I absolutely love gardening. Of all of the hobbies I have, it might be the one I love the most. There is something about having my hands in the dirt, something about growing something from seed (it still feels like magic), something about caring for and tending something and knowing that without your care it will die, that all just really grabs me. Gardening is so easy for me to want to do. I just gravitate towards it.
And there were some major successes this year! Our tomato boxes that Lily found for me started out a bit problematic because I didn’t water them for three days and I learned the hard way they must have water every single day (ideally even twice a day when it is very hot). By learning the hard way, I mean we probably had 50 otherwise beautiful tomatoes develop big yucky brown areas on the bottom. But, after that wave of ruined tomatoes passed, we are now in a season of incredibly delicious tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. Steak tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, yellow baby tomatoes, black and red cherry tomatoes. They are so so good. See the boxes below. I would recommend them to anyone:
You will also notice to the left of the tomatoes our flourishing nasturtium. These are edible flowers that go great in salads. The other flower pot has the fun flowers you see below. I love how they start and end as these little balls, but they pop open with so much energy when they bloom.
Now I will take you through our garden boxes row by row (read captions for details):
In the front is our herb box. You can see brilliant and big basil plants on the right. Honestly, I have no idea what that out-of-control thing is on the left, but I’m sure it is some type of herb. This was also our herb box last year, and over time we have planted in it thyme, cilantro, parsley, basil and probably other things. We mostly use the basil for our Caprese salads. In the back box, you have two lavender plants on the ends with two little pink flowering plants in the middle (I’m not sure what they are).In the front box, you have two beautiful winter squash plants producing beautiful gourdes, but you can’t see them because of all the nasturtium around it. In the back box, I originally planted something (I don’t remember what it was) that never sprouted, so at a loss for what else to do, I just put in a bunch of cucumber seeds. Now the cucumbers are growing like crazy and sprawling out of the box. They are delicious though!On the right you have brussel sprouts. The things I planted next to them didn’t sprout, so just for the heck of it, I threw in a bunch of sunflower seeds. Now the sunflowers are towering. My favorite sunflower has red pedals instead of yellow. It’s hard to see it in this picture. On the left is our strawberry patch. We thinned it early season and got excellent strawberries from it early season (maybe 30 or so), but then it just became a box of strawberry foliage. I have definitely not mastered strawberries yet!In the front box you have the evergiving Kale plants on the left. We keep eating them (they are so delicious!) and they keep producing more. We’ve had to wash them very well recently due to spider-like bugs on them in great quantities. Also in this box is chard, lettuce and arugula. The lettuce was bitter. The arugula was good I think, but I don’t think we’ve really used it, and I can’t wait for Lily to cook the chard to eat with the steak we are planning on Sunday. In the back is black and red cherry tomatoes. They are growing freely without a cage and they are turning out wonderfully. There are also a bunch of peppers, green, purple, and orange.Here are all the boxes togetherFor the garden plot on the West next to the fence, you have the following from left to right: -Sunflowers that bloomed and are now dying (you can barely see them on the left). -Cosmic purple and orange carrots and beets in the two boxes -Zuchini, squash (butternut), pumpkin and potentially honeydew (not sure if that is also a squash or if my honeydew actually grew haha), cucumbers, peas and beans (which quickly died), probably some other things and then the rows of corn. The corn actually turned out yummy this year! I think I just picked them way to late in previous years. I think if the hair on top of the husk turns dark, it probably means you are picking it too late and it wont be sweet anymore. Anyway, because I didn’t water consistently or fertilize consistently, I’m guessing that is why on average each corn stock only produced one good ear of corn and one gimpy or non-existent ear of corn. Still, it’s been so fun to actually enjoy corn from the garden this year!It’s hard to see, but on the right side of the West garden plot we have Zinnias, mint (tons and tons of mint, it’s so invasive) and some raspberry bushes that didn’t produce much at all this year.Here is a picture of what Lily and I did in our front yard this year. This plot makes me so happy. It used to be lawn with a circle of flowers. Now the whole plot has mulch and a bunch of different rocks and flowers. The rocks came from a quarry from the Utah West desert that my friend Josh took me to. Lily and Georgia did an amazing job picking out the plants. The black-eyed Suzannes (yellow ones on the left) have been growing like crazy. My favorite is the slivery-blue bushes. This has been so fun for us! I was skeptical that I would be in to planting flowers because they aren’t edible and therefore functional like vegetables and fruit, but Lily thought I would be into it, and she was dead on. I love this space.
