Thursday, March 30, 2006

This morning when Steve woke me up to say good-bye, he didn't mention anything about the bedroom. I noticed it in my groggy state, but I thought maybe he didn't want to disturb my sleep too much. When I got up, I called him to give him a chance to tell me how much he liked it. He didn't even bring it up! I was pretty annoyed, so I told him I was hanging up, and when he asked why, I said something stupid about not waiting anymore for him to say something that he obviously wasn't going to say. He was like, "Uhhhh...I love you?" It turns out he completely did not even notice the new paint. When I told him I painted it, he said he couldn't wait to see it, but it's too bad I had to go and spoil the surprise. Gah!

We have asparagus sprouting! I was so excited to see that this morning. We also planted our spinach seeds today. I cannot believe how many weeds keep growing in that garden. I've been keeping up with it pretty well, but I hadn't been down there since last Friday. Holy cow - the place was covered in new weeds! I think it's because last year I just raked the weeds into the ground, thinking they would be good organic mulch, when really I was just spreading around millions of tiny weed seeds. Today I filled two entire plastic grocery bags with weeds that I pulled, in between trying to stop Emma from stepping on our asparagus. As I was preparing the dirt for the spinach seeds, I noticed that there were a TON of worms. I hope this means that we have healthy, nutrient-rich dirt.

We have a pretty small front yard and a decent sized back yard. Both are full of weeds. Steve wants to hire a lawn service to come once a month and do whatever it is they do. This has really been troubling me. Not only do I think tossing chemicals around willy-nilly is potentially unsafe for Emma, the garden, and the dogs, I just don't feel right about dumping more toxins into the earth. We've discussed a compromise of doing the front yard only. Today the lawn service guy came out to give us an estimate. It would cost basically the same to do just the front as it would to do it all. I expressed my concerns, and he said a lot of their customers have kids and they've never had any problems. Okay, so that tells me absolutely nothing. He also said they only spray weed killer on each individual weed so there wouldn't be that much, but then continued on to say that our yard has so many weeds that they'd have to just do a blanket spraying the first time. As much as I would love to have a lush, green lawn, I think I'm going to have to veto this. Well, the backyard, at least. And I better get busy pulling weeds!

And, because I think all posts should have pictures, here is a funny one of Emma enjoying her smoothie this morning.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree about the lawn service... Those chemicals scare me!

But, I have to admit that I put down fertilizer in my front yard today! I got some organic lawn fertilizer and a cheap hand-spreader. Of course, what I really need to do is be pulling weeds out of the mulch beds instead of putting fertilizer on the dead spots in the yard grass!

That picture of Emma is hilarious! I love it!

Katie said...

Im worried about the same thing. When we first moved to this house there were little white balls all over the patio. I thought maybe her tetthing tablets had spilled. But when I put one in my mouth it burned the crap out of my tongue. Turns out it was some kinda chemical they sprayed on the grass! Grrrr.

Emma is adorable, as usual!!

Catherine said...

What a hilarious piture! That face.

Oh, and paragraph one sounds exactly like a conversation that would happen at our house. Where ARE They when it comes to DETAIL??!? Sit up and NOTICE please:)

David said...

Emma rather looks like her mother.

Katie said...

you might ask my mom about the whole weeds in the lawn thing...she's quite the guru. She mentioned something about 'weed & feed' on their lawn & it's looking great. sounds like it might be right up your alley :)

emma's such a cutie! thanks for meeting up for dinner last night!