I think this is a great idea if you are looking to start a CSA, but can’t purchase land. Another idea I see that could stem from this is sharing your yard with apartment dwellers. A lot of homeowners have yards and want organic, local produce, but do not have the desire or the time to work in a garden. I am sure a number of these homeowners know someone who has the desire to grow their own food, but does not have the space. The homeowners could allow their friends to farm their land and use their water in exchange for some fresh produce. Both parties get something they want out of the deal and it is better for the environment.
Friday Update – 11.07.08
Adoption Update: Today marks eight months or 35 weeks of waiting for our referral. I cannot believe it has been that long, time is flying by. There was finally a much anticipated sibling group referral this week, the couple waited just shy of 12 months, 4 year old girl and 18 month old boy. A six month old girl was also referred this week. Congratulations to the happy families!
Work-Outs: Let’s just say I took the week off! I was so lazy this week and I blame it all on Matt, had he not spoiled me so much for my birthday weekend I would not have been so lazy. It was really hard to get back to normal life! Matt woke up early and rode his road bike all week, he loves riding early in the morning, while I am content to be in bed.
Gardening: Things are sprouting away. It is so nice to see some green out there. We are having a little sunshine problem, with the sun being low in the horizon and our acacia trees getting so big, little is making it through to the garden. I am going to come up with some sort of reflectors out of used political signs to get a little more light on the garden. Thankfully this is only a problem for about four months out of the year.
Random Stuff: It finally is feeling like fall! I am so excited, the weather is absolutely gorgeous. I can keep the windows open all day and enjoy the fresh air. We were finally able to turn off the A/C for the year. I hope to keep it off until May again.
Cabinet Matt hung for me on my birthday, complete with kitty shelf.
Carter’s new favorite napping spot
Friday Update – 10/17/08
Adoption Update: No referrals this week, but several families received their court dates. We also decided this week to expand the ages we were requesting. We are now waiting for two siblings 0-42 months with one being under 18 months.
Life: Matt’s Grandpa found out this week he has cancer. Please keep him in your prayers.
Running and Push-ups: Yep still doing those, being consistent, but not progressing super fast.
Gardening: I finally transplanted my little seedlings and they are going through some major transplant shock. Maybe it is because they want from a nice humid little house to the dry desert air. I hope they perk back up soon.
Random: I finally have decided what I want for Christmas. Solar Panels! Our local utility is finally offering a rebate for the purchase of them (up to $15,000). A system for our house would run around $33,000. With the Federal and State credits we only need about $15,000 more. Now if my money tree would start producing I would be set!
Friday Update – 10/03/08
Adoption Update: Five referrals this week, four infant girls and one infant boys. Congratulations to the lucky families!
Running Update: I ran one day this week! I was also going to run today, but woke up with a headache and I am not dedicated enough to run with a headache. I did walk every day this week.
Push-ups: I completed the last column of week 2 this week and will be finally moving on to week 3. The sets are getting harder and harder for me, and instead of advancing a week at a time I have decided to advance a column at a time. I don’t really care about getting it done in six weeks (obviously, it has already been more than that) so I will take it slowly. I am sure I will get to 100 before Tom and Jerry get here.
Gardening: My seedlings are doing great, I will probably be able to plant most of them in the garden this weekend. It is still fairly warm, but I think they will survive.
Jackson noticed the water droplets in the seedling starter boxes and attacked, it was pretty funny until he tried to bite through the plastic
Random Stuff: There are two more tractor tires in the field behind my house along with several smaller ones, I plan on rescuing some of the smaller ones in the future to make a potato container in the spring. If anyone is interested in rescuing tires just let me know.
A solution to the obesity epidemic in America.
I also learned about the Phoenix Permaculture Guild this week. They have some interesting classes and a good tree buying program.
Friday Update – 9/26/08
Adoption: There were no referrals this week. The courts reopen October 9 and hopefully things pick up then!
Running: I walked a lot again this week, hopefully next week I feel up to running.
Push-ups: I so wanted to keep up with the push-ups this week, but I had a clicking pain in my right shoulder (probably from all the lifting I did on Monday and Tuesday) so I took a couple of nights off from the push-ups, but Matt kept up on his. He is getting pretty buff!
Gardening: The tire gardens are full of dirt and ready to plant! I just want to get a little fence up to keep the dogs away from the gardens, then the real fun begins. I did plant a few other things this week. (Well Matt did the hard work of digging the hole for me.)
Pomegranate Tree
Artichoke Plant
Gerber Daisies, because a girl has to have some flowers
My seedlings
Carter keeping the seedlings company
Planting Time
Dill, Peas, Green Leaf Lettuce, Lettuce, Green Onions, Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Rue (herb to keep cats out of certain areas)
Cauliflower, Turnips, Broccoli Raab, Riverside and Valencia Onions, Swiss Chard, Kale, Radishes
I still have some more planting to do and hopefully will get these seeds started by the end of the week.
(I set up my seed photo-shoot and the boys thought they should help)
Two pics from this weekend:
Matt sawing my tire garden
Me watering the stuff we put in the beds to compost. We put down a layer of cardboard to kill the grass, then we had a ton of tree branches to get rid of (from our tree that was hit hard by the last couple of storms we had), and thought we should just compost it in the gardens. We are now adding manure and compost to fill up the bins.
Friday Update – 9/19/08 (late edition)
Adoption Update: No referrals this week. I am really needing to see some siblings referred so I can feel some movement.
Push-ups: We started back on our push-up program this week! We had to start over at week two, but I don’t care, I am just glad we did them.
