For Valerie who wants me to blog something she doesn't already know: "What I've been doing the last two weeks."

Let's see. Actually I'm going to go back further than that. In February, knowing my regretable tendency to procrastinate, I bought fabric to make Easter dresses for my girls. Elai picked out a lovely periwinkle to make an A-line skirt, Mosey picked out a periwinkle calico to make a jumper, and I chose periwinkle gingham to make a jumper for my 5yo and a dress for my 1yo. The two oldest sewed their own during sewing lessons with Miss Emma. I cut out the gingham the week after buying it. I started sewing on the Monday before Easter. :-p

Well, with one thing and another, the machine breaking down, the kids getting sick, me getting sick, I didn't quite get the dresses finished in time for Easter. We didn't make it to church anyway since there were so many sick little ones, but we had a lovely day anyway. We had our own little worship service - Divine Service II, First Setting, out of the Lutheran Worship book - and then listened to a sermon for Sunday School. We've been listening to Doug Wilson's Bible Stories series and we were up to the lesson about Peter, which, as usual, was quite good.

Mosey had been saving and painting eggshells, which she stuffed with chocolate and hid for us to find - she even made one for me and Mike! It was fun, and it was the first Easter egg hunt I've been part of since I was probably 12 years old.

Mike was able to get off work most of the following week, so we spent that time doing Big Gardening. He built two new raised beds for me, so now I have three. We use the lasagne method for building new beds: make a wooden frame, put down layers of cardboard, newspaper, and leaves, then top with compost and topsoil. In one of the new beds I planted tomatoes, peppers, and marigolds. The marigolds serve two purposes, to look pretty :-) and to discourage nematodes. In the second new bed I will plant carrots, radishes, cucumbers, and salad stuff. I've never done broccoli or lettuce so I don't have any idea how well it'll turn out.

The old bed is going to be a Three Sisters bed - corn, squash, and beans. We planted the corn and the squash (crookneck and spaghetti squash, and pumpkins), and I'll plant the beans in a few weeks after the corn is up. Of course, after I planted the squash I found out you're not supposed to plant it until a couple of weeks after you plant the corn, and then you plant the beans a couple of weeks after that. Oh well, we'll see how it works out.

We also used some leftover bits of wood from other projects to put up a trellis to grow gourds on. This is so we can screen our very ugly compost area, and then we're going to make birdhouses out of the gourds to attract martins, which like to eat bugs.

There are so many crows and pidgeons here that they eat all of our seeds, so we covered the Three Sisters bed and the gourd patch with clear plastic to keep the birds out until the plants are big enough to survive.

Today, Mike and our two oldest sons have been going out to a friend's farm to collect rocks - great big rocks to make a retaining wall out of. When we built our blueberry bed in the front yard last year, we made a temporary retaining wall out of bricks, but it's not high enough, sturdy enough, or good-looking enough to be acceptable. I'd been wanting stone, but certainly didn't want to pay money for rocks! Then we thought of our friend the farmer. Farmers don't like rocks. Surely he'd be glad to have someone tote them away! Sure enough, he was glad to let us take away as many rocks as we want.

The stones are beautiful - white and gray and beige with fossils embedded in many of them. I have no idea what kind of rock it is, but anyway I'm sure it was made by Noah's flood. One has the most beautiful fossil of a snail that's about an inch and a half across. If nothing more impressive turns up, that rock is going to go at the end of the wall nearest the walkway to the front door.

As you can tell, we're doing companion planting in the vegetable beds - planting a variety of things together that benefit each other and eliminate the need for using synthetic pesticides and herbicides. We're doing something similar in the blueberry bed, called the "fruit tree guild." The basic plan is to plant a fruit tree, plant bulbs around the base, then herbs around that, and berries and flowering perennials beyond that. The fruit tree is obviously for food; the bulbs are for beauty; the herbs can be used for food, are beautiful, enrich the soil, and help discourage pests and weeds; the berries are for food again; and the perennials are for beauty and to attract beneficial insects. I'll give details about our bed later.

Well, I still don't have the girls' dresses finished, but I should be able to finish Grace's tonight after supper. I only have to hem it and sew on the buttons. Everyone's well now, so we'll be able to go to church tomorrow, Hallelujah!