Babies and children everywhere, but I still don't want one (yet)

No lie, it's hard not to think of babies in my family right now. My sister just had her first little nugget a couple of weeks ago and my sister-in-law had her second little nugget two weeks prior. In the past month, two good friends announced they're pregnant. Also, given that the hubs and I spent time with family this weekend to welcome my nephew, the questions related to when I'm going to have my own little ones have come up. These also prompt me to remember past comments like "you would want to have kids soon, while you will have energy to enjoy them" and "you know, you said that about a year after you were married you would start trying to agave kids." This latter comment, I don't remember saying. 

Some times the "pressure" to start trying to have children gets annoying. I realize my parents and in-laws really want to have little grand babies around that they could spoil (since a grand puppy doesn't seem to fit the bill). My mom used to remind me that by the time she was my age she already had my siblings and me. Sometimes the "pressure" is internal; I am in my early 30's, and I don't want to be too old when I have my own. However, I am still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. I'm still in flux. Between the current job and trying to prepare myself for a career transition, I doubt trying to bring a child into the craziness that is my life now would be a wise choice. But there have been plenty of people who have also been apted to remind me that as you get older it would harder to have the children. 

With all of this in mind, I could not have been any happier to have just finished Jean Twenge's article "How long can you wait to have a baby." (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-long-can-you-wait-to-have-a-baby/309374/?single_page=true) The things I got out of her article were 1) the information behind the "it gets harder to have a baby as you get older" is based on pre-20th century data and while it is true, it's not as severe as society would have you believe, and 2) when it comes to actually trying to conceive, the traditional family planning method will be the way to go since statistically there is no difference between women in their 20's and women in their 30's. Her biggest piece of advice is to "plan to have your last child by the time you turn 40". That is advice I would have no trouble listening to. 

There is no doubt that I want children, probably 2-3, but I know I'm not ready for them. I may be in my (early) 30's, but I'm still selfish. Perhaps I'll be ready in a couple of years, when my life is not in as much flux as it is now. Until then, my furry baby is all the child I need. 

     Puck, my furry baby, patiently waiting for a ball

Macro view of the garden

Tomato flower

Late in 2012, Aaron wanted to up-grade our camera equipment to the fancier  professional versions of the entry level DSLRs that we had. With the camera change, a change in the lenses also was in order. One lens that I have been eying for a while was a macro lens - which if you are a Nikon shooter, it's brand of macro lenes are labelled "micro." My wonderful husband spoiled me with getting one of these lenes. However, due to teaching, taking graduate school-level classes, races, and gardening, I haven't really had a chance to play with the new toy camera, much less with the fun our new lenses. That is until last night. With no grading or any other pressing paper work hanging over my head, I thought it was just as good as any to take a few shots. Since I've been blogging about the garden, I figured the plants would be the perfect test subjects. 

Young tomato

The tomato plants were among the first subjects. Not only did I get some shots of the flowers, it allowed me to be able to carefully inspect the plants for signs of fruits. The past few days weeks had me annoyed with the lack of tomato fruits. There had been plenty of flowers but not fruits. I thought that there could be a lack of pollinators, though I'm not outside very much to verify. I thought this was equally annoying since I had assumed that tomatoes were not picky when it comes to fruiting (I think I need to do more research about this). While shooting a flower on one of my store bought plants, I noticed a tiny little fruit!! I'm hoping that there will be a few more fruits that will begin to show up, and that I do not have to "replace" the pollinators in my yard.

Zucchini bud

This past weekend, I saw bright yellow flowers from my squash plants. I hope that I'll see it a bit more opened up to take some cool shots of it as well.

The corn, which were started from seed, have been growing nicely. One fun thing about the corn plants is the swirl pattern in the middle of their stocks where the new corn growth emerges. It looks like a green vortex.

Looking into the corn stalk

The couple of pictures below are from one of the hostas across the drive way from the vegetable garden. I thought it would be fun to play with Lightroom and see what effects I can apply to the photo, although I had not installed the program on to my computer until last night. Quick note, most of the pictures in this post were cropped and had the exposure adjusted on them to make sure they were not too dark. After playing with the tone, saturation, and vibrance of the photo (and cropping too) the shot on the right is what came out. Not too shabby (imho).

With school out and my main objectives being working on the garden, finishing my course work towards my teaching license, and working out a lot, I'm hoping that I'll have more time to pay around with the camera.  

Mission Creep... Garden Style

Garden at the beginning of May

Garden with all three beds as of last week

My goal for 2013 was to have a few garden beds in the part my yard between the driveway and my neighbor's property. The plan for the garden this year was to have three beds with corn, green beans, squash, and herbs. By the beginning of May, I had one bed with a handful of plants - mostly tomatos and pepper plants. I thought I was making good progress, but  another two weeks passed by before I was able to complete the latter two beds. Unlike the first bed that contains store bought plants, the second and third beds contain plants that were started from seed. The second bed contains squash plants that were started a few weeks earlier and some green beans from seed. The third bed contains corn and green beans. My parents have already threatened to steal corn and green beans from my garden. (Grrr...) In the first bed, I added some more tomato plants and a couple of basil plants. So the initial garden plan has been completed and I just have to tend the garden as the plants grow.

Starting seeds, part 2

I will not lie that the size of my garden has expanded beyond my initial plan. Part of this was due to the sad fact that the first set of seeds I started in late March/early April were no good to plant out because they had received too much light. The epicotyls of each of the seedlings were much too long and did not look healthy. This is part of the reason why I had bought plants for the first bed. That and I was impatient in having a fuller plant in the garden/  A few weeks before building the two latter beds, I had started some plants to plant in those beds. The result of the second try were a good number of seedlings; more seedlings that I had space to plant out, which left me with the problem of what to do with the extra seedlings.


The other reason why my garden plan expanded was the unplanned removal of the azalea bushes (wall) in front of our house. When we moved into the house I thought that they looked pretty, but after the blooms finished I didn't really like the way they looked. Also, the bushes were overgrown and I didn't want to work that much on them to trim them back and train them. So after talking with a coworker who offered to take them off my hands, the azaleas were gone. That left all of the bare spots in our yard to figure out what we were going to do.

Front walk way before and after

Beets, radishes, lettuce, and herb

Since I had extra seedlings, I figured, why not plant them in the front of the house. As Aaron would remind me, this decision was a classic case of mission creep. And the mission creep did not end there as I had also started a bunch of container gardens full of veggies and herbs too.

I'm really hoping to get some tasty produce out of my suburban experiment.