Sunday, May 20, 2018

A garden story

We moved to Orem in 2011. In our rental, there was a beautiful garden! Everything was all ready to go, so we took advantage of it!
It was so much fun! And we got lots out of it!

These pictures are from our first harvest. During our 2nd year living there, we decided to plant turnips, just to see if they would grow. They, in fact, did grow. We were so happy with our turnips! Then Chris tried to make turnip soup. It was awful. After the first bite, we both decided that turnips were definitely not something we would try ever again.
So, in our minds, this gardening thing was no big deal! If you just plant things and water them, they grow, and then you harvest and eat and it's fabulous!
Then we moved to Idaho Falls, and were very sad to find that our yard had a lot of shade during the day, making it difficult to plant a garden. I tried doing a window sill garden for my herbs. It didn't work that well. But then, the city of Idaho Falls came to our door and said that we needed to have our apple trees trimmed in order to make way for the power line. I asked them to trim really far, because I hated that apple tree. I'm not sure if it was one apple tree or two, but at any rate, it had two trunks and looked terrible. They asked if they should remove it. So, low and behold, part of our yard now gets sun!!


Chris took a day off of school to make us a garden.
And Chris and his helpers made this:
And then we started planting! We thought that it would be fabulous like our last garden in Orem. However, we had a water problem last year. This happened basically because we have no experience in actually making a garden, and my parents were on their mission in Cincinnati, so they couldn't help. Thus, we were on our own!

However, the "expert" has helped (A TON!!) and, after I worked for about 7 hours this past weekend, along with some boys down the street (because of this) and now our garden now looks like this:
I never thought I would be so excited about dirt! Yay! So my dad will come help with our finishing touches next week, and we will plant! Davis is very excited and really really wants to plant cherry tomatoes, because he thinks it's so fun to eat them off the vine! I can't disagree with that!
Anyway, I have learned that, although gardening is hard an tiring, it is a lot of fun, especially when you have kids to do it with you. I also think it's a wonderful thing to teach kids how to do! We're excited for our harvest!








Shoulders

Chris called me from school one day, right after noon. This wasn't a strange occurrence; he does that every now and then. But this phone call was, well, special.
Chris: Hi, babe. How are you.
Me: I'm fine. How are you?
Chris: Actually, I'm in a lot of pain. I'm pretty sure I just dislocated my shoulder, and I'm going to the hospital.
Me: So . . . would you like me to be there?
Chris: Yes please
So, I called my parents' house. My dad said that dislocated shoulders are very very painful, which I can imagine.  I got ahold of my mom, and she came to get my kids and take them to her house while I went to the hospital. (It's so nice to live by them!!!)
At the hospital, he was in a lot of pain. It took a lot to X-ray his shoulder. They concluded that it was, in fact, dislocated and needed to be put back together. They gave him some medicine to knock him out, and three doctors put his shoulder back together. Hearing the POP was gut-wrenching!
We went to the doctor, who I actually know from Junior High, a week later. We were under the impression that he would say that everything was fine, and nothing more would need to happen. After an X-ray, MRI, and CT scan, we found out that surgery was necessary. The day before surgery was actually our anniversary, so we grabbed a babysitter and went to dinner and a movie.

The next day was Chris's surgery, which was a pretty long day:

We've learned that you actually use your shoulder a lot! (Not that it was new information to us)
There's a lot you can't do when you don't have full use of both arms. For example:
  • Shave your face
  • Do the dishes
  • Empty the trash
  • Help in the garden
  • Clean the house
  • There's a myriad of other things that just don't work . . . but he's getting a lot better! Once again, physical therapy is fabulous and intriguing to see the help they give his shoulder!