Gardening Season

It's finally here. The time of the year I come out of hibernation and head outside. It's so exciting to inspect the property in early Spring and see what is popping up from the ground, but it's even better when you get to start to put new things into the ground. Memorial Day weekend was spent putting the garden in (minus some time spent yardsaling).

I've been starting my veg from seed the last few years. The first couple of times I ended up with pathetic spindly seedlings with a high casualty rate, but this year almost all of the seedlings were healthy. Although that sounds like great news I was not prepared for such a high survival rate, and being the ever frugal Sprague I could not let them go to waste. Eric came to my rescue making temporary satellite gardens to accommodate the veg overflow.
When the project was completed I consulted the sage (Hubby) and asked him if the updated garden looked Country Chic or White Trash. He said "If we had painted all the tires white it would have looked Country Chic, but we didn't..." 'Nuf said.

We have also been working on the inside of the house. We moved Corie into my sewing room, my sewing room into Zak's room and Zak into Corie's room. Which meant we had to repaint all three rooms. Corie and Zakary got to share a room, so for three weeks Eric and I fell asleep to "Zak, turn that music off and stop singing", "That's mine. Don't touch it", "Turn the light off", "MOM!!! Corie/Zak is ___ (fill in the blank)" . It was alternately funny and annoying depending on how tired we were. We have completed the painting and everyone is in their new room. The colors came out great, but I'm not posting pictures until we get the fine tuning done... That translats into as soon as they clean their rooms :)

Our next indoor project is the living room which will start with a new color for the walls. We have had paint chips taped to our walls for over two months and have finally made a decision... Behr Cloudless is the winner. We liked the blue on the front of our anniversary card and had it color-matched :)

We did take a weekend off to go visiting in New York. We hiked up Vroman's Nose and had a picnic, ate lots of good food (Pat is an excellent cook!!!), did some shopping in Albany, and best of all Eric and I got to relax. Even though it was downright cold in the pond Corie jumped in for a brief swim.

And a sure sign that warm weather is here... Zakary gets shaved.

Hello Emmy. Goodbye Apprenticeship.

Okay, so it's been a while since my last post. Luckily we don't do anything very exciting, so bringing this blog up to date can be accomplished in one posting.

First let me introduce Emmy, and tell you our cat story.

We had decided that Whitney was going to be our last cat, but after weeks of daily crying bouts and depression we decided that I cannot live a full and contented life without a kitty to love. I scoured the local adoption websites and met several of the kitties face to face. We found one at our local Humane Society and filled out the paperwork. We got the house ready, picked out her new name, and waited.... and waited.... and waited for the phone to ring. After 7 days with no word I left a message. We spent the next few days playing phone tag. They needed more info, and I gave more info, and then we waited... and waited... and waited again. I called to inquire on the status of our application and was told by a volunteer that the director was out. My application was on her desk, but she couldn't tell if I was approved or not. I asked about the cat I was trying to adopt and was told that she had been adopted by someone else.

What?!

Can you believe they let someone adopt our cat right out from under us without even giving us a heads up?! Although I was furious I had to be nice because they had what I wanted and needed... they had cats! So I asked about another cat that we met there and really liked, and could I get dibs on him? She said that most of the cats had been adopted at the Adoptathon in progress at Petsmart. They were having same day adoptions all weekend, and most of their cats had been brought there. So here we were waiting for three weeks to get approved and they were handing cats out willy nilly at that very moment! Ugh!!! It was to late to head to Petsmart that day, but we were there when they opened the next morning. There were a lot of kittens available but only a few cats. Eric made a beeline to the fattest cat they had... Emmy. The representative from the shelter (North Country Animal League) told us that Emmy had been at the shelter for 4 years. We immediately filled out an adoption application, our references were checked and in less that 20 minutes we were approved. I guess the stress of the past month had worn me down because as soon as she gave us the thumbs up I burst into tears. Right in the middle of Petsmart I started sobbing, and I don't mean those dainty tears that we see on television. I mean those loud gasping sobs that make everyone turn around and get embarrassed for you. When I tried to explain to the woman about Whitney she started crying also, and then we both started laughing (but continued to cry at the same time). She said we were the "feel good adoption of the weekend".

Our other great news is that Eric completed his courses and graduated at the top of his class. Soon he will be taking the the state test which will propel him from Apprentice Plumber to Journeyman Plumber. Here's a picture of us at the graduation ceremony. Zakary was very proud of his dad, but was not happy about having to wear "fancy clothes".