Sun and water

Our garden just keeps on growing. Today we picked our first (and probably only) bell pepper. They don't grow very big in a natural garden. And this poor plant was devastated by some mysterious creature in its infancy....at least we got one :)

Here is our first Cucumber! We hope to have many more of these. It was absolutely delicious, not to mention huge :)

We planted this guy as a little sunflower seed--he's almost 6 feet tall now!! Amazing what sun and water can do...

Life is good.

The Gardener's Life

I'm completely alone and it is Father's Day. So, to keep myself distracted from the sadness of this situation I am going to post a very time-consuming blog update on our garden.

I just realized the last photos I posted of our garden were from its itty-bitty days. I need to catch you back up! So as my close friend and confidant, Julie Andrews, likes to say: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start....

Here it is at the start in early April. The two plants are a tomatoe and pepper plant, which we're bought already started. The rest of the garden is full of hidden seeds :)

Life! It really is a marvelous sight to watch a bunch of tiny, dry seeds you plop into the ground come up as such different forms of life :)

We added an addition for our strawberry plants (which we transplanted from the front)

At the end of May we went with Zach's family to the East Coast. While we were gone, the summer heat/sun kicked in. When we came back--our garden had exploded in growth!!

I suppose I should explain its contents. We have 5 tomatoe plants, cucumber, one bell pepper plant, one hot pepper plant, onions, carrots, lettuce, corn and strawberries

This is the most recent picture. Our corn is tasseling!!! Hopefully they all spread enough to fertilize eachother. Otherwise we'll have lovely corn stalks....with no corn. What looks like paper on the ground was an attempt at "phonebook mulching" to keep the weeds at bay. But look at that Carrot Forrest (bottom middle) and those dashingly handsome onion plants (bottom right)!

Here is Zach with the first harvested head of lettuce! We have more lettuce now than we know what to do with...

Salad made with our homegrown leaves :)

There are many enemies to the garden.... We found this monster slug on our porch one night. But it was so gloriously monsterous we didn't have the heart to kill it. So we walked it down the street and put it in someone's empty lot of grass.

My favorite thing so far has been our strawberries! They were absolutely delicious!!!!!

Before these I had only ever had the big, steroid induced, hyper-bred grocery store strawberries....and I thought they were good. But then I had these little organic, natural-size, home grown strawberries. SOOO much flavor was packed into these little guys!

This strawberry made me laugh....I think he was trying to become a tomatoe.

Below are some of the real tomatoes :)

Golly, isn't he a doll?

However, let's return to something that is NOT a doll. In fact, he is the scorn of all mankind, he is the scum of my garden, he is the DESTROYER of my petunias! This, my friends, is a cutworm (one of the many that plague me)

Here are my petunias before they were discovered by mister cutworm and friends....

....and here they are AFTER that little fatties feasting. At the time I had no idea what was eating my flowers. I started hunting around the box, and to my surprise (and disgust) found that little chunker hiding just below the dirt, waiting for the night to come out and gorge himself once more. I soon discovered several more and-- [don't read this if you somehow love cutworms]--squashed them all!!!

However, they never reached my second box of petunias....

Which are now doing very well :)

We also planted peppermint. It is SO easy to take care of, it grows like a weed, and it smells fabulous! You should grow a pot!

More petunias before...

...and after

My rose is blooming :)

Our plant-filled front patio :)

Summer has come!!

Zach just wrote a new blog post (see below). So this will be a new record--two blog posts in ONE day. Summer gives us this kind of time.

We both took our last final on Friday and we have been enjoying the sweet flavors of summer freedom. Here are some random pictures...

The beginning of summer was marked by the arrival of the hummingbirds. I LOVE these guys. They're such little gentlemen. And just, like, the coolest little creatures ever.

They're tough to get photos of, however. This feeder is directly outside our bedroom window. I had to have the blinds down, with just one tiny slit taped open. Then I had to actually catch one sitting there (I kept my camera on my dresser). They're super skittish AND I was using my macro setting. So I could barely move.

I have not edited the red on this guy. They aren't kidding when they call them "Ruby Throated Hummingbirds." It seriously blows my mind how delicatley painted God's creations are...

This was my Mother's Day gift for my mom. I bought a ceramic mug for 25 cents, spray painted it white, then painted it with....dandelions! Later I planted a little pepper plant in it and wrote her a poem. She is pretty much the most fabulous mom ever :)

I made Lucas cupcakes for his birthday. They looked so cute I had to take a photo. Now anytime I need to crave chocolate frosted cupcakes....I just have to look at this photo.

Summer is gonna be soo sweet :)

Adventures through Missouri and Iowa ... or ... MAN-Time

Hello World, this is the quieter, manlier half of TheVicars.blogspot.com. Just thought I’d post an update about some (2) of the things I’ve been up to in the last few weeks.

