Saturday, July 30, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
kindergardens - week 13
Our kinder hasn't been in our kinderGARDEN much this week. He's been a little distracted.
I'm afraid the garden doesn't hold a candle to the newborn kittens next door. I've already been informed by our neighbor that they will be available for adoption. I'm trying very hard to resist the adorableness of the gray calico on the right. We have two cats already - we don't really need a third. But oh, she's cute.
The big gardening news this week was this:
Wonderful, blessed rain!
After three dry weeks, we were more than happy to have a big thunderstorm roll through. Now we don't have to do this for a few days:
Kiddo's zinnia bed. So pretty.
We picked green beans this week!
I threw a handful in a pot and steamed them for dinner the other night. Kiddo gagged on the first bite and refused to eat any more. Gardening Mom fail. There are pounds and pounds of beans still out on the teepee...I guess we will be donating some beans to the food bank!
Fortunately, there are a few other things that Kiddo is willing to eat from the garden.
We'll see if we can get him out there a little more this week. I found our first ripe roma tomato last night, and our peppers and onions are getting big. Salsa time is coming!
More kinderGARDEN fun can be found over at The Inadvertent Farmer.
I'm afraid the garden doesn't hold a candle to the newborn kittens next door. I've already been informed by our neighbor that they will be available for adoption. I'm trying very hard to resist the adorableness of the gray calico on the right. We have two cats already - we don't really need a third. But oh, she's cute.
The big gardening news this week was this:
Wonderful, blessed rain!
After three dry weeks, we were more than happy to have a big thunderstorm roll through. Now we don't have to do this for a few days:
Kiddo's zinnia bed. So pretty.
We picked green beans this week!
(I obviously didn't plan on picking them until I got down
to the garden...I should have brought a bucket).
I threw a handful in a pot and steamed them for dinner the other night. Kiddo gagged on the first bite and refused to eat any more. Gardening Mom fail. There are pounds and pounds of beans still out on the teepee...I guess we will be donating some beans to the food bank!
Fortunately, there are a few other things that Kiddo is willing to eat from the garden.
We'll see if we can get him out there a little more this week. I found our first ripe roma tomato last night, and our peppers and onions are getting big. Salsa time is coming!
More kinderGARDEN fun can be found over at The Inadvertent Farmer.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
hubby, the butterfly whisperer
This weekend my husband found me craning under a picnic table, trying to snap pictures of this guy.
He watched for a few seconds, then casually walked over, stooped down, put his hand out in front of the butterfly, and did this:
My man's got skills.
He watched for a few seconds, then casually walked over, stooped down, put his hand out in front of the butterfly, and did this:
My man's got skills.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
kindergardens - week 12
Ladies and gentlemen, it has come to this.
I couldn't take it any longer. I had to pull out my beloved acorn squash vine this week, and that was the last straw. Those cucumber beetles are dead meat. I hope.
I also found squash bugs while I was out spraying, as well as some foreboding egg clusters, so they all got doused. I don't know how organic gardeners do it. I tried planting late, I tried hand-picking the critters, I tried various concoctions of foul-smelling ingredients. What's a girl to do? I'm trying to justify my actions by telling myself that at least I know what I'm spraying on my food and when (and this particular product is not supposed to be absorbed by the plant, so theoretically it will all wash off before we eat it). And I didn't spray the whole garden - just the cucurbits. Which still took the whole bottle. Yikes. We have a lot of cucurbits.
Moving on...
We were a little late with our last KinderGARDEN post, so if you missed itlast week yesterday, you can check it out here.
This week, we've really started to harvest yummy goodness from our garden. We've been feasting on grape tomatoes and peas, picking the occasional pepper,
and last night we picked the first of the beans on Kiddo's teepee!
(And, coincidentally, found a huge Carolina locust/grasshopper in the teepee. And he has friends. Is there no end to the bugs??).
When the heat and the bugs aren't chasing us indoors, Kiddo has been busy in the garden. He's been checking the progress of his morning glory house,
hiding in his flower maze,
smelling the flowers,
checking to see if he still fits in his teepee,
navigating his zinnia path (just starting to bloom!),
and anxiously waiting for the yellow tomatoes to ripen ("they're my favorite, Mommy. They're REALLY good!").
He has a while to wait yet.
He also spent an evening transplanting flowers (with feline "supervision") in his flower bed.
Kiddo's helper, Sam, comes to visit whenever he spots us in the garden.
One happy side effect of our groundhog fence is that it has worked on the cats, too. No more litter box "gifts" in our garden! And there was much rejoicing in the land.