On Saturday night we bundled all of the kids up in lots of layers and snuggled them together in their sleeping bags. It got down to the 30’s, but we were all so bundled and Abe and I snuggled a lot, so we stayed warm.
When we woke up on Sunday we packed up the tent and headed home. On the way out of the park we stopped and walked through West Thumb Geyser Basin for an hour.
So this is our family dynamic at its best. Mary is the sweetest thing and is here resting on Lydia while she reads, and Lydia is affectionate and absorbed in her own reading. And the two little kids are joyful and exuberant.
On Saturday we drove up through the Tetons, set up camp and fished until dinner. It was late in the season and the fish were all at the bottom of the lakes, so we didn’t catch any. But we sure had fun trying!
Yellowstone Lake
That little white dot in the middle is Abe fishing in the creek.
Lydia snuck the phone and took a selfie.This is a baby bison nursing. When it latched it bumped its mama off the ground. Poor mama bison.
We ate dinner at Canyon village and after admired Yellowstone Falls. This is our fifth Yellowstone trip in four years, so sightseeing felt like a bonus. Hopefully this is a yearly tradition so we can just have Yellowstone trips from now on that are just relaxed and where everything feels lucky and happy. Like this trip. I was SO happy and thankful all day long, and I think everyone else was too.
On Friday we packed the car, stopped by Trader Joe’s and didn’t hit the road for Yellowstone until 8pm. Needless to say, we didn’t make it there. We got halfway to a random inn called Bull Moose Inn and were so thankful to find lodging that wasn’t $1000. All the stuff in Jackson is so expensive and booked. So this motel was awesome. And waking up the next morning in the beautiful misty forests was amazing.
What was not amazing was that Clarissa was awake almost all night long bouncing around the motel room. Abe finally put her in time out and after that, she stayed in bed, sucked her bottle and finally fell asleep. It was about 3am. Nights like these make us so happy that this darling child is our very last. Hallelujah.
I had a relatively good day in Chicago. Travel can be hard because my e-mail inbox is flooding with inbound e-mail as I’m about my activities and so I’m often just trying to steal the moments I can to try to stay on top of things. Even still, it’s nice to mix things up a little bit.
In Chicago, I presented at a CSI user conference. They are wanting to either resell our technology or allow their customers to contract directly with us. I did a presentation at a break-out session for seven minutes to fifty people. I didn’t feel very on, and I barely prepared (I think those two are definitely related), but I chalked it up to the fact that I have a million things going on right now and this deal was not super big or promising, but CSI is a big SAP partner, and it was important for the overall relationship I feel, that I go and present. Plus some business really could come from it.
Then I met with my contact, Jessica, at a medical device company. They just barely signed their contract. She greeted me with a hug, which felt fitting because we’ve been working together for six months to try to push something through and we finally did. She is a great person and was fun to talk to.
I don’t remember what happened before leaving on my work trip this day. But I do remember that on the plane, and back at the apartment I worked on my “Prison to Playground” book about my story overcoming perfectionism and finding more joy in the gospel. I also ate at a way good Jamaican restaurant.
On Tuesday after dropping the girls off at school, I took Ammon and Clarissa to the zoo. I had the best time with these two little ones. They are so cute and fun! In this picture they look a little confused, but so adorable:
We wanted to do a day trip to Wyoming to see a reenactment for Labor, but I had a ton of work work that I spent the first half of the day working on. Instead, after my work, we all went to the Scera pool and had a wonderful time as a family. We almost finished off our punch pass.
On Sunday Abe took care of the kids all day while I finished up the last of the Thrive conference, which went from 8am-6pm. We covered so much territory, and by the end everyone was in love with everyone. We were all willing to be vulnerable and share so much of ourselves with each other during the conference and after it was over I felt so sad to leave my new friends.
I can’t wait until it’s online so I can post it here.
