How does your garden grow?

The garden is finally making progress. Since so much was planted later than normal I've been worried, as our weather has been unusually cool and wet this spring. Last week we finally saw our first good hot days and things really started taking off.

The sweet corn is knee-high and looking lush and promising.

Salad fixin's under protective netting. I've been tasting these before harvesting, dreading the bitter taste that signals bolt. So far, so good.
Magical and widely derided zucchini. Many people lament the vigorous overgrowth of this plant, but I welcome it. I have many different uses for it besides the human food factor, I will also be feeding bunnies and chickens. I say go wild, zucchini monster!

Little baby cabbages forming. Aren't they just the cutest? They also seem to have avoided the worst of the pests this year. Maybe late isn't so bad after all.

Animal Additions

Once again our animal population has increased, all in the span of one week. First up, our LaMancha doe, H2, had her kids last Friday, a cute little buck and doe. They did not present well and I had to go in and help out. Poor baby screamed and pushed for naught until I got the kids in a better position, but she did her best and turned out to be a very attentive and loving mother. Mom and kids are doing well, and the kids are wasting no time being kids:)

Danny turned 10 on Saturday and as a little surprise gift I picked up two adorable fluff bunnies while shopping for meat rabbits. The little white one is very tame and Louise is constantly stealing her. That bunny just goes limp and waits her out. lol Danny is happy to have his new pets and has named them Snowflake and Caramel. They are quickly becoming spoiled and get to play in the yard nearly all day.
I did manage to pick up a few meat breeders. This one is a buck and I had plans to acquire a couple California whites for him to mate with. Alas, those went to a higher bidder, so he is a lonely guy for now. He doesn't seem too concerned, he's busy getting used to his new freedoms.

I did manage to get two California red does. I didn't plan on it, but they have papers and were said to be knocked up already. I'll say! One of them kindled in the holding pen before we could get them in their colony pen. Look closely, you can see the little bundle of kits in the corner. There are 8 of them in there. I've decided not to mess with them and therefore the cage is in the pen until mama decides to either move them or they get old enough to kick out. I'll post more on my colony set up another time.

Next up I need to find a buck for the reds and a lady or two for my spotted boy. We are getting quite the menagerie around here:)

Cherry-O!

I have been pleasantly surprised with the cherry trees I planted early last spring. Both trees were loaded with fruit this year and I even managed to pick a couple handfuls before the birds found them. These are just wee baby trees too. I am hoping to add a couple more of this variety to our orchard this fall. Imagine the cherry pies I can make:)

Wedding Bells

My baby brother got married on Saturday in a beautiful outdoor wedding. Thankfully the weather cooperated:) Jesse and Louise were part of the wedding party, both did pretty well, though they both kind of got grumpy with all the long drawn out itinerary. Louise finally had enough of the photographer and refused to do any more poses after the third hour. I'm just glad she lasted that long.

Getting dressed in the parking lot, he refused to drive an hour in the penguin suit.

Dolly and her cousin as the flower girl/ring barer. She did not want to hold hands.

Jesse with his "date". They make a pretty picture, even though he seems to be scowling.(He's really not.)

A rare moment of standing still.

The whole wedding party, Jesse is on the far right, Louise is obvious:)

Sibling shot, yep I'm in there.

The blushing bride, holding the biggest bouquet ever.

Congratulations guys, hope you have a long and happy marriage!

Strawberry Jam

(Crushed berries) I forgot to take a pic before we crushed them:(

It's strawberry season! Unfortunately the slugs are winning in our small berry patch and it looks like this year may be a bust. We only get a handful or so each day, the slugs always get there before us. On the way to town today I noticed a tiny sign for organic strawberries and wheeled in. The woman selling them made me a deal on three quarts since they were yesterdays berries, she kept apologizing for not going out to pick today. I was happy, the berries looked great and after sorting, topping and crushing we ended up with a quart for our jam making.

To the quart of crushed berries we added 4 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup of lemon juice. This went into a heavy saucepan over low heat to dissolve the sugar. Then I turned the heat up and brought it to a roiling 220 degrees. Once it's there it's nearly done, just ladle into jars, process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes and done! We managed to get 5, half-pint jelly jars filled. Next we will be doing the blackberries and grapes(both grow like weeds for us). Nothing better than homemade jam on a warm bagel:)

Rules, Rules, Rules!

I hate to be the bad guy all the time, but we can't always let our children have everything they desire. And while he manages to put on quite a dramatic show for sympathy I'm sure, I simply cannot allow him to eat the mulch. Sorry Bubbs.

