He had fun. The Sunday before we had a party with Joe’s family. It was a just because party, but Peter thought it was for his birthday. On his birthday we went down to Grandma’s (my mom) and visited with cousins, went to a small amusement park there, and ate pizza and cake.
He didn’t get a lot of presents. Minecraft (which was inexpensive, but now takes up much of his and his dad’s time), a couple of toys. He didn’t care he was just excited it was his birthday.
We went to the Denver Botanic Gardens on a recent vacation. It was beautiful and filled with different styles of gardening, good ideas, and lots and lots of plants. My husband was impressed with a crevice garden, I enjoyed the Bonsai. Here’s a sample of pictures.
I’ve always loved public gardens and recommend that people go to them. They are a great place to get inspiration and to see plants in person. If you go to one that is nearby or similar in growing conditions to what your own garden is, you can walk away with a great plant list, and know that the plants will probably do good in your own garden. It’s a far better way to find plants than just looking at nursery tags or even in books. I live in Utah, but we are very similar in climate to this Colorado garden. There were more short grass prairie plants than I often see around here, but I don’t think it is because they won’t do well here, just that people don’t utilize them as much as they could. I really want to put blue grama grass somewhere on my property; this plant was used in several different ways at the gardens.
My garden is nowhere close to looking like the gardens there. It was established in 1951, so it makes it 62 years older than my own garden. Gardens are just very slow to develop and establish properly. Even if you have lots of time and money (which I don’t anyway), plants can take years to establish, and re-evaluation needs to be done constantly. Gardening is an art with living forms, where the artist does not have full control but works within the constrains of environment and the results takes years to achieve.
We went out to Denver in October. It was a bit of a risky vacation weather wise, but we ended up with weather in the 80’s.
It took forever to drive out there. Baby H hates the car now. He screamed for a good portion of the trip.
Our first day of sightseeing we went to the Denver Botanical Gardens (for a little over an hour, but I could have spend tons more time there, just not with kids), the Denver Zoo (for four hours), and the Museum of Nature and Science (for two hours, but we needed more time). It was too much in a day! We were very tired walking around the large zoo, and ran out of time at the Museum. But we loved everywhere we went, and with the amount of time we had I wouldn’t have changed it much. (Also, we used this pass which made it rather inexpensive.)
The next day we went to Rocky Mountain National Park. It ranks low on my list of National Parks. Pretty good hiking, but the trails are crowded because we took the short easy ones, and it’s a national park. It is gorgeous, but one of the reasons I like to hike is for solitude. People taking selfies around you isn’t exactly solitude. There was also a pretty cool herd of elk there, that you can get pretty close to. We choose not to drive around the park either (see above), so we missed out a bit on that.
Final day in Denver was a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion. It was a zoo for invertebrates, very fun if you are into that sort of thing. (I did take entomology in college and might have been teaching a tidbit I actually remembered to a tour guide.)
We’ve been in our home two years. I don’t feel like I’ve been there that long. Here’s what we’ve done in two years:
Garden
Inside
I’m pretty happy with everything we’ve done, but we have tons to do still. I think I might live here for a long time, just because it will take me that long to finish everything I want to in the home. Hopefully we will finish our re-model project downstairs by next spring, and then we can start working on improving the garden. I want to construct some raised beds and start filling everything out with more plants.
My best advice to giving up depression, distraction or stress it would be to go outside more. I’ve never regretted being outside and noticing rainbows, animals, plants, and the beautiful sky. It gets me out of many a bad mood and enlivens me.
Photos from Ogden Nature Center
Our house never had a master suite. Our bedroom started off in the basement living room. I didn’t like have our bedroom in a living room. We moved upstairs to the attic. It was hot and the bathroom was far away. We moved downstairs again to a bedroom. Finally, we just decided to remodel.
The current master bedroom looked liked this a year ago:
The space has been used at some point as a kitchen to a secondary apartment years ago. We used it as a family room, and school/craft room. Now with an added wall it is our master bedroom.
While we were working on the remodel, we got to a point that everything was livable. Now, we are focusing on one room at a time. My bedroom was the space I wanted to do first. I wanted a space to retreat to and enjoy, and not have to look at construction holes when I went to bed every night.
We worked hard, and got it down. I love it. The bedroom isn’t large, because I like small cozy bedrooms. (It does have a giant closet.) It is the retreat I wanted. Now I can go to bed looking at wallpaper and birds and things I like.
It was nice to actually finish something. When you remodel with jobs and gardens and kids and a tiny budget, it doesn’t go very fast. We’ve been working our our basement since March. We still have a while to go, but by finishing this, it made the rest of the remodel seem achievable.
