Garden Talk

Even though I talk about my garden a lot on this here blog, I need you to not be fooled by it. Yes, I have a garden - a big one - and I write about it with pride and joy. But the truth is, I hardly have a green thumb. Probably three quarters of what I plant ends up dead before it can yield any produce. Every year I wonder, "Why am I doing this?" It costs us far more in time and money to grow our own vegetables than it would to just buy them from the store. Plus, my mother-in-law, the garden hoarder, is always trying to make us take her vegetables. 

But there's such a sense of accomplishment in gardening, despite my low success rate. And home-grown stuff tastes amazing... for vegetables... 

So I continue to garden even though I'm not great at it.

With my gardening efforts, I have learned that I cannot grow flowers. The only flowers I've ever successfully grown are sunflowers... so basically... weeds. When we first bought our house, I tried every year to plant flowers, and they always died. Every year, I try to grow poppies, and they always get a few centimeters high and then die. Potted plants inside my house always die. And every year I plant marigolds next to my tomatoes... and they die.

But this year is different! This year, for the first time, the marigolds are alive!

And they are flourishing! 

I've never had them expand beyond a single bloom and actually fill in the space. 

Also this year, I've kept some of my Mother's Day flowers alive. They're not in the best shape, but they're alive!

My friend, Melissa, gave me some snapdragons for Mother's Day.

Zoe gave me whatever these are...

And like I said, they are barely alive, but they're alive!

(The mystery plant Eva brought home from kindergarten growing in a Dixie cup didn't survive the transplant to the yard). 

The funniest thing about all this is that I married a farm boy. Scotty's grandpa and his brothers ran a local produce company for over 40 years, so Scotty grew up farming. You would think that would make him a great gardener, but it hasn't given us any gardening advantage. Scotty is just as responsible for plant deaths as I am!

The farm did give us a great resource for fresh peas, tomatoes, green beans, and corn for many years, though, and thus, we are corn snobs. As Scotty's grandpa grew older (and as his brothers began passing away), we knew that the day would come where we would need to learn to grow our own corn. Scotty's grandpa passed away a few years ago, but his brother, Fred, has continued growing corn and sharing it with us in the summer. This year, we decided it's time to give corn a try. 

Since we do square-foot gardening, we are using a far different method than that of the farm. We got some seed from Uncle Fred who said, "give them plenty of space," and we were like, "uhh... we're planting nine per square foot because that's what Mel Bartholemew says to do..." and Uncle Fred said his daughter has been doing that, and somehow it's worked. It's very different than growing corn on a farm, but it makes sense because on a farm, you need space for irrigation and pickers. We don't need that in our backyard. Farming and gardening share some similarities, but ultimately, they are two different systems, which is why marrying a farm boy doesn’t automatically mean you’ll have an amazing garden.

I wanted a little bit of a "head start" on the corn, so I planted our first batch from starts. The rest I have done from Fred’s seed, and I've planted it in phases so it will ripen across time. One of my greatest concerns is making sure the corn pollinates effectively so we actually get ears of corn, so I've spent all summer reading up on corn fertility and watching for the stalks to form tassels and silks. 

When we got back from our vacation last week, I was so excited to see our first corn tassels from the corn starts peeking over our backyard fence. A few days later, the first silks appeared. 

Just this morning, I found our first tassels on our very own corn stalks grown from seed! I now feel a great sense of responsibility in that I must bring about corn fertility. I am, essentially, a corn sex therapist. My therapy techniques for this season will include giving the stalks a gentle shake so pollen drops from the tassels to the silks. Other ideas include breaking off a tassel and touching it to the silks or touching a cotton ball from tassel to silk. I also read online that it's recommended to only water from the ground and never from above the plants because that washes the pollen off before it can do its thing. I'd never thought of this, and I've very often watered my garden with sprinklers or by hand with a sprinkler attachment, so this year, we decided to try only watering from the ground (i.e. NO SPRINKLING) to see if that helps with the rest of our garden. 

So far, it has been super fun to grow corn. It sprouts really fast and grows rapidly, so it's exciting to have a crop that show such visible progress from day to day. Hopefully, by the end of July, we'll have some ears of corn! And if all goes well, the marigolds will still be alive, and the sunflowers will have bloomed!

