In My Own Backyard

Warmer weather is here.  I haven't been able to bring myself to wash all the woolens and pack them up but I have a feeling that that will take place this week.  The bugs are biting, flowers are growing, and the soccer/baseball seasons are coming to an end.  In all honesty, it is always baseball season here, but little man's team only has a few games left.

I have found that I have had to weed my container garden more this Spring than I ever have before.  These little monsters are everywhere.

If you look at the bottom of this photo you can see a wee tree starting to grow. Too bad I'm not starting a tree farm!

 

Like last year, I have a mix of flowers and herbs up on the deck. I wish I had more room for an actual garden but I'm making do. It's nice to sit out on the deck and enjoy the warmth and the color. Not crazy about the mosquitoes or the humidity but that's just par for the course.

 

The hanging pot holders for the fence have been put to use - I'll have to make a few more this year.

 

 

Little man was excited to find another hanging chenille plant this year. Odd little things - perhaps we can keep this one longer than we did the last one... Until this year we weren't exactly sure what it was called - we simply referred to it as the "hairy red caterpillar plant".

 

 

 

I am trying something new this year though! Guess what this is?

 

 

Every year I have to rely on tomatoes from my neighbor and/or head to our local farmer's market for fresh tomatoes to cook and freeze for winter. This year, due to the colder temps we had for a while, my neighbor had to buy more tomato plants to replace a few that didn't make it through the cold temperatures. He had more than he needed and asked if I wanted any. Sure, why not???? What's the worst that could happen? No tomatoes and a few dollars spent on more soil and a few cheap containers (I didn't want to spend a fortune on pretty containers so instead, I bought a few large buckets to go along with some pots I had in the shed. A few drilled holes later, and voila! The ugliest tomato containers anyone has ever seen. If it works out I will have to figure out a covering of some sort because man is that collection of pots hideous!  I don't care though, not if it means I can harvest my own tomatoes! I am cautiously optimistic to see how the Season goes - I did a bit of research, mixed my soil on a wing and a prayer and now we'll see.  I have 4 different types in there - each container type is a different type of tomato plant.  I could have used more, but knowing that I had no idea what I was doing I passed on the remaining plants (that I didn't use) onto my other neighbor so hopefully we'll all have some tasty tomatoes this Summer.

 

Little miss and I have been spending a fair amount of time playing soccer in the yard.  We are down to 1 practice and 1 game this week and we're done.  This means I might actually be able to start attending my Thursday Night Knit Night again!  It's been ages since I've made it but I'm not going to miss her soccer for it!  Little miss has decided that "she wants to play soccer for as long as she lives" which includes playing again this upcoming Fall.  I'm not sure how it will work - we don't have a U9 team and I think she will have to move up to a U10 team for the Fall which means her current coach wont be able to be her coach again but I don't know; I'll have to look into it and figure it out.  Here are a few shots of her in action during her game last week.

 

 

 

We've been working on keeping our feet down during throw-ins...

 

 

The boys had to leave a few minutes early for their ball practice. Seriously, how is he balancing like that? His hands were hardly resting on the bench.

 

 

I think I'm caught up now on blogging. As per my usual, there are more pictures on my Flickr page. I still have to upload pictures of little miss' new pet - maybe I can get that done this week as well :)  I'll also try to take a few pics of little man during his last few ball games for the Season.  Happy Spring!