chaz sends wen and fun finds in the compost pile

what a whirlwind of a week!! busy, busy, busy! i'm pretty sure i was home late every day. from staff meeting monday, special initiative meeting tuesday, purchasing orders for audio books wednesday, Stand for Children strategy meeting thursday and finishing some work in the garden yesterday.

much of this week was used trying to use some of our budget to stock our literacy library with audio books. i will admit that i was very excited about getting audio books, because i remember when i was little (before kindergarten) following along in the read alouds with a...wait for it....RECORD PLAYER!!! yes, it's true, my two favorite books were scooby doo and the abominable snowman, and rudolph. later i would add dumbo to my list, but with scooby doo....it just never got old! every time they caught the old man villain, i was like, "yay! they caught the bad guy!....again!" oh the wonder of children!

so, i was thrilled about getting the audio books, because i think it will bring reading to life for our students!

then yesterday was an exciting day at school because our school was chosen for 'trees for threes,' in which the dallas mavericks came out to our school (as well as a load of volunteers and some master naturalists) and planted several trees. the students were almost as excited as the teachers... the cheerleaders took pics with some of the students and staff. one of the guys that got his pic with them will probably be smiling all the way into next week! good times.  

this was the actual planting of the trees-very good info-now i am 'tree-planter-certified'

and the cheerleaders were there as well, so we got a pic from them signed for one of our avid teacher fans!

after school, i went out to the garden to get a few things done, and i wasn't sure if i was going to get rained on or not. i did. but just a few sprinkles! so i didn't get done what i had hoped to get done, but i did get a surprise as i was putting something into the compost pile. i noticed some plants growing out of it. guess what kind of plants-forget guessing, i'll just tell ya-POTATOES and spaghetti squash!!

i had thrown some of the potato starters into the pile because they had gotten all moldy and i figured they were rotten. well, lo and behold, they were sprouting shoots, so i carefully dug out about 6 plants and replanted them, hopefully they will grow and produce! i checked on the snap peas that we thought had perished with the harsh winter, but after cutting away the dead vines, they are beginning to thrive again!! woo hoo!!

 then i got sidetracked by the other harvests and cut some cilantro, rosemary, mint and parsley. yes, we have a garden for chefs! i feel as though i'm learning so much about gardening that i could probably grow a garden that i could survive on and save a lot of money with! i think i'm starting to appreciate this garden-business more and more! i am getting so excited for our summer crop!!

you can imagine my shock at finding these sprouts in the compost pile!!

there was really too much for me to take home, but i had to trim the cilantro so that it wouldn't start to flower

oh! i almost forgot the other thing that happened this week...i was again watching t.v. last weekend and got caught up when i saw a commercial for wen hair products...yes i did.  and my hair product from "CHAZ" came on wednesday...and it's not really shampoo-it's more of a conditioning cleanser...ok, shampoo that doesn't lather? anyhoo, the smell alone is worth it! almond mint makes me smile deep inside my being! i will be sure to keep you informed of the progress. it's supposed to keep me from having to wash it every day, but in reality, i LOVE the smell so much that i really kinda want to wash it two to three times a day!! (oops).

i went ahead and told bruno and chaco that CHAZ sent their newly formulated shampoo as well.

so...sometimes i get bored. i kinda feel like one of the characters from the twc commercials...nothing good can come of boredom, can it? well. last night, i may have gotten bored. so i found my good scissors and went into the bathroom and cut my hair. i've never been obsessed with my hair, so cutting it myself doesn't really scare me...and i never did it when i was a little kid, so i'm making up for lost time. as long as i don't go too short on the first round, i can trim it up to make it work. and i haven't had to yet, but if it got real out of control, i would still have something for a stylist to work with.. ok, ulterior motive- i may have also wanted to cut it so that i don't have to use as much of the 'shampooless shampoo' so that it'll last longer!  ...plus, when i let my hair grow out, i always forget how much quicker and easier it is to wash short!

 i have just a little more detail trimming to do..:)

so.that just about covers this week.

mad gab champion skills put to work at walmart!

well. let's see. a lot has happened in the past week. we worked up a small writers boot camp- camp ROCKSTAR!  for writing rockstars! so part of this little gig was a small 'assembly.' i pulled that one together as painlessly as possible.

so...we all just wanna be big rock stars...

pretty sure i stumbled through the entire thing...with no real microphone (hopefully they could hear me just fine)...they were a tough crowd. mostly because they had no idea what to expect, i think.  tomorrow by the end of the day, they should all be full-fledged writing rockstars as well. smile.

 a couple of the teachers said that their students were a little confused. "that looked a little like ms. robinson." i guess we don't dress up nearly as much as we ought to on our campus... it seemed a little monotonous working with the groups the way we did, but from the teacher reports, the kids enjoyed it; hopefully they got something valuable out of it! not gonna lie, it made me miss kamp-where dressing up was mandatory!

