May

Hairy tent caterpillars were everywhere for about a month. 

Lettuce grows pretty quickly and easily- as long as it gets enough water and not a lot of sunlight.  We plant it in the shady-half of the garden.  When the weather gets too hot, it bolts- turns into a dandelion-like plant and gets bitter.  But so far, we have great tasting lettuce.

This was the garden a few weeks ago- just peas, strawberries and lettuce.

This is the garden now: marigolds, melons, pumpkins, lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, herbs, onions, strawberries, peas, and spinach.  It's so exciting to watch everything grow!

This four x four ft lettuce patch provides us with enough lettuce to have salad all week.  We pick the lettuce once a week when it's finger-sized because if it gets bigger it gets tough and bitter.  We've heard that it's best to harvest lettuce in the morning before it gets hot, when the leaves are juiciest.  The single cabbage plant was provided by a neighbor who didn't have a garden but did have a cabbage.  It's growing well too but we're not sure how to eat it.  Maybe they will.

Our strawberry plants give extra soft and sweet strawberries but you only get to eat them if you beat the slugs to them.  We've found that taking out all over-ripe or ruined berries has lessened the slugs and that throwing away the misshapen berries as soon as possible prevents you from getting weird looking berries.

Our peas have a lot of aphids; shake the plants and it looks like it's raining green raindrops.  Fortunately, ladybugs, and their larvae, love aphids as much as we dislike them.  Baby ladybugs do not look like adults.  The bug on the bottom is a baby and the one above is a larvae that is slowly turning into an adult.  It's amazing to watch the different stages of their life cycle happening on the plant.

More ladybug aphids.  The babies come from oval-shapes yellow eggs planted in neat clusters and the babies emerge teeny tiny and black.  They grow bigger and get the orange markings, finally swelling up and lightening like the guys above.  When they get really fat they find a secure place, hunker down, and start changing.

Braden loves peas more than any of us.  The plants just grow on wire fencing stretched between posts.  Braden will immediately go to the plants whenever he goes outside, tugging one of us along to get him a few pods.  Once we've opened the pod, he'll eat the peas like candy.  Jessica will go out and pick all the ripe peas in the morning, leaving them in a bowl on the counter for people to eat throughout the day.  Braden will find the bowl and carry it around until it is empty.

That's a big bite for a little pea!

A rainstorm came through and Braden and a few other people had fun getting soaking wet.  We love rain!  Then a thunderstorm came through.  Braden is saying, "Can you hear the thunder?"  He seemed to get that the loud noise came from the sky and wasn't afraid of the loud thunder.

Braden is 2!  We reuse whatever wrapping paper is in the house, hence the Christmas-themed paper.  We wrapped a couple of Braden's toys, both his favorite ones and ones he's forgotten.  They were a hit; exactly what he loves to play with and wanted.

Somehow wrapping old toys gets everyone interesting in them.

The only new toy was a bicycle seat for Braden so he could go on bike rides with the family.

The family went to a nearby park to play volleyball.  We can get the ball over the net!  

Due to our inexperience, the ball landed in the tall grass besides the sand and got lost.   We're not sure who decided to put the decorative grass there, but we would not advise anyone plant it next to their court.  The grass was sharp and a little painful to dig through.  

Spencer bravely tunnels his way through, braving both sharp grass and the possibility of snakes.

Dad makes a great shot.

And Hannah catches it!

Afterwards Mom and Dad and a couple of the kids did a few 'suicides': Dad's name for running from point A to point B (in this case from the grass to the net), and back, and forth and back, running a little faster each time.  It's really hard but really good for you.  Everyone had a great time.