Monday, April 27, 2009

Burning, Planting, and Planning

A couple weeks ago, Aaron experienced a slightly traumatic event. His beloved Nemo rocking chair broke.

He has had this little Nemo rocking chair for 3 years, which he used daily to sit at the coffee table in our living room while eating his snack and watching TV (I know, I know - bad habit!)

It had taken quite a bit of abuse from Aaron over the years. We could tell that it was starting to fall apart, so Rashed had tried to tighten up the screws just the weekend before. But unfortunately, it really was beyond repair. A few mornings later, one of the chair legs cracked, split, and gave up. It just couldn't hold itself together anymore. Aaron was so distraught for while. "Where am I going to eat my snack?" he cried. (seriously!)

A few days later, Isaac was searching around for something he could burn in the fireplace. (Can you tell where this is going?) After only finding one little box, he came upon the broken Nemo chair in the garage. "Can I burn this?" Rashed and I said it was okay, but didn't think that Aaron would agree. But he did! Isaac and Aaron pulled 2 chairs up to the fireplace and watched it burn!


Bye, Nemo . . .


You've been a great chair . . .



A few weeks ago, we started to prep our vegetable garden for the season. We gave our garden (and ourselves) a break last year and didn't grow anything. So I'm really looking forward to fresh-from-the-back-yard vegetables again this summer.


Weeded and raked


bags of Compost/Maure and new Topsoil to be added to the planting areas

Last week we got snow peas, spinach, and lettuce planted - some of the few things that can be planted this early. Our average last frost date is late May, so the rest will have to wait a few more weeks.



We've also been busy outside getting a couple estimates on having a retainer wall replaced. Along the entire east edge of our property, an old cement-block retainer wall runs from the front all the way to the back. It was there when we bought our house almost 11 years ago. We've never liked it, but it's been really showing it's age the past couple years, blocks fall off into our neighbor's yard all the time.


from the street all the way to the back fence (our house on the right; our neighbor's yard on the left)


the section along our back yard - we're also going to replace the chain-link fence with a wood privacy fence that matches the rest of our back yard while everything's all torn up


goodbye ugly, old cement blocks! I won't miss you!

3 comments:

Grandma said...

Aww..Nemo is gone??!!! I heard nothing about this while they were here this weekend. So what is he sitting on now?
Looking forward to eating some of your fresh produce sometime... :)
XO

Teresa @ Grammy Girlfriend said...

I enjoyed reading your blog today ....

I am making so many new friends in the blog world.

Hope you will stop by and sign up for my give away on Thurs

Nadine said...

Hi Chris,

I am happy that you came by and visited my blog, thought that I would come by and visit yours too! We do have much in common! I hope you have fun with the veggie garden this year - ours always keeps us busy, but so worth the effort!