Mama talks plants, instead.

Well it's my day around the house.  Daddy is a bit tired, so he is napping while our son naps.  I got a watch and flowers for the garden.  If you know me, you know I like to try my hand at all sorts of new things.  I am not  a gardener, but like anything else I start by reading up then I jump right in to it.  I love flowers,  I hate paying our hard-earned money for temporary things.  So I am glad to invest time in something that will take a while (years for a garden) to develop, but makes me happy seeing it every day along the way.  So I do perennials.  I search for what will grow in our poor soil, with our winters and dry summers and the light conditions for where it's going near the house.  Next I want it to self-propagate.  I just but one or two of what I like and I hope to split them up and spread them out in a year or two as they grow.  So I expect a lot from my flowers.  (Like everything else, my husband would say.)  The way I see it, I am spending money on it when we get by on much less than anyone else in our neighborhood.  Money that I stretch so thin it's nearly transparent.  Money that could be used for my family.  So I try to be economical with my garden purchases.  And so they make me happy.  I put in iris bulbs last fall and they are doing nicely.  I bought a few tulips but they didn't like our soil.  I also did some end of season sale mums last fall and about half of the came back, which was pretty good.  I got six for four dollars, and I love the way they look.  Plus I can re-seed them if I collect the seed heads, which I'll have to get before the bunnies can.  This year I got marigolds to do like wise.  Six nice plants for $1.88.  They are strictly an annual, but I love them and they reseed easily if you collect the seed heads.  Most everything else were perennials suitable for a rock garden, because our soil is that bad.  I bought a big block of peat and add that in when I plant but that's about it.  I just got a light pink Dianthus, Silver Mound, Basket of Gold (yellow allysum), Moonbeam Coreopsis, Tricolor Sedum, Blue chip campanula, creeping phlox, and a painted daisy (chrysanthemum).  Oh and a Clematis to replace the one DH killed.  I got it last month a Costco with some Lily of the valley rhizomes.  Those are coming in nicely.  Plus my sister gave me five of her Hostas that she wanted to split out.  It sounds like a lot, but still looks pretty bare.  With just buying one of something it will take a while for them to multiply into a large enough quantity to spread everywhere I want.  But I have plants that I love which should be able to survive here.  We had nothing but some small, and yet overgrown, shrubs in the front and a single young tree that the builder put in for the original owners.  Last fall and early spring we put in two dwarf pear trees.  They flower and are compact, but shouldn't cross pollinate.  They were simply trees that were available for $12-14 that would work well where we wanted them.  We did buy top soil for the trees, I doubt they'd do well otherwise.  We don't have any topsoil.  The builder didn't put any down.  We have clay and rock.  Lots of Rock.  Huge rocks.  Everywhere.  Had good luck with dwarf apple and pear trees at the last two houses, though.  From Big Lots, no less.  I also bought two seed packs for later: primrose and fleabane (like a purple daisy).  My son will like helping me start them later this week. So I am excited and have been out in the nice weather a lot lately.  I remember thinking last year that we needed to hurry up and work on the yard/gardens before the baby came.  Now our wait has extended to approaching three years.  It was supposed to be 10-11 mos.  I can't seem to "just-stop-thinking-about-it" like my sister tells me.  I want it to be NOW so badly.  We talked about our options, but we really don't have any.  We borrowed to finance this adoption and have committed to this child from China.  I feel like I would like to have three, but my husband thinks two is the perfect number.  Especially if we are lucky enough to have one of each.  Our son's food allergy takes more time and consideration than anyone who doesn't live it can imagine.  And we know our next child may have issues from starting life in an orphanage.  More time.  If we were sure of three, we couldn't commit to yet another child before we know the needs of the second.  We couldn't afford another international adoption.  I think we could do domestic through the Foster System if we knew the child were not going back to the bio parent.  Neither on of us is comfortable 'selling ourselves' to prospective birth parents and we want our son to be able to be the oldest (keep birth order).  Did I mention that we are not well off?  My dear husband is a teacher; he has shi##y health insurance.  DH needs to start saving for retirement, and we need to pay off the student loans and this adoption.  So not a good time to think about more kids.  Apparently it is time to WAIT for kid #2.  I can't stand it.  We've been waiting more than a year already.  So I have been keeping busy, more than the usual, frenetically busy, to keep my mind off the wait.  I love my son so much.  He has the usual pre-school temperament with full-time stubbornness and occasional tantrums.  But he is such a wonder.  I could never have imagined.  I feel like I spoil him because I know these moments are gone so quickly.  I want to take him to the zoo, buy the family membership to the museum, go swimming or to playgroup instead of clean the house- all because I can see how fast he is growing up.  So I do spoil him.  He does have discipline, but he gets more one-on-one attention and does more kid things than most.  We have been seeing baby goats, swimming, doing toddler soccer class, running through the sprinkler, playing in the sandbox, gardening.  You name it.  Busy, busy, busy.  Making every moment count because I want us to enjoy this precious time.  Happy Mother's Day!