the kitty & the garden

On any given day, I will find Ryker holding our kitty that we brought home 7 weeks ago from Wyoming. He loves the kitty. Maybe a little too much. He constantly wants to hold him and carry him around.

It's not allowed in the house, but Ryker sneaks it in sometimes anyway, and hides it in a blanket. Snowflake (the kids named him), will get bigger and bigger, and soon probably won't let Ryker carry him around anymore. He already runs away when Ryker gets near. But if Ryker gets a hold of him, he's pretty good to just put up with whatever Ryker does to him. I'm surprised he puts up with it.

Anyway, here are some pics of Ryker & his buddy, Snowflake, taken August 2010. I think it's pretty sweet that he loves him so much.

And a couple of pics taken Sept. 2010 (below).

I've been really pleased with this kitten. He's very sweet & lovable. He sticks around our house for the most part, and has even caught a mouse at the neighbors house.

I've found myself liking cats again. I went through a phase where I hated them, and vowed never to get one. But they are so low maintenance, he stays outside so he's not shedding or trashing the house, and he is just so CUTE! I've even seen Kevin pet him.

On to the next subject: the Garden. Every year I get SO tired of weeding the dang garden! So last year Kevin built these grow boxes for me. I bought the "Square Foot Gardening" book, and have been practicing some of those concepts and I like them.

But as you can see, weeds are still a BIG problem.

Well, we didn't get around to finishing the garden last year. We just got a couple of grow boxes in and that was it. So this year, I begged and begged Kevin to help me get it done. We dug some trenches and ran water lines to each of the boxes. Then for my birthday, Kevin had a truckload of gravel delivered.

My awesome neighbors came over and helped haul it all over to the garden. We put some plastic down first to keep the weeds down.

And here's the finished product! We left the corner for compost. We'll eventually fill in that extra space with more grow boxes. But doesn't it look SO much better?

This is the section on the side of the house that used to be a dog run. This is a pic from the springtime. Who in their right mind would want to keep up on that weeding?? Not me.

We dug all the weeds out, got rid of the garbage, recycled all the metal we were storing back there, then did the plastic & gravel thing. Kevin is now in the process of building a playhouse for the kiddos! They are beyond excited.

Here's to no more weeds!!