this morning's harvest...

this past week...

Gaming.

Reading. At the library. And at home.

Battling knotweed. One day we will win the war.

Playing. With our new camera.

Gazing lovingly. :)

 Walking. At Mendon Ponds. At Sherwood Fields.

At Abraham Lincoln Park.

Sleeping in.

Grading. Never a shortage of that.

Celebrating. 23 years of wedded bliss. And there honestly has been 

heaping loads of bliss. I am so. damn. lucky.

Hoping desperately. For pieces of dropped popcorn.

Fearing the giant zucchini.

Not pictured:

Chatting. Gray had an appointment with Dr. Bennett.

Cheering. Annie went to a Rhinos soccer game with Dan and Savannah.

Painting.

Creating.

Watching. Latest episodes of Under the Dome and Project Runway.

And watching/rewatching the first four episodes of Veronica Mars.

Weeding.

Freezing.

Dreaming. Of retirement. And traveling the Western hemisphere in a camper van.

gardening blues...

Oh my, but what an odd gardening year it is. Late spring and early summer were SO DARN RAINY, and while it's not quite as bad now, we're still getting more rain than is normal here. It's taken it's toll, that's for sure. All the heavy rain washed away or drowned so many seeds and seedlings. We're going to have pathetic harvests of some of the things we've never had the slightest trouble growing before. Like kohlrabi--we're usually inundated with it, but this year the rain inundated them. We're only looking at getting maybe half a dozen (if nothing else goes wrong). Same with carrots. The cucumbers didn't come up at all, but we've since replanted them and they seem to be growing strong now. Only about a quarter of the onion seedlings survived, and an even smaller fraction of the cauliflower and broccoli.

But the worst, worst, worst thing of all is the tomatoes. Last year, I canned about 60 quarts of tomatoes, not to mention about 30 pints of salsa. This year, I'm going to be surprised if I can any. :( At this point, we've got lots of green tomatoes, but the plants themselves look utterly pathetic. We're babying the hell out of them, hoping they'll hang on...but honestly, I don't think either of us is too hopeful.

On the bright side, as Chris mentioned last week, the abundance of rain seems to be making the peppers happy. We've got loads of jalapenos and cayennes growing, and loads more flowering. Hopefully some of which are sweet green peppers. (We got all my pepper seedlings mixed up when planting them, so we're not sure what is where. :P )

As I said, our second planting of cucumbers seems to be doing well. And I'm tickled to death about how the cabbage is doing, especially as it's something completely new for us. And the zucchini--well, you know zucchini, it's going gangbusters. I've been baking away, and freezing some as well.

The lettuce is still feeding us abundantly.

The celery (another new-to-us crop) seems to be doing well, looking a little more celery-like all the time. And though we got our green beans in the ground a little late this year, they seem to be doing well too.

So yeah, it seems to be a year of ups and downs in the garden. We're trying hard not to be too disappointed in the "downs." After all, every bite of fresh-grown deliciousness we get is an "up" worthy of celebration!

I'm not sure if Chris is going to have a chance to get up a Saturday Farmers Market post today, but be sure to check over there for more garden goodness!

this past week...

Harvesting.

Baking.

Blooming.

Pampering.

Reading and Writing.

And 'rithmetic (not pictured).

Picnicking with friends.

Swinging.

Painting.

Walking in the woods.

Enjoying nature's beauty.

Not pictured:

Suffering. Oh poor Max. Got the worst sunburn I've ever seen while at Grandmother's.

Weeding. So much weeding.

Scrapbooking.

Riding rollercoasters. Annie went to Darien Lake with her friend Dan.

Thrifting. Banner haul.

Rearranging Gray's room.

Hanging with one's best friend. Jimmy was over for a sleepover.

Watching. Latest episodes of Under the Dome and Project Runway. 

And rewatching. Episode 1 of the original Star Trek series.

Loving. Lots and lots of loving.

good stuff...

(This edition has been written over the last few days.)

*This face:

*The sweet breeze wafting through the window this morning.

*It was in the wee hours of the morning and I still hadn't been able to fall asleep due to pain, and I was feeling frustrated, and yes, maybe a bit angry...but then I opened my eyes and the view out the window was so beautiful...what seemed like hundreds (though it probably wasn't nearly that many) of fireflies flashing throughout the trees and bushes. There's always fireflies out there in the summer, but I don't think I've seen them in such profusion since I was a kid. Glorious.

*A spontaneous trip to the antique mall with Rich, my favorite person to hang out with. Added bonus to the sheer fun of it--I managed to find a few small treasures that shall be Christmas presents for my Mom.

