April Concerts

 Elena's orchestra earned a #1 rating at State!!  WOOT!  WOOT!

I was super sad that I didn't make it to Elena and Isabel's concerts because I was working.  This is a major downside of working. (Money is the upside. 😉)

They really loved their orchestra teacher.  He was great!!!

Braum's with friends after the concert.

I do have Sebastian's end of the year band concert though.  Enjoy!

A Feb to Aug Overview of My Gardens

One of the perks of being a year or two behind on my blog is that now I can go through the whole spring and summer of my two favorite gardens all at once, to show all the changes.  😊😊😊 I really love gardening and this is the first house that I've been able to have a full blown vegetable garden, and I had prepped it and bought soil and everything before we decided to move, so I decided to plant it despite not being there the whole summer.  But this is my front flower bed.  I planted a few zinnias in it, but mostly I had planted bulbs the fall before, when I didn't know we'd be moving yet. 

And my crocuses came up!!!  I love crocuses!!

I also had Elena (or Isabel?) plant these after finding some half dead plants at Walmart on clearance the year before.  And lo and behold, they came up again!!! Yay!  This was by the tree. 

Crocuses and the start of the tulips coming up. Spring in Wichita is its BEST season.  There's tulips for weeks. 

And my first early blooming purple tulips. 

Aww.  I went with purples and reds because I love red, and to match our door. 

Tulips are pretty in every color. 

And then the late blooming red tulips came out and I LOVED my garden here.  It was gorgeous!

And then the irises bloomed that had been there since we moved in.

And the allium I planted (more purple!) started blooming with the irises.  🥰🥰

And even better, the half dead hellebores I bought on clearance at Lowe's came back too!  🥹🥹🥹 (happy tears of JOY!)

And a bleeding heart I had planted the year before as well. 

I planted some purple petunias in my planter and a gorgeous fern by the door, because it gets no sun there.

'

Awww a bee on my bee balm!!  I also had a bee habitat bird house type thing in this flower bed and it had insects living in it.  🥰🥰🥰  I love bees.

And then the liatris I planted came up, and I added some red coleus I had grown from seed under lights.  

It's really hard to get the full effect here.  But it still looked pretty.

And the zinnias I planted started blooming, but sadly one that was supposed to be red looked completely orange. So I ripped those out.  And the purple ones looked more pink.  But they flowered well, so I kept those in. 

I let the little kids plant Mongolian Giant Sunflowers. 

This is how they looked just before we moved. 

I had started a few flowers in here, but mostly they were vegetables. 

I accidentally killed most of these though, because I didn't harden them off and they fried in the sun.  So sad!!

My garden starting to grow.  I bought a few tomato plants to replace the ones I fried. In the round circle thing, I planted herbs.  

YAY!! It grew!!!  I had my doubts.  The carrots I planted actually never grew, but everything else did. 

And then it grew A TON!!!

Cantaloupe deliciousness. 

Butternut squash.

WAY TOO many zucchini.

All the vegetable here were from our garden.

I was picking about this amount every 4-5 days.  I harassed people at church, work, and all our neighbors by giving them zucchini and squashes.  The kids ate the cucumbers, green beans, and tomatoes no problem.

So true.

Leo took these pictures after we had moved but he had to go get mail from a neighbor.  The heat in August just killed everything. I had planned on ripping everything out in August and planting a fall garden.  But alas, it was not to be. 

Our neighbors though had watered and picked from it for weeks after we moved.  They loved it!

Columbine I had planted the year before.

And my beautiful David Austin rose.  I don't know why I have such trouble with roses, but they looked fabulous in the spring but by the beginning of summer they looked awful.  So sad. And yet, I'll probably keep planting them everywhere I go. 

Basically All of April 2023

 

Isabel and all her track stats.  This was when I had to start taking her to physical therapy because she's hyper-flexible. The physical therapist thought it was due to pulling her gluteus medias or minimas (I forgot which, but it was an underneath muscle).  Anyway, he was having a hard time telling her how to stretch it out because she was too flexible for any of the stretches to work.  She was so mad because she was doing fabulous in track but then ended up crying through her races because her hip hurt so bad.  

I braided and beaded her hair for her. 

Sebas flint knapping. 

The boys started watching a fútbol game in español to practice Spanish.

Pretty running day. 

Pretty driving day.

Jubal got this note from a girl in her class.

We tried to start teaching the kids Spanish.  This did not work. 

😂😂😂

Yep, more sunsets. 

Nicolas's contraception he made.  Pretty amazing.

And Jubal on the piano.