1,000 Hours Outside - April and May Recap

I don't know how two whole months went by before I could find time to write another 1,000 Hours blog post, but here we are!

Just as a reminder, here is a link to what 1,000 Hours Outside is all about.

1,000 Hours Outside

Even though we dealt with some late-season frosts over the past couple months, the weather still continued to warm up as we crept closer to Summer.

In April we ended up spending about 30 hours outside, just a couple hours shy of our total for March.  

In May we spent 58 hours outside.  What??  Can you believe it?!  I was shocked to end up with such a high number as I was adding up the daily totals written on our calendar.

What did we do with all of our time outside?

A lot of gardening and landscaping.  Our entire vegetable garden is planted.  The radishes have already completed their time in the garden while the squash are just now sprouting.  We lost a few tomato plants to some recent frost so we picked up replacements at My Potted Treasures nearby.  For only a dollar per plant we bought three different varieties of small tomatoes and I'm looking forward to trying them!

I'm trying out a few different annuals this year in the landscaping that I have planted from seed along with some small perennial plants that I am hoping will become more established as time goes on.

Oliver sniffing our new flowering almond bush.

The kids have been loving playing with their water table and little pool.  Adeline likes to fill up the watering can and water my plants outside.  Oliver loves bugs.  He'll carefully pick them up, place them on his hand, and then study them for the longest time.  Adeline also likes to push her tricycle up our driveway and then coast on it back down the hill while squealing with delight.  The two kids will often go off on adventures together behind the barn, traipsing around the field, and getting into trouble.

Noah and I have been working on dismantling an old pig pen behind the barn.  There were cattle panels buried partway in the ground with large rocks or cinder blocks buried along the inside to keep the pigs from digging under the fence, some fence posts along the outside edge to hold up the cattle panels, and then various roots and box elder trees growing through the spaces in the panels that we had to dig out and cut through to free up the fence.  There is a bit of fence still in place against the back of the barn, but it has two different hefty root systems growing through it and it's a lot harder to dig out with it being right up against the wall of the barn, so we might just leave it there.  The goal was to clean up the area enough so Noah can easily mow through it with his Kubota, and we have pretty much already achieved that, so we're probably done with that area for now.

I'm sure the rest of the warmer months will be full of playing in the water, weeding the garden, and harvesting vegetables.  As Noah and I were relaxing outside one evening while the kids were running around before bedtime, I remarked to Noah for probably the hundredth time that I'm so glad we have so much space for the kids to explore outside.  While I do enjoy taking them to the park, it's also nice to not really have to go anywhere for them to be able to let loose and burn off their pent up little kid energy.