Two Green Thumbs

I forgot to take pictures of our first harvest (beets, swiss chard, 4 cherry tomatoes and green beans), but there's plenty more where that came from...

I love that my kids always want to eat everything straight off the plant, raw.  (even the chard!)

Peach likes to open the string beans and  pick out the tiny beans inside to eat.  Funny-bun...

Millions of Apples

It's weird.  Last year, we got hardly any good apples from our apple tree and a BAJILLION from our pear trees.  This year it happened the other way around.

I filled every bucket we own (and even emptied some at some neigbors') and the tree still looked untouched:

I was even absurdly picky about the ones I was willing to keep.  If I had any reason to believe there might be a worm inside, it got tossed.

Iris was amazed by our awesome apple-peeler-corer-slicer.

Sadly, I'm not a big fan of applesauce, but luckily, they are delicious in the dehydrator!  Perhaps I'll try to tackle carmel apples again?

Fall Day Play

It's been quite gloomy lately, which means optimal photography weather :) I can't believe how vibrant some of these colors look- they're all from my back yard!

I love how bright the green ball looks.


The Frog was "helping" me sort through the apples under our apple tree and he decided to keep one for himself.

First Harvest!

Because I do square-foot-gardening, that means I can just plant food and ignore it until it's ready to eat. Even so, I love to walk by and look at all the little leaves popping out of the ground. When I went to check on my little garden family yesterday, I couldn't believe it, but I already had ripe radishes! I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure I planted them about a month ago... (at least it feels that way).

The Frog got to taste his first radish ever:
he went back for a second :)

Spring is Finally Here!

One of the best things about going away last Tuesday, is that we left a snowy white Utah, and returned to green and flowers popping up all over! I can't believe the changes that can occur so quickly! After snapping this shot, I quickly got distracted by all the pruning and weeding that needed to get done, but The Frog and I had a great day spent mostly out in the sun! Our tulips are mostly out and our magnolia tree is looking gorgeous with it's large purple blooms!

Love it!!

Spring Is In the Air!

I was so excited the morning I woke up and all our daffodils were finally in bloom!

That makes spring official, in my mind, despite the fact that it snowed the very next day.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

I've been meaning to grow herbs ever since I went to grad school but never managed to do it until now! I was really nervous because they were only supposed to take 5-7 days to start sprouting and on day 8, I thought about starting over, but I didn't have time that day and I