On Stick Forts and Ramshackle Gardens

We spent the weekend in true Reintjes style working in the yard on ramshackle projects using bits and pieces of things lying about.*  The boys are hard at work on a new fort that Chris cleverly designed by sinking sticks in the ground and telling the kids that they needed to gather up all the sticks in the yard they can find to build up the walls by making a kind of wattle fence.  It's a win-win.  The children get a fort and the grown ups get the sticks cleared away.

It will take a lot of sticks to finish off those walls.

We also worked a bit on shoring up the garden.  It's September and the tomatoes are finally tomato-ing.  That might tell you something about our gardening skills.

We should probably not be allowed to make gardens.  This particular one was designed before we actually knew what the sun situation would be in the new backyard during the summer.  Spoiler, there's significantly less sun there than there was in the winter when the trees were bare.  Really, we mostly positioned the garden to disguise a very ugly cement wall.  If this were our forever house I would have put in hydrangeas there, but we didn't have time to grow up bushes large enough to cover that amount of ugly wall so a garden it was.

Really I like to think of all of our gardening endeavors as practice gardens until we actually have a home of our very own to put in a real professional garden.

So far we've learned that:

1. We shouldn't plant tall things in tall planters or we won't be able to reach the vegetables to harvest them.  
2. We should always check where the sun will shine before we plan our garden.  
3. Also, we should put the garden somewhere we'll actually remember to look after it.  This might not work if you are like me and like the idea of gardening better than the reality of actually tending gardens.  
4. On a related note, we probably should check our garden more than once a week.  
5. Don't overplant the garden.  The plants will grow larger than we think they will. Really.
6. It's silly not to harvest the lettuce.  Just make a salad for goodness sake.  But lettuce plants can turn into pretty amazing flowers if you let them just go to seed so maybe they weren't a complete waste.
7. Maybe next time we should just stick with herbs.  My chives are doing very well.  You might even say I'm a master chive grower.  

There are probably other lessons in there as well, mostly revolving around not planting overly ambitious gardens when you have babies in the house.  I doubt we'll ever really learn that particular lesson though, hope does spring eternal.



*When I say "we" I mostly mean "Chris."  I mean it was raining most of the time and someone had to stay dry inside listening to the end of their audio book and tending the baby, right?  

On the Birthday Boys and Secret Surprises

This week Chris and David had back to back birthdays--as they do every year--but this year posed an new problem in choosing the best time to celebrate since their birthdays fell on week days and Chris leaves for work before the children are awake and doesn't generally return home until well past the time when they are supposed to be in bed.

Luckily for us, at the last minute Chris' boss decided to take a day off so he was able to take the day off as well.  When the cat's away and all that.  Actually, when the cat's away the mouse tends to leave the office just a wee bit early and then bring all of his unfinished work home to complete in the evening, but for the sake of the birthday story lets all imagine him playing.  So we were able to celebrate both birthdays together on Chris' actual birthday.  David wasn't the least bit upset that he got to have the cake he chose and open all of his presents a day early.  On his actual birthday his Cubscout pack had their annual rocket launch anyway so everything worked out perfectly.  Right down to his chosen special birthday dinner of microwave Star Wars mac n' cheese which I think is really gross but was nevertheless an ideal thing to give the children for dinner when I needed them to eat at 3:45 in order for them to get to the rocket launch on time.

We picked out some excellent presents for David, including a wallet and some already beloved Calvin and Hobbes books which I will likely regret giving him but I was most proud of the surprise I was able to pull off for Chris.

Years ago his old bike was run over by my car--it's hard to say for certain who was at fault really, but I maintain that the bike must not have been properly stored in the garage for it to have found it's way under my tires in such a small space.  Anyway,  he's been without a bike for the past seven years or so. This year our new neighbor gave me his wife's old bike, and another neighbor gave us a children's bike trailer so everyone in the family had a bike/way to be transported by bike but Chris.

Well, no more!  I saved up my spending money and tracked down a refurbished street bike on Craigslist that very much resembles that wonderful, crushed, bike of old.  I managed to pick it up (with the assistance of a neighbor who watched all of the children who would have blabbed my secret), sneak it into the house, and hoist it up into the attic where it stayed for almost a month unbeknownst to anyone but me.  On the day before Chris' birthday I snuck it back down out of the attic and hid it in the baby's room where I retrieved it during one of my many, many, many, many, many late night nursing sessions and brought it out into the kitchen for him to find the next the morning.

He was pretty surprised.

I love giving really good gifts, and I really love pulling off great surprises.  I'm not always successful because I'm really bad at telling lies--my face always gives me away.  So successful secret surprises must be so secret that no questions at all are asked me about it.  Once questions start, the whole thing will inevitably fall apart.  Luckily, he never imagined I'd try to find him a new bike and I think he was genuinely shocked.  

Let the family bike rides begin :)