Finally, we've started an experiment - we were going to grow a yam for the "Y" in our alphabet garden, but then I read that they are incredibly difficult to grow and are basically a tropical plant. I had already bought a yam at the grocery store, so I went ahead and stuck it in a shallow bowl of water on our kitchen counter. It sprouted and grew and grew...and grew!
So we stuck it in the ground and waited to see what would happen. And now, 10 days later, it looks like this!
I don't know if we'll get any yams out of it, but we're having fun watching it grow!
Linking up to week 12 of KinderGARDENs over at The Inadvertent Farmer.
I couldn't take it any longer. I had to pull out my beloved acorn squash vine this week, and that was the last straw. Those cucumber beetles are dead meat. I hope.
I also found squash bugs while I was out spraying, as well as some foreboding egg clusters, so they all got doused. I don't know how organic gardeners do it. I tried planting late, I tried hand-picking the critters, I tried various concoctions of foul-smelling ingredients. What's a girl to do? I'm trying to justify my actions by telling myself that at least I know what I'm spraying on my food and when (and this particular product is not supposed to be absorbed by the plant, so theoretically it will all wash off before we eat it). And I didn't spray the whole garden - just the cucurbits. Which still took the whole bottle. Yikes. We have a lot of cucurbits.
Moving on...
We were a little late with our last KinderGARDEN post, so if you missed it
This week, we've really started to harvest yummy goodness from our garden. We've been feasting on grape tomatoes and peas, picking the occasional pepper,
and last night we picked the first of the beans on Kiddo's teepee!
(And, coincidentally, found a huge Carolina locust/grasshopper in the teepee. And he has friends. Is there no end to the bugs??).
When the heat and the bugs aren't chasing us indoors, Kiddo has been busy in the garden. He's been checking the progress of his morning glory house,
hiding in his flower maze,
smelling the flowers,
checking to see if he still fits in his teepee,
navigating his zinnia path (just starting to bloom!),
and anxiously waiting for the yellow tomatoes to ripen ("they're my favorite, Mommy. They're REALLY good!").
He has a while to wait yet.
He also spent an evening transplanting flowers (with feline "supervision") in his flower bed.
Kiddo's helper, Sam, comes to visit whenever he spots us in the garden.
One happy side effect of our groundhog fence is that it has worked on the cats, too. No more litter box "gifts" in our garden! And there was much rejoicing in the land.
Finally, we've started an experiment - we were going to grow a yam for the "Y" in our alphabet garden, but then I read that they are incredibly difficult to grow and are basically a tropical plant. I had already bought a yam at the grocery store, so I went ahead and stuck it in a shallow bowl of water on our kitchen counter. It sprouted and grew and grew...and grew!
So we stuck it in the ground and waited to see what would happen. And now, 10 days later, it looks like this!
I don't know if we'll get any yams out of it, but we're having fun watching it grow!
Linking up to week 12 of KinderGARDENs over at The Inadvertent Farmer.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
kindergardens - week 11 {up close and personal}
Last week's (yes, I'm late. It's lame, but there's not much that can be done at this point except to carry on) KinderGARDEN assignment was to get out into the garden with the camera and share some macro shots.
My excuse for being late with this post is that I took entirely too many pictures and spent several days whittling them down from over 100 to about 25, which is still too many, but I can't make myself whittle any further. I'm sorry. So without further ado, I will now overwhelm you with close-ups of our garden...
Kiddo's flower bed:
Veggies:
Critters:
Lots more KinderGARDEN fun can be found here. Tune innext week tomorrow for more gardening news from our house!
My excuse for being late with this post is that I took entirely too many pictures and spent several days whittling them down from over 100 to about 25, which is still too many, but I can't make myself whittle any further. I'm sorry. So without further ado, I will now overwhelm you with close-ups of our garden...
Kiddo's flower bed:
Veggies:
(snack)
(lettuce - has since bolted. Boo.)
(Kiddo's pole bean teepee - we found baby beans last night!)
(glowing swiss chard)
(kohlrabi - a fascinating and beautiful veggie, but we're not sold on the taste yet)
I think I might just be in love with Indian corn tassels:
(aren't they lovely???)
Critters:
(My evil arch-nemesis, the dread cucumber beetle...currently engaged in some hanky panky. Believe me, I took advantage of their distraction as soon as I snapped the picture.)
(False potato beetle. He actually likes our eggplant better than our potatoes. No beetles were harmed during the shooting of this photo).
And more:
(Kiddo's got zinnias in his flower maze!)
(Another inhabitant of the flower maze. Oh, dear sunflowers, how I love you)
Lots more KinderGARDEN fun can be found here. Tune in
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
