The good the bad and the sad!

Whew!  What a crazy life we have had the last few days! 
First off the Good news!  Saturday I took the day and prepared my main garden area for my Lasagna Garden. I am so excited!  This is really an experiment for me this year so I hope it works! .  I am too lazy to pull weeds, but I really want to be a successful gardener so this is a good solution I found!    If you are interested, the link above has some great info on how to do it.  Here is what I did Saturday.  It is lucky that I got any pictures since I am the worst at remembering to take pictures when I do projects.  As I was in the middle of the process I remembered I should take pictures, but I did not feel like going into the house to locate my camera, but then I remembered that my phone was in my pocket so I took some pics with that.  So the quality is not that great.

So first of all I am creating a U shaped raised bed garden on the south side of my house between the side of my house and the fence. I am using some big rocks that we already had just sitting there serving no purpose to be my inside border.  My plan is to be able to walk down the middle and have easy access to the 3 areas.  I lay ed down newspaper layers first and sprayed them down with water.  The newspaper smothers weeds and prevents new ones from coming up and the newspaper will eventually decompose into the ground.

 Next I layed down a layer of peat moss.

 Then I put down a layer of straw, leaves, grass clippings and kitchen compost (scraps of  fruit and veggies etc) then I put down a layer of soil that I already had in my kiddie pool gardens and manure. Then more peat moss and compost and continued layering in this manner until I had several layers.  I still want to top it off with one more layer of soil.  Normally you don't have to add soil, but since I did not prepare my garden spot in the fall and allow it to sit over the winter I am adding some soil to mine. here is how it finished up looking when I was done.

So anyway like I said It is an experiment for me this year.   I have never used this garden method before, but I have already learned from past experience that traditional row garden method just don't work for me so I am happy to move up from my kiddie pool garden level to something a little more advanced, but yet still an easier option then the traditional. 

So now to the sad and bad news we have had lately and that was the source of a lot of stress this last weekend.

See this tiny little Poodle  with a very sad haircut ( I do it  myself because I am too poor these days to take her to the dog groomer)

Well Saturday while I was busy doing all this garden stuff,  and my husband was at my dads watching the BYU game with my son,  and  the other kids went to see Rango with friends. She slipped out front without us noticing. We were so busy and distracted that day that I am embarrassed to say that it was not until later that night that we discovered she was gone.  She usually comes right back when she gets out so we knew that she either got hit or that someone had her. We called for her and we drove around the neighborhood in the dark trying to find her.  We finally had to go to bed wondering where she was:-(  I could not sleep all night!  We got up early and drove all over our area looking for her.  We had no success and were so depressed! I made flyer's with her picture and description and the kids went around the neighborhood before  church dropping them off at everyones door. It happened to be fast Sunday so we made her one of our main objectives of our fasting.  I know we were all praying constantly.  I think what was bothering us more than anything was just the unknown of where she was and what had happened to her!  I was afraid to tell the kids that if we had faith we would find her because what if we didn't  find her?  Then about half way through church it hit me that if she was alive there was no reason why God could not give  her back to us because he can do anything right!  So after church we redoubled our faith and prayed again as a family and asked that if she was alive that she could return to us.  My kids were so sad and my 12 year old cried herself to sleep Sunday night (mocha usually sleeps with her)  Anyway our last hope was to call the Animal shelter Monday morning and hope that someone had turned her in.   Anyway to make a long story not so long (sorry)  we called and she was there!  What a relief!  A police officer had picked her up Saturday afternoon a few blocks away from our house and had turned her in.  We surprised the kids with her when they got home from school and they were so happy!  But the main things learned in this situation is #1 Make sure your animal has identification.  #2Mocha meant a lot more to us then we realized and we will appreciate her much more. #3 Faith , Prayer, and Fasting works!  And I should not be afraid to have faith because I am worried that the outcome may not work out how I hope.   I need to trust in God and know that he sees and knows all.  I need to trust what his will is.

So now onto the next sad and bad thing happening right now.  And I hope the small lesson of faith learned with Mocha can be applied to this situation to. 

We found out last week that My Mother in law has breast cancer.  They found it is spread to her lymph nodes so it is pretty certain that she will have to do chemo.  She is  having her surgery  today to remove the breast and lymph nodes that have the cancer.  My own mother passed away from breast cancer 4 years ago this month so it really hits close to home for me:-(