To Be a Farmer's Wife!: The joys of gardening and produce production

At first, I was turned off by the thought of having a large, expansive garden, like my husband would have liked. One, because we don't have the room for it. Two, because I didn't want my whole yard to be a farmer's market!

I patiently allowed Ryan to have the far side of the house to excercise his green thumb (mostly not visible when you are in the back yard... well, I didn't tell him that's why he only got that much space). I "oooo'd" and "aawww'd" when he would ask me to come and look at what was growing on a daily basis. And then I would quietly go back to what I was doing. ;)

But then something happened... I started to care what the garden looked like, and I started being interested in what made the garden grow better in some spots and not others. I started to pay attention to what was blooming, and now, sprouting into real life produce!

Maybe we were born in the wrong century... or maybe we are just nerds. Either way, we like our garden, and I guess it's not so bad being married to a farmer at heart. :-)

Here are some fun pics of our new little sprouts. This hot heat has really made them go gang-busters lately! I'll have to keep you all updated on their progress!

Our Garden :-)

Onions! They are getting sooo big!

Itty-bity pumpkins... hopefully they will grow big enough for us to carve them. We will have to have a pumpkin carving party!

Acorn squash... love that shape.

We just found a couple of these guys the other day... they are volunteer pepper plants. We make our own compost and then use it in the garden... we must have had some pepper seeds in there that found their way to the surface. Yum!

The Farmer himself. Get those weeds out of there!

My stocks!! One of only 3 surviving starts.


Our lovely little hydrangea :) He started as just a little guy from another plant. He is well on his way to growing big and strong!

Goodness gracious... It's hot out!!

Ok, so I grew up in Lake Stevens, and have never lived anywhere other than the greater Seattle area. And man! We DO NOT get heat like this often! I feel like an old lady when I get all groggy and nasty-sweaty (yes, that could definitely be a technical term). It is pushing 93 today and is supposed to get hotter later this week!! Drink your water! ;)

This past weekend, we went to Salem, Oregon for Ryan's first-ever Feskens Family Reunion. Boy, was it fun! ;) 95 degrees and tons of people I have never met. Doesn't that sound like fun to you?! I am being a bad wife. It really wasn't so bad. It was interesting to learn about the Family Tree and about past generations and how the Feskes family became the Feskens family. It's always so weird when you meet new people who have your same last name.

Our (my) First Blog!!

Ok, so I never thought of myself as a "blogger". It's not that I thought of it in my head with any negative connotation... just never thought of myself as being interested in it. But as I was introduced to it by my friend Therese, I found myself liking the idea of sitting down and spilling my guts to the world, in a way that seems as if no one will read it. But alas, I'm sure at least one person on this planet will... so I better keep it clean. ;)

As I am typing, I'm finding this experience to be a bit like a grown-up diary entry. I never really keep a diary or journal growing up. I wrote in a journal throughout middle and high school. But the entries were all about, oh... I'd say... roughly 2 YEARS apart... so I'm not so sure that constitutes actually "writing" in a journal. Ha! But this could be kind of fun. We'll see where it takes me... :)

Oh! I almost forgot about Ryan... he is the other half of this blog. However, my bet is that he won't ever touch it ;) There's just something about engineers that isn't especially keen on writing down their life experiences and emotions... all you other engineer wives know exactly what I am talking about. But no... he is the love of my life and my best friend in the whole world and we look forward to welcoming you into our home, daily adventures, and this crazy thing we call LIFE :-)