It has become quite an amusing, if not annoying, habit around here to make sure Bubby stays out of the mulch. My son Danny is especially exasperated.
"You mean that stuff that looks like cereal, and smells like cereal, but doesn't taste like cereal?"
"Yes, please just make sure Bubby isn't eating any, ok?"
Big huge dramatic sigh.."Ohhhh kayyyy"....."Bubby no!"
And life goes on. lol

How does your garden grow?

Growing food is a full time job around here. This year we added another large bed to the east side-yard. This virgin bed is growing our tomatoes, beans, peppers, melons, pumpkins and grapes this year. The tomatoes and peppers are doing well, but something keeps eating my beans. If I can't get that under control soon, the been harvest is going to suck this year.

In the west garden, the corn is sprouting along with thousands of weeds and weeding is now a constant activity. It's a battle of epic proportions that I'm not sure we can win. Chemical warfare is out, we prefer organic methods. Organic usually means labor intensive, very labor intensive. The benefit is stronger arms and nice shoulder muscles, but I'm not convinced that is a desirable quality in a woman.

The onions are doing great though and with the nearly foot thick pile of grass clippings around them, weeding is much easier in that bed. Unfortunately we can't cut the grass fast enough to supply this mulch for the entire garden, plus I keep taking away huge swaths of the yard for more gardening. I hate the noise the mower makes anyway.

The Strawberries are large and would be doing great if the slugs would all just disappear. We only manage to get 3 or 4 ripe berries per day, many more are lost in the wee hours to the slimy hordes.

Believe it or not, there are hundreds of potato plants in this bed. There are also thousands of weeds. I can't decide if pulling by hand or hoeing is faster, I'll let you know someday.

So how does your garden grow?

All the pretty posies...

Since I've been digging up the giant beds on the far side of the property, I've been faced with a bit of a challenge finding places for all the plants. We put in a cute bed around the flagpole out front, but that quickly filled up and I still have bunches of plants I need to move. I've been giving them away left and right, but I'm still digging, digging, digging.

Finally inspiration hit me during one of our cookouts a couple weeks ago. I had a vision of beautiful sweeping beds of glory all around the perimeter of the house in place of the straw-bale and weed-scape that we currently had going. I had to think about the large roof overhang though, can't put much under there and expect it to thrive, plus we still needed to get under the house on occasion, so I decided to recycle an old patio in the driest corner and there I would be able to collect all manner of potted plants. That is what is hiding behind these newly transplanted daylilies. It actually turned out quite nice, now if the home improvement stores would just get a new shipment of the paver sand I need, I'd be a happy gal.
The digging efforts have continued and soon I found myself heading around the west end of the house. I found a use for the pvc trellis my loving husband made me for the grapes(I had to crush his enthusiasm and explain why it wasn't quite strong enough for grapes), now it will get a less demanding annual vine to love. I put in pavers and filled in with white marble in front of the door, moved in more lilies and I'm still going strong. It really is coming along nicely.

The best part? The mulch! Mmmmmmmmmmmm.......chocolate! I found some cocoa hull mulch at Menards and decided to give it a try. I think everyone loves it, in fact, we can't seem to convince Xavier it's not cereal. Last night we all sat around the carport and breathed in the chocolate air, it was well worth all the work.

What I've been up to.........

Believe it or not this pantry/storage room/utility room used to be so crammed full of crap you could hardly get in or out. The freezer faced the wrong way, there was a huge box of milk bottles in front of the dryer, the high chair sat on top of various plastic dishes, clothes and papers and the door was non-functioning. I finally got into a bit of a frenzy one day and cleaned this room out, re-organized and tossed a bunch of junk. Walla! Even I'm amazed by the vast amount of space that was hiding in this room. Now canning will be a lot easier, since I no longer have to contort myself around objects just to find my canner. My jars can stay clean and orderly and I can actually get to the freezer. The dryer is redundant though, we rarely resort to using it since we all prefer fresh smelling clothes anyhow. Oh, and the back door now opens!!!!

That was just one day full of adventure and enthusiasm! I didn't stop there.........

Since GM has moved over to the trailer, I've been trying to dig and move my flower beds. Well, I don't actually have giant beds to move all the plants to, so I've been dividing and giving away bunches of daylilies. These are pretty pink, purple, red, yellow, and white varieties, so I've had no problems finding takers. The neighbors all have some and I'm mailing more off to gardening friends all over the US. I have been digging and dividing for days and haven't made much of a dent in the beds. It's daunting, but I hate to see them mowed off. GM prefers a nicely mowed lawn akin to a golf course, rather than pretty landscaping.

Let's not forget all the veggie gardening going on around here too, and the goats chores are never completely done. I'm a busy girl.