Running: I did not run this week, but I did start walking again and the weather was much more tolerable.
Gardening:
I started some of my seeds early this week:
Matt and I started working on the new garden beds today:
It was getting a little warm out so we had to come in and cool off for a while and we’ll head back out this evening to hopefully get some more work done.
A big thanks to my cute hubby! You have done so much hard work for me this week and it is very much appreciated.
So Tired!
. . . and a little sore this morning. Why you ask? (okay you might not be asking but I am going to tell you anyway)
Yesterday morning I was walking Taffi and minding my own business when I noticed that someone had dumped a tractor tire in the field near our house. I thought to myself I must tell Matt, because believe it or not we had just discussed tractor tires this weekend. I know we are weird. Anyway I decided we must have said tire. I figured it would make a nice sandbox or garden.
Matt came home last night and asked why I hadn’t brought the tire home. Ummm because it is a large tire and I thought it would be fun easier to do together. I had to remind him we needed to do this before the sun went down as it was in the middle of the desert. He was still being slow because he thought how long could it take to bring home this little tire, yes apparently in his head it wasn’t all that big.
Here is Matt standing next to the tire:
For those of you who don’t know my husband is over six feet, so it is a decent size tire and I couldn’t even lift it by myself.
Lucky us when we got there we spotted two more smaller tractor tires and decided to take one of those home too. Here is me with my tire:
It took as around 30 minutes to roll the dang things home! I dropped mine way too many times (believe it or not they didn’t roll all that well). Matt managed to keep his upright the whole time, he must be super strong.
In the end we decided to use the tires as gardens. I checked and it is a safe use for gardens, at least according to the internet. We were planning on building raised bed gardens this weekend out of wood and now we will have less to buy.
For anyone interested in the Maricopa area there is still one of the smaller tires left. I will gladly show you where it is if you are interested, but I will not roll it anywhere. Okay I might, it was a really good workout.
Here is a picture of how dirty I got rolling the tire home, for some reason Matt wasn’t nearly as dirty:
Friday Update – 9/12/08
Adoption Update: Our agency had five referrals this week, four infant boys and one infant girl, a sibling group of a girl and a boy ages 5 and 7 was also placed off of the waiting children’s list. Congratulations to all the happy families! The families waiting the longest right now are the ones waiting on referrals of young sibling sets. Overall I am still doing fairly well with the wait and fully expect to be waiting into the new year. In fact, I have always had a very specific date in my mind for our referral date ever since we sent our dossier to Ethiopia, but I didn’t even pick it in our Guess the Referral game because I wanted my referral sooner. The date that has always been in my mind is February 23, 2009. So if anyone wants in on the referral game and trusts my instinct, have at it!
I also met a fellow Inskeep this week through the blogging world who is also adopting through CHI. They are still in the paper-chase phase, hopefully soon to be in the waiting stage.
In the meantime I have been doing some shopping for Tom and Jerry, mostly on etsy.com. I love that place! (side note, my friend Sandi just started her very own etsy store, so go check it out) Here are some of my more recent buys:
Clock for the nursery:
Some embroidered diapers:
For some reason this one is my favorite, it makes me smile every time:
Running and Push-Up Updates: Yep still not much happening in the exercise department, but Matt and I did discuss why we thought neither of us felt like working out. It is HOT and we are sick of the heat! For those of you who don’t know Arizona summers can be a little long and wearing, like long winters are to some of you. This end of this week we finally started seeing temps in the 70s again! Albeit only in the early mornings, but hey it is a start. So I think exercising will pick back up, even though I am sure September has one more heat wave for us, it always does.
Gardening: My little garden is still going strong and there is okra galore! I need to do some more pickling. I am also starting to get a few more tomatoes and it looks like I will have some jalapenos before long.
This week also marked the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. My dad participated in the memorial held here in Maricopa. (he is the one in the front of the group of bagpipers)
show and tell part 2
Here is our garden spider. No photoshop here. And I have $5 that he can eat rick’s spider.
Tomatoes!
The first tomatoes of the season are finally here! My garden didn’t produce the early season tomatoes we should get in Arizona around May/June. I was shocked my plants made it through July and August, and managed to produce some fruit. I tasted one yesterday and let’s just say it was worth the wait!
The first pickled okra of the season
Yep I pickled okra this afternoon. I also pickled some more banana peppers and made bread. It was a busy afternoon in the kitchen!
Show and Tell
After my Friday Update last week, my Uncle Rick thought he would share one of the spiders that lives in his garden.
Yikes! I am glad I don’t have any of those. Anyone else want to share the creatures that live in their garden?
Friday Update 8/15/08
Adoption Update: Our agency didn’t have any referrals this week, it has been since the week of 7/11/08 since the last set of referrals. So, they have to be coming soon, right? This isn’t all that unusual with international adoption. I do like it better when the line is moving, but I am not very stressed about the wait at this time.
Running Update: I ran once this week. 🙁 Let’s just say someone stayed up too late every night to watch the Olympics and refused to get up early before the heat set in and run.
Push-ups: We didn’t do them, don’t know what happened we just forgot. I am pretty sure we are now going to have to just repeat week 2.
Gardening: Most of my plants are still alive, they made it through the hottest part of the season!
Taffi helping weed (Just ignore the photographer’s shadow, she doesn’t think these things through)
My peppers (they were feeling left out of the last post on gardening)
A bee doing his job (I hadn’t seen a lot of bees this summer, but they finally showed up!)
Scary Spider (I let them live in the garden because they eat the bugs that eat my plants, but there are several of them and I have a tiny fear of spiders)
What an exciting week, ehh?