It's Almost Gardening Time Again!

I started this as a Facebook status update, then realized it was getting kind of wordy.  So, blog post!

I bought some seed packets yesterday and am starting to get excited about gardening this year.  I am not, however, excited about clearing out the garden area.  I wish I had cleared out the old stuff last year and covered over the ground.  But I didn't, so now I have more work ahead of me.

Still, it should be easier than last year, when I hadn't touched the area for a few years and the weeds were 2 feet high in some spots of the planter.

This year, I'm planting in a larger area and giving more room to the squash and pumpkin plants in hopes that I will get some good results from them and will avoid the mildew that was such a problem last year.  And I'm going to do more intentional planting in containers, rather than transplanting a ton of stuff because the garden gets too crowded.

AND I'm starting earlier to give things like tomatoes time to actually ripen.  I had so many nice-looking tomato plants with many tomatoes growing on them, but they were all still green when the weather turned cold again, and none ripened.  The first year or two that I tried gardening, I got a number of tomatoes, so I know it's possible.  I just didn't plant until late June last year, which didn't give them enough time.

So far, I've gotten:

• Herbs (sage, sweet basil and oregano)
• Multicolored mixes of carrots and sweet peppers
• Sugar snap peas (a huge favorite of Ben's last year)
• Green beans
• Cucumbers
• Orange Slice Hybrid Tomatoes (excited to try these - their color is awesome)
• Green onions
• and Spinach

I also bought a packet of Marigold seeds to sow around the edges to help cut down on garden pests.

I want to buy butternut and spaghetti squash, zucchini, pumpkins, grape tomatoes, Roma or another type of red tomato (and/or maybe purple heirloom?)...and I think that's it.  Possibly asparagus, but I need to see if that will grow well here.  Oh, and lettuce.  And maybe another herb or two.

I have not gotten to a nursery yet to check out dwarf apple trees, but that is another thing I'd like to plant, this year if I can.  I will probably get 2 trees of different varieties for cross-pollination purposes.

Really hoping that I can get a higher yield this year from the garden, and I think that by planting earlier and giving more room for things to grow, I will.

Iowa Stubbornness

This morning, I was able to sit in on Circle Time in Ben's classroom.  I was already planning to observe while he worked with his teacher and the speech therapist on PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) cards, but I had gone in earlier to help out Rachel's teacher, and she didn't have anything for me to do.  Ben's teacher saw me in the hallway and said I was welcome to come in sooner, so I did.

Ben did awesome during Circle Time, paying attention to the activities that they were doing (days of the week, weather, letter of the day, etc.) and enjoying the songs that were playing on the iPad as the teachers and some children sang along.  He sat for the entire time and didn't try getting up once.  Then Circle Time was over and it was time for PECS.

And I tell you what, he would not sit for anything.  He didn't want crackers, he didn't want Bugles, and he didn't want to sit.  Mostly he wanted to stare at his own reflection in the microwave and tell himself how awesome he looked, but then he wanted to just move around the room and do his own thing.  Finally he went into the quiet room (a small alcove-type room with a comfy chair that's often kept dark so that kids who have sensory overload can go in there for a break) and sat.

The speech therapist wondered if maybe he needed a break after sitting for so long during Circle Time.  They went ahead and worked with another student, and when they were done, Ben was still in the quiet room.  So the three of us moved in there with him to try again.

Cut to about a minute and a half later, and he left us in the room to go back into the classroom and again do his own thing.  Two more minutes and one brief return on his part, only to be a tease and result in him leaving once more, and I said "I wonder if I'm just too much of a distraction to him?"  I went out in the hallway and moved out of sight of the window, then waited for a minute.

Wouldn't you know it?  I peek in the window, and he's sitting at the table with his teacher and speech therapist.  They're using his fish toy as incentive, and he's picking up the card and handing it back to the speech therapist and getting back his fish.  They repeated it a number of times while I watched.  He ended up doing it 8 out of 10 times without any prompting, which was a 10% improvement from last week.

He just didn't want to work while Mom was in the classroom.

Stubborn little stinker.