Veggie Venture

I like gardening. There's something very peaceful about digging in the dirt. There's a certain amount of satisfaction in helping to create something out of a mound of soil and a small helpless-looking plant. I am useless when it comes to keeping plants alive indoors, but when it comes to an outdoor garden, where mother nature does the watering (most of the time) and all I have to do is pull some weeds and add a little nutrients now and then, I do well enough. :)

When I left my first job, one of my wonderful coworkers gave me a great book called "Basic Gardening: A Guide for the Horticulturally Helpless" by Yvonne Cunnington. It has been an excellent tool for learning in my gardens. I am by no means an expert, but it gave me the confidence to try things out with some trial and error. We've had some wins and some losses but thankfully no tears.

This year I am trying something different. I have for several years now wanted to grow a vegetable garden but for one reason or another have not had the time or the motivation to maintain it. I decided instead of buying a whole bunch of annuals that look beautiful but then die in the fall, why shouldn't I try planting some vegetables instead and see what happens? It's a fun idea, and if I get some vegetables out of it, then bonus! I'll learn a bit about gardening in the process, and maybe I'll get to make some salsa or something out of my peppers if they manage to grow. We'll see. :)

Little Changes Big Changes

It amazes me how time flies when you are working and looking after a child and just living every-day life. Here it is already the middle of May, Sam is growing before my eyes, and there's a hint of summer in the air. Life's changing nature is never more keen than in the spring, and this spring especially seems even moreso. My son seems to surprise me every day with new words, new skills, new humour....he is unbelievable.

As we do every April, we went to Hatteras Island NC (part of the Outer Banks) for a week of holiday-ing and relaxing. The house we stayed in had several flights of stairs to which Sam had unlimited supervised access. He mastered climbing up and down the stairs that week. He also mastered the words "apple", "en haut" (up in french, although it sounds more like uh-oh), and putting a great effort towards the word "turtle". More recently Sam has added the words "hat", "hot", "flower/fleur", "tree/arbre", "juice/jus", "wow" and "yay" to his ever-growing vocabulary. He is a very communicative little guy. :) He LOVES music and singing, I swear he would be happy to listen to me sing "twinkle twinkle little star" over and over and over again.

He also took his first few steps while in Hatteras but hadn't taken any since. That is until last night. It had been a good month since Sam attempted to take any steps, and then out of nowhere, after his bath last night he just started walking between Tim and I. Tim took some video, but Sam was completely naked, so it won't be going up here. However, I did manage to get a few clips of Sam walking today. We were halfway through a diaper change and he decided it was time to walk instead. He would go behind his closet door, peek out and then walk towards me. Enjoy! :)