sunflower pumpkins

last weekend when we were working on the garden, we made a trip to home depot because we needed some dirt and grass seed.   while we were there, we decided to look at the different seed packets that they had.  well just like with tomato plants, we are a little late with the whole planting process.  the only seeds we could find were on clearance so we pretty much just had to take whatever they had.  some of the seeds we ended up with were sunflower and pumpkin seeds.  

i felt like there was no way we could get sunflowers to grow this late in the "season".  we planted them in some extra pots we had to go ahead and get them to start growing.  we also did this with the pumpkin seeds.  while planting the pumpkin seeds, i just happened to read the package.  the pumpkins are "prize pumpkin" size.  they are expected to grow one hundred pounds and be seventy inches or more.  we might win the county fair!

the seeds were planted last saturday.  we took pictures so we could see the progress of our little sunflowers and pumpkins.  when i got home form mobile today, i took a peek at them to see if they had grown any.  to my surprise they had.  as of two days ago, there were no spouts and today we had about 8 pumpkin plants growing and about  5 sunflowers.  someone must have a green thumb.

pictures are from day 1 and day 6.  today the sprouts got transplanted in the garden.

let's zumba

so as most of you know, i became a zumba aficionado while in hot springs.  i became obsessive and would zumba for about two hours a day.  since i have stopped "zumba"ing, i have put on some major poundage.  no exaggeration.  (you know you are fat when your fat clothes don't fit).  so in my search for gyms in the greater jackson, mississippi area, i looked into which gyms offered zumba.  monday morning i became a member of the ymca of northeast jackson.  this ymca is just about two months old.  it is a smaller branch, has a pool and is right next door to our grocery store!  the first two days, i just did a very uneventful workout on the elliptical and the treadmill.  

on wednesday, they offer a zumba class at 8:30 in the morning.  i had no idea what to expect.  there were about 9 people in my class.  most were middle aged.  i was the youngest and the oldest far surpassed any of the zumba "gold" ladies that were in my geriatrics class in hot springs.  so once again i had to hold in my giggles from watching some of the ladies do the "hula hoop".

my instructor was the complete opposite of my instructor in hot springs.  in hot springs, my instructor was curvy but had an awesome figure and was really energetic.  seeing her everyday made you want to come and work out even more.  my new instructor in jackson is a 6 foot, 140 pound indian guy.  i thought "this should be interesting".  one of the main things in zumba is to really use your hips and i just couldn't picture him shaking his nonexistent hips.  after class started, it took me about 10 minutes to control my laughter.  my instructor would count steps (in an indian voice) "1,2,3   5,6,7".  not only in this class do you have to know that there is no "4" in his counting, you also need to know that when he says "one more time" that's really not the case.  he should say "a few more times, ladies".  

all in all, it was an experience. i will continue going twice a week to the class that they offer in the afternoon.  it is definitely not as fast as the one in hot springs.  but it is brand new here and i think once people get the hang of it, it will become a little bit more lively.

squirrel wars

this past christmas we got a bird feeder with some black oil sunflower seeds.  we hung it from the corner of the house in hot springs.  within a day, all the birds west of the mississippi had found it. at any given time we had 20 birds on the feeder.  every once in a while we would get a squirrel but they soom realized it was easier to sit on the deck and just wait for all the seeds the birds dropped.  

when we moved to jackson, not only did we have a horrendous flea problem but the mosquitos were extremely bad too.  well, that's what dr. said.  for some reason the fleas and the mosquitos did not care about me but we insistent on making dr.'s life miserable.

we were talking to our neighbor one day about about the mosquito problem.  she said whenever she goes outside with her little girl she has to fog the backyard because it is so bad.  she said she had talked to someone else a block away that was having the same problem with the bugs.  they had talked about getting bat houses so that the bats would take care of all the mosquitos.

needless to say after that conversation, i forced dr. to go to ace hardware (supporting our neighborhood stores!) and help me pick out a bird feeder and black oil sunflower seeds.  i figured if i could get birds in our yard, then maybe they would eat the mosquitos on the way to dinner at the bird feeder.  i would try anything!  i am not going to have a bat house as a next door neighbor.  no way!

