Shubinesque

Church softball season has started up and I’m on the team again this year. Two years ago was my first season since high school (and we won’t discuss how long ago that was), and I had soooo much fun. Last year Henry was just a teeny tiny so I sat the season out. Last Thursday was our first game, and we won 18 to 4. I’m pretty sure it was my best game ever! I scored three runs (didn’t even strike out or get out at first! How’d that happen??), and got three people out from my post as second baseman. One of them was by catching a pop fly. Yay!

Then last night was a lovely jolt back into reality as we got slaughtered 22 to 3 by one of the best teams in the league. Even their girls hit way out past our center fielder. Plus, their pitcher was pitching short balls that seemed to find the plate at the last moment. The first time I was up, I let three strikes whiz on by without even swinging because they looked like they were going to be balls. Duh!

Also from yesterday, now I have a beautiful two square inch purple bruise adorning my left shin right below my knee. It matches the one and a half inch bruise on the same shin just above my ankle that I got last week (and yes, I did measure both bruises, ’cause why wouldn’t you??). Apparently I need to work on catching grounders on grass. Those tend to pop up at all kinds of weird angles because the ground is uneven, and they seem particularly fond of hitting me in the left shin. At least they aren’t popping me in the eye! Since I play infield most of the grounders that come my direction are on dirt which is much smoother. Good thing too! My next ball-related purchase is going to be shin guards because hey, me = wimp. I don’t really mind having purple lumps on my legs (when I was in Jr. High I played touch football with the boys on the blacktop every lunch break for two years and had permanent scabs on both knees for that entire time), but I don’t like not being able to sleep because my leg hurts any time anything touches it. Kind of obnoxious.

Otherwise things are going pretty well around here. We’re starting to settle in nicely, and I’ve been working on school curriculum for our next term which starts next week. In addition to our usual coursework, we’re starting two new subjects, Botany and Drawing, both of which I’m pretty excited about. The Botany book is put out by Apologia and is awesome. I come from science nerd people (like sand people but without the sand and the Banthas), and Apologia’s stuff is just as in depth as any science person could hope for when teaching their nine year old. When a book explains in Chapter 1 the term binomial nomenclature including the breakdown of the Latin roots of each word, you know that the book is going to be great.

Okay, well I’m off. You guys have a lovely holiday weekend, and may your 4th of July partying be safe and include lots of nice weather.

Rachel

My green thumb, or the Black Thumb of Death as I like to call it, began its hibernation faze when I was about fifteen and has yet to really recover. This was the year after I planted a huge garden in my longsuffering parents’ backyard and then promptly discovered how much I loathe weeding. But I am now older and therefore oh so much more mature. Plus, I have acquired a taste for fresh, local vegetables to cook with and a general irritation with paying wads of money for them or driving all over town to the Farmer’s Market. Handy solution: a garden!

Small problem: our backyard is tiny. I was pretty sure this was going to be the death knell for my gardening dream, but then a bunch of my friends got all hung up on this crazy thing called Square Foot Gardening and my garden fantasy was reborn.

The idea is pretty simple. You know how all your seed packages say things on the back like “Space two inches apart in rows eighteen inches apart”? Well, instead of planting in rows, you plant in one foot squares. Instead of planting in eighteen in rows, you plant each seed two inches apart in all directions. So you can fit 36 carrots in one square foot.

You build a 4′ x 4′ box on a pedestal and then fill it with brand new gardening soil (he has some special mixture but we just bought bags). You mark off your box into 16 one foot squares and then plant one crop in each square. Since you have new soil that is separate from the rest of your yard, it doesn’t have so much in the way of weeds and is all full of nutrients plants like instead of whatever old brown stuff you have in your yard. The box dimensions make it so that you can reach to the center of the box from wherever you are around the outside.

We don’t have a decent spot for a box, but happily we already had planters all around the deck that were about 2′ x 10′ on one side and 2′ x 6 on the other. George has been planting stuff in there practically since we moved in, but he sweetly transplanted all his things elsewhere in the yard so I could take over the planters.

Last weekend we planted basil, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, green onions, lettuce, strawberries, and a sunflower before the weather decide it needed to have a 50mph windstorm. Charming! It’s been raining ever since, but hopefully we’ll be able to put in the cucumbers and snow peas plus more tomatoes and peppers shortly. The kids have been enthusiastic (well, George less so until I told him he was responsible for the strawberries), and I’m looking forward to yummy things! Yay for spring!

Rachel