The before... of the before and after of our garden.

I love before and after pictures of home improvements/gardens/makeovers. Since we are leaving for a few weeks, I took pictures of our veg garden as a record keeping of the BEFORE shot. We planted three Asian pear trees. We are so looking forward to some asian pear from our own yard.

They cost $25 for a dozen in NYC china town years ago. So if these trees produce a dozen or two each tree, we will earn our money back in two years.

Two friends gave us some raspberry bushes. Ever bearing and late season. I am so looking forward to it. I have learned that fresh raspberry are soooo goood. There are also four blue berry bushes from last year that we hope to cover with netting, so it won't be picked through by birds.

Strawberry plants are blooming and I hope we will be back in time for the berries. I am going to dedicate this whole bed for strawberry plants.

The cherry tomato plants I seeded and planted died after a really cold night last week. So I went out and bought some in a local farm for only $2.75. Makes me wonder why I went through all the troubles. I need to remember next year to not bother with all that work.

In this bed we have red onions, pok choi, and two different kinds of lettuce. Various herbs: dill, basil, mint, and chive. I would say this is the most exciting bed in the garden. I planted them early in spring, so they are really flourishing now.

This bed has zucchini, yellow squash, different kinds of peppers, spinach, carrots, and sugar snap peas. It also has four cherry tomato plants.

There are more sugar snap peas here and some more carrots. Most of the plants here are large climbing ones. Pumpkin, Butternut squash, Patty Pan, Cucumber and bush beans. All the plants are pretty young so it looks pretty bear now. But it will be pretty bushy and full when the summer heat kicks in.

Bobcat, Cherry Picker! Oh my!

It has been too long. My computer is partly back. Our lives have been so full that I even had a little melt down and some R&R to get back to norm. So we are going to skip all that and fast forward to some big things happening in our homestead. We hired THE stump man to come and take down a few trees. They bought over a BOBCAT, a CHERRY PICKER and a stump remover. Large equipments that my son adore. It was such an exciting day!

My husband is planning to build a tree house on/around this tree. We hope to build a platform later on in the summer. As we have more time later we'll add different things to it.... a swing ... rock climbing things ... a net. All in theory right now. Where are my structure engineering friends???

Waiting...

I have not been able to post for awhile because of several reasons. First, I was away for a week in Panama City, FL with all 300,000 spring break college students. (that in it self is a story to write about=). Second, I spend 3 hours on the phone with Dell and they have declared my hard drive to be on it's way out. Furthermore, I had a jiggly sound whenever I move/shake the computer. (we suspect that there was a small piece of toy inserted into my CD drive....humm... which of the three suspect do you think it might be?) So my laptop is at Dell Depot, hopefully all will return to normal in a few days. It's raining out, perfect weather for waiting...

Homeschool History Group

This past Thursday afternoon from 1pm to about 4pm. Eight moms and twenty six kids came to our home to learn some American history. Our drive way and street was packed with mini vans. The garage and the hall way was filled with boots, winter coats, scarfs and hats. Since, there was rain and snow outside, everyone was came inside to stay warm and greeted good friends/playmates. It was chaotic at times, but it sure was FUN!

I joined this homeschool group last year to test out the possibilities of doing homeschool with Lydia and Priscilla. Last year, this group studied Geography and I learned so much! (Till this day Nathan(2.5 yrs old) will go to any map and claim that 'its Africa!') So Fall of 2009 we started with a prepackaged curriculum (Sunlight) and entered into the world of homeschooling. It really has not been that difficult following a pre-made lesson plan. As with all kids, our girls are always asking questions and this time we give them more thought through answers and took advantage of teachable moments. The big adjustment was to carve out a regular schedule to teach them. I do most of the teaching right now during 10am till 11:30am. Joe use to teach the girls on Saturday mornings, but now they are taking ballet lessons during that time(I am going to have to post some ballet pics next time).


Our History group starts with 30mins of play time for the kids and setup time for the teachers. We then have 45 mins to an hour of class. There are three groups, the older children (grade 3-5), the younger children (K- 2grade) and the babies. Afterward, it's snack time and more play time for the kids and for the moms to grab a cup of tea together. We have a schedule of which home to meet at, snack duty and teaching duty. I have learned so much from these moms, who are full of experiences in homeschooling and life. They are such a blessing from God, without them I don't think I would've ever give homeschooling a chance.

p.s. I promise to take down the Christmas decorations before summer.

Oh, Baby!

I went to a baby shower today WITHOUT kids. It was so fun to hangout with ladies from church! I had many long uninterrupted conversations, which is rare as a mom of three. There were so much yummy food there. I did all the tricks magazines tell you to .... drink several cups of water... snack on celery or fruit ... I even skipped lunch. But I still ate so much that I could've skipped dinner as well.




















It is during these social situations that the question of weather we might have another baby often comes up. Joe and I ............ nop, just I.... have been swinging back and forth about the decision of having more kids. So I decided to list the circumstances when I would say yes to have more.

"Yea, I think I can have another one..." at/when
1. Baby Showers
2. Homeschool group, where there are moms of 4, 5 or more kids with orderly lives.
3. Beautiful sunny days and kids are having a great time outside.
4. Several weeks of full 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night.
5. Holding a precious baby.

"Hahah, no thanks!" when
1. Seeing very pregnant moms struggling to get up.
2. The tiredness in the new born moms.
3. Taking our sick child to the ER because of allergy or asthma.
4. I can think clearly with my mind and begin to have complex thoughts. (mostly depends on hr of sleep)

Currently, it's still a debate in my mind, but I am leaning toward the "no thanks!"
Our third child Nathan was a surprise. An awesome surprise! I love Nathan so much!
So... I guess I won't mind if God has more surprises. I probably will love him/her sooooo much too.

... after the swelling of 50lbs.(my average pregnancy weight gain).. =)

A New Season

I have registered this blog for several months now. But putting the pen down seemed so hard. Since even my mom has started to blog now.... So here we go. This blog will be about various things in our lives here in western MA. We will start with our backyard adventure. We have been here at our homestead for one and a half years now. This will be our second gardening season. During our first year, we have cleared some land for four raised beds to grow some vegetables, but it was a very wet summer and we had some harvest. One of them will be turned into a strawberry patch. I also would like to put in another raised bed just for asparagus. We put in the ground 4 blueberry bush and a grape vine. I hope to put in some more raspberry, blueberry and blackberry plants this spring,
because it' s easier to take care of the berry plants than vegetables. I am also thinking about moving the herbs to the front yard, but it only gets sun till noon. I hope they will do well.
So today, we started burning the brushes that has been collecting since last summer. My husband was so eager to start and it felt pretty good as the pile diminished into ashes. It was a good start and we both felt the satisfaction after a hard working day. There will be many more hard working days to come and we are looking forward to it. Working in the yard makes me feel thankful ... the enjoyment of working with my life long mate.... working with dirt and observing/learning from things that grow.... the wind and sunshine. Thank you God! I am grateful for this life.