Summer 2011

            I thought keeping up on this blog was going to be easier than this. It has been a crazy summer...    


                                                   Although, we have not really done much, besides our 2 week trip! 

We did go to Texas for 2 weeks. We spent 3 of those days at south Padre Island.  We stayed in a hotel on the island that had a board walk off the back of the hotel. It also had an amazing swimming pool right in front of the beach.  The kids kind of bounced back and forth between the pool and the beach all day.

        

FYI: South Padre Island is only 10 miles from the boarder. We had to go through a check point to leave.

My favorite time. Was waking up at 6:00am and walking down to the beach.  I can not explain the feeling.  I walked out to the beach. The sun had not come up yet. There was a layer of fog in the air. There were a few joggers running by every once and awhile, but for the most part I was the only one out. There is a soft breeze that was coming off the ocean. You have the sound of the waves coming in. Then the sun starts to come up. The feeling that came over me was a wash of emotion. It was so serene. I could not help raising my arms in the air and closing my eyes to feel it.  If you want to feel close to heaven go sit on the beach all alone on a perfect morning and watch/feel the sun come up! 

I brought Avri, Hattie and Belle with me the next morning.

Although they did not feel what I did, it was neat for them to watch and I got some cool pictures of them.

Fog before the sun came up.

Love that face!

We found some cool seashells! 

We all played in the sand! The kids dug up so many tiny clams...that the next day I told them "today we are going to go dig as many clams as we can, then we are going to take them out of their shell and microwave them for lunch" So funny all the kids were ready to go catch some lunch!

Trying to make a face in the sand.

Avri

Matt and His dad hanging out in the shade

Me and the kids making sand sculptures

Back In Houston...Where grandma and grandpa live. The kids were entertained by the dogs! I am not sure who had more fun..the kids or the dogs.

Kids swimming with aunt and uncle in Houston pool

The twins celebrated their 8th birthday in Texas.

Friends mom wanted to make up the twins and take pictures. 

Kyle started football. He has been practicing 6 days a week for 2-1.5 hours.  He is loving it...Maybe not as much as I wish he would! I have always told him he is going pro...He may play and act like he enjoys it just for my sake!

The twins got baptized August 6th.  It was a very personal day. We only had a couple family members show up and a few neighbors, but the lack of people did not make the big day any smaller. The spirit was so strong...I just wish everyone else could have felt it.

 So thats our summer!  





             

New Puppies!

Some how!

Long story short!

We promised Hattie a lizzard for her birthday.

Matt is a softy and we ended up with two NOT one.. but two miniature poodles.

They are sisters. They were 8 weeks when we got them. They are now 11 weeks.

Aside from all the potty training and keeping them out of the boys arms they have been very good puppies. 

Yesterday they found their way to a tray of strong D-Con we had in our garage.  Luckily I was outside and saw them eat it. We got them to a vet within an hour and a half. The vet induced vomiting and then gave them a charcoal treatment. They are also on vitamin k for the next 30 days twice a day. The vet said we were very lucky to have caught it as the puppies both would have been dead by morning. The vet also said to do follow up blood test every 10 days for the next 30 days to make sure they are not going into organ failure and that their blood is clotting normally. We are to watch for bruising and blood anywhere else on the body.  

That being said.. an after hours vet clinic on a Saturday night YA!  Lets just say we have some golden puppies!

It makes you think!

I am the one who says put them down! BUT in the moment....where do you as an owner draw the line on the measures you are going to take to save a pet.  The bigger question...Your children's pet?  It is weighing heavily on my mind. Blood tests another couple hundred dollars....and if they come back and say it is not looking good!  Then what?  IVS lots of medications LOTS of $$$... Where do you draw the line especially if you have already spent more than you ever swore you would on a pet or pets!!!  

Bats or Fireworks?

            Happy forth of July! We were in Austin Texas this year for the 4th of July. We were planning on watching the fireworks this year but due to the dry weather in Texas there were no fireworks.  We decided to walk down to a bridge across the street from our hotel and watch the bats fly out from underneath a bridge instead.  There are around 1.5 million bats that fly out from underneath the bridge every evening around 8:30pm. They are said to consume between 10,000 and 30,000 pounds of insects every night. 