*Yellow bursts of sunshine popping up completely unexpectedly in the flower garden:

*Satisfaction in completing a project. Especially when it's for someone else. In this case, Craft Hope's latest project. The embellished flip flops that shall be mailed off today:

*Watching the first two episodes of Under the Dome last night with the whole gang. And being so excited about it that when I came upstairs I immediately went and pulled the book of the shelves to start reading it. ('Cause goodness knows I need to have yet another book going...silly me.)

*Anticipating this coming long weekend that has been set aside for pure pleasure. I'm a big fan of anticipation. :D

*The first couple ripe blueberries from our new bushes:

*Starting Ali Edward's Hello Story class today. Oh my gosh...already so inspired. Have filled an entire page filled with stories I want to tell using the first week's story structure.

And how about you--what's the good stuff of your life today?

let the preserving begin...

Plan was to get some strawberries in June...but well, plans fall through. I knew we wouldn't yet have enough strawberries of our own to preserve, but I'd planned to buy some local organic berries. But yeah, it just didn't happen, and we're stretching the limits of the season now. I'm not going to shed any tears over it...we've got more than enough strawberry jam left from the last time I made it and even have enough sliced frozen ones left from last summer for a few batches of muffins through the coming year.

So my first preservation feat (feat--ha! like there's anything hard about it :P ) of the season was radishes. Rich and I love radishes, but even we couldn't munch our way through this year's harvest. We always tend to overplant them.
(Gray likes to harvest them, but doesn't like to eat them.)

And you know, I've no idea why I never thought about freezing them before. But when we just couldn't keep up with the eating, I decided to look into it. Turns out they're as easy to freeze as kohlrabi.

Wash, slice, blanch 2 minutes, then into the ice water.

And now we've got 4 lovely bags of radishes for future stir frys. Supposedly they stay nice and crisp. The kohlrabi I froze last summer did, so I've got hope for these babies too. :)

Apparently you can also freeze the radish greens, but I've never eaten them before. Have you? Suggestions for using them?

and it's Saturday again...

So it's again time for Saturday Farmers' Market. (Though the farmers market we go to is on Sundays, and it's finally opening so hopefully we'll be headed there tomorrow.) And I feel a bit lame even participating in this, as we're always on the tail end of things. Some of you are harvesting goodies already, and other have these big lush plants growing away. And we, just last weekend, finally got the final things planted. (Oh, okay, not final--we still have to plant a few green beans and some pumpkins. Oh, and my herbs.) And waiting until last weekend to put the tomatoes and peppers in the ground almost wasn't good enough, as we had a hard freeze warning Sunday night---luckily, our baby plants fared okay. And just a few days later it was in the 90s--good thing plants are so hardy, huh?

There has been much prep and expansion going on in our little garden world this spring. That far rectangular section--that was the garden we put in last year. All the rest, we've added this year. We've probably tripled the amount of space. Thanks to a lot of hard work from my Dad, Rich, and the kiddos. Gray pretty much tilled the soil and got the strawberry patches (the square sections closest) ready himself. But yeah, not a lot to see yet.

We will have a few bites of fruit to eat soon. These are strawberries we planted in a planter last season. We may end up with a couple dozen berries, but as for this year, I'll still have to buy a bunch at the farmers market for preserving.

We planted four blueberry bushes this year, but again, it will probably be a few years before they produce enough to keep us from having to go pick a bunch to make it through the winter. I didn't think to take a picture of the blackberry bushes we planted last year, but they are coming back beautifully this year. Hopefully we'll get a few more berries this year than we did last year.

















As far as the things planted in the main garden, I'm not really sure how much of it is doing. We're trying quite a few things for the first time, and I just don't know if they're looking as they should or not. :P  Like this cabbage:

The leaves look pretty to me, but I have no idea how it should be looking at this stage. Should it be bigger by now? *shrugs*

Oooh, and the celery. Another new one for us. Looks good to me, but again, what the hell do I know?!! Of course, if it does do well and we end up with as much as I planted, I'm probably going to have to learn to like eating it. *shudders*

(And yes, I totally need to weed again.)

And hooray for those early bursts of deliciousness! Won't be too long until we're eating radishes. (Yep, they need to be thinned--badly.)

Like I said, it just doesn't seem like much now...but hopefully we've got lots to look forward to this summer in our little garden. :)

























For more (and better) fresh food and gardening posts, be sure to head over to Chris's Saturday Market post and round-up!