Garden July 9-14, 2018

Garden 

July 9-14, 2018

Another good garden week!!!

You can see the bare stalks from me breaking off the leaves.

I'm harvesting so many greens this year!!!!  I'm so glad!  I feel awful spending $5- $10 dollars a week buying greens most of the year.  With my garden this year I will be able to use MY greens for months!  Yay!

This year we are trying to grow Tomatillo plants.  They are really doing very well.

The Burbank Russet Potato plants are doing very well.

The green beans are coming in nicely.  In front of the Marigold plants is the Spinach Bed.  I'm letting the spinach bolt so I can collect the seeds for new spinach next year.

Dd's corn is growing well.  I hope it can beat the cold weather.

I've added string for the upcoming green bean plants to grow.  I've tried to spread out my bean planting so I have green beans for longer this year.  

Dd's sunflower plants, outside our garden fence, are getting so tall!

This middle garden is doing well.  A volunteer sunflower has risen above the tomato plants it is next to.  On the other side the section of carrots seem to be doing well.  I can't wait to see if they are getting big under the dirt!

This is the Peony plant G & G brought to us from their yard.  I am SO relieved to see that it is going to survive the move.  Usually, transplanting anything in the excess heat of July is a horrible idea.

The old front flower bed is doing well although I haven't kept up on the weeding like I should. 

The SUNFLOWERS are all getting so close to blooming!  Dd is so happy about that!

Next Week:
I see green beans starting to show--I see beans in our future!  And lots of more greens getting blanched and frozen!  

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July 8-14, 2018 G&G Go Home, Agnes Healing and Riverwalk

July 8-14, 2018  

Giz &Grampy Go Home, Agnes is Healing and Lowell Riverwalk Festival

Hello Friends!

Grampy saying goodbye to Dd 

 The vet told us to not leave Agnes alone after her surgery, so we ALL stayed home from church on Sunday.  A reminder--Agnes ate a bunch of sewing thread (we didn't know it), started throwing up, not eating, and finally started hiding away from us.  We took her to the vet and they spotted the problem immediately.  They said if she didn't get the immediate surgery she would die, and that the thread might have already torn through her intestines and she could still die even though we do the surgery.  She had surgery a few hours after we took her in on Thursday, July 5th.  They let us bring her home on Saturday.  

She didn't move much this whole week, but you could see she was slowly improving.  Each day she seems a little better! So thankful!  Sunday night I moved the big dog crate from the basement into our master bedroom.  I'd slept on the concrete floor in front of the crate door Friday and Saturday night and was in need of a soft bed.

Giz and Grampy's End of Visit:

This weekend Giz and Dd made hair scrunchies.  They had a great time working together and this was a fun project.  All of us had a great time playing Uno & Skip-Bo on Sunday night.  This time Grampy won over and over!  Monday morning was the sad farewell.  Dd and I had a hard day--missing G & G and being worn down from their visit.  G & G had a nice drive back home stopped by a really large flea market in Fort Wayne, IN.  

Garden:

Another big garden week.  I transplanted some things due to some plants growing so much bigger than I predicted, so I had to find some new places for things to get a shot at growing.  Last year we had SO many worms/bugs on some plants I decided to not grow them this year---no more cabbage or broccoli!  But, I did try out a new vegetable this year---the Tomatillo!  So far they are growing really well.

Insecticidal Soap Mishap:

Last year's garden had so many green bugs and worms that I wanted to prevent a repeat and bought a spray bottle of insecticidal soap from Tractor Supply.  I never use those pesticide sprays and hope to be able to continue that choice though it is very tempting to have a perfect garden.  The past few weeks Dd and I have been making our own "insecticidal soap' to replace the store-bought one I had used up to prevent our veg getting eaten by bugs.  I think I put too much soap in the mix.  At the beginning of the week, I noticed many leaves, especially leaves I know I had been targetting with the spray, were getting brown or burnt looking.  I immediately stopped using the spray ( 3 parts water to 1 part dish soap) but the damage was done.  The extra heat from the past two weeks only made the damage more intense.  Besides the burnt leaves the rest of the garden is doing very well.  

More Blanching / Freezing of Greens:

Like last week, I harvested and blanched a big batch of greens for my smoothies by freezing the blanched greens.  I'm hoping to buy fewer greens from Costco and use my own greens more this year.  I'm beginning to see limits to my freezer already.

Dd invited Lexi to spend this night this weekend, here they are swimming.

Riverwalk Festival: Friday

Dd invited Lexi over this week; an overnight visit.  She loves books as much as we do and the library has a tent sale outside each summer at the festival.  Each of the girls filled two bags with books!!!  We walked around, listened to the bands, and looked at all the fun things for sale--mostly art or food.  After seeing the Riverwalk Festival the girls had a great time swimming.

Lexi can now drive herself to our house.  I just stared and stared at her car in our driveway.  It was hard for me to accept we have come to the chapter in Dd's life where cars are so important.  It was a visual cue at how old Dd is getting, how fast adulthood is approaching our home...oh dear.  I'm not ready for this!

