Take Your Child to Work Day

Last night when I went to pick Noah up from his track meet, he mentioned that the following day was Take Your Child To Work Day.
I thought to myself, “Okay, but Dom can’t take you to his job.”

Noah then says to me that he wants to stay home with me and do what I do for the day.

It was the first time any of my children ever had such a request. Usually my kids would look at the one with the “career” and go to some special work day their dad had planned.

I was intrigued by my son’s request to stay home with me. I thought about it for a while, and then finally said yes to his request. I told him to be ready to work. I think he’ll sleep good tonight! LOL

Today started out a little slow with him sleeping in until I WOKE HIM UP at about 9:00am.

I should have woke his ass up at 6:00am when I woke up, but I figured I’d let him sleep a little more after everything I had planned for him to do.

Dom was home today and my dad came over as well. Dom was busy calculating how much gravel we are going to need for the property, my dad was discussing the new book he was writing, and Noah was now in the shower getting “photo ready.” Teens…!

Next, all the men were hard at work digging new holes so that we could “plant water” in the ground.

After the water was planted, Noah, Dom and my dad started bringing our earthy homemade compost over to the basin, where I spread the two piles in the area.

It’s a real challenge getting compost to really heat up in the desert. The arid climate dries everything so quickly. We found that our piles would heat up fast and then burn out just as fast, leaving a cold pile in about a week. We’d turn the pile and it would heat up super hot and then fizzle out again.

Keeping the moisture right, getting enough oxygen in the pile and also adding enough “greens” has been the biggest challenge. The end result though was digging into these piles and smelling the forest. The piles reminded us of when we’d take a hike through the woods. Earthy, moist, fluffy….gorgeous!

After filling the basin with compost, my dad made us some lemonaide, Dom installed the small arbor in its new location and then went and made us a great steak and salad lunch, and Noah cleared a new area so that I could prep it for planting Spanish Broom.

We ate, put Simmi to bed for the night, and Noah and I headed back outside to finish planting and doing more earth works.