Housewife, 54

I am so far behind on using this as a diary that it is ridiculous.  We have had several family events this year, and I have posted none. Maybe I  will post about all of them at once...later... but for now, I just want to make a short post about this past weekend. I love my extended family.  I grew up living close to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and quite a few cousins, and we were close enough in age that I didn't need friends, I had lots of cousins.  Just recently I had chats via Facebook with a couple of said cousins, now grown as old as me and with families of their own, all living quite far away.  One of those living farthest away was coming back to our home town for a short visit, and how many of us could meet up there?  Count me in! I drove just 4 hours down to stay with my Auntie, Mom's sister and had a nice visit with her and a cousin from that side of the family... and the next day I went to visit the other cousins and family from my Dad's side of the family.

Spring took off with a bang and all the gardening to do.  I had started seedlings indoors at home, first in the basement with a grow light and then took batches in stages out to the greenhouse, then started more!  I ended up with 80 tomato plants, among many other things! I was planting gardens like mad all through May and into June. The educational garden at the City park was the most urgent as it had to be ready by June 24 for the ONLY day of the year that the public can come to visit.  Then the Church garden was my second priority, and my own gardens got worked in whenever I could manage it. Looking back... It was an awful year for gardens....  Petersen Farm started off well with a nice early planting, but we had two new raised beds built and in order to fill them with dirt, the truck ran over the newly planted potatoes and corn....  after I got the new beds planted I got really busy with the other gardens and while SOME things were growing well in the raised beds, the in-ground