Winter Garden, etc

jet lagged we remain in this family.  i never imagined it would take so long to adjust back to central time.  here's a photo i took of indi at 1 a.m. this morning.  the other night i was up with her until 2:30 a.m.  she goes down at her regular bedtime and then wakes a couple hours later thinking she's just had a good nap.  the problem is, i don't really blame her.  i've been wide awake at night, too.  

today we prepared our winter garden.  we had a great gardening season this past summer and are looking forward to this winter when we will have collard greens galore.  collards are generally pretty easy to grow here, which is probably why they are a southern staple.  we planted collards, kale, and broccoli. 

we also bought a bunch of herbs to plant in our wash basins.

as we were preparing the bed, we noticed this avocado tree growing. we had thrown an avocado seed in the compost pile, which is pretty commonplace for us, but this one took root and look at it now!  we were quite impressed.

it reminds me of the story behind this thriving aloe vera plant.  i had bought it to use for burns and cuts and it was about two inches long.  it didn't do well inside so i put it out on our back porch so it would receive more light.  the wind blew it over and it fell to the concrete below.  i noticed several days later that it started to take root in one of the cracks.  i threw it into a pot to plant later, forgot about it, and look at it now.  if only we were all so resilient! 

lately we've made a toy "discovery" that i'd like to pass along.  everybody knows the endless possibilities of the cardboard box for kids.  recently, we started making cardboard box toys.  it started with a castle, then dan made a barn, next a volcano, and today he made jude this train station/tunnel.

it's free and keeps the kids entertained for awhile.  when they're sick of it, you can recycle it and not have it clutter up your house.  it's multi-purpose, too, because they can then color, paint, glitter, or chalk it, which, again, keeps them busy.  i'm all about keeping kids busy with minimal effort on my part.  three cheers for the cardboard box.