The holidays...

Long time, no post!

I knew this would happen. I'm bad, epically bad, about updating blogs and Katherine just finished up her masters. So this page has suffered for it. But I bought a domain today and redirected to here and that warranted an update. Katherine and I are now the proud owners of thejarnigans.com and will hopefully have a website on it eventually. For now though it will lead you here, to our lovely, and neglected blog.

Quick update: the garden died. One weekend we went out of town and a nice little heat wave came through and roasted everything. We'll give it another go in the Spring and hopefully do a little better with our layout and planning.

This weekend will be our first of four family Christmas events. The Brians clan will be assembling and celebrating Christmas, at my parents' house I believe. We'll be attending Katherine's graduation the following Saturday and then we'll do Christmas with my parents, then her parents, and then the Jarnigan clan. Not to forget Chris' birthday (my brother) and Kristie's (her sister) somewhere in that mix.

Alright, that's enough for now....

Laters,
Dan

Watermelon

We now have 5 watermelon growing in the garden!!!  I can't wait for them to grow big enough for us to eat.  Yum!!!

More Green Things!

Well, we keep getting more and more hopeful about our garden. Maybe we are at least doing a couple of things right? Our watermelon plant is trying to take over the garden. We also noticed this morning that there is one watermelon growing on the vine. It's hard to believe with all of that vine there is only one growing and not ten. The watermelon plant is already invading the cucumbers space. And speaking of cucumbers, we now have two that are almost full grown. Plus, there are at least two more on the way. Some of our pepper plants have more peppers on there. I think Dan is pretty excited about that. He pulled off four hot peppers the other day, and used two to put on his pizza for lunch.

So we are really excited that we have more fruits and veggies growing in the garden. I guess the heat is giving them an extra boost! Here are some more pics....

Our token watermelon...

Cucumbers!

Oh, and last but not least, Ayda has taken to laying down on the other side of the garden near the fence.

More to come later!

Green Things

Okay, so we're not so good about updating the blog. Kinda saw that one coming. It's now June and although our blog was neglected, the garden definitely has not been! We've got four tomatoes coming in and one green bell pepper. Katherine picked our first four beans, which aren't quite enough to cook, but we'll get there.

We've also now picked up my granddad's old Troy Bilt tiller. It's not a full-size one, but we don't need a big one anyway. I'll go ahead and tell you, using it is a whole lot better than hoeing the garden. Anyway, here's a few more shots of our watermelon vine and peppers.

And an update photo of the blackberry bush...

We'll try to post more later.

First Plantings

Quick update....

Well, we finally got a few plants in the ground. We went to Lowes and bought actual plants of peppers (and one for a watermelon) in case our seedlings didn't turn out that great. So we planted those in the garden, and also planted some of the cucumber plants and pole beans. So far the last two haven't done a lot, and the cucumbers didn't last. We just replaced those with some other seedlings, which will hopefully do better.









Our blackberry plant has a flower on it! It's pretty and pink, and just bloomed today. It has grown a lot over the past week. We are ready for the fruit to start developing on it.




My dahlias and peonies are coming up too. I'm excited about these because I am ready for a little more color to get into the yard.




Ciao,
Kath

Getting it started

It's planting time! Kinda... Not willing to trust our luck with growing our garden from seeds, I bought a tray of peat pellets to start our seeds. The tray has 72 peat pellets, each about the size of a tea light candle. Once you add water, each pellet soaks it up and expands about 3-4 times their original size. Then we put 2-3 seeds in each pellet and covered them over.



Knowing my wife, I also picked up some labels for our budding garden...



Now we wait for them to sprout and transplant them to the real garden! Which needs to be broken up again....

*sigh*

Settled Dirt

OK, so for those of you that may or may not know, you can't let the ground settle after it has been tilled. That is why the hoe was invented. Now, I decided since I had some time that I would use the hoe to break up some of the dirt in our little garden. Dan has already done this once, and then the rain set in and it needs to be worked over again. After about 15 minutes of stabbing the ground with the hoe, all I can show for my efforts is about 1/5 of the garden with turned up soil and two very sore hands! The upside: there is only 4/5 of the plot left to work, and if I keep this up then I might actually develop some arm muscles!!! I'll admit, that is an exciting thought. Who needs a gym membership when you can just have a garden in your back yard? I don't think I have a future in landscaping, but I'll take the benefits when I can. :)

While we have not planted anything in the garden yet, we did plant the blackberry bush. It doesn't seem to have grown that much, but maybe after the next good rain that we get it will show improvement. Hopefully we will be able to plant our vegetables soon, but Dan's schedule makes that a little difficult. Plus, my class is coming to an end and the next two weekends are kind of claimed with school. I suppose if all else fails then we can plant it piece by piece whenever we get time.