Bryce Canyon

Last week, after we left Saint George, we went to Bryce Canyon. None of us had ever been there, so we were excited to see something new!

We got to the park around 8:30 a.m. and got a parking spot near the Navajo Loop trailhead. We ate some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the picnic tables for breakfast and had a potty break before hitting the trail. 

Scotty told us that it was a quick one-mile hike.. 

Lies.

It's a 1.3 mile hike, and normally the .3 mile difference doesn't matter, but when you descend 515 feet and have to climb back up, it matters a little bit. I basically imagined it being a nice, little walk. I would have dressed and prepped completely differently if I'd known the truth. 

Going down

Going up

Possibly true

Normally this hike is a loop, but they had part of it closed, so we had to go down and back up the same way. The weird thing is that my "difficult" children (you never know which ones are going to be the "difficult" ones, as they all take turns... except Nicky. He's fine on hikes) gave us the most grief on the way down instead of the way up. Based on how they behaved on the way down, I was dreading the hike back up, thinking we'd never get them out of there, but they were much better on the way up!

I'm not sure what that was all about, but it just goes to show... children are unpredictable!

"Thor's Hammer" as viewed from the beginning of the Navajo Loop

After several days of very little sleep, this hike was about all I could handle for the day. We were all pretty wiped out, so we spent the rest of our time in Bryce Canyon just going to lookouts. That's one nice thing about the park - there is a lot to see with very little effort. 

Take this arch, for example:

It's just right off the roadside. It's not very often you get to see a natural arch without working for it!

This raven was hanging out at one of the lookouts, and he was quite the charmer! He wasn't scared of people, and we were able to walk right up to him. 

I wondered if I might get too close and end up being one of those people who get shamed online for approaching wildlife in a national park. Would I be the lady who got attacked by a raven? Would I lose an eye? 

I know not to approach a bear. But what are the rules with ravens? Will they eat your face?

Wildflowers on the roadside

One of the lookouts had a hot dog food truck, which I've never seen in a National Park before. We thought it was genius! We got some hot dogs and pretzel bites for lunch.

We also had a potty break, and I took Zoe and Eva in the outhouse with me, and I had Eva hold my phone while I went to the bathroom. Then I caught her taking pictures of me on the toilet, and we had a nice "talk" in which my voice was very loud, and everyone outside the bathroom got to hear me.

We spent a few hours going from lookout to lookout. Our girls were totally bored and refused to get out of the car at most of the stops. I didn't fight them even though inside my heart I was lecturing them about missing out on the beauties of the earth and all that. 

Before we headed out of the park, we stopped at the visitors center and got the kids' passport stamps and cancellations. The visitors center was packed! And we ran into Scotty's cousin there. Funny how we run into people we know when we're so far away from home (we ran into one of Scotty's co-workers in San Francisco a few years ago, and we always see people we know in Disneyland). 

We got a kick out of the bathroom lines in the visitors center. There were about seven men standing outside the bathroom in a line, and there was no line at the women's restroom. That was a phenomenon that deserved documentation!

Outside of Bryce Canyon, Scotty and Nicky took a short hike to see a cave and waterfall. I stayed in the van with the girls - there was no way we were getting them on another hike at that point.

Then we went to Old Bryce Town and got some ice cream and sarsaparilla. 

Old Bryce Town

We also stopped by the Red Canyon National Forest visitors center for another passport stamp, but we didn't do any exploring there. We just enjoyed the scenic drive.

That evening, we stayed at a motel in Hatch, Utah. On Saturday morning, we were hoping to catch the hot air balloon launch at the Panguitch Hot Air Balloon Rally, but we couldn't drag our butts out of bed in time. A week of camping and vacationing can do that to you! Fortunately we saw some of the balloons on Friday morning as we headed to Bryce Canyon.

It was really cool to drive under them. Some of them hovered just barely overhead. 

We had originally planned to make a few stops on the way home, but since we were so tired, we drove straight home, and we'll save those adventures for another day. 

Saint George Plus

Last week we went on a vacation to Saint George with some of Scotty's extended family. We stayed in two townhomes at the Arcadia Resort, and we had a really great time. The townhomes were exquisite. As far as accommodations go, they've really thought of nearly everything there. They had bathrooms, televisions, and bunk beds a plenty. A variety of places to sit in every room. Night lights. Hooks everywhere to hang stuff on. And even decent shampoo and conditioner!

