. It really is sweet that she cares so much.

On the non-baby front, we actually have two ripe blueberries on our blueberry plant. This was very exciting! So, we picked them last night and each ate one...they actually tasted like blueberries! We were very excited! Our tomato plant has 10+ tomatoes growing on it. They are all still green, but I am excited about the thought of being able to use tomatoes that we grew ourselves in the coming weeks.

Another Spring Post

I know I have posted a lot lately about spring...it must be my mood (or the weather). Today we took a trip out to a garden center with our friends. We loaded up the car with plants and headed home. Ian and I took to our patio to plant our plants...some flowers, a tomato plant, a blueberry plant and some sweet corn. What can I say, we were in a food mood! Since we were already out on the patio, we decided to clean up a bit...cleaned the windows, swept and more. It looks really nice.

The blueberry plant really is the most exciting for both of us. Being that it is rather large already, it seems rather legit. It is supposed to produce fruit in July or August and we can't wait!

Hopefully we will actually stay on top of our plants and not let them die! And, hopefully they will produce more than our plants last year...two strawberries and a bell pepper that was an inch tall!