I came across this quote in a book I read, and it really made me stop and think.
I will finish by leaving you with a word that I would like to see totally expunged from the English language. Ladies and gentlemen, may I suggest you let fun out of your lives? For it is, brothers and sisters, a mongrel word, an ersatz word, a fast-food bucket of a word! What does it mean? Consider the shameful usage: “I was doing it for a bit of fun,” or “I thought it would be fun,” or “I was only having fun” and, worst of all, the little bit of white on the top of this chicken dropping, “Are we having fun yet?”
Why have fun when you could have enjoyment, amusement, entertainment, diversion, relaxation, sport, a bit of a lark, and satisfaction and probably contentment.
Fun pretends to be about enjoyment, but is merely about the attempt. In search of fun, people pull themselves towards places that advertise fun, but they are probably to be avoided, since, in my recollection, fun means trudging around a soaking wet seaside town wearing plastic raincoats that, no matter what you do, always smell of fish. All right, maybe I’m only having fun with you? –Terry Prattchet, A Slip of the Keyboard
Lately, I’ve been trying to stop asking myself and others if we are having “fun” and instead asking if I am enjoying myself, if I am happy, content, or relaxed. So, randomly doing things in front of a screen might be “fun” but I’m not really enjoying myself. Trying to have a “fun” bike ride isn’t relaxing when oldest son hates riding bikes. Looking for fun gets me nowhere. But looking for happiness and joy can. Sometimes it comes at random times…watching my children wander around the garden and bring me strawberries. Getting the biggest hugs picking up my son from school. Finishing a big project, eating pumpkin chocolate chip bread with my family, making a surprise birthday present. None of these things are really “fun” but they brought me more joy.
(I know one of my categories is fun, and it’s on the tagline of this blog. But I’ve got a nice alliteration going, so it’s staying.)
Switching gears, we had that big deal about the moon a while ago. It was disappointingly cloudy, and these pictures were as good as it got for us. I still enjoyed trying to see it with the boys, and there was a slim time when you could see a tiny bit so I was happy we did.
After a bit of a late start, the tomatoes caught up. I’ve done more than 10 quarts of salsa, 12 quarts of tomato juice, crushed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and I still have counters full of tomatoes! I didn’t cage or trellis my tomatoes this year, so they are just lying on the ground. The slugs love that. I’m not too sad about it though, because they’ve let plenty for me.
Here’s the swales:
Really, I’ve been happy about how they turned out. Last year I planted some squash out here and it all died by mid-summer for various reasons. This year everything has done just great. And the irrigation system is amazing. Flood irrigation is often difficult to work with, but the swales are a perfect match. I just have to turn the gate twice a week, and it fills ups nicely. I never have to adjust it, worry about low or high water volume, and nothing has dried out.
The fennel in the herb spiral has flowered, and the seeds are almost ready to pick. I might have enough fennel seed to last the next 20 years, it’s not a herb I use frequently. Well, actually, I don’t really use any herb that frequently. Something to work on.
I was in the parade with the Community Garden float. Which, by the way, won an award. My niece was up to visit and got to to ride the float.
Exhausted afterwards, I stayed home with napping baby while Joe took the kids to the carnival rides and car show. I was okay with that. There is only so much crowded events I can take. But the kids adored it of course.
I’ve been moving furniture about. I’ve actually taken pictures meaning to post them, and have re-arranged the furniture before I got to it. I think I’m done, at least for a while. Sometimes I wonder if there really is a point, but the room has improved in both functionality and looks.
This was the old living room, and here is the old dining room. (Their are hyperlinks attached in that sentence.) We swapped the dining area with the computer/family area, and it works much better. Otherwise, it’s been fiddling around, swapping couches, chairs, rugs and decoration until I got it how I liked it.
As you notice, I don’t clean up much for my pictures. My house is rarely completly clean with three kids running around. I’m okay with that, so you get my house how it is.
This is an old picture. Looking at this picture makes me miss the green sofa in here. But I also love the green sofa where it is. Maybe I just need two green sofas.
Also old
This picture was taken today. The painting came from my Grandma’s as she was cleaning out her storage room. I love it, it’s an awesome find.
Looking back toward the computer area. And the blue table is randomly in a different spot because this was not taken today. We re-surfaced our dining room table (I still need to do a bit of touch-up paint). Might write more about that later.
I love this line for hanging pictures and children’s art.
Final picture of the computer are. My preschooler is constantly moving pillows around to be comfortable. We also recently printed family pictures. I took them with my point and shoot camera and couldn’t be happier.
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