            It was a pretty crazy sight, creepy if you think about it.There were so many of them you could hear the wind with flight.  Defiantly something I will never get to see, hear or smell again.  The crowds of people in the park and boats below faces all watching the sky and waiting, did make the evening feel a bit patriotic.  The bats take about 45 minutes to clear out from underneath the bridge.

Our first family flight!

              " Flight destination Austin Texas"  We got to the air port 2 hours early to get through security. Security was a breeze, leaving us 1.5 hours to wait for our flight. We waited an hour and then we were told our plane had mechanical problems and would not be going anywhere. We were able to get rerouted onto a different flight that landed in Houston and then on to Austin, but we were left with another 2 hours of waiting. I do have to mention my kids were being so good. On any other day sitting in an airport with 6 kids I would say "you are crazy, I would rather walk"  they were so good.  So we finally land in Houston rush across the airport to make it to our next flight. We make it with an hour to spare but then a huge storm hits. Apparently they have not seen it rain like this in 3 months. DELAYED AGAIN! We waited an extra hour for the storm to pass. After a really long day we arrive at our destination. We are all so exhausted and ready for bed. my 4 hours of sleep the night before had caught up with me. We wait for our luggage to come around in baggage claim. ( we only checked  Matt's bag) when the planes got switched we ended up on this tiny plane and they had to put my carry on and two others under the plane. So every ones luggage shows up except for mine.
I was so tired and proud of my kids I could not even cry at this point.  The airline said someone took it and they were calling her to tell her to bring it back. This other bag was left behind so she must have mistakenly picked up mine.
So long story short...I got my luggage back around 1pm the next day. So other than our bad luck we made it through 2 flights and 3 huge air ports without losing any of the kids. No one threw up or cried and no one was injured. I would say we did pretty good!  Crossing my fingers that our flight home goes a little smoother though.

Kids comments Tallon "are we flying yet"?  "when are we going to fly"?   Response "we are already flying"
      Avri "lets do this again" She loved flying

Abby looking out the window says "there is a storm ahead"!  Belle...She puts her stuff away as fast as she can and grabs my hand and braces herself.  I say "there is not a storm ahead we already flew through the patch of clouds".  Belle gets her book and crayons back out.   Abby "there is a big storm ahead" Belle puts all her stuff away again, grabs my hand and braces herself.  Me "Belle ...we are flying around the storm, you are fine"  Belle gets her stuff back out!
We did go through a storm on the smaller plane before Abby began to forcast. I thought I was going to get my arms squeased off between Abby and Belle.

Tallon " we are so high, are we going to get to see Jesus?"

My tomato plants have me stumped!

            It has become an obsession! Seriously, I look for pictures and descriptions and walk out and look at them a few times a day. I do not see anything anywhere like what is going on with most of my tomatoes. They look like they are wilted but are firm to touch. The leaves and stems are almost fern like and they are all curled and growing down instead of out and up. I did find little black bugs that look like ants or fruit flies on them so I  sprayed a pesticide. The pesticide did not seem to do anything, so last night I blended up  3 garlic cloves in 2 cups of water then added about a TBL of oil, a few drops of natural lemon oil and eucalyptus oil. I put a 1/4 cup of the mix with about a 1/2 tsp dish soap in a 64 ounce sprayer. The plants actually looked a touch better today. I did not see as many living bugs on them. I did put a small cup of oil by one of the plants and the black nat things seem to be attracted to it and drown.  

My Utah Garden 2011

This is my second post today for my garden. I felt like the good and bad could not be on the same post.
So besides the nightmare. I am crossing my fingers we don't lose anything. I have done everything beside sing to it to help it along.

