Little Sprouts

Today gave the first sign of life for our peach tree. Our plum tree, too, just came out of dormancy a few days ago. Its always a bit nail biting how long it takes of warm weather before they show signs of greenery. Our bare root blackberries still have us wondering their fate.








Another little sprout had a first today... Gloria had her first day of school. The beauty of homeschooling is that it can start at any time. She's been recognizing letters and shapes for weeks now even though I've never tried to teach them to her. Saturday she accurately counted the 4 eggs she helped me pick out. So, today was her day. We started after a good nap and went for a half hour. We practiced holding a pencil and crayon properly, tracing lines (and eventually letters), we sang and practiced enunciating the harder to pronounce letters in the alphabet song, learned the letters A and T by name and shape (no sounds too much as of yet) and worked on our first scripture verse: Romans 16:19. We added motions because "excellent" is a bit hard to say and all those little words in between the biggies get glossed over anyway. She's a singer and a dancer all the way... it may be hard to just memorize things straight and not dance and sing with it just for the fun of it. Here she is with her new big box of crayons to commemorate the day. She did great. We're going to keep it to twice a week for now. We'll gradually increase over the next couple of years so that kindergarten isn't a shock to everyone's system.

I've been overhauling the beds in one garden the last couple days. Double digging (digging out one small section, putting it in a bucket, shoveling out the next section and dumping it in the first, repeating all the way down the line until you put the contents of the bucket into the last remaining hole) and adding composted cow manure. I have all our squash in one solid block which I will spray with copper sulfate right from the get go to hopefully keep anthracnose away... or at very least concentrated to one area. Peppers and tomatoes are in beds though the sprouts were still a bit on the small side. Corn and red-seeded asparagus beans are looking great- every seed sprouted. Have those growing together in one bed. Gloria and I planted more seeds this morning- more corn, cowpeas, watermelon, okra, rattlesnake pole beans, and nasturtiums.

Gloria also got her own "garden" this weekend- a long window box (that a little brother can't dump over) that she got to plant, all by herself, nasturtiums (pretty flowers) and canteloupe (seeds from a melon we bought from the store). She's very proud of it, but its 100% hers so we'll see what happens. I expect something will sprout and she'll have more to be proud of.

The fig tree is holding its own right now. No new life on the affected areas yet, but root regrowth would be first anyway. I'm still putting sugar down occasionally and watering a bit everyday so it doesn't get dried out with its damaged root system. I think I'm winning.



Gloria and I also fertilized all our veggies and herbs today with "Sea Tea", a liquid fish emulsion fertilizer. She had a great time with the sprayer and was such a help when it came to cleaning it and running fresh water through it. She watered the blackberries with the sprayer and loved every minute. She's already looking forward to Thursday when I said we would spray again (copper sulfate). Its nice to have a helper.