The good thing is that the days are getting longer, and they are also getting warmer. Summer days will be here soon! Hurray!

Kath

I called the cops on someone...

Okay, so I'm on the way home, heading down 65 from downtown and when I'm crossing the overpass above the two-lane road that runs from 119 to the back entrance to Oak Mountain State Park there's a girl sitting on the overpass. Now, she's not in the middle of the road, she's sitting on the concrete abutment of the overpass, but still that's like 2 feet from the lane. There's not a car anywhere near that I saw, and I think there was a bag or something sitting on the ground near her, but it seemed a really odd spot to be sitting at midnight-thirty so I called the cops. Granted, she might have been unable to sleep and just wanted to get out and enjoy the night air. Maybe she thinks it's really relaxing to watch cars stream by at 60 mph just a mere few feet away. I, on the other hand, thought this to be odd behavior so I phoned the 5-O. Which brings me to another point....

My phone rocks! According to my wife I'm obsessed with my phone. I however just believe that good tools should be used whenever needed (and my phone is a very versatile tool). I was able to enable a voice search and say "Pelham Alabama Police Department" and the top item returned was their address and phone number. Tapping the phone number link brought up my dialer with their number already punched in and I just had to hit dial. I think that's pretty cool.

Anywho, it's 2 am and time for bed.

Dan

Firsts Updates

Well, we went down to Petals from the Past this afternoon. When we left it was just overcast, and when we were almost to Jemison the sky decided to let it all down. It was pouring rain to the point that we thought about turning around and going home. We got there about 12:30, but it wasn't open yet. We didn't realize it didn't open until 1:00pm. So, Dan suggested we go to Peach Park in Clanton. I had never heard of the place, and promptly responded with "Huh?". After Dan's amazement that I had never been to Peach Park, we decided to kill some time and go down there. Since the season for fruits and veggies hasn't really come into full swing yet, there wasn't much at Peach Park. There were a few rows of veggies and some fruit, but the cafeteria area is what had the most going on. The cobblers and cakes smelled really good, but we didn't taste any. They also have homemade ice cream that they make there. I guess we will have to visit again later in the spring or summer when there is more available.

There were not that many people at Petals from the Past when we arrived. It was still drizzling some, and most of their plants are outside. Good thing I had my big umbrella! They have all kinds of plants there, and several types of trees. Dan contemplated getting a lemon tree, but we have nowhere to put it. We ended up getting a blackberry plant. They have a hybrid blackberry called "Kiowa" that they have developed, and that is the one that we bought. Unfortunately, they advised that it's not worth eating the berries the first year. So we will have to wait until next year to eat them. I guess I might need to learn to make jam in the meantime. Blackberry jam is my favorite! They do have a Black and Blueberry festival during the summer that we plan to attend. Has anyone ever been to it before? Hopefully we will be able to get some good blackberries at the festival.

And for the last "first" of the day, Dan gave me a lesson on driving a manual transmission. He and his dad swapped vehicles for the weekend since his parents would be driving Dan's niece and nephews around. Since we had Larry's Ford Ranger, then I convinced Dan to give me a lesson. Now, to be honest I have been scared of doing this for a while. The last thing I want to do is completely ruin my father-in-law's mode of transportation, and I have been completely convinced that is exactly what would happen as soon as I try. Dan and I have only been married for a year, and I would never live it down if something happened! I have tried to drive a manual transmission once or twice before, but was NOT successful. Today, however, I was (after a few attempts) able to shift from first, to second, and then to third fairly well. We went to the parking lot of a local church, which gave us plenty of room for me to move around (and not hit anything). I was rather proud of myself, and better yet we were able to return Larry's truck in working condition!

The lesson for today: firsts might be scary, but they can be a lot of fun too!

Until the next adventure,
Kath

Firsts

Welcome to our blog! This weekend we're doing several things for the first time, this blog being one of them. Well, we both had our own, but this is our first together. So you will be seeing updates from Katherine, from Dan, and from Dan and Katherine. If you see one that is just mostly gibberish, it's probably from Ayda. She can't type too well.

Our other big first for the weekend is our garden. It's not quite a garden yet, it's just some tilled land in the backyard (for now). We do have big (well, small considering the size of the plot) plans for it. So far we're thinking we will plant some bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, herbs, carrots and maybe a few other things. We have a field trip today! We're heading to Petals from the Past in Jemison, AL to get a few ideas and maybe plants.

All gardening tips and ideas are welcome! We will try to update about our garden, other antics, adventures, and adversities as they come our way. We'll even through in a few visual aids every once in a while...

Thanks for joining us as we discover how green our thumbs might be!

Ciao,

Dan and Katherine