I'm back.

I would like to say that I'm all rested today, but I'm not. I am still trying to recover from traveling yesterday. I have a lot that I want to write about but I guess I need not do it all in one post today. I don't think I could handle that much thinking right now either.

I did wander out into our gardens today. Everything looks great! I'm starting to get worried about the amount of tomatoes that we have out there. I think Nancy and my family will have enough tomatoes to take us through to next year. While we were away Nancy picked a couple for us and she also snagged 4 very large zucchinis that I'm excited to do something with. I might make another couple of loaves of bread or do something more creative. I will have to figure it out in the next couple of days so they don't go bad. Tim also hauled in a bunch of our wax peppers. I don't know if I have enough to do pickled peppers or not. I should give Peter Piper a ring. It's funny as many times as we used to say that tongue twister, it never dawned on me that you can actually pickle peppers. I'm slow sometimes.

small harvest

I think we are going to pick beets sometime this week and pull a carrot and see if they are ready to come up. I'm sad though because it doesn't look like any of the seeds that I planted on our home made seed tape came up. I wonder if the seed didn't like being put in the flour paste glue. I will try it one more time and then figure something else out.

forest of beets and carrots

It also appears that we will be picking some kohlrabi pretty soon too. The bulbs have gotten nice and big. I still have a jar of pickles so I'm not sure what I'll do with any more of them right now.

kohlrabi


These green peppers weren't even on the plants when we left for vacation. They popped out and grew in the matter of ten days. Crazy. You want to see something else crazy? This:

The mystery plant. I'm still really hoping these are cantaloupe plants. This particular batch of misplaced seeds (from compost) have taken over a corner of the flower garden. I'm going to have to watch it because if they are cantaloupe, I've read some hints about putting pantyhose around the baby melon to help it grow.

Tim's peppers are really getting big too and most of them have peppers on the plants. He's probably going to be making some hot sauces with them again this year. That is usually what he does. It stinks the house up something fierce, but he has so much fun doing it.

future hot sauce

While we were away, Nancy picked up something really neat. A potting bench. I had joked around how I was going to take the lower level of the kid's fort in the back yard and make into a gardening area. They can still climb up to the top and have their secret jedi meetings, but I was going to use the bottom for my gardening stuff. She found this potting bench at a yard sale. It's awesome! It will be used a lot I think!

I guess to end this for today I want to thank Nancy for keeping an eye on all our little plants out there and making sure they were watered when they were thirsty. Also, thanks for keeping my inside plants alive. Oh, and a big thank you for the big batch of pickled beets and eggs in our fridge when we got home! YUM! Thank you also to Debbie for picking up our newspapers and keeping an eye on the house to make sure all was ok.

new bench

Have a great day!