Garden Experiments

This week, at Pop pop's clever suggestion, we decided to try hanging a few tomato plants up-side-down in 6 gallon buckets. We read some articles that said tomatoes grown in this fashion are more resistant to disease and pests. Daddy drilled 2-inch holes in the lids and bottoms of the buckets, then we carefully threaded the plant through the hole in the bottom of the first bucket, and filled the rest of the bucket with potting soil. We left them sitting upright for a few days, and today, we hung them up. So far, they are doing quite well.

We haven't gotten a good rain in weeks, so I've had to water the garden almost every day. Last week, Daddy ordered a drip-irrigation system for the garden so I wouldn't have to spend all morning watering with the hose. All the parts came in the mail on Monday. We installed it yesterday morning, and now it's all set up. This morning, all I had to do was turn on the faucet. It's working really well so far.

I've been having problems with Flea Beetles and Colorado Potato Beetles eating my potato plants. I tried dusting the plants with powdered lime and spraying them with a noxious concoction of garlic and red pepper, neither of which solved the problem. Today Jacob fenced a couple of chickens in the potato patch to see if they would eat the bothersome bugs. Hopefully, this measure will get rid of the pests, and I won't have to use chemical pesticides.

~Tricia Ann

Nike!

That's the one word that an Athenian soldier could gasp out as he came limping into Athens after sprinting 26 miles from the Battle of Marathon. Well, we didn't exactly run a marathon or win a battle, but we did (through much study) pass our Western Civilization 1 CLEP test on Friday. We ended up having to do a bit of cramming on Thursday night. We were trying to memorize 50+ pages (front and back) of notes we had taken from our Western Civ. book by copying them. We didn't finish until about 2 a.m. There's obviously a lot to study when your test covers all the history between 25,000 B.C. : ) and A.D. 1600. We got really tired, but we had fun anyway.

Here are some pictures that Mom took.

~Tricia Ann

Daddy got us some Coke so we could stay awake.

We each used up a whole pad of paper!

After writing about 30 pages, our middle fingers got sore, so we broke out the Band-Aids!

Veggie Towels

Tricia Ann and I made some pretty tea towels using a ribbon embroidery technique that we saw in a Martha Stewart Magazine recently. We thought the little veggies were so cute. I did the machine sewing and Tricia Ann did the hand embroidery.
~Trish

Many Hands, Light Work?

We spent last week helping our dear pastor raise his barn. Well, actually the upper story will be his home! Thanks to the skillful leadership of a builder-friend and the help of the men and boys of Heritage Presbyterian Church, the feat of drying in the entire home was completed in a mere 4 days! By the Lord's Day, the men were exhausted but exultant in the results of their labors.
~Trish


And the evening and the morning were the first day.And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Other Barn Raising Activities...

Of course, the ladies cooked a lot of meals! And we had such fun together.
Mrs. Marcia was such a blessing in the kitchen! Such a servant's heart!

Jacob assists Daniel in clipping his chickens' wings.

Bethy and Camille

Some time for fun...

Boys being boys.

Plum tuckered twinsies!

Gramps about to enjoy a piece of chocolate cake.

Jeremiah

What's that awful smell?

Best friends!

Mrs. Christy and daughter, Miss Caroline - two lovely ladies.

One tired daddy.

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it.
~Psalm 127:1

Two cuties on the mule.

The Lord blessed us with a MF 240 tractor on Tuesday. I hope it will be useful to us.

-JL