The only thing they didn't have... was a garbage can in the laundry room (how could they have overlooked this?)

We felt kind of spoiled! Except for when we had to carry our dryer lint to the kitchen.

We spent three nights there with very little sleep. We ate a lot of delicious food. We played rowdy games late at night. We swam in the resort pool. We had extremely in-depth conversations about deodorant (I could spend a whole blog post talking about the weird things that went on with deodorant on this trip, but I'll spare you). Our kids enjoyed the company of their cousins from morning until... well... morning.

Cousins on tablets

Floating in the lazy river

Nicky on the golf course

This trip was a wonderful chance for us to reset and gather with our extended family after being apart for so long. 

Not everything went smoothly, though. My father-in-law had to go to the emergency room with a hernia, and there was a little bit of family drama. But overall, Scotty, the kids, and I loved it, and Grandpa is going to be okay. 

Some of the family left Saint George on Wednesday, and the rest of us left on Thursday. My family made an adventure out of the journey home. We figured we might as well extend our trip through the weekend. Hence - “Saint George Plus.” So after we parted ways with the extended family on Thursday, we continued our vacation with just the six of us.

First we headed to Pipe Spring National Monument in Fredonia, Arizona. This is a water source in the desert that historically served Native Americans and later, Mormon Pioneers. 

When we got there, we were greeted by a park ranger who was guarding this big, fat caterpillar-y thing outside of the visitors center. There was some debate as to what, exactly, the creature was. One ranger thought it was a lunar moth. Another ranger thought it was some sort of tobacco cutting thingamajig.

Me and The Google couldn't come to any solid conclusion, but the thing was massive (bigger than my middle finger).

Inside the monument grounds, they have a garden, some farm animals, and a fort. 

The garden intrigued me because I've never seen crops growing in red sand. 

This structure is for the vining plants to climb. I would love to see it later in the season when it's fully grown. 

It kind of blew my mind because I didn't think crops could grow in that kind of soil.

The spring has a bit of a slow flow right now. In its prime, it would put out 40 gallons a minute, but now it only puts out 4 gallons a minute. 

Here are my girls sitting by one of the ponds where the water collects:

After Pipe Spring, we stopped by the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary near Kanab. I don't have a lot of "shareable" photos from the sanctuary (now that we're going mask-free, I’m back to keeping photos of my kids relatively private), so here's a courtesy horse:

The sanctuary does a tour that sounds pretty cool, but they were fully booked, so we weren't able to see much. We pet a few cats and drove to a place called Angel's Landing (not to be confused with the location in Zion). It's a natural amphitheater, and I guess some of the Lone Ranger was filmed there.

This may or may not be Tonto's hideout. We're not sure what the guy at the visitors' center said, and we kept losing cell phone service, so I wasn't able to have a thorough consultation with The Google. 

Our next stop was Moqui Cave (and yep, this is still the same day we left Saint George. Even after experiencing it first-hand, I’m not sure how we fit all this into one day. We didn’t even leave til noon). 

Scotty told me it was a short walk to the cave. No big deal. In actuality... it was a short "climb" to the cave - on a path which I now refer to as the "ankle killer" because I'm still in shock that I didn't break both my ankles. 

You can see Zoe there on the left walking toward the cave

Inside the cave

While we were making out way back down from the cave, Nicky climbed down the cliff as the rest of us made our way toward a safer place to descend. Then he decided to climb back up and rejoin us. I saw his head poke up over the side of the cliff, and just as he started to push himself up and over, his head suddenly disappeared, and I heard him slide all the way down to the bottom. 

He about did his mama in! But at the bottom, he got up and started walking, so I was able to relax a bit. Then later, he showed us his butt cheek where a few layers of skin had come off. His leg was pretty scratched up, too, but man! That butt cheek! The next day he said, "It's not bleeding, but it's leaking juice everywhere."

Classy.

From there, we headed to the Belly of the Dragon!

It looks hardcore, but it's really just a man-made tunnel that goes under the road. 

For the sake of looking impressive on the internet, let's pretend that it's hardcore. Like way hardcore. I mean... it has “dragon” in its name and all.