well, i filled up the bird feeder once and all the sunflower seeds are gone. unfortunately it is not the birds that have eaten them.  i have brought all the squirrels into our yard.  at first i would sit on the deck and throw acorns at them.  then i moved onto ice cubes.  it was fun sneaking up on the squirrels and pelting them with ice cubes.  don't worry i have such bad aim that all my ice cubes hit the deck or grill and just scared the shenanigans out of them.  dr. kept saying i needed some kind of tin thing so the squirrels won't get to the bird feeder .   i didn't know he just meant the tin prevented them from getting up the pole because the tin is slippery.  i thought he meant that they were scared of the shininess.  they jump over to the tree by a fence.  so i went outside and wrapped the fence with aluminum foil.  i know my neighbors were watching, too, because i am sure they could hear ice cubes bouncing off the metal grill.

dr. just laughed at me and wondered what our neighbors thought of us.  it took about 6 hours for the squirrels to tear off the aluminum foil from the wood fence.  they did, however, stop coming around so much and that gave the birds time to eat some of the seed.

(you can see the fence to the right of the picture... unfortunately this is after they tore the foil off so you won't be privildged to see my aluminum foil covered fence)

babbling brook

our house is up on a hill. (  i actually think it might be the highest point on the street.  ) the front yard is up on a hill but the back yard is all downhill from there.  there is a steady slope towards the edge of our property.  we thought this would be perfect because all rain would go to the yard behind us which is a good bit lower than ours.  but, some genius decided that our yard needed a cement wall along the back of it.  so every time it rains, we have an olympic size swimming pool in the back. 

we were worried that all our veggies would get washed down hill whenever we had rain (now i guess i would say.... IF we ever get rain again.) so while preparing our oversized veggie garden, dr. dug a trench from one of our gutters out to the edge of our garden.  right now it is just a trench but once we have a little more time to work out there the hope is that the trench will become a little rock  stream (with no water) going through our garden.

although it looks puny, dr. worked hard in the 96 degree weather trying to dig through all the roots. this is only the beginning.  people will be coming from yards away to veiw the rock stream we have in our garden.

green grass

the people that lived in our house before us had a big black dog and a small white dog.  the yard was absolutely torn up.  from the back deck you had one trail going out to each corner of the yard.  it is probably safe to say it was one of the worst kept yards i had ever seen.  the idea of ever getting grass to grow in the backyard was just not realistic.  so getting grass to grow in the back yard was our first step in the makeover process.

i decided that the flower beds in the front yard needed to be rounded out and made a little bit bigger.  while i was fixing the flower beds in the front, all the grass i dug up, i transplanted into the backyard with hope that it would grow.  i was not optimistic that any of it would take.

on top of the transplanted grass, dr. decided to plant some grass seed that would fill in the bare spots in the corners.  we are actually extremely surprised at the amount of grass seed that has grown and how much of the transplanted grass did not die.  the yard actually looks fantastic compared to what it looked like when we moved in.  people seeing it for the first time might think it looks horrible but if you ask those who saw the bare spots and tracks in the yard, they can tell you it looks a million times better.  i am posting one before picture (the one that you can see part of our yellow back house in ) and two after pictures from two different angles (the one from the deck with the umbrella in the way and one with just grass and our little sprinkler in the bottom corner).

new friends

so as of tuesday we will have lived in jackson for 2 months.  we have been working hard on the house and in the yard so it would be "liveable" by the time dr. started work.  now that he is working 78 hours a week there is little time for him to do anything around the house.  since we have been here, we have gone out a couple of times with others from the emergency medicine department.  i was so excited to finally meet so people (girls) and make new friends.  the first time we went out, we went to what turns out to be a very popular bar.  we some how ended up at a table with about 15 law students and three guys from dr.'s department and mimi from nuerology.  mimi was great and so much fun.... except she is a doctor.  so if i will never see my husband than i am never going to see her.  sweet but will never see her.  then we went to a get together for all the people in dr.'s "class".  i was so excited to meet the wives because their husbands would be living at the hospital too and they wouldn't know anyone in jackson either.  unfortunately, it turns out that dr.'s whole "class" is girls.  it's me, the one wife, and then all the husbands.

so on the friend front i was not doing too well.  then we went out to a party on the fourth of july.  it was for the class above dr.'s but there were actually other females there.  well, two, and one was a doctor.  but it turns out the other wife at the party actually went to sewanee.  she was a year younger than i was.  we didn't know each other  but are so thankful we actually have met another person here.  (my next door neighbor said meeting people in jackson, ms is extremely hard).

so now that we have friends, we went out to dinner last night with two couples (one went to med school with dr. and the other is the girl from sewanee).  we went to a delicious restaurant called biaggi's.  it was wonderful italian food.  i had some ravioli dish and dr. had a sausage rigatoni dish.

so yummy!