June 28, 2008

What a nice day! Until it rained :o)

The kids were so excited to have more banana bread for breakfast that they ate a whole loaf, lol. I figured since I only have 2 loaves left I better get on it and find that Amish started that I knew I had frozen. I dug and dug and finally found it :o) I was going to bake tonight but "P" fell asleep in the living room on the floor about 2 hours earlier than usual so I couldn't run my mixer without waking her up. I'll have to do it in the morning.
It was a beautiful day today - not too hot and not too cold with just enough wind to keep the bugs away :o) I spent about 3 hours outside with the kids. I got some weeding done and leveled out a few spots so they are ready for grass seed. Since it's been such a wet Summer we've been spreading grass seed like crazy to finally get rid of the dirt side of the yard where we ripped it up for the addition a few years ago. We had mounds and mounds of dirt and finally had the neighbor to take about 20 loads out with his dump truck and then I took my Dad's Bobcat and spread out the rest and leveled things off real nice. I got a new sprinkler for the garden at Walmart and it's awesome so I'm going to go and get a few more for the yard and get going on the rest of it.
I made a horrible discovery though as I was picking weeds :o( When we tilled up the garden we had added some of the neighbor's good stuff from his cows so I assumed that all of these red based weeds that were coming up were from something that the cows had eaten. WELL, turns out they are all sandbur shoots - every damn one of them! That side of the yard has just been dirt and lots of sandbur weeds for a few years. If I'm thinking correctly, every sandbur that falls off the bush becomes another plant. And since we tilled up the new garden this year we tilled them up and they are growing stong in our super fertilized (thanks cows :o) garden. Holy cow crap do I have some work ahead of me! They're pretty easy to pick out though because they're new weeds but they are as thick as the grass on a golf course. Maybe if I just till it every week it will keep them from growing to the stage of having burs??? Hmm, I'll have to try.

I have been trying to be as natural and organic as I can be and tonight I found some awesome sites with great info on products and what's in them.
Non-Toxic Kids is a great one that links to lots of good info.
EWG (Environmental Working Group) is another great one and it has a Cosmetics Safety Database where you can click on a category and see how products rate and also search for things that you have and see what the chemicals in them really are.
I know some of it's scary stuff to read but you do the best you can and it's always nice to be informed so when you have a choice to make you have the facts to make the better choice.

2 comments:

  1. Love the Cosmetic Database. I've been checking on that thing for at least a year now, and changed out all my "facial" and "body" products because of it. Try http://www.allergykids.com as well for interesting factoids about out crops and how genetic engineering plays a role in ADHD, allergies and a host of other stuff. Scary, but informative. Making Amish Friendship Bread today! Whoo hoo! 10 days until bliss!

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  2. Sandbur weeds? Man!!! You DO have a lot of work ahead of you. Thanks for the links to the organic sites!

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