Parentheticals

The weather has been really nice, so we went hiking some more this week. We gathered more plants for the food forest, and played that we were from redwall We now have lots of currants, some serviceberries, black raspberries, a gooseberry bush, strawberries, mint, a plum tree, and some Oregon grape. We want cherry trees, apples, raspberries probably more plums, and perhaps a peach tree and some asparagus before we are all the way done. The garden is finally starting to sprout. We have tons of pea plants, and some lettuces to show for our work so far. We have also been burning all of the trees we cut down and dug up from our yard. The kids really wish we had marshmallows. Mike's next school semester started, and it has mostly been going well. Alison has been preparing to teach a bunch of people about how to get along with their kids. Her class starts on Monday. She has nearly 100 people signed up so far -that is pretty exciting. We also have been recently playing a lot of

This last week the weather was nice, so we played outside a lot of the time. As we were preparing to plant our garden in the backyard, we ordered some fruit bushes. Alison had read about building a permaculture food forest, and this seemed like a good way to start that. We had ordered a gooseberry bush, two Serviceberry bushes, and also a pair of black raspberry bushes from a nursery in the east. The bushes all arrived on Friday, so Mike went outside and planted them and watered them heavily. We hope that they produce lots of berries for us to eat in the future. Of all of the seeds we planted a few weeks ago, very few of them have begun sprouting, so we went and replanted the whole entire area yesterday. We have also been burning a lot of wood that we got by ripping out all of the trees of heaven which were growing in our backyard. The fires have been crazy, according to Rea. Alison also went on a massive food shopping trip on Saturday so that we could get all of the stuff that w

We accidentally didn't write a blog post last week, so this post is going to cover two weeks. Last week, we began to tear all of the small tree of heavens out of our yard so that we can have a tree of heaven free yard. Alison thought that it would take a lot of work and a long time; however, Mike and the kids are very strong, so we got most of them out in two days. We kept working on them sporadically for a few other days, and now the entire yard is tree of heaven free (except for the strip between the carport and the fence, which we haven't yet done). We will have to grub up sprouts for a few years probably, but we're hoping that they will actually eventually stop. While we were working in the yard we decided to dig an irrigation trench from the place where the kids always leave the hose on ("it's our creek!") all summer, to the place where we have planned a garden this year. We then planted some of the seeds which Alison bought so that we could have all