Gardening... if that's what you want to call it

**While writing this post I realized I have a tendency to start sentences with the word "so," so I had to make a very conscious effort to not do it with this one, well I actually did but then I went back and edited the first sentence a long with many others throughout this post so they wouldn't all say "so..." I'll add a "*" wherever I took out a "so."
*When Steve and I moved into this house a couple months ago we were really excited because it was spring and our backyard has a garden! How wonderful!! So one day we had some time off together and headed to Home Depot. After some calls to consult my mom about seed brands and what tomato breeds are best and talking with the nice lady in the garden department, one hundred dollars later we came out of there with a whole bunch of seed packs, a shovel, a hummingbird feeder, some manure, and a couple of those peat pellet trays so we could start our seeds indoors. *After another week or two we finally started our seeds indoors and they grew! They all grew quite nicely except for the peas, only a couple of those worked. *A few weeks later we decided we would finally stop procrastinating and when we had an evening together we went outside and planted all of our little plants with their peat pellets. We planted about 32 tomatoes (4 different types) and about 8 plants of everything else: peas, green beans, 2 types of onions, 3 different types of peppers, and I can't really remember what else. A couple of days later something dug up and ate all of our little onions, the peppers, and the peas too, so I replanted the peas and Steve replanted the peppers. The peas all grew again and once again something ate off all the leaves and then they kinda just shriveled up and died. So did everything else. What we have remaining in our garden is a green bean plant, a pumpkin, and two random plants I think are maybe green beans too, not sure yet. Everything else died or got eaten! Sad. Today I went out into my depressing little garden to take pictures to prove the sadness of the whole thing. I guess we will still be getting our produce from the grocery store, and my green thumb will just work indoors for houseplants I guess.
This first picture was peppers at the bottom of the picture and then tomatoes at the top, all along the little wall.
This second picture is the two random plants that I can't tell what they are yet, but I think we planted them... Green beans??
This third picture was three different types of bell peppers at the bottom, then two rows of onions, then the peas were at the bottom of the green netting. On the other side of the netting was green beans and then pumpkins, we have one of each of those alive still.
Our one surviving green bean plant. We got really excited one day because it had blossoms on it and we were excited to have some actual results from the garden; the next day we went to check on it again and something ate the flowers... :(
Our little pumpkin plant, it hasn't grown very much, but it hasn't died either!! The pumpkin is those little ornamental ones, I think we got white ones, but I can't remember.

Voting (Steve)

So this is my first time blogging, and I normally wouldn't have felt the motivation to do so but I feel I need to vent this particular frustration of mine into a public forum. Voting.

My first memory of actual voting was MTV's "Rock the Vote," a public debauchery that encouraged our nations youth to "just get out there and vote." At the time I didn't find this distasteful, but then again back then I wore jeans about four sizes too big for me sliced up the seams and frayed up to my calves. I also dyed my hair orange and red with kool-aide and threw myself into mosh-pits. Good times. Looking back on that experience though, for the life of me, I can't remember one time when MTV encouraged our youth to familiarize themselves with any other topic except for the environment. Not once did they say "Just get out there, educate yourselves in basic economics (don't worry, math only hurts the first time you use it) learn a little history, at least make sure you can find Europe on a map (you'll need a world map), and then go Rock that Vote!" Instead, what was at the time one of the greatest youth icons of the time let loose an army of the ignorant upon the American political system. At least Pearl Jam had the decency to decline participation on account of unbiased voting suggestions.

Why is that we encourage people to vote? Shouldn't the preservation of their liberty and the continuance of prosperity be enough to motivate people to submit their opinion about who should lead us? Do we really want people to "just vote?"

In my opinion, if man or woman is not inspired enough by the fact that they have the opportunity to contribute to the political process and to protect their interests by voting then they do not deserve our, or our governments, attention. These voting drives I see, geographically selected to isolate and target certain demographics, sicken me. If a citizen in the 1700's and 1800's could face musket and canon fire, and if those African Americans of the 1960's could face lynch mob's in order to participate in self governance, then a modern citizen should be expected to overcome his or her own apathy in order to educate themselves and get out there and not only vote, but to do so intelligently.

So, the next time someone knocks on your door to ask you if you would like to register to vote, if you don't feel you can do your country the service of detaining him/her until after November, at least inform them in the rudest possible manner about what they are doing to this nation. Rock that MTV.

Roots and Family

[picture by heather, it is beautiful and I think her caption on it on her myspace kind of inspired this blog]

So as I was working on my little sidebar over there where I told a little bit about me and Steve and made me think about having roots. Since I am an army brat I don't really feel like I have roots anywhere. I guess I kind of have some in Southern Illinois, that's where my parents live, and I lived there for four years, but do I really have roots there? A lot of my moms family is in Pope County, and our property is old family land, we have a cemetery there that has my ancestors buried in it, so that is pretty cool. I think I've decided that I have ties to that land, it will always be special to me, and so far that is the closest to roots that I have ever had, but I don't really feel like they are my roots, just ties.

[The picture of these daffodils (taken by my dad) is one of those things that makes me miss home, so I added them because they give me that warm feeling of belonging somewhere.]

As Steve and I were walking the other day we were discussing having roots, and Army brat that I am feel almost homeless, so I think we have decided to put down some roots here in Reno. Even though I can't seem to get any plants to grow here (I will have to blog on this subject at a later time), I think I can be successful getting some family roots growing, I mean I am pregnant so that has to count for something right? So anyways, roots, I think I will grow some in Reno and having Steve's family here definitely makes it easier. Having a set of grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-grandparents, and even some of Steve's aunts and uncles and cousins all right here in the same city. It's really nice. I can walk over to my sister-in-laws house when I am bored. Our child will get to see family members on a daily basis, I'm really kinda excited about this!
Granted, I don't want to leave my family out, I wish I could see them every day, I wish that my kid and Leslie's kids would be able to play outside together all the time and that we lived in the same city or maybe even the same street (and from reading your latest blog I think you would enjoy this too), its just not possible. You see my family is spread out all over the U.S. and we don't get too see each other very often. But I guess I should be used to this, that's what it was like growing up, we got to see our cousins at family reunions and stuff, and when we lived in KY/TN we got to see them on some weekends, but we just didn't get to see them all of the time, and that really makes me sad that my kids won't get to see their cousins (on my side) all the time either. But on the bright side, one day (I hope) our kids will have lots of cousins from at least one side of the family that they will get to hang out with all the time.

This picture is one of those pictures that always makes me happy, I love my sisters and miss being close to them]

Let's try this again...

So after talking to my friend Christy today, I have decided I am going to give this whole blog thing another try, and maybe this time I will actually tell people I have a blog. I still don't really get the workings of this site, but I really enjoy reading what's going on in other people's lives and spying on people I am not really in contact with anymore, So here goes... wish me luck!!