Ionia Free Fair:

Saturday Dd was invited to go to the Ionia Free Fair with a church friend, Faith Anne.  Dh and I dropped her off at 9:30 and they didn't bring her home until 2-3 pm.  She said the highlights were the rides, corn dog, root beer, chocolate milkshake, honey sticks, molasses cookie, and Elephant Ear!  

The small white eggs are from our Bantam (Ms. Lemon), but this week one of our other big birds laid a tiny little brown egg.  It was so cute I had to take a picture of it.  Can you see it in the middle of all the other eggs?

Chickens:

Surprise!  I accidentally found a nest of chicken eggs under their ramp!  There were something like 14 eggs there!  I had noticed the egg count had been down a little.  I assumed it was due to the heat and ugly weather.

Volunteering at the Library:

Dd worked her normal hours and also picked up an extra day b/c another teen had to call in.  She has been looking online to read about possible library careers.  She really likes working at the library and especially working with the kids.

Pool:

Still working on getting the water clear.  Geesh, we've tried everything!  Saturday, when I went down to check the water I got stung by a hornet; which was swollen and painful for 3-4 days afterward. 

This weed was growing in our buggy bed and I thought the leaves looked like it might be a flower so I left it alone.  Finally, I got to see what a pretty plant it was after waiting so many months!  It really is gorgeous!

Academics:

Bible:

Church and Sunday School

Entrusted by Beth Moore (Bible study on 2nd Timothy)

Andy Stanley: Guardrails - lesson two

Math:

Khan Academy: 30 min each day

Foreign Language: 

Spanish on DuoLingo

Physical Exercise:

Swimming 3x this week

Mowing the Yard 1 x this week

Dd made a GF cake this week

Reader:

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Fun Reader:

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Art:

Dd reworked her OWL painting

Painted 2x

Sweet Potato Biscuits:

I made these GF biscuits this week; usually, Dh likes to make them on the weekends.  I just wanted to share them as I'd never heard of them before and thought I'd mention them.  They really are very good!

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Garden July 4th Week, 2018

Garden 

July 4th Week, 2018

I thought I would post a few garden pictures separate from my updates.  I like to go back and look how my garden was doing last year, in the same week, to compare and this will make it easier for me to do next year!!!

This week I thinned out LOTS of Swiss Chard, but it still looks fairly full.  I will repeat Chard next year, for sure.  I really like having a whole bed of it.

We brought up some of our Blackberry bushes when we moved here from Indiana, not a lot, just a few, but they continue to multiply like crazy.  This year I tried to move all of it out of our left bed and replanted it on the right, inside the gate.  What little was left behind on the left has gone crazy and has spread out.  I'm still finding new baby Blackberry sprigs coming up in our herb garden.  I don't know how it spreads so easily, but I am glad!  I'll have a bunch to round up and replant...if only I knew where I want the Blackberries to be planted permanently!  They need a home for the long term.

Giz brought me up a section of her Peony plant, Dh adores Peonies, and I'm protecting it with the umbrella while it goes through its transition.

Like the chard, I really thinned out both kales in this bed, but it still looks pretty full.

This is the newest bed we made a few weeks back and planted with Yukon Gold potatoes.  They are coming up fast!  It has been SO very dry, I'm having to water a bunch.  We have two other varieties of potatoes growing in other beds as well as this one.  We really like potatoes!!!

This spring I researched how to properly prune our grape vines and it has made a HUGE difference.  Normally we would get just a few grapes, this year we will be able to can them---maybe a grape jelly?  We brought our little vine from our home in Indiana too---it has adjusted very well here.  We are still planning on building a real trellis for it somewhere on the other side of the house for its permanent home. 

Here is our new 'inside the garden' double size raised bed.  It is doing well.  The cardboard egg rack was to get some spinach seed grwoing.  I tried putting seed in the cardboard and then just in the dirt beside it to do a little experiment to see which would sprout more spinach.  Well, both actually failed.  I think I had 3-4 sprout inside the cardboard and 3-4 sprout outside it---but the kicker is that I probably used 30 seeds.  This was new seed too.

The first bed, by the house, is the "herb bed" with asparagus and herbs, then the "spinach bed," then the "lettuce/tomato/green bean bed."

Close-Up of the Herb Bed, Mammoth Basil, Sage, Strawberry plants in view.

A week or two ago I spotted these two new blackberry sprigs poking through the grass by the Herb Bed.  I'm glad to see them, but, they will have to be moved eventually.

Counting My Blessings
I'm so thankful to be able to hang my laundry outside and grow nutritious food in my garden while enjoying the sights and sounds of the woods.  In our last home, in Indiana, we were not allowed a clothesline in our yard so I had to put up an umbrella clothesline inside my bedroom.  I'm so glad I don't have to follow all those crazy HSA rules any longer!!!   

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