Child labor?

Really. He doesn't mow the lawn yet. An executive decision was made to let him putz around the yard on the lawn mower. He had fun, and Todd got to take pictures. It was a win win situation for everyone apparently. I'm sure the day will come when he hates the lawn mower.

Just looking at this picture... I see so many things to comment on. Yes, that's a mound of ashes in the yard. It would appear that we are redneck enough to have a bonfire in the yard, but really, you're allowed to burn things like slash and weeds here. That is a little barn like shed on the left. It is badly run down but may eventually be a fort / playhouse for the kids. It just needs some work and no... there is no earthly reason for a mailbox in front of it. We have no idea what that's about.

This does give you an interesting look at the east side of our property. That is the neighbor's house. They've been remodeling it, hence the enormous roll off dumpster you see here. The dumpster is actually gone and the house is almost done now. It's almost like a Mexican villa sort of house.

And really I posted that picture so that I could now brag about my gardening skills a little.

Here's what happened to that piece of dirt you see behind Rye.

Ryley has to be in a lot of pictures. He sees the camera and assumes you're taking his picture. He is awfully cute though.

Anyway, this garden was something of an experiment this year. We moved in at Easter while I was very pregnant and didn't have a lot of time / energy to devote to the project. At any rate, it came out pretty good. We did corn (duh), lettuce, cucumbers, green beans, sweet peas, carrots, onions, pumpkin, and watermelon this year. I had to actually pull 4 pumpkin plants out as I had no idea how they grew. They were taking over the garden. We now have 5 actual pumpkins and 3 watermelons going. I will probably have to give away a ton of cucumbers as I had no idea how they grew either. I'll end up pickling the mass amounts of green beans I ended up with. The sweet peas were actually a vine variety so they didn't go quite so well but we enjoyed being able to nibble on them as we weeded the garden. The lettuce, carrots, and onions were perfect. So now that we know what we're doing, the garden will double in size next year and we'll add some other things like tomato, peppers, celery, and berries maybe. It's kind of nice to spend $10 on seeds and have fresh produce at your fingertips. If I could figure out how to construct a greenhouse I might actually try to do something all year long.