Entry for March 09, 2008

"Yaritai koto ga ippai!"

(There are) so many things I want to do!

I'd like to have a garden this year. There's a bit of space in my yard that has no lawn. The landscaping guy said that he didn't want to plant lawn there because it was too shady (from the house nextdoor and our house), so we left it bare. We plan on building a shed for the lawn chairs and gardening tools eventually, but there's still space left over, so I was thinking of planting something.

I'd like to have

parsley
cilantro
basil
rosemary
thyme
spearmint
jalapeno (don't know how to make the squiggle over the n)
zuccinni (courgettes to my British friends)
Roma tomatos

Most of these things are only occasionally found in supermarkets, so they will be nice to have around, and except for the jalapeno and tomatos, seem to be pretty easy to grow...provided you have enough sunlight. That's the catch. I'm growing things in an area that a gardening professional decided against planting lawn. Maybe I'll pretend I'm an apartment dweller again and plant everything in flowerpots...

In other news, the Pumpkin Palace now boasts an electric trash composter. You put in food scraps and it dries and processes them into compost. We just turned it on last night and put in some coffee grounds and vegetable scraps this morning. You're supposed to put in only a little bit at first, and eventually you can put in up to 1 kilo (or 2 pounds for my American friends) of food scraps a day. In a month or so, we should have our own organic fertilizer to mix in our flowerpots or garden. The noise level is pretty low, and the odor is rather like opening a new bag of compost you bought at a gardening store, you notice it but it's not that big a deal. We'll see how it does.

And now, the most important news of all. We have told my parents but not the in-laws, so please don't say anything to them before they hear from us ;)

The Pumpkin Princess will be a big sister sometime in late October or early November. It's a bit early to be telling people, but I usually end up telling people early because of the nature of my work, and it seems strange for the people at work to know but not my friends and family, so I just go ahead and tell everyone. Right now, I only get queasy when my stomach gets empty. I nibble on stuff when that happens, so I'm starting to gain weight when most moms lose their appetite and either lose weight or stay the same. I'm using up my weight gain quota too early...