Our garden is growing and growing!

I am so amazed how well the gardens are doing! With our current cycles of heat and rain, the plants have all thrived.  The weeds have tried to get ahead, but Brian and the boys have kept them at bay.

The onion leaves are huge...The bush beans all have flowers on them. The carrots are growing and have already been thinned.  The various squash plants all have flowers and huge leaves...and even some baby fruit like this little cucumber. However, the leaves have started to shade the pepper plants, so transplanting might be needed soon.

Most of the tomato plants have flowers on them, and a few have the beginning of fruits.  Even the tomato plants that were eaten early-on by rabbits/squirrels have tried a second go at things and are surviving enough to produce flowers.

Our little blueberry bushes have blueberries ripening on them.  I hope to get them before the squirrels discover that they are edible.

 

Our four pea plants are vining up the fence. Tamlin is showing off how tall they have become!

On the swingset, the upside down tomatos also have flowers and fruit starting.
The potato plants are growing and flowering. Tam and Jude are showing how many potatoes they'll eat (5).
 I can't wait to taste the salsa!

Humor

HA!
HA HA HA!
I think I hear "Mommy, watch this trick" at least once a day... and sometimes the stunts are just as "awesome" as those done by friends back in college!
HA!

10 Years!

By Golly... it has been 10 years since Brian and I got married!
10 years!
A decade!
And, depending on which one of us you ask,  it has been about 17 since we started dating.
Gosh!
I've known Brian for nearly half of my life!
 Good thing I still love him... All the way to the moon, and back.

Here are some old photos of us, mostly from our time in Minnesota...2001-2005ish.

Click here to view these pictures larger

Fish Festival and fireworks

Our town seems to be having parties all the time. We love this :-)  The boys love going into town to see what's going on, what games to play, what parades to watch, and what food to try.   Here are a couple of more shots from the Fish Festival... complete with a fireworks show at dusk.  This was both boys first fireworks and they were impressed.  Can't wait to get them out for forth of July.

First harvestings

 Our Garden is doing wonderfully!  There is so much green in there, and not all of it is weeds!
Even our little carrots, which went in last, our sprouting well.

 

 The tomatoes and the cucumbers have flowers on them.  We are hopeful that they will get busy and yield some fruit too.

We do have a few produce that are ready for harvest.
I discovered that we have a small patch of strawberries in the back corner (amongst some poison ivy).  Even after Brian hacking at the area with lawn mower all last year hasn't deterred all the plants.  We are yielding the bumper crop of 6 berries this year :-)


In the boxes, most of the fingerling radishes are ready.  I should have remembered how fast these little guys grow!  I had let Tamlin and Jude plant most of these seeds = tons of seeds in short little lines.  Next year, we need to remember to space our planting of radishes out, so that they all don't come to harvest at the same time!

All of us tried eating some of the raw radishes straight from the garden.  Tamlin pronounced them good!  So, now I'm looking for good radish receipes :-)

 

I'm eager to try this : Pesto, Radish, and Sea Salt Crostini or

Grilled Steak With Cilantro Sauce and Creamed Corn with warm tortillas or maybe even 

Radish Butter : http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/radish-butter

While searching for radish recipes, I found this quote by a fellow gardener / cook.  It totally sums up how I feel too!

Deborah Madison: I think once you get into the garden and that becomes part of your source of food, you realize the difference between eating food that’s really alive and that’s kind of sort of alive -- that’s been sitting around the store. I think of it as languishing compared to just picking things and bringing them in.  But there's also a quality of, “I grew it, it’s my baby, I love it no matter what.” And you just eat the ugliest stuff and you’re so happy. I am not a perfectionist gardener by any means; I’m a beginning gardener, and not everything comes out as it should. I always feel like, “Oh my gosh, it grew under my watch,” so there's sort of a feeling more of gratitude.

 http://www.splendidtable.org/story/what-to-do-with-the-radish

You go garden!
And you rock, Brian, for making this happen!

Sand Castle Contest

 It is a beautiful June day...and our little town is having a huge festival this weekend. Really...it is like a three day long party!  They close main street and invite in a ton of vendors as well as local folks raising money.  There are pageants, contests, parades, and fireworks :-)


This morning at 9am was the sand castle contest on the main beach.  Apparently this contest has been held for the past 20 years and sounded like it would be a ton of fun for our little family to participate in.  Jude had received a big bag of beach paraphernalia for his birthday (From the aunts I think), so we had plenty of buckets and shovels.

When we got to the beach, did we have a plan?
Nope.
The rules were simple:  build a sand castle using the usual buckets and shovels and any natural objects found on the beach.  We entered in the preschool category with our two little ones and called ourselves Team Dragon, having played wizards and dragons at the water park this week.





I asked Tamlin what he wanted to build...
Tam "Build a castle. . . and a dragon"
Ok.
Hmmm...

Brian went to work on the castle.
The boys began by hauling water up and finding rocks and sticks.
I thought about how to make a dragon out of sand.
We mounded up the sand and made the vague dragon shape blob-like body.
But what about wings?
Tam came back with sticks...brilliant!  Stick wings!
Jude helped with decorating the dragon with rocks and sticks.

Dragon was looking good but something was missing.
Tamlin asked where his tail was...a tail!
We worked on sculpting a tail that swept around. Of course it had spikes all over it.
Tiny white shells became the dragon's teeth.  Tam decided on two black walnuts for the eyes.  Jude helped stick the sticks around for a throat fringe.


The boys went back and forth between helping Brian with the castle and helping me with the dragon.
They added sticks and rocks to the castles to make doors and decorations.  Tamlin added a cool warped wood piece as the wizard on the top of the tower defending the castle from the attacking dragon.


But the castle needed something too... and the boys were tired of finding rocks...



We need a moat!

Dig, boys, dig!

We then lined the moat with small rock and shell debris so that it looked like water.

Here's our finished castle and moat.  The dragon is just to the left of the photo...

swooping in toward the tower outside the moat.

 And Here's our Dragon flying in for an attack!

We waiting and played while the entries were judged...maybe 15 groups total.  There were other cool castles, a sand sunflower, a great looking fish, a giant flag, and even a living sand-mermaid!


 Everyone got ribbons for participating.
And we WON for our category!
Yeah!
Tam was so excited to get a ribbon AND a trophy!

Jude buried his ribbon in the sand :-)




As a family, this was an awesome morning.  I loved that we were able to do something fun all together...with no fighting or tears or pouting.  Both kiddos really got into the event and had a blast.
Can't wait to try again next year... Brian is already thinking of doing a city-scape with Jude dressed up as Godzilla!