Home Stuff

 Well, this is my ghetto garden.   Yes, that is a baby pool.  Bobby read in the newspaper about 7 months ago about this man who had no lawn and still had a vegetable garden because he used a baby pool.  After not having much luck in the past with gardens, I decided to give it a whirl.  So far, so good.  I have it by our back parking area (not the best spot) but I wanted to prevent the squirrels from easy access to the goods.  It took about 7 bags of soil to fill.  We planted (to start) radishes, tomatoes, melons, peppers and sunflowers. There are fewer weeds and ickiness than when I planted before in the ground.  I have been able to maintain this alot easier.  The "look" is  pretty bad but I am hoping that when things start producing and everything looks great you won't even notice it is in a walmart baby pool!

 I took this pic around Easter.  Everything is so much bigger.

 Cooper's salt crystal experiment.  I posted this because it is soooo easy and pretty cool.   It looks like rock candy.  I love that stuff.  Anyways,  this is how you do it:  Pour 1 cup water in a saucepan and  bring to a boil, turn off heat and remove from the burner.  Add 1/3 cup salt and stir until no more salt will dissolve.  Allow the solution to cool; then poor into a drinking GLASS.  Be sure to pour only the solution into the glass and leave the salt that did not dissolve in the pan.  Tie one end of a string (yarn) to a pencil and drop the other end of the string into the solution.  Rest the pencil across the rim of the glass.  Don't touch for a couple of days. Then after about 2 days, lift up the pencil and you will have salt crystals!  Super cool!

  We finished our Apologia Botany book around February and needed something else.  I had this Abeka Science workbook and activity book forever and decided to pull it out.  Cooper loves it.  I jump around in it but it is very comprehensive.   He loves the activity sheets and loves the review questions (and experiments).  I think next year we just might do the same thing.  One of the Apologia books and then another science that has a little of everything in it.  Plants, matter, energy, animals, geology, astronomy etc.  Next I think we will try to make rock candy.  Same idea, I am sure, except with sugar and heavy corn syrup!