My garden

My garden is coming up beautifully! I can't believe how fast things are starting to grow. Of course out here in Utah we've had a lot of rain lately. This has not been a typical Utah summer. We're in the desert so usually our summers are hot and dry. The rain has been a nice treat for our plants out here!
Between the rain and the "super soil" my veggies are coming up rather quick.
I am amazed at how little time and effort I am putting in to my garden right now. The hardest part literally was building the boxes and mixing the soil. I have so much coming up right now. Today, as I was out surveying I found that I now have radishes, green beans, corn, cucumbers, peas, beets, spinach, lettuce, and I saw a pumpkin coming up too! Of course I planted a few tomatoes.
Here's a few pics of my garden that I took a few days ago. I'll take some more some time next week so that you can see the difference.

The last picture is my strawberry bed. I put it in a different spot in the yard. I used the same soil mix but didn't section it off. I have both June bearing and ever bearing strawberries. I probably won't see too many strawberries this year but next year I should have enough to can a nice batch of strawberry jam. YUM!
Unfortunately some of my strawberry plants are having a tough time. My neighbor brought them to me, but they had been sitting in a hot car all day. A few of them have snapped out of it, but I think some of the other plants have died. No biggie though, the plants that survived are already sending out runners.

On the rest of the home front. The children are adapting rather well to no TV. That's right we have canceled all TV services at our house.We don't even have rabbit ears around here. At the beginning of the summer I put together an art box for the kids. I keep it well stocked with various craft projects, construction paper, glue, scissors, markers, crayons, colored pencils, etc...
Last week grandma sent the girls a book of paper dolls. Earlier tonight they were busy cutting out the dolls and some of the clothes for them.
I must say that canceling the TV was one of the best things we ever did. It not only saves us $$$ but it's allowed our children to become more creative with their time.

It's been awhile

I know it's been awhile since I last posted.
I've been quite busy. In my efforts to stimulate my household economy (since Uncle Obama won't) I've branched out to a new career. I recently took a course in becoming a Mortgage Loan Officer. 20 hours of in class time was required by the State of Utah. The course was mainly Real Estate law (yawn). Upon completion of the course I was then required to take a State and Federal test in order to get my license as a loan officer. Amazingly I passed the test the first time I took it! YAY!
The cool part is this job will allow me to work from home. I can get work done while the kids are in school and be home for them when they get home from school.
The next trick will be figuring out how to not allow Facebook games to distract me LOL

I've also been quite busy with yard work. We now have a decent yard for the kids to play in.
The main thing here that applies to my blog is the fact that I also now have a vegetable garden! I love home grown fresh veggies.
This isn't just any old garden with rows and furrows. The ground here is terrible! It's like clay. I somehow managed to talk my husband in to building me garden boxes for raised beds. I have adopted the principle of square foot gardening. I must say this is the coolest thing to happen to gardening in years!
If you've never heard of square foot gardening here's a link http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ It is so easy! I think the hardest part was mixing the "soil". So far I have planted radishes, green beans, peas, spinach, beets and a few tomato plants. Tomorrow I hope to get out and plant some more veggies.
I'm going to anxiously await the harvest. I'll be sharing some of my veggies with friends and neighbors, but I'm also planting enough that I'll be able to can and freeze some for future storage.

I'll try to take pictures of my square foot gardens and post them here.