Woes of a Gardener

One of the guys I work with started a container garden and he told me he bought all his supplies at the Dollar Tree. So I thought, why not? I went to the Dollar Tree during one of my lunch breaks and bought all the pots, seeds, and soil that I would need. I paid about $15 I think. I bought a seed packet that had radish, carrot, cabbage, bean, tomato, cucumber, and romaine lettuce. I found in my garage the little wood container from last year when I tried a "do your own herb kit". Ya lets just say herbs were not so easy for me.

This time I remembered I needed to mark my plants which was one of my herb plant mistakes and caused problems for me. The second thing I did differently is I didn't use the whole packet of seeds. Yup, that's right, didn't know I shouldn't use a whole packet before. I also checked my plants and watered them at least every other day.

I was so excited to move my plants to larger containers. My bean, tomato, and cucumber plants were going cRaZY! They were wrapping around my other plants and I kept having to disconnect them afraid that they were going to choke the other. I bought a trellis and separated my plants.

I noticed that I had so many slugs and caterpillars. I kept killing them but noticed my cabbage plant was being demolished. At one point in time I went to check my plants and saw a wasp grab a lush bright green baby caterpillar and started eating it. There were 2 other caterpillars and I got rid of them and the wasp came back looking for them later. I never thought I would cheer for a wasp!


It was weird because my tomato and cucumber plant kept flowering and flowering and nothing was growing. I finally found on the tomato one little bity tomato starting to grow that was the size of my big thumbs fingernail. However nothing ever came of it. I don't know why I was not getting any production from my plants. 

And then the rains came! It was the first tropical storm of the year and when it left, it left rain after rain after rain. I think my plants just didn't get enough sun and just seemed to get some sort of fungus. 


I was taking so much time and care into them and it didn't matter. I finally gave up. My plants still sit out there looking like a hurricane hit them. The only one that has somehow made it is my romaine lettuce! It is flourishing! 

Micah's Wedding Reception

I had to take picture of my own dad and brother
creating the napkins for the reception!
I was SO impressed

My cousin Micah Ihli got married in Utah. I wish I had gone out to the wedding out there, but just felt like I couldn't go at that time. He did have a wedding reception in Orlando and I took the day off for the reception and the rest of the weekend. It was a lot of work to get ready for that reception, but everything looked beautiful!

I really enjoyed getting to know Micah's new wife Camille. I wish that she they lived near us in St. Augustine. It would be really great to have some people living near us. They actually will be living out in Logan where my sisters are now. They both will be going to school there.

The lights shown here was colored sand and
we connected 4 LED lights to a small battery

It was also great to see my Aunt Corrine Madison. I haven't seen her since my own wedding 4 years ago. She is such a sweetheart. We were all exhausted after working for the reception so on Saturday the day before she flew back home to Oklahoma we decided to just go to Downtown Disney and walk around.

So cute how she decided to have the pictures hung

All those little cups are actually hand made chocolate molds with candy in it

Chocolate/nut covered apple bites in a spoon full of caramel

Cupcakes - love the lace decoration around the cupcake

Raspberry Cheesecake mousse and cake pops

All the food and desserts were home made except for a meat platter - my Aunt Nancy even home made all the bread  and there were multiple types of bread

Food included: bread, fruit trays, meat/cheese trays, garden salad, pasta salad, strawberry spinach salad, potato salad,. Desserts included: banana and chocolate pudding, raspberry cheesecake mousse, caramel/apple bites, peach cake, carrot cake, candy, strawberry cupcakes,  and cake pops.

Not the greatest picture because all of these were taken with my phone, but I don't have any picture of us with Aaron and Nicole's 2 boys - Croix and Levi

Levi excited for FOOD!

Nicole and Aaron's new baby girl Lyla

Memorial Day Weekend

I had Memorial Day off which everyone ended having off at work due to Tropical Storm Beryl. Before we knew about the storm we had made plans for my parents and my sister to come up to visit us for the weekend. They got here Saturday night and I met them for dinner after work at Osaka. Following dinner we went and saw the movie 
Men In Black 3.

Sunday we went to church and it rained off and on all day long. My parents and I drove around Nocatee and went over to Michler's Beach to check out what it looked like there with Beryl really rolling in. The tide was REALLY high and you can't tell by the pictures but the waves were really pretty big and the tide was pretty dangerous looking.

Monday, Memorial Day, Omar had to be at church at like 6 AM to make breakfast for a 7:45 AM flag raising/pancake breakfast for the ward. Omar was in charge of all the food except for the pancake mix. We bought $150 of bananas, bacon, and eggs. Me and my family ended up getting there about 8:30 to everyone sitting in the gym listening to one of the members who served in the services share some services. SO many people showed up. I think it was because everything else got cancelled because of TS Beryl. We waited until the end to eat and that meant that there were no pancakes left. I was glad Omar wasn't in charge of that part because there was plenty of eggs and bacon.

My parents didn't end up staying much longer on Monday because of the storm. They left about noon to try to beat the traffic. It was a quiet Memorial Day