First Seedlings of the year!

Ooh yay! Today I noticed a few of my seedlings have sprouted! Spinach, a few cherry tomatoes, and my onions, yay! This weekend is supposed to be great for gardening, reaching the mid 60's on Sunday! If I could just shake the PMS bitch ball tying my mood down, I would be on cloud 9. SO READY FOR SUMMER!

Potty Training Chart

The little man is FINALLY showing signs of being ready to potty train. Am I ever ready for it! We've been on two solid days of potty training with one accident each day. They both happened shortly after working hours where I lose track of the time. He tinkled in the kitchen yesterday and today immediately After sitting on the potty he went into the other room and pooped his pants! Argh! As soon as I cleaned him up and ran a bath, I went to look of there were any 'leftovers' in the room he chose and the damn puppy peed right in front of me! Some days I could just dig a hole and crawl inside. Some days I wish I was just at the beach.

Any-who, I couldn't find a potty training chart that I like enough. They all were either two short or not interesting or exciting enough. So naturally, I made one. Poster board, foam backing, sharpies and stickers.

The goal is for Z to fill each puff of smoke with a sticker, working his way to each planet in our solar system starting from the sun. He gets one sticker for pee and 2 for poop. (And only one per hour, to keep from multiple trips to get more rewards, tricky buggar will do that!)

 Each planet has a reward. Mars = a Sucker, Venus = a trip to the park, Earth = a trip to the zoo. 

 He earned his sucker in one day so as to experience the reward and catch on to the goal. I think it's going to work out well. :)

Garden Beds 2013

We FINALLY. Got started on the garden beds this year. Our beds from last year were awesome but needed lots of improvement and more sun. Our friend gave us a bunch of shaved tree trunks about 20 feet long. We initially cut them about 10' in size, and then cut them in to 4' or 5' lengths to make the garden beds. I had fun using the mantis and tilling up all the soil while the Hubs started to put them together.




The tree on the far right is where last years garden, it blocked a lot of light from my plants. The dogs will be able to have that area back for themselves.





The first bed is almost up! It took a lot of arguing to get him to make these garden beds 'my way', which is the easy way. I love him but he over analyses things too much and doesn't know how to do anything half assed. My last planter bed he built (while gorgeous and tougher than a tornado) cost $200 and took 2 months to build. It was only 3' x 10'. I really do enjoy simple and quick rewards. So when he said he needed to till, level, dig out where the beds would go and string level before building them, I let out a swift 'oh hell no!' Thats a lot of time and work, and I had expectations as to how fast I thought they should be built. I won and we had 3 planters done by the end of the day. Yay! I expect these planters to last me at least 5 years. Hopefully longer. Besides the posts and top soil, they will all be built on free materials. Woo hoo!!