Growth mediums

Apparently we forgot to post this last week, even though we started writing it.

On Monday (last week) Alison and the kids met up with Katrina and her kids (their friends who moved to southern Utah). They had a fun time.

Friday Alison and the kids went to nature group and it was raining and snowing and quite cold and they were all very sad so they came home early.

On Friday night the Plastow kids came over and had a sleepover with our kids. They are all good friends, so they enjoyed sitting up all hours of the night and talking about things. Baby Elizabeth slept down with them and she only woke up once during the night, so she seems to be getting much better at sleeping through the night even under unusual circumstances.

Saturday Mike and Sarah went out to gather raspberry canes to transplant into our yard. They were located in a park in Sandy on the top of a wooded hill. We ended up digging up a total of seven plants and we planted them in our backyard beside the strawberries. Hopefully they will survive and give us lots of good raspberries this year or perhaps next year.

Also on Saturday the berry bushes that Mike ordered from a nursery in Minnesota arrived and we planted them all out. Mike is very excited about this. In the front yard we put two honey berries (one Solo Honeyberry, and one Blizzard Honeyberry), which are a edible variety of honeysuckle berry. We also put white currant bushes, which are a variety that we discovered wild in the dell and really enjoyed. We also planted four Pequot lakes brambles, which are a black variety of raspberry and hopefully are very similar to the black raspberries that we used to pick in Michigan. In the backyard we planted two service berry bushes which were labeled as Northline Saskatoon which are of a cultivar which are supposed to produce very large and tasty berries. hopefully they are going to be very good. All in all there were nine bushes that we bought, and most of them seem pretty healthy at this point in time, so hopefully they are going to grow very well this year.

Between those and the raspberries and strawberries that we got we now have 30 berry bearing plants in our yard right now. The next thing that we plan on doing for the yard is to get in some fruit trees and also get our garden properly established.

Right now the only things planted in our garden are about 20 wild onions that Mike and Sara also picked up when they went out and about 6 chard plants that overwintered.

The boy who lives just to the south of us named Aiden has been coming over and visiting us practically every day. Aiden Timmy and Gideon have been good friends and have enjoyed playing together a lot.

Also on Saurday Grandma Sheila came over to help us fix Rea's sewing machine and also to help plan Rea and Sara's new quilts that they are having her make for them. She also gave us some more tuna steaks which is very nice because we had eaten all of the ones that they gave us originally. The solution to the problem with the sewing machine was to put thinner thread into the sewing machine. Mike is glad that there wasn't anything actually wrong with the machine itself, and Alison feels sort of vindicated that she couldn't figure out how to get it to work.

Mike finished up grading all of his finals for his class that he was teaching as well, so last week was an interim week for him. This week he started his spring semester, so is now helping a lot of students to get used to their new classes. This is also his finals week in his masters program classes, so he is working on all of his finals projects a lot. Hopefully his new classes doesn't cut too much into his time that he has for working on his finals in his classes that he is taking.

One of the video games that Aiden has is called Mario maker. Timmy really likes it, so he has asked for it for his birthday. Timmy's birthday is coming up fairly soon, so we are getting ready for it. Alison's birthday is also coming up before Timmy's, so she is trying to come up with list of things that she wants for her birthday. Unfortunately as adults it is difficult to come up with lists of birthday presents because we want to only spend a little bit of money on our birthday gifts, but things that we really want that are that inexpensive are easy to fit into the budget, so they end up getting bought before any birthday occurs.

On Sunday of last week Mike started feeling sick, and laid around a lot. This started the week-long festival of sickness wherein nearly everyone in the family threw up (most of them multiple times). After Mike, Sara got sick, and then Gideon got sick second, and spent one awful night throwing up a whole lot (like perhaps 10 times). Next Timmy got sick, and then Alison and then Rea got it today. It must be some sort of flu.

As this was going on we also carefully tended our new bushes, and it seems like most of them will survive the transplanting. Here are some pictures:

15 strawberry plants survived. They don't seem to be having any trouble at all.
There were 5 swiss chard plants that overwintered, and are vigorously growing now.
Here are the two honeyberry bushes - one is all green already, and the other is starting to sprout leaves
The serviceberry bushes are the ones doing the worst of the lot - they lost all their leaves, and haven't recovered yet. We are still hoping they pull through.
The three pequot lake brambles are also mostly doing well. Two of them have put out leaf buds, and the other will hopefully do so soon
The white currants are starting to put out leaves as well:
The 7 raspberry bushes we took from the local park are doing wonderfully well. Only one of them is having any trouble, and that one finally started putting out new leaves yesterday, so it seems like it will survive.
Gideon also planted an old potato from our pantry, and it is growing wonderful leaves - this might be a new thing for us to try out

With all the sickness in the household, we have mostly been surviving, however those of us that are healthy still try to do things like go on walks when we can.

Mike has also been working hard on his finals. Hopefully he can get them all done soon so that he can go back to normal.

Oh - I just remembered - Rea's herb garden is starting to grow as well, and her flower garden too. Here's to hoping that they grow wonderfully well.

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