Progress

I am on fire with this 30 Before 30 deal.  In the past few weeks, I've knocked out two more items from my list:

11. Clear the junk out of our back flower beds and replace it with something edible (tomatoes, peppers, piles of Snickers bars?  I don't know)

13. Have a bright red front door


Instead of being an overgrown mass of weeds, the garden area in our back yard is now an actual garden!  With actual produce living in it!  My apologies to those of you who hoped I would really put piles of Snickers bars back there.  

The garden runs the length of our back yard and is about two feet deep (from the fence to a brick retaining wall thing), so we had quite a bit of space available.  With the help of a very kind person who knew what he was doing, we planted strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe, red and green bell peppers, Roma tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini.  Hooray!  


I thought I would wait to post about this until I could take some pictures of nice, thriving plants.  But I'm sort of scared they will never reach that point.  I've kept them alive for almost three weeks now, and that alone is a record for me, so I'm counting this as a success as far as the 30 Before 30 list is concerned.


The front door, however, is quite picture-worthy.  Even Ben is a fan:

I'm making strides toward the goal of reading 25 books in a year, too.  I'm about halfway there, but I wanted to go ahead and share my reviews for those of you who are looking for some good summer reads.  I'm too lazy to post real reviews (plus I don't think any of you would actually read them, now would you?), so I'm just giving you the advice of "READ IT," "read it," or "don't bother."  I'll elaborate if you ask nicely, but here's what you get for now:


1. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver - read it
2. Clay's Quilt by Silas House - READ IT
3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - READ IT
4. The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway - don't bother (and I feel bad for saying that because I promise I am in favor of evangelism in China, but I really did not enjoy reading this book)
5. Parenting the Fussy Baby and High-Need Child by William Sears - read it (you know, if you have a superbly clingy child and need some encouragement)
6. Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck - read it
7. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin - READ IT
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - read it
9. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - READ IT
10. Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos - READ IT (this one was surprisingly good - don't be fooled by the cover art)
11. Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules edited by David Sedaris - don't bother (with a few notable exceptions - I loved the short story by Lorrie Moore)
12. The Help by Kathryn Stockett - READ IT