Happenings in Our World: May 2010

21 May 2010

Cove Fort

We also stopped at Cove Fort down in Central Utah on our way home. It was really neat.

Afterwards, we ate up all the food we had left with us for lunch since it was Sunday and we didn't want to stop anywhere for lunch. It worked OK, and they had a nice grass spot for a picnic.

After he got done eating, Les was playing Frisbee with his hat. It landed in the tree.

The Gap

On the way home from Cedar, we stopped to show the kids Parowan Gap. It has petroglyphs all through it.

We hiked around a little bit to look at them and to see if there were any others that weren't obvious, and we found a few more.

The kids were amazed at the effort it must have taken to carve into those rocks 1000 years ago.

Zak misunderstood the word petroglyphs, and thought that we were looking at the "picture cliffs." I thought that was a pretty good explanation of what they were.

We decided this rock must have been the "face" of the Indian that made the "picture cliffs."

What could be more fun to two little boys than a whole farm to play and get dirty? Really dirty!

We went to Southern Utah last weekend for Brian to do the St. George Triathlon that he does every year. This year the kids and I stayed in Cedar at my Grandpa's house while Brian camped down at Sand Hollow Reservoir where his race was the next morning.

When I went out to check on the boys, I found them feeding the sheep. but they had tied the hay in a rope that they could dangle in front of the sheep so that they wouldn't get eaten in the process (yup, those are my city boys!)

And they could "drive" the tractor anywhere their little imaginations could take them.

They were in heaven. Fortunately for everyone else, the tractor didn't run, but that didn't stop them.

Last time we were there, my cousins boys showed them how to get to the fort. Of course this involved rappelling down into the silage pit and climbing back out. It wouldn't be any fun to do it the boring way by walking straight there.

This is my cute Grandpa. Bronx the dog came to visit this weekend too. He belongs to my cousin that lives with and helps take care of Grandpa.

A Garden

When we first moved to our house, we had a garden off the back side of the carport. But then one of our trees got too big, and that spot doesn't get sun any more. So for a few years, we haven't had a garden. Last year, Zak really wanted a garden, and we never had time to worry about it because we were redoing the house. So this year, we decided to give it a try.

We have a spot at the back of our yard that is sectioned off with railroad ties, that we think may have been a garden at one time, but since we have lived here it has just been grass. We also have a problem that our backyard slopes off, and so any watering that we do just runs off to the neighbors yard. We haven't known what to do. But we think that we have the problem solved.

Brian tilled the area. I now think that we should have cut the sod out first, but instead we just tilled it all in. The ground was SO tough, that this small section took about 3 hours for Brian to till. We found that it actually helped to break up the ground by the shovel full to help the tiller break down into the dirt. It took quite a while, but everyone helped.

And the boys "raked."

We got a load of compost and tilled it in as well as removing grass roots through a screen. I wish we had had time to do a better job of this. Hopefully the roots will just break down, and not grow grass.

Then we planted. We planted green onions, onions, carrots, beans, cantaloupe, tomatoes, potatoes, basil, green peppers, and still plan on putting in broccoli, garlic and cilantro.

For Zak's birthday last fall, Grammy and Gramps gave Zak garden tools, seeds, and a sign for his garden. He was ecstatic to get to use them all. And he even planted his sign!

Hopefully the garden will be productive and we can manage keeping it alive. I'm sure there will be more pictures to come.