I planted 25 tomato plants, 13 peppers plants, 1 egg plant, 8 cucumbers, 1 watermelon, 1 cantaloupe, small row of Swiss chard, 3 small rows of corn, 3 small rows of beats, 4 pole beans, 2 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 4x4 box of peas, 2x4 box of carrots and a 4x4 box of white onions.  I also have 2 4x4 boxes of  established raspberries, 1 4x4 box that has asparagus growing in it (this will be year 3).  I also have two 4x4 boxes of strawberries. That is all in my back yard. I have a huge rhubarb plant, a huge bed of strawberries and 7 fruit trees in my front yard.  I also have random herbs planted all over the place. 

Matt finished my new raised bed. The tall supports down the center are for my grapes and blackberries.

My peas are looking good! My kids favorite.

 

All my pepper plants look really good. I planted 3 yolo wonder green bells ( 2 out of the three have peppers on them already), I also planted two banana peppers , 6 jalapeno (I want to can them this year) and 2 red bell peppers.

This is one of my banana peppers. I have never had peppers this early.

This is the average size of my tomato plants. I have a few that are much bigger, but not as healthy.

  

My front bed is so full of strawberries. They look better this year than they ever have. I thinned them out so much last year I was worried I would not get much. It made them thicker and bigger.  I hear Strawberries are really hard to grow in Utah, but I tried to kill these before I decided to baby them.

Picture before I removed my covers.

I bought most all my plants about 7 weeks ago. I have kept them in my wagon in my garage and pulled them in and out everyday if the weather permitted. I got all excited and planted them almost 2 weeks ago. I was so glad I missed the big hail storm but then it got all rainy and cold. That first night I could not sleep and worried all my work and money was outside freezing. So the next night I came up with 33...Yes 33 buckets, flower pots and garbage cans. I even used my kids Easter buckets.  I have gone out and covered everything without a cage or support most every night since. I go back out in the morning and uncover them.  I covered my caged supports with a big furniture cover. I read that the tender plants will survive in the cooler temperatures but anything below 50 they put all their energy into just staying alive. In other words they won't grow much.  I am hoping I will have a record produce garden this year. A big come back from not growing one last year.
     

My Garden nightmare.

I think my yard would be a pathologists dream of bacteria, viruses and who knows what else. One of the managers at IFA said that all this wet cool weather has all kinds of stuff growing that normally is not a problem here in Utah.

                                              My Blackberries

I dug them up two days ago to look at the roots.  I had some white ones so their is a tiny hope. The water table is so high where they are planted. The roots where just in a slosh pool of water, so I raised them up . I  picked up a  Ferti-lome fire blight spray that that I have started to treat them with.

This tomato was very purple. It looks a little droopy but it is not as purple as it was.   I know that the cold  temperatures can cause plants to turn purple through the veins because they can't absorb the phosphorus.  I bought some  bone meal and sprinkled it around the base of all my tomatoes.

I could not get a good picture of the purple on my tomatoes so I took one of my marigold.   These leaves are not crispy. It just looks like the leaves are suppose to be this color.  I have found a few things that this could be. One is fire blight.  One is the lack of phosphorus.   A new disease that popped up in 2006 called TPLD.  

This Tomatillo split and looks like shoulders. It is growing out instead of up. Weird! 

This tomatillo is still tiny and not growing ...yet it is covered in as many blossoms as possible. I am trying to decide  if  I should pinch the blossoms off so the plant can grow bigger first.

                 Now on to my trees! This is making me sick!

We started off infested with aphids. This leaf is after being sprayed twice! 

Then came all the rusty colored leaves on my  apple tree. This tree looks horrible. It has fire blight and a bacterial issue.  I am thinking we will have to cut this one down. 

My pear tree looks like some one took a magnifying glass and burnt all the tips of my leaves. This tree also has fire blight and some other kind of bacteria.

I took cuts of both trees to IFA and that is where I got my information. I have also researched on line and found the same thing I was told by the IFA manager. He recommended a ferti-lome fire blight spray and also a ferti-lome broad spectrum fungicide.
I was also told to cut 6 inches below and infected branch but that would be my entire tree. I have applied the spray 2 times at this point. My tomatoes look better. I think the rest may as well. It is hard to tell ...as they still look good as dead.