buescher blog: Isabel, Isabel, How Does your Garden Grow?

You might remember from an earlier post, that Geoffrey spent a lot of time during his paternity leave working on terracing the side of the house. Once the yard was terraced he brought in bags and bags of new soil, that already had organic matter mixed in, and mulched the beds to prevent weeds. When the weather was warm enough I planted the tomatoes, squash (yellow and green), cucumbers and assorted herbs I had started from seed. We must have done something right as the garden is insane. The squash and cucumber plants are huge, the herbs are growing like crazy and the tomatoes are full of flowers. The squash and cucumbers started flowering a couple weeks ago and tomorrow I should be picking the first of the cucumber. You can't get more local and organice than produce from your own yard. We plan on adding a third row of terrace this fall and next year will expand the variety of plants.

Almost ready to pick!

The squash leaves are HUGE!

The yellow squash still have a ways to go before they will be ready to eat.

This is what we are calling the squash explosion. Last year we had a much smaller garden, and apparently missed picking a squash. It must have rotted and seeded itself, as this spring Geoffrey discovered a mass of baby squash plants growing together. We decided to leave it and just see what happens. It actually has flowers so hopefully it too will produce some yummy squash.

This week has been a crazy one, as we had hardwood floors installed and will be having the steps stripped of their carpet and refinished on Friday/Saturday. We spent a good part of the weekend packing up everything from the closets and inside of all the furniture in preparation for the task. Last week, the floor was delivered (all 79 boxes) to allow it to acclimate. Monday morning a crew of 3 showed up and it was off to the races. Furniture was moved, carpet was torn out and the flooring began. We went with a 3 1/4" wide maple plank in a butterscotch stain with an "Extreme Finish." The finish was developed by a Canadian company to withstand just about anything. I tried scratching it with a key and sandpaper (well the sample) and you couldn't see a thing! The new floor looks amazing and the before/after pictures certainly don't do it justice. The pugs haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I'm loving it and actually looking forward to cleaning it, as the pug hair and dust should come right off!

What 79 boxes of hardwood floor looks like.

Work in progress.

The finished living room. All of the furniture is sitting on carpet squares until we get felt furniture pads to go underneath everything to protect the floors.

And it seems that Monday is Isabel's day for trying new things. On Monday Eric came over to hang out while his car was getting tuned up and sat and played with Isabel while I packed up the office. He called me to come quick as he thought Isabel was going to roll over...back to stomach, and sure enough, she did! After she tired of being on her tummy she flipped herself onto her back. It was fun to watch and also means that we have to pay extra attention to her, should she decide to put these skills together to roll across the room. It is just amazing to me to see how quickly a baby develops and learns new skills. In addition to working on her rolling skills, Isabel has also become quite vocal and is experimenting with new sounds. Geoffrey and I try to imitate her sounds back to her, which always gets a grin. Even funnier is that she responded back to a recording of her voice with glee, when I was playing back a video I took of her "talking."