Seventeen pounds.

Pounds that I lost? I wish. Tumor removed from butt? Nope. Potatoes picked out of withering patch? Ding ding. Yesterday morning I was out with Patchy and I thought, "hey, why don't you stick your hands down in there and see if there is anything. We had checked a while back and came up with these pathetic looking potatoes. But not yesterday. I pulled a plant out of the ground and loosened up the soil and three beautiful potatoes were laying there for me. I ran inside and showed Tim and then called Nancy. See? I was excited! After a fast breakfast, Tim and I went out and pulled up the entire patch of potatoes out by the tomatoes. The patch went from this:

scraggly potato plants

To this:

17 pounds of potato perfection

To this:

three rows of three different kinds of lettuce with Mylie watching over them

Needless to say we were very excited. We still have one more potato patch to pull, but we are going to wait a little bit. I am trying to figure out what to do with them all. I split them in half and gave half to Nancy and the other half I have in a brown bag ready to put into a dark cool spot so they will last longer. I left all the dirt on them because I've read that they last longer that way instead of washing the dirt off of them.

It was such a nice morning yesterday morning that we hit one of the gardens and went to town on the clean up. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of the veggie patches. It was the patio garden. I've been debating with myself and Tim about the mystery plant. I'm pretty sure it is a pumpkin plant. And while it's huge and taking over the patio and covered with blossoms, there is no sign of any fruit growing on it at all.

taking over patio

bountiful beautiful blossoms (with icky bug)

Tim thinks it came from a pumpkin that was genetically modified to not reproduce. Sad. So after a lot of thinking about it, we pulled it out. It was choking out some of the flowers we had planted earlier and was just crawling with those striped beetles. Tim chopped the hell out of it and threw it into our compost.

patio reclaimed

Once that was out of there, I went to town on weeding out the flower bed. I still need to work on the brick patio but it looks much better already. While I was weeding I freaked out when I touched this and didn't even know it was there until I looked again.

praying mantis

This thing is huge. It was just hanging there pretending to be a leaf of the plant and my hand touched it as I was pulling weeds around it. It gives me the shivers even now as I'm writing it. Next to it, I didn't photo it, was a hanging carcass of another one. She sucked the life out of it apparently. It was pretty gross, but the kids were fascinated. *shudder*

So while I'm pleased about the potato patch production and the clean up of the patio garden, I still have the garden beds to deal with.

the mess that is our garden

I'm not even sure where to start. It looks like we have a bunch of tomatoes to harvest again. The cabbage is growing into beautiful heads. There are a couple of kohlrabi left to be picked. There is a zucchini growing bigger. There are a couple of cukes hanging out and then the squash. Here's my problem with the squash bed. It too has a mystery plant in the bed. It looks like the pumpkin plant that we took out of the patio and it's running over the top of the other squash. I need to get in there and clear it out but it's going to be difficult telling which plant it which. They are all covered with blossoms. Then there is the mess of the brick pathways. They are inundated with grass and weeds. It's going to be an all day adventure I fear. Maybe what I'll do is enlist Tim to come out and help for a couple of hours this morning while it's still cool out. It's supposed to be warmer today than it has been for the month of August. Our high today is 81. Not too bad.

Lots to do today. I need to go start a loaf of oatmeal bread for Ethan. Nancy is going to send him a care package and I said I would make him a loaf of the yummy bread that I make all the time. I can do that now and while it's rising, head out to do some weeding. I hope everyone has a great day!