then on saturday we had a little job fair action at one of the high schools. i'm not cut out for the human resources aspect. i just don't think it is a strength of mine. (i'm pretty certain of this). my favorite part was that i saw some familiar faces! it was great to see lorraine, marcos and tim hise! i wish i'd had more time to chat!

i went straight from the job-fair to one of my favorite adventures-walmart. yep, for multiple-item necessity, this is my go-to. so i found the items in question and made my way to the checkout. the lady greeted me with a foreign accent-i believe perhaps nigerian or something from that region. anyhoo...she bagged my stuff and when she finished, she looked at me and said, "duty debbie?" i looked at her with the scrunched nose, squinted eyes that say: what-did-you-just-say? so she repeated herself..perhaps it was, "Doodie Deadbeat" again...i raised my eyebrow, which was answered with "Anemone Bach?" uy. my brain neurons were firing at tremendous speeds trying to resolve this verbal conundrum before me. 

in an effort not to be rude, i shook my head and said no....(not certain what i was saying no to), and proceeded to tell her to have a good afternoon. she didn't hear me because she had already started to check the next person in line. so as i walked away with my cart, i repeated what she had said in her accent, and not to brag, but i am a pretty good mad gab player because i try to envision people saying the phrases with a foreign accent. and then it came to me!!

DU TY DEBBIE = DU (you) TY (did) DEBBIE (debit).
ANEMONE BACH = ANY MONEY BACK?

so i repeated the phrase all the way out to my car and i even started responding with my own foreign accent..which would look something like this: I.D. deadbeat.

of course i came home and immediately put that anecdote into a couple of letters i will be sending out tomorrow-i don't think they read the blog, so they won't be disappointed that they already read about it. whew!

well, i think that about covers it--counting down the days for the first round of tests to be over! hopefully i can get out into the garden after school this week...but once again, i have some meetings, so i don't know what that will look like.

time to get prepared for tomorrow with a little sleep!! 
julie

spoiler alert: clay and hatchet are villains

ok, truth?

i went to school with the boys and they went nuts over freedom in the courtyard! they ran and explored...

while i 'set up shop' (rolled the dolly with wood on it around to the place where i needed to build the raised bed). rolling a heavy dolly with no sight line of the wheels was a test of my maneuvering ability. i got it around the curves in the sidewalk without losing any wood, and without the wheels falling off the sidewalk. (who's the winner? MEEE!!!)

once i was in place, i stood there and looked at "ALL THAT WOOD." oh goodness. what have i gotten myself into? it's kinda like when you decide you want to eat something and your eyes are bigger than your stomach. then i shook it off and wondered where to begin. so logically i began with the posts. i spent way too long trying to use the hatchet that i had purchased and the points that it produced were shoddy at best.(this is what happens when you use a dull hatchet blade..oops).

so i ditched that effort after two janky posts and decided to turn the compost-i had to put the dogs in their pen while i did that because i was worried they would come over and try to jump in the pile... and get bitten by the ants that currently reside there decaying our dead stuff. then i spent a good portion of the rest of the afternoon trying to clean up the flower bed around the gazebo, which took forever because i had to dig up the irrigation hoses so that they were above ground.  once i finished that, i was kinda' a muddy mess. but i still needed a whet stone to try to sharpen the hatchet.

so we went to home depot.

while bruno was shouting "GO FASTER!!" chaco was pleading to go slower.

 i tried to sharpen the hatchet, but the next day-it wasn't any better. boo. so i resorted to a saw that a friend lent me to cut down a sapling. i was able to create somewhat of points/edges...enough to get them into the ground anyway.

 once all of the posts were ready, i pulled out the post digger, the pick, the shovel and eventually a small hand shovel. time to dig holes. i forgot that soil here is 99%clay, 1%pride...CLAY IS MY NEW NEMESIS!!!! cursed be the clay. my dad suggested that i double what stood above the ground...that would've meant a 30 inch deep hole...umm..once i started digging, i was defeated about 2 inches down. there was no way i was getting 30 inches into this ground! it was a mess. i was a mess.

since the holes weren't going to be 30 inches, no way, no how...i took the next best measure. i cut them to size. so now i would only have to dig a 15 inch hole. this was more feasible, only slightly less difficult. 15 might as well have been 30. when i finally got the posts in, i set the bottom boards up to make sure that there was going to be no issues. at this point, there had better be no issues.

day two finished.

day three: all i had left to do was screw the boards into the posts. and that's what i was kinda thinking...screw the boards. so pulled my little drill out of the closet. and it had no charge. i'm pretty sure it didn't have a charge the last time i charged it. i should have just spent the money on a good one the first time around. but i don't drill enough things. so i went to the store and purchased a 20v black and decker matrix. i then had to return home to charge the battery...it took about 4 hours, but i was able to get back up to the garden before they shut the building down!