After we explored the Belly of the Dragon, we finally headed to our destination of Panguitch, Utah for the night. We checked into our motel (a funny, little place with lots of personality), and then we grabbed some dinner at Big Fish Family Restaurant - which we enjoyed so much, we went back again the next night. 

We then tried our best to get some sleep so we could go on more adventures in the morning!

Father’s Day Camping Adventures

Five years ago, we hit a bit of a milestone in that we were able to take our kids camping for two nights without anything going horribly wrong… by “horribly wrong” I mean that no one died. We still had an incident with poison ivy and a bout of the flu. And someone backed into our van. And Scotty drove off with his fishing poles on the roof.

But no one died.

And since that “mostly successful” camping trip, we’ve gone many more times, and I can attest that it gets much easier with each year. 

Thus, we have gone camping over Father’s Day weekend for five years in a row (we also camp at other times, but this particular weekend and location is now a tradition… until we decide it’s not).

These camping trips are starting to become similar from year to year, so I don’t have anything exciting or new to report. The only things that made this trip unique are that Nicky got his braces on the morning we left, so he was pretty uncomfortable. He’s a tough kid, though, so he endured. Also, we took Nicky’s slack line that he got for Christmas, and that made for a fun way to keep the kids busy.

I enjoy seeing my kids out in nature. They alternate between forest exploration and whining about being bored. Oh, how I love to torture them! I alway gauge the success of a camping trip by how dirty they are when we come home, and boy, were they filthy! I still have dirt in my bathtub.

We stayed from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. Then we drove home in time to head to church for singing time. Our church expectations for the day were, “Whoever’s clean and wants to go to church, get in the car!” Two kids didn’t make the cut.

Between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, we scrambled to get laundry done and pack our bags again so we could leave on vacation with Scotty’s family. We also had to go buy two new tires because we got a screw in one, and it couldn’t be repaired. 

Luckily, we managed to pull it off!

And now I’ll warn you of the forthcoming vacation posts. If you are my sister-in-law (who shall remain nameless) I know that you are looking forward to these posts. If you are anyone else… please bear with me while I make my life look magnificent on the internet.

Summer so Far

Here we are at the end of June - 50 days until school starts again… But who’s counting?

Me.

I’m counting.

But for now, I’m ok. I’ve adjusted to having the kids home. Sure, I about lose my mind on the daily while they fight and ask for electronics every minute, but I deal. 

June has been quite busy. Here are some of the things we’ve been up to:

We started our summer off by hiking to Timpanogos Cave. Scotty and I had never been, which is kind of unusual for having grown up so close to the attraction. It’s in the National Parks passport books, so our kids were able to get their stamps and cancellations.

The view from the trail

I splurged on an annual pass to Thanksgiving Point so we would have somewhere to go through the summer. I let my kids take turns inviting friends. We’ve been to Ashton Gardens once, the Butterfly Biosphere twice, and the Museum of Natural Curiosity twice.

Kids feeding the koi

Geese in the pond at Ashton Gardens

The koi. Ew! 

Thanksgiving Point is about 45 minutes away from where we live, so I try to make a day of it. We pack lunches and try to hit a couple of places with each visit.

Daisy at the Butterfly Biosphere 

I was invited to speak at a girls camp for a ward from West Jordan. While I was there, I realized that the last time I went to girls camp was about 16 years ago. It was kind of funny to put a number to it! I feel like I’ve always been in Young Women, and yet, I haven’t served in YW since I was pregnant with Nicky. Maybe I feel that way because I’ve served all the current young women in primary and Sunday school. 

That was the first time I’ve spoken since before COVID, and I found it very intimidating. The whole world changed since the last time I spoke! No pressure…

We’ve had some record-breaking heat this month, which is always so draining for me. I just don’t function in the heat. It zaps my energy like nothing else.

Despite the heat, we’ve managed to keep up on our garden. It’s doing well, but time will tell if we have a good harvest. We completely re-did our garden this year. We are having some curbing installed around the new area, but we’ve had some difficulty getting it scheduled. The contractor is crazy busy. We initially planned to lay some sod as well, but we decided to hold off on that due to the drought. So we have a lovely dirt patch just hanging out for the summer.

Our first corn box

Daisy got braces right before school got out. Then Nicky got braces about a week ago. It’s amazing to see how quickly teeth can move. Nicky’s teeth already look completely different.

I feel like we live at the dentist and orthodontist. 

Zoe joined a cheerleading team, and she’ll be doing conditioning and tumbling all summer. I hope she can keep up with it. It’s something she’s been wanting to do for a very long time, but the time commitment is intense, so I’m not sure how it will go. 

I gave my kids the choice to do summer piano lessons or not, and they all chose to do summer lessons. I used to “make” them, and last year was the first time I ever gave them the choice. It’s funny how they whine and complain about piano lessons, and when I give them the chance to bail, they don’t (which is secretly what I hope for anyway). 

We went camping over Father’s Day weekend. This accidentally became a tradition, and this was our fifth year. 

Kids in the hammock

Right after we got back from camping, we left on an extended family vacation (posts to come).

Teaser

Now I’m hoping for a few quiet, lazy days before things get crazy again.

Update: Well, those are famous last words. Things just got crazy. 

Ninety-Six Thousand

Since watching In the Heights for the first time a few weeks ago (and a couple of times since), our whole family* has had the songs stuck in our heads. 

One of the more common lines we find ourselves singing is, “Check one, two, three, what would you do with 96 G’s?” 

In that song, the characters sing about what they would do if they won the $96,000 lottery. 

The other day, while in the car, I was thinking about what I would do with 96 G’s. As far as lotteries go, it’s not the greatest sum, but it sure beats the $2-3** I hear of my friends and family winning.

Here’s what I would do with 96 G’s:

First action: pay off our house.

Second action: pay off our truck.

Third action: renovate at least one of our bathrooms but I’d hope to stretch my dollars far enough to do both. 

(I decided that in this hypothetical situation, I don’t have to pay taxes).

My kids (some of whom have no concept of money or cost of living), told me the following:

Nicky would put the money in the bank because Scotty and I made a deal with our kids that we will match every dollar they put into savings. So far we’ve been able to keep up on this commitment, but if our kids are going to be throwing around those kind of figures… we’re in trouble!

Daisy said that if she won 96 G’s, she’s give $50,000 to her mom and dad (suddenly I have a favorite child), give some to charity, and buy a chinchilla.

Zoe said she would “probably buy a mansion.” I decided that age 8 isn’t the time to crush her dreams, so we’ll stick with that for now.

Eva said that she would buy ten pet rabbits and one pet cat.

Scotty said, “If I win the lottery, you’ll never see me again,” which, thankfully, is just another line from In the Heights and not an actual sentiment from him. Smart aleck.

*We let our kids watch In the Heights, but you should definitely do your own research and decide for yourself whether you allow your own children to see it. It has some language, innuendo, and other things that aren’t especially “kid friendly.”

**We do have a relative that won 250 G’s, though.

Oh Hey Stress

A few years ago I did an internship for the National Healthy Marriage Institute. Part of my responsibilities were co-writing and beta testing a workshop on willpower, which included a unit on stress management. Prior to that, I took a course titled "Family Stress and Coping."

That is all to say that I've learned a thing or two about how to handle stress...

...and I don't practice a lick of it!

Last week I had two events that put my stress and anxiety level through the roof. Here's how I coped:

First and foremost, I completely avoided my to-do list regarding the events (examples to follow). 

I slept... a lot.

Like three naps a day. 

I went shopping... a lot. Because when you're stressed, you need two new area rugs.

And new bedding for your kids, and a freezer full of food, and a decent selection of 4th of July decorations. 

I rearranged my plate rack five times. 

I read 4 books. 

I yelled at everyone, watched way too much TV, and stayed up too late. 

I hung some shelves in Daisy's room and organized her Legos, which would actually be productive if I weren't using the task for stress avoidance.

I saw In the Heights twice.

I slipped into Dr. Mario comas while my kids fought right in front of me

I ate... a lot.

And last but not least, I laid on my couch where the swamp cooler blows just so and wallowed while sipping Vanilla Coke from a styrofoam cup because even though I love earth, I also like adequately chilled caffeinated beverages.

(Sorry, Earth). 

Just for the record, none of those behaviors are recommended as healthy ways to manage stress. 

Now the two stressful events are done and over with, and I can resume all of these behaviors as just "daily habits" rather than "stress avoidance techniques."