2017 Harvest
Greetings to all.
This weekend Aunt Chelle drove down from Fort Collins to watch Xavier. Mom and Dad needed a getaway, and Steamboat Springs called to us.
The afternoon, when Chelle arrived, grew overcast. Xavier's garden patch had seen its better days. Time to harvest most of what it grew for him. Before jumping in the car and heading to the mountains, we spent some time helping Xavier bring in his bounty. We wanted some time with him before we left.
We targeted the pumpkins first. Twenty were ready and five will be ready in a few weeks if the weather holds. The stems proved too tough for Xavier's strength; Mom stepped in to assist.
In all my years of growing pumpkins, I have never seen vines so fecund. Many of the pumpkins weigh over twenty pounds. Snails (which plagued our gardens this year) covered the bottoms of all of the pumpkins. Fortunately, they did little damage. We flicked them into the street, then brought the gourds onto the patio.
After the pumpkins, Xavier helped with the butternut and spaghetti squash. However, he did not have the same exuberance in harvesting them.
All in all an extraordinarily productive garden this year. Who knew the soil a forty-five year old Blue Spruce tree had grown in would make so fertile a planting area for gourds? The pumpkin vines are still producing flowers and fruit; we're likely to get five or six more pumpkins this year.
The squash survived the plague of snails also, and there are many more of each kind left to harvest. The vines supporting these, however, have all but died back.
We moved the squash and the corn stalks from Rebecca's garden onto the patio with the pumpkins. Rebecca and Xavier have plans to use many of these in decorating the front yard for October.
The day's harvesting finished, Rebecca and I left Xavier in the very capable care of his Aunt Chelle and headed to Steamboat Springs. Xavier spent the rest of the weekend not feeling prideful over his harvest, but pining for his parents so far away.
Xavier's New Office
Greetings to everyone.
Xavier's room has become cluttered, and Middle Earth something of a mess most of the time. The clutter and strewn-about toys in Middle Earth were (mostly) tolerable, since we decided that was Xavier's main play area. His room, however, was a different matter altogether.
Rebecca invested in two translucent storage containers as a test to contain Middle Earths creeping dishevelment. We also decided to move Xavier's table out of his room. He never used it and it was a breeding ground, perhaps the wellspring of all the clutter in his room; certainly the inspiration for it at least.
We thought to move the desk and chairs to Middle Earth and move his toy bins and new toy containers into his room. Then we had a different idea, one I was hesitant to agree to.
We thought move the desk and chairs to my office. There Xavier could play while I worked. It was an intriguing idea, but my office was already cluttered to a threshold of annoyance—and the desk would mean tighter space.
We moved some things around in my office, got rid of the large CRT taking up space in a corner while harboring spider nests and rearranged two pieces of furniture. His desk fit in perfectly.
Instantly, Xavier loaded his desk with two items: a computer-looking play and learn toy and a ten key calculator with paper roll. The ten key was his version of the printer to the right of my computer.
He often sits there while I work. He writes bills and prints me out numbers on his printer. While the roofers were working, we had a rain storm and the unfinished roof leaked above his desk. He sat down (after we cleaned up the mess) and wrote out checks to pay for the roof leak, just like Daddy sits and writes checks to pay other things at his desk.
When asked at school what he wanted to do when he grew up, he responded with "I want to grow up big like Daddy and have fun and work with him in his office."
Xavier's Garden
Greetings to everyone.
Late last year a wind storm blew over a 30 some foot Blue Spruce pine tree in our front yard. After having the stump removed, a large 20 foot diameter circle of dirt remained.
In the winter and early spring months that followed, Xavier used the dirt patch as a sandbox. He plowed roads, trucked dirt from here to there, dug up long rotting roots from the circle's former occupant. He even planted a single onion bulb along the northwest edge.
In early June, Xavier wanted to plant some seeds near his onion. Rebecca had several squash seeds and several pumpkin seeds soaking in a dish. We used those. After all, we had a nice large patch for the vines to expand into.
The soil did not look like it would support much; the forty-some year old pine tree had drained the ground of any nutrients. But, it would be fun for an evening and Xavier was excited to plant. We planted and we marked where we planted. We put up flags to keep the lawn crews from tromping through the garden. We even trenched in a soaker hose around all the plants (even the thriving onion).
A couple weeks later, every seed had starter leaves above ground—even the seeds Xavier spilled and we did not pick up sprouted. Rebecca mixed up some fertilizer and applied it, and the garden did very well. Daily we worked the land, training the vines to stay off the lawns, both ours and the neighbor's.
The patch garnered much attention from the neighbors, and many comments. We even had someone leave a hand-written note expressing their admiration of the patch.
The Spaghetti Squash (as always) did well. We had concerns about the Butternut Squash, but it outgrew and out-produced the Spaghetti Squash! And every time you counted the pumpkins, you found another you did not notice before.
