The Last of the Harvest

We pulled up the last of the onions and spaghetti squash and, of course, Chase finally got to pick his watermelon.

Its About Time

We are finally starting to get food from our garden.  We've been eating snap peas, cucumbers, green beans, and carrots.  Chase is still anxiously awaiting his corn.  He checks on it every day.  We still don't have any ripe tomatoes but I think we'll start getting some red ones next week. 

We've had a lot of fun with the carrots, snap peas, and green beans so I think we'll plant more of those next year. 

While the garden has been busy growing I've been busy playing with fiber.  A while ago I bought some milk silk from Greenwood Fiberworks and I've been attempting to spin it ever since.  I had some trouble at first but eventually got the hang of it and finished two bobbins worth.  Michael bought me a jumbo flyer for mother's day so I was able to ply them together.  I love how it turned out.  Now I just need to find something to knit with it.

two bobbins worth of singles

Plying

Setting the twist

Wound into a hank

The Summer of the Lawn

We have dubbed this year the summer we attempt to take care of our lawn.

This was the situation

This picture was taken after I'd sprayed the weeds no less than three times.

Not only did we have a serious weed problem we had a pretty major sprinkler repair which resulted in trenches being dug all across our back lawn.  When they flipped the fixed sprinklers on, a whole row of sprinklers we'd never seen before popped up.  I'm pretty sure the previous owners didn't know they were there either.  They also told us that we have 5 sprinkler boxes, 2 in the back and 3 in the front.  But we'd never seen ANY boxes in the front.  EVER.

After a lot of digging and stabbing things with the shovel, they found 2 of the 3 boxes.

The two they found are inside the curbing, under the ugly white rocks, and even under the black weed barrier material.  Its really a miracle we found them at all.  We still have no idea what those white pipes sticking out of our patio are for.  We have one in the back yard too.  But like I said, we found 2 of the 3 missing boxes--one is still MIA.

Quick side note: If you're in need of large quantities of white rocks, contact me, we'll talk.

So now the sprinklers are working.  And by "working" I mean they are no longer spewing water into the basement window wells.

But it hasn't all been fun and games.  Michael was dying to make me a new planter box, so I let him.  I'm all heart.

He also built a small one for Madison.  She is very excited to have her own little box and even has a tiny little tomato on one of her tomato plants. 

See the white pipe?  WHAT IS THAT?!!

So there's the yard.  Its a work in progress.  Hard work and slow progress.

Eggplants Never Say Die

I am a happy recipient of my dad's cast offs when he plants his garden each spring.

Last year he gave me an eggplant. I love eggplant so I took it not realizing that I had bought so many tomatoes that I didn't have room for it in my planter box. I'm pretty sure Michael is a one planter box a year kind of guy and wouldn't be super excited about making another. So, instead of growing among my hordes of tomatoes, I put the eggplant in a pot all by itself next to my planter box.

Unfortunately my tomatoes grew much faster and wilder than I had expected and tangled themselves up so much that I had no hope of actually reaching that pot. To make things worse I had forgotten to drill holes in the bottom of the egg plant's pot. The pot quickly filled with water and it sat like that all summer.

In the fall I cleared out my planter bed. This is new for me. Normally I neglect my planter beds until it snows. Then its too late to clear them out and I have to deal with a very dead nasty mess come spring. But in my on going efforts to be a better person I decided to go ahead and clear out my planter bed in the fall like everyone else does.

Once the pot was uncovered I decided to dump out the stagnant pool of mosquito breading water that had collected in it only to find my little eggplant still alive. It hadn't grown any, but it was still green. Seeing as it was fall and a bit late for eggplant I chucked it in the planter bed and turned it with the rest of the dirt.

So what do you think I found when all the snow melted?


A thriving eggplant.

This sucker better produce some fruit. Anything that works that hard to stay alive better do something pretty damn good.

Fresh Produce

Michael and his father made an awesome planter so I could plant tomatoes this year. As I was planting tomato plants the girl and boy decided that they wanted to plant strawberries. We managed to acquire two strawberry plants that we put in a strawberry pot on our front porch.

We watered our strawberries this morning and were delighted to find that we had our first ripe strawberry! Unfortunately the girl and boy both want some of it and I'm not certain I can successfully cut it half . . . .


Sorry the picture is grainy. My camera doesn't like to take pictures of very small things.