Sharon Edwards

Spring Activities

We have been fairly busy this past week or so. We have planned gardens and dreamed of chickens, worked in the yard and had many trips to Lowe’s and several nurseries. We have also had a lot of running and playing ball and just outside time since it has finally warmed up. It is nice to have lots of visits from grandkids and sons and daughters. Nice to spend time on the front porch talking and watching the kids play – this is one of my favorite things to do when it is not cold. They all have so much fun playing together.

We got some dirt delivered last week for our gardens. We are changing things around a little and Jonathan (SIL) is building us a few new raised gardens and also putting a fence around them with a covering. We are tired of the deer and squirrels eating everything we plant. We are really excited to get this done. We have talked about it for a few years and now we are actually doing it. I can’t wait to get everything planted. Tess is as excited as I am – she loves gardening and is constantly out taking care of our plants. I just hope we end up with a few vegetables we can eat.

We also had a tree cut down and the kids spent an hour or more watching – first from the deck and then from the family room window when the smaller branches were done and they started to drop the tree.

We have been to Liam’s baseball games, had ice cream with the grandkids on the porch and read and read. We are now reading The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright. We like it so much we are reading it for probably the third time. Since it is almost done we know we are reading Then There Were Five by the same author next. This is probably our favorite of the series. They are great books. We actually did not enjoy the first book in the series – The Saturdays. We just could not get into that book, but I’m glad we kept reading the series as it got better and better. We are planning to read and read this summer. School will be out soon and we begin testing this Saturday. Everyone is always glad when testing is over and we officially start summer vacation. Only a few more weeks.

What We Are Reading

We finished The Secret Garden, which is one of our favorite books to read in the spring as we plan a garden and buy flower seeds. We read it almost every spring which might seem like overkill to some, but we love it and it never gets old to us.

We are now reading The Trolley Car Family by Eleanor Clymer. We really like this book. It is about the Parker family – mom, dad, and four children. Mr. Parker loses his job driving a trolley car and they can no longer afford to live in their house. The trolley car company does give Mr. Parker a trolley car when they let him go and the Parkers have this idea of taking the trolley car out to the country and living in it while dad looks for a new job. The kids think it’s a wonderful idea and are so excited to get started.

Their grumpy neighbor ends up going with them to help get the car moved – with the help of his horse and one borrowed horse. He also decides to take a vacation and stay a while. The Parker family turns the trolley into a home with a place to sleep and eat and even a place to sit and visit with each other. They get chickens, and a cow, a kitten and start a garden. They meet a wonderful family that lives nearby who helps with milk and eggs and canning until the Parkers get their place going.

My girls really like this book and so do I. They love the adventure of moving out to the county and getting animals and learning to garden and making jam from the berries they pick. It was also another good book to read in the spring as we try to get our garden started. This also makes my girls want chickens even more – they have talked about chickens for a couple of years.

I’m just posting a few pictures from the past week. We have had grandkids over, gone to Liam’s ballgames, worked in the garden and bought a few plants.

Oh, and I forgot that Evelyn and Aria finally got around to washing the doll clothes that were given to us by our neighbor. They had already gone through them and divided them and planned to wash them outside on a nice day. They ended up doing it in the kitchen floor on Sunday afternoon as it was a little cool to do it outside.