Gardens, Babies, and Family

Last week, most of my family (dad stayed home, we can hardly get him to travel anymore) headed to Florida for my Aunt Mary’s funeral.  It was a bittersweet time of seeing family that we don’t often get to see and saying goodbye to our precious Aunt.  She will be missed, but never forgotten and it will be so different not to have her at our family gatherings this year.  This was my mom’s sister-in-law, married to her brother and they were very close.  Mom doesn’t get to Florida all that often anymore, so she really enjoyed getting to see many people that she knew and grew up with too.

We celebrated Mother’s Day with mom (Mark went with me for BBQ at their house and we also saw his mom) and then mom and I drove down to Florida the next day with my brother-in-law.

Lauren and Renee drove from New Orleans, since my sister was down there helping Lauren out after baby Iris was born.  Baby Iris is 4 weeks old now and growing so much already.  She’s a little peanut and so cute.  Looking at her, she reminds me so much of Parker and it is hard to believe Parker was ever this little, but she was.  We got to meet the baby for the first time at the hotel and great grandmother and baby got acquainted for the first time.

Mom and baby Iris, her namesake.  There was eye contact and a few little smiles.  Babies are so sweet with their newborn squeaks, they sound like little kittens.

I didn’t take my big camera, so relied on my iPhone to take these first pics, but I hope to get better ones when Lauren comes up to Georgia in a couple of weeks.  Since she is on maternity leave, she’ll bring both girls up for a visit soon.  Can’t wait for that!  More baby time!

We could just eat her up, the precious thing!  She’s got a headful of dark hair and her daddy’s genes all over again.

Mom, of course loved it!

She is so sweet and precious and we are in love already with baby girl Iris!

I thought y’all might like to see a picture of all my cousins.  This is most of my first cousins on my mom’s side of the family. There are 4 missing, I think.  The siblings are all standing together in pairs, can you tell that we are related?  It was good to see them all and get together for the first time in years.  We don’t often get to spend time together.

From left to right:  Keith and Kendra, Carla and Howard, Renee and I, Brenda and Dennis (who lost their mom), Jan and Jacque.

In garden news with my dad, you may remember just a few short weeks ago, the garden was planted.  You can barely see green shoots popping up on the backside.

And now it looks like this!   These pics were taken Mother’s Day Sunday.

Daddy is so proud of his garden.  This is a row of Irish potatoes, looking strong and healthy. We’ve gotten quite a bit of rain, so it’s growing well.  He runs his tiller down the rows to keep the weeds down and as things spread out he hoes it with a hoe.

This row is squash and zucchini.

Parks Whopper tomatoes on the next row. He’s a proud gardener and he should be.  I don’t know anyone who does it better than he does.

He’s got corn and beans on the far rows, with a few other things in between too.  I’ll keep you all posted on how it all looks and when things start coming in.  We are salivating waiting for the tomatoes to come in at the end of June or first of July.

He planted pole beans on fencing this year.

And his muscadines and scuppernongs are doing well as they always do.  He babies them and cuts them back every winter so they will grow out and produce.

The main thing he does in his garden is to fertilize regularly with 10-10-10 fertilizer and keeps it hoed for weeds and makes sure it gets plenty of water. He and my brother-in-law added composted leaves to the garden over the winter and dad tilled them up in his dirt and he thinks that really made a difference this year too.  He planted Parks Whopper tomatoes because he heard that they are more disease resistant than the other kinds he had been planting, so we will see how they do.

Can’t wait for a Caprese Salad and fresh bruschetta this year!  We dearly love those tomatoes!  I wanted to share my dad’s garden, because I know how much you all love him and my mom.  Thanks as always for reading and stopping by my blog!

 

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