Garden Journal - Tuesday June 30th

Smaller Garden:

• Loads of green tomatoes. Haven't seen any aphids or tomato hornworms yet.
• A handful of cherry tomatoes everyday
• We've gotten maybe 8 big tomatoes. A couple Mortgage lifters, a few Bush Goliath, and a few of something I didn't pay attention to what they were.
• Cucumbers are just now reaching 5 feet tall on the trellis. Are getting a handful (5 or 6) of cucumbers everyday.
• Lots of hot chili peppers on the plants. Have picked a handful of the thin green ones.
• Bell peppers are starting on a few plants as well.
• Getting a handful of green beans off the teepees everyday.
• A few small yellow squash on the ys plant
• Zucchini plants are big and vining over and I get a zuke off each plant every couple days.
• Basil is flowering.
• Thyme's looking dead
• Dill looks horrible. Bottom half looks yellow and dead. I think it's on it's last leg
• Potatoes plants are all dead. Time to dig!
• Onions from garden center are falling over and looking done
• Amish bottle onions are flowering, some are falling over. Wonder if it's because I just did the heavy weeding the other day? Hope I didn't kill them
• Eggplants officially all dead
• Brussel Sprouts eaten to death and I might pull them
• Huckleberry plants are ginormous and are starting to get purple berries
• Sweet potato plants starting to perk up and vine a little bit
• Corn has it's first small corn on it! And the flower thingamajigs on top.
• First butternut squash plant vining and about 3 feet long
• Planted new yellow squash and zucchini a couple weeks ago. Chickens destroyed about half of the starts. Ugh. Need to get new seeds as I left them in the yard in the rain. That's why I planted them when I did lol.

Clay's bigger garden

• Corn is getting pretty big.
  
• Pole beans growing up the corn on two 100 ft rows
• Pumpkins are vining and getting yellow flowers
• Pumpkins wilting in heat of the day
• Bush beans were getting a few handfuls a day but they're getting eaten by rabbits
• Clay put up a fake owl yesterday to try and scare the rabbits
• Clay found a few surviving watermelon plants. They're about a foot long LOL but have flowers.
  
• His butternut squash are going slowly but going
• Sweet potatoes not so great but limping along
• Two pumpkin plants have died. I see no sign of cutworms or squash bugs. I think he's not watering enough

I know this is just for me, thanks if you even read it lol.

Bounty

Oh neglected blog how I miss you so.

We've gotten so much out of our garden over the course of the Spring. I've taken pictures and then never get around to posting them. Like this yumminess from the Spring:
But those great lettuce and bok choy days are gone. Unfortunately for us the inexperience gardener I am didn't plan well enough, didn't plant some things early enough and all those type mistakes so we had a dry spell between Spring and Summer harvesting. But here's a taste of what we've been getting the last few days.

We still have lots of potatoes still to dig up (it's going on Clay's weekend project list) and of course the zucchinis are just getting started.

Oh my do I love fresh onions. They just make me happy.
Zukes and the first yellow squash. Bad picture but still yummy.

And you know it goes when you miss a day picking cucumbers. Ours have just started and one missed day and we walk with 10 at least. In a few weeks, we'll be overrun!

We have been getting tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, herbs, zucchinis, yellow squash, hmm... what else? Don't know why I don't have a picture of our lovely tomatoes. They're sitting right there on the counter right now lol.

Okay fly by quick post. All I have to say is that I am amazed by the miracle that is putting a tiny seed in the ground and having a huge plant that gives our family food grow from it. Amazes me every year.

Father's Day

Like I always say, it's been a while. And like always I say I want to post more and that I will but..... we all know how that goes. We had a great Father's Day. Well we sort of did two days. Today my Dad came into town to visit and we spent the day with him. It was great to have him here on Father's Day. I don't know the last time that was the case. When I was a teenager maybe. So Happy Father's Day dad. I love you.

Last night we celebrated Father's Day with Clay. It sure made me love him more that instead of wanting to do something alone or have a free day he came up with the idea to do something with the kids. He wanted to have fun with THEM for his day. And I suppose if one celebrates Mother's or Father's day that is what it should be. Not a day off but a day to celebrate the beauty and just great fun that being a parent is, a time to love and enjoy our children.

So this is our Father's Day.

Rounds were brought over for seats, rocks too, firepit made, fans made to beat the horrible heat, hotdog/marshmallow sticks sharpened, and tents played in.
Then after we roasted hot dogs, there was lots of this happening. In fact Adric roasted marshmallows until bedtime!

All of that led to lots of this:
Pictures of beautiful people were taken
We laughed, played, ate, laid on the trampoline, ate, were HOT, took a break after hot dogs to go in, cool off and watch Wall-E, had a great time and it all led to this:
Daddy and the kids sleeping outside in the tent. Mom on the other hand, went inside to watch movies and scrapbook in the cool house.

About 15 minutes later, Cassie came in. Turns out Clay thought he'd tell a scary story that was TOO scary for her. She couldn't sleep outside after that.

Then.... came Adric. It was too hot.

Then came Clay who had woken up Frankie who was asleep. Too hot.

And my movie time turned into movie time with Clay which meant he wanted to watch X-files instead of chic flicks. SIGH. LOL lol.

Happy Father's Day honey. I love you.

A few more Scrapbooking pages

A handful more to show you :)



Don't you love when toddlers first learn to "smile" for the camera? This is Garrison's version.

Still working on/thinking about starting the digital scrapbooking posts. Working on, yeah that's it.

Garden Journal - Sunday June 14th

Before I forget, going to do a quick garden journal. This one will have pictures though!

Currently:

• All broccoli and cabbage are done and gone. Had bad infestation of caterpillars that did my cabbage in. Planning on row covering them next year to see how that goes.
• Loads of green tomatoes
• Pole beans huge and overflowing. No open flowers yet but close
• Potato plants starting to die back
• Cilantro totally flowered and fallin over. Needs to be pulled
• Amish bottle onions flowering
• Most eggplants dying from flea beetle infestation. Gotta find out what to do about those. I've read loads and can't find a good answer.
• Lettuce tall and bolted.
  
• Lost 2 out of three of the first yellow squash plants lost to what look like vine borers.
• Inch long zucchini on the plants.
  
• Planted loads of sweet potato slips yesterday
• Have lots of hot peppers growing on the hot pepper plants
• Caught a gazillion squash bugs by spraying water on the plants and catching them as they crawled up to dry off. Kids loved that!
  
• Cucumbers just starting to flower
• Brussel sprouts have little buds, lots of caterpillar damage but I couldn't find a single bug one them yesterday. Maybe getting too hot. Hopefully.
• Clay's winter squash seeds he planted are starting to peek their first true leaves. Just peeking. He planted those about a week and a half ago
• Lots of green huckleberries. The huckleberries have really made it through and grown big despite the flea beetles.
• Amish bottle onions flowering, open flowers. Took all flowers off all the other onions.
  

Clay's garden:

• He put some fertilizer (gasp) on the corn. His corn is finally starting to get bigger with all this rain. Some are still 2 inches tall but some are 2 feet tall or taller.
  
• Pumpkins starting grow. A couple are about 5 feet long with vines.
  
• Two official nice yellow pumpkin flowers
• Bush green beans just starting to flower
• Planted 50 foot row of 2-3 wide of sweet potato slips yesterday