 i finished one raised bed-two more to go. i think i will be getting some student volunteers to help me out with the next two. (no hatchet...or anything that might damage limb or phalanges). 

 once that was done, i knew that the custodial staff was going to need the dolly, so i unloaded the wood onto some pavers under the awning and figured i'd come back with a tarp. weeeeellllll.....i really didn't want to come back, so instead, i looked around my office to see if i could find something to cover up the wood. i DID! i found some fancy table cloths that worked just fine, then i brought the cart back in and said goodbye to judy, our head custodial person in our building. she said she wasn't sure if she would be back on monday or in her new building. so i may have been the last person at cabell to see her for the last time. (we'll see come monday).

all of that and to be quite honest, i am surprised that i am still moving! hatchet, sawing and digging muscles are just not used nearly enough! forget the gym...garden and build! not only is it a workout, you get your vitamin d AND nothing beats the feeling of being productive!

go forth and be productive~
julie

p.s. the best part so far was watching the boys play! this was the first time that we play outside and when i throw chaco's toy, he fetches it...whenever we are outside, he is usually too distracted to play fetch. so i tried again when we went to our little dog park here at the complex and he was all about it-we've had a break through! from now on, the dog park will be much more fun!

dueling dogs and a hatchet job

let me start by saying that i was so relieved when i saw that one of my friends had posted something shortly after the news about the missing malaysia flight. one of my friends has been in asia traveling around and that type of news is just a little too close for comfort!

so now that that's out of the way, where to begin, where to begin...i never learn my lesson: that when i don't write for a long period of time, i have a whole lot to share.
what better time to catch up than at the beginning of spring break?!

so, one thing that happened awhile back was that i went to my 2nd semester real school gardens coordinator meeting. because i arrived early enough, they allowed us to go in to see the butterfly garden. i absolutely LOVED it!! the best part was that the sights and smells were tropical and very familiar! when i saw this butterfly, it reminded me of the times that i got to go with another missionary family out to the river, and catch butterflies, of the beautiful fluorescent blue variety.

while there, we went through a training on natural resources, one of those being sandstone, and making paint from the powder, and we made some native american messages:

i'm pretty sure this had something about the woman capturing the man...some discussion, and then i hope they used the fire to cook something else and that it was not a heated discussion that ended ugly...but i don't recall.

while there, i picked up potatoes and onions. we are doing the smart potatoes program-which means that we will be donating potatoes to the north dallas food center. they also informed us that we could pick up warm weather plants when we return from spring break.

when i found out all of the plants that they will have for us, i really wanted more space...i have never loved gardening, but now that we have one, and the produce is plentiful, it's really been kinda fun. so in order to get more space, i am going to venture to build three new beds over the break. i am going in tomorrow and we'll see how much we get done (we being i...the boys will come with me and explore a little and romp around, but they aren't very good with tools). and speaking of tools, i asked dad what he suggested to put a point on the posts, and he suggested a hatchet.

so i stopped in to walmart yesterday because where else can you get a hatchet, spaghetti squash, greens, a book and a hatchet in one stop? so i went to the sporting goods section, and i had to look and see if they had the ammo i needed-i wasn't holding my breath, because they are always out of 9mm. but they had it!! what?! so i found someone to find someone with keys to the cabinet. i was contemplating my good luck and apparently in all the contemplating i forgot the ketchup-which i didn't notice until i was in the checkout line. and then i spotted it. the lady in front of me had just what i needed:

i was close enough to snatch it, but i refrained. i really kinda wanted to, though. good thing my parents raised me right.

 when i got up to the checkout, the lady checker rang up the ammo and then saw the hatchet and i already knew what was coming before she said it. "no one's gonna mess with you!"

 

when we were kids, my parents would have probably been on the cps most wanted list because we used to chop tree limbs with the hatchet, trim the lawn with the machete and play with fake guns all of the time! the fact that my dad did teach us how to use a hatchet will come in handy tomorrow!

also planned for this week: make an appointment with the passport peeps.

 it will be good to put a fun trip together.

i know that you're all wondering, but i did see manny at school the other day. and it reminded me of this song (take a listen)...and that song always reminds me of the joke (kristi canady reminded me of) why did the elephant paint his toenails green? to hide in the lime tree...

it's manny!! in the first grade mardi gras float!

 and then there was the day that was beautiful out, so i took the boys to the park and we sat for awhile and just enjoyed the view...and the boys reenacted a duel. they pretended that they were vice president burr and alexander hamilton..

yep, they make me laugh!

i thought that the book i purchased would last longer....i finished it early today. i guess that's what i get for reading a book meant for teenagers. i require books that need some chewing. (apart from the academic books). i really need to reread NOT A FAN-that may be a goal. yep, i just set a goal. it's going to be a lovely, productive spring break!

julie