Life on Snow Hill

Last night I got home from work and got straight to work in the garden. I enjoy it for the most part, but it took me the rest of the night to get everything done – it was almost dark when I came inside.

The first thing I did was get the tiller and run it through the whole garden. It was beginning to look like part of the yard with all the grass..er..weeds growing in it. That by itself cleaned things up nicely.

I had 14 healthy tomato plants, plus one more that was really thirsty. I got those in the ground. We’re not planting quite as many things this year, so I had some extra room for tomatoes. I left extra space between the plants so it would be easier to get around them all once they start bearing.

I also got 4 each of some bell pepper and jalapeño pepper plants. Those all looked good except for one..it was a little thirsty as well.

I had wanted to plant some gourds, but never got any seeds from them last year. Well, where they were growing last year, some more started to come up. So I moved some of those plants to another part of the garden.

The same thing happened with cucumbers. We bought some seeds this year, but some of them didn’t come up very well. Some of the old cucumbers from last year started growing again, so I moved those plants to the cucumber row.

I planted some beans that a family in our church gave us – Turkey Craw. Everybody seems to like them pretty well, so we thought we’d give them a try.

I also had to replant the okra. I saved some seeds from a few pods last year, but those never came up.

It was a nice evening to work, and a great time to get it finished. We got some good rain last night, and the thirsty tomato and pepper plants revived and looked strong.

You can’t see much yet, but here is the garden as of this morning. (Click to enlarge)

Well, it’s about that time of year again. Spring is in full swing – the air is filled with…er..pollen, and the sun is shining when April showers aren’t falling. We got the garden area plowed up a few weeks ago, and just over last weekend we got it tilled up and ready to plant.

Monday evening when I came home from work, Becky and I set to work in the garden. First, one little bit of something funny. We let the garden go last year. We didn’t get near as much out of it as we should have. It got all grown up with weeds so that we couldn’t do anything at all toward the end of the growing season. Onions are hearty little plants. Before anything else started doing anything, whether it was grass, flowers, trees – you name it – we had onions in our garden from last year. We have two perfect rows already. Sweet! One less thing to have to worry about planting this year!

So I got the tiller out on Monday and worked up the ground a little more where we’d be planting. We put out okra, corn, cucumbers, carrots, squash and watermelon. We still need to put out some green beans, peppers and tomatoes.

Now I’ll be outside every day checking to see which seeds have sprouted first. Then we get to work hard to keep weeds out of it this year. I’m determined not to lose it this time!

Can you believe it’s already May, 2009?  It seems like just last week it was New Year’s, and we were thinking about what all we wanted to get accomplished this year. My WAIT program failed miserably because I wouldn’t stick with it. I haven’t stayed all that organized, either. I haven’t gotten any new firewood in a good while, either. It won’t have time to dry out by next Winter if I don’t get on the ball.

The faster time flies, the more things need to get done, and the less time you have to do it. Do you see a pattern here?

I suppose that the biggest reason I haven’t been able to get a lot accomplished lately is because it seems like it has rained non-stop. My garden is loving it, but I can’t give it any attention because if I try to walk through it, I’m up to my knees in mud.

My yard desperately needs to be mowed. I can’t, however, because, you guessed it – it’s raining! And the more rain it gets, the more (and faster) it grows.

Overall, I’m thankful for the rain. The last couple years were a little dry and the garden needed to be watered by hand. So far, there’s no need at all for that!

I’m looking forward to things drying out, though, so I can get back outside and take care of some work that really needs to be done.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed. Not in an “I’m so stressed out I can’t take it any more!” kind of way at all. Maybe it’s more of an “I’m so busy lately that I sleep much better at night!” situation. It’s true, actually – I’ve been getting such good, sound sleep lately. I just wish I could get more of it.

Things have been picking up at work, first of all. We have 9 servers that need to be rebuilt and reconfigured. These servers are what our virtual infrastructure runs on. “What’s that?” you may ask. I’m so glad you asked! In a nutshell, a virtual infrastructure is a set of servers and network configurations that run on other servers. This is a good thing, because on these 9 servers, we have over 100 virtual servers running. So rather than having over 100 physical, real servers sitting in our datacenter, we only have 9. But we still get the benefit of the power these 100 servers offer us.

At home, well, the weather is changing. Spring is here and grass is growing. Along with weeds. Flowers too. This means mowing, weed-eating (Gotta get that weed eater fixed!) and gardening. I’m honestly excited to start the garden again this year. It just needs to dry out long enough to be plowed and tilled really well so that I can get some seeds in the ground. Spring means it’s also time to start working on getting firewood for next Winter. I’ve blogged about that in the recent past, so I won’t say much other than that I’ve gotten a pretty good start, but there’s a lot more to do.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we’ve been busy at church. Becky and I are, as most of you already know, teaching the teenage Sunday School class. I’m also in charge of the youth choir. We’re also working towards getting a teen visitation program going, as well as other youth ministries. I’m not sure I knew exactly what I was in for when I became the Youth Director, but the Lord had it in His plan, and Becky and I have been reaping blessings from it already. We’re thankful the Lord is using us, and praying that He will continue to do so, doing our best to stay in His will. These youth are a great bunch to work with. Our prayer is that they’ll have such a desire for God that we’ll be the ones trying to keep up with them!

Today on my lunch break Becky and I went out to the garden.  There were several things that needed to be picked or dug, so we set to work.  We had it all done in about half an hour.

In this photo (You can click it to make it bigger) you can see carrots, squash, zucchini, potatoes and cucumbers.

There were a ton of carrots – all of them that were planted in fact.  We probably dug out about 5 earlier in the year, but we decided these were all big enough.  So we have a pretty big pile of them.  We just need to cut the tops off and clean them up so that we can get ‘em in the fridge.

We’ve been getting squash and zucchini for a while now, so those aren’t as big a deal – they just add to the grand total.

The potatoes are the first that we dug up this year.  They look to be in good shape, but we need to cut into them to see if there are any of those tiny little black worms.  My dad hasn’t been able to grow potatoes because of those stupid worms.  Maybe they’ll be okay in the ground I have.

And last but not least, we have another big mess of cucumbers.  There are probably enough (15 lbs) to do another batch of pickles.  We’ll see though.

We had to use the wheelbarrow to get all of these veggies out of the garden.  Now we just need to get to work on getting them cleaned up and in the refrigerator so they won’t go bad!