35 weeks and garden update

Posted On June 14, 2010

35 weeks now. Only about a month to go until we meet this new little person! I can’t believe how fast it’s all gone by this time. At the same time it doesn’t surprise me. We’ve become a busy bunch this year- expanding the garden, fixing up the house (slowly but surely), philosophizing our heads off (we can’t seem to help ourselves these days), spending time with family and friends, all of course while taking care of Vera… I’m glad though- it’s kept me active and happy for the most part, and I feel really good for being almost done cooking this baby. Last time I felt good, but not this good. I was much more rickety and it was harder to move at this point with Vera. Makes me wonder if I have a smaller baby this time or if I’m just stronger. I’ve still got 5 weeks to go, so I’ll just focus on staying happy and comfortable. I am glad to have a pretty open schedule from here on out. I’m off-call now, although I still have a postpartum visit or two, and I’m done watching my niece this week. Open open open. I love the miscellaneous work that I do, but I’m definitely ready to nest and just focus on my stuff for a few weeks. This house is a complete pit, too, so I’m going to get my sister’s help and I’ll get this place whipped into shape in no time. Feeling nostalgic, I found this entry I wrote when I was just as far along with Vera. Fun.

Spring weather is kind of amazing. I can’t believe the amount of growth from some of these plants. All this rain mixed with heat… our potato plants have basically exploded, and we’ve had to build up two more panels already.

Green everywhere! This weekend we’ll put up our trellises, mulch the walkways, and get our chickens. So excited. Until then I’ve got a lot of weeding and thinning to do (it’s meditative… right?), and I want to put straw down into the beds- we’ve had some scorching hot days and I want to keep things well mulched.

Our baby cherry tree! It produces the sweetest little mini cherries. I’ve got to do something with them soon before all the critters find out about them. Any ideas? Tonight we’re going strawberry picking again after Jeff gets home from work… probably in the rain, but I don’t mind. Ending a long day with a fresh bowl of strawberries and milk is one of my favorite things right now. I’m also reading some fiction finally, so I’m a happy girl. 

This weekend we gave our tv and the tv unit that Jeff made (his first piece of furniture!) to our friend who lives downstairs. It feels a little weird, actually, but both of us are happy that we did it. We ended up just trading him for his little tv, which we’ll just hook up for special stuff- I want Vera to be able to pop in a video for a sleepover or something in the future, and I like to use it to work out sometimes. That kind of thing doesn’t bother me. I realize that it’s not the having of the tv that bothers me, it’s the routine use of it, and mostly how crazy I think it makes kids (I remember myself freaking out over my mom turning the thing off). I just really want it to be a treat, and Vera is so much less emotionally stable after watching- and so are all the other kids that come over here. It’s hard to not use it all the time when we have it, so I’m just going to keep it in a corner or a closet and we’ll have to hook it up to use it. Or I might keep it all hooked up, but then make a cool fabric cover for everything so the kids don’t even notice it. Vera has asked about it but I just tell her we said goodbye to it and she finds something else to do. I think in a couple of weeks we won’t even notice. I’m looking forward to doing more interactive stuff with Jeff at night, too.

Oh yeah, and the thrifting fairies? They are looking out for us, I swear! Jeff and I were telling my little sister about how when we want something we can just throw it out into the universe and it ends up coming to us. It’s been kind of weird, actually. Plus, when we buy something thinking we couldn’t find it, we learn our lesson by seeing the opportunity just days later. Well, we were sitting around flipping through my dad’s Lehman’s catalogue (I drool over that stuff), and I was admiring the pasta maker. Jeff laughed and said that we had one a few years ago from a garage sale, but it was missing a part and we never used it (clearly, because I don’t remember it at all), and we got rid of it. I said that now I wanted one, and Jeff and I both said "Universe! Pasta maker!"- as has become our custom when we see some gadget or something that we want. That was last week. Yesterday we were at Jeff’s parent’s house, and his dad said "Do you guys have any interest in making pasta?" We both burst out laughing. 

Thanks universe! I called my little sister on the way home and said "Guess what the universe just gave us?" and she was like "What… a pasta maker?" Haha. So she’s coming over tomorrow night for some homemade pasta. Love.

I’m excited about this, because we’ve pretty much cut out all the refined grain products in our diets. We have treats here and there, but mostly we stick to whole, soaked grains and sourdough stuff. But pasta is delicious. So, I’m thinking I’ll make our own pasta out of sprouted flour… plus I’ve heard it’s super easy to make and there’s nothing like fresh pasta. Yay! Plus, see the ravioli maker? I’m planning on making some homemade ravioli and pierogies to freeze for easy postpartum meals… So happy.

That’s all. Today I’m doing sourdoughy things, playing with Vera, trying to get this place back in some kind of order, crafting a little, strawberry picking later, and then reading my book. Bliss, I tell you.

*Also, I wanted to mention that I know I haven’t been commenting as much lately- I’ve been all over the place. But I’m still reading and interested- I’ll do better soon. 🙂