1/2) As many of you know, our friend Jacob ‘Biscuit’ Ratliff is currently on an 1,100-mile bicycle trek to Texas. (Actually, he’s almost finished!) As probably fewer of you know, I got the chance to ride with Biscuit on the first day of his journey. It was an incredible ride! We went about 60 miles South on Missouri Highway 3, waving to the Amish, soaking in the gorgeous Missouri hillside, and got to know a few of the locals along the way.

Here’s a few photos of our ride…

The Stallions. Biscuit’s is the one in the foreground with all the robust camping gear strapped to it… mine’s the one in the back with the fairy water bottle.

What is he doing … Contemplating the vast expanse of the open road? Feeling miniscule in the shadow of the American agricultural machine? Taking a pit stop right on the road before the epic journey continues???

Actually…he’s taking a picture

Here’s the both of us on a bridge which was approximately our half-way point. Biscuit had a bug in his eye … or something.

And lastly, here is our hero riding victoriously through the downtown strip of his first stopping point, the tiny town of Clifton Hill.

2/2) Just about a week ago, I got a chance to go on another excellent adventure. Amy was camping with the BSU women-folk, so I would have been batching it for the night at the homestead. That sounded far too boring for the last real weekend of the semester, so I called up my friend and adoptive brother, Jagadish Subedi, and we made a fast break for the Iowa border last Saturday night. Jagadish left today for Ocean City for the summer, so this was kind of a last hurrah for us guys.

We slept in the parking lot of a campground area. Jagadish took A LOT of pictures (like 200 or so), but here are a few of my favorites.

Here’s a charming candid of my friend. I call it, Sunrise in Passenger Seat of Pickup.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention – Hoss came along. He’s much further North in Minnesota at his new adoptive home now. Another last hurrah for us guys. The lake (not recalling its name) provided a nice backdrop.

This is a picture of a neat hotel in the picturesque town of Keosauqua, Iowa, which is nestled right on the Des Moines river.

Ah, the winding road … Jaggu took this one. I think it captures the Missouri farm-scape beautifully.

The two pictures below are of Jagadish and me playing at the school grounds in Bible Grove, Missouri. The school was bigger than the rest of the town …

So yeah, that’s just a snippit into the masculine side of this blog. It’s not all butterflies and blooming flowers around here … but, I have to admit … I like those things, too.

Happy summer, everyone!

Zach

Beautiful days

On Thursday our friend Jagadish came over and made us some absolutely delicious Nepali food.

Usually their food is very, VERY spicy. Zach and him are always teasing me about how I can't handle spicy foods. Jagadish made this especially "bland" for me. He said he couldn't feel any heat--and my mouth was still burning! Haha--I'm such a wimp. It all tasted SOO good, though.

This was one of the leaves from our strawberry plants this morning. Isn't that just glorious? God totally did that.


Yesterday Zach and I took the tandem bike out for a spin. 'Twas a beautiful, fresh evening.

The sunset was beautiful. Kirksville has seriously awesome sunsets, like...every day.

We've only got one more week of finals--then it's summer sunshine and freedom!!

Mmm, good day

I just put the finishing touches on two papers. One an 8 pager written in Spanish, the other a 10 pager written in English. I love the feeling of finishing a paper. Then I came home to see Hoss had pooped on the GRASS and not the patio--a big achievment for him. Haha! (Even if it was only like 7 inches from the pavement, literally) After a big bowl of leftover spaghetti for lunch, I felt like writing a blog because the day was so good!

(An egg cartoon of nothing?)

When I came into the office I glanced at my egg carton of pepper seeds--LO AND BEHOLD! I saw a little pepper plant shooting up!! Gosh, I was happy. Here is a picture of the little guy :) It is so crazy to think that enormous, towering trees and tiny little flowers all start from one little shoot that decides it wants to meet the sun.

My little basil friends keep growing each day. They are very friendly :)

Yesterday Zach and I planted our blackberry plants. His is above, he named it Moses. Mine is on the bottom, I'm still deciding on a name.

Here is the corn starting to shoot up in the garden.

The lettuce is just itty bitty clover lookin' things :)



And finally, here is our little house. On Saturday we had a 75th birthday party for it and invited a bunch of friends over to our house. I think it is aging quite beautifully, don't you?

Yesterday we sat on the porch, drinking kool-aid and eating barbeque potato chips. (You're never too old for that) Hoss sat by us, thumping his huge tail anytime we laughed. We just sat there for an hour chatting, or just watching cars and people going by. We joked about how boring most people would say we are. If we're only 19 and 20, and already spending our afternoons sitting on our porch --what will we be doing when we're actually old people!! Haha.


Either way, I thought it was absolutely beautiful.

I say this a lot, but...God is so good.