Do I Ever Stop Talking About my Garden?

Nope! We've had lots of produce from the garden. Several bags of green beans are in the freezer and we've eaten loads of zucchini. It's so delicious just sauteed until soft in some butter. yum! The okra is really picking up and I'm looking forward to making some pickled okra. Surprisingly the strawberries are actually producing a small handful each day, which Zoey loves to eat. I have high hopes for them next year. We harvested the corn and had about 30 "full" cobs and another 20 or so half or smaller cobs. I guess I must be planting too close, I can never get full pollination of the cobs. This was probably the best turn out of cobs over all years past so I can't be too disappointed.

Tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, now that the cucumbers are slowing down :-/ One of these years I'll get them to work together. We've been eating pounds of cucumbers for weeks. For a while the stink bugs were happy to hang out in the corn plants after I harvested, but once they started to dry up they've been migrating and I have to make rounds a couple times a day and scare them out of my tomatoes. Wretched little critters. Brandon bought a giant pumpkin seed growing kit for Zoey so we're going to forego a second round of corn and plant giant pumpkins there this year. The second season of corn has always been a little disappointing anyway. With any luck our baby watermelons and cantaloupes will thrive and be delicious. Last year was a flop for cantaloupes.

Top: partially pollinated corn

Bottom: stink bug damage

The sunflowers, though they have all been treated the same seem to be successively weaker from back to front. The tallest is about 9', far cry from the 12 or 16 I was hoping for. Maybe next year.

Baby watermelons

Eggplant, always a success

Ripening tomatoes, already marred by those stupid insects!

And for your enjoyment, the blurry caterpillar dance. Sorry I hate video editing, so you can skip to about halfway when he actually starts dancing. This little guy was pretty annoyed that he got sprayed with water while I was watering the plants. He danced for quite a while. Anyone know what kind of moth or butterfly he'll grow into?

Garden Update

Just because I love seeing my garden grow and talking about it. Some more pictures for you to enjoy.

Strawberries, peppers, and okra

cantaloupe, sunflowers, watermelon

lima beans and green beans (we've picked a couple pounds of green beans so far)

Tomatoes and cucumbers. We've eaten 4 cucumbers and I think I've finally gotten Ian to stop picking the green tomatoes.

Herbs, eggplant and zucchini. Pretty sure there's a nutrient deficiency in this bed.

I'm a Little Girly Sometimes

Usually at the incessant insistence of my 3.5 year old.

*GASP!* That's a Turtle!

A couple days ago Brandon and I were just catching up on some shows on the DVR. Lowla had been out barking in the back yard like she does. Some nights she is more annoying about it than others. She came trotting into the living room and deposited a turtle on the floor at our feet. Brandon sprang to its rescue.

The critter is all sucked into his shell, obviously terrified that death by wiener dog mutt is near.

Never seen a turtle covered in moss like this. He was pretty big, I surprised Lowla was even able to carry him around.

After some pictures Brandon released him in the front yard. Haven't seen him since.

My Little Artist

My kids are usually pretty good at going to bed and staying there even if they aren't sleeping. Zoey has been increasingly being more difficult to put to bed at night. I usually tell her that she doesn't have to sleep but she needs to stay in her room and play with the few toys (stuffed animals, ponies) that she has with her. One night I was pretty busy with work and after I helped Brandon put the kids to bed I went back to work. I heard Zoey get up several times and Brandon put her back. Finally I hear "Mel....You need to come up here" I figured he was finally calling in reinforcements to lay down the law and get her to stay in bed. He's the good cop, I'm definitely the bad cop.

I walk into her room and find:

 

Yes, that would be crayon drawings on all four of her walls. I put her to bed and told her she would be punished the next day. In reality I was more upset at Brandon than her. I knew at some point the kids would mess up the walls and they would have to be repainted. I asked Brandon how she got the crayons and why her lights were one and he said, "I didn't know she wasn't supposed to have them. I thought she just had to stay in her room." ...

So the next day her punishment was to help me clean the crayon off the wall, which is virtually impossible because of our builder grade matte paint. I mixed some vinegar and water and made her scrub at the crayon until she was really whiny and bored and obviously making no progress while I cleaned most of the rest of it with magic eraser. That was about an hour. She thought it was fun for the first half hour.

She hasn't added any new artwork to her walls since. Hope it stays that way!

Wheat Bread

Our ward was doing a wheat order of some high gluten white wheat, good for bread, and I finally decided to take the plunge and buy some for food storage. I've been reluctant for a while to buy whole wheat just because I wasn't sure how to use it. After all I have had an unopened bag of wheat flour in my pantry for a couple months now. Intentions were good but I just never got around to using it. After I put in my order for four 6 gallon buckets of wheat I started baking to see if I could even use this stuff.

I modified my White Bread Recipe and used half whole wheat flour. I also added one tsp of vital wheat gluten and substituted honey instead of sugar. I am really happy with how it turned out! Very light, springy, and delicious. The kids ate 2-3 rolls each for dinner and Brandon and I polished off the pan. Next day we ate 85% of the loaf between all of us before we were just "breaded out" We don't eat a lot of bread to begin with.

I also made chocolate chip cookies the next day and substituted half the all purpose flour with whole wheat and they turned out fabulous too. I guess using whole wheat flour isn't that big of a deal after all! I've been wanting to try a whole wheat pie crust. I know the bran can be prone to burning, but pumpkin pie in a whole wheat crust is sounding pretty good! I guess now that I have the wheat coming, I should invest in some kind of mill/grinder. There are so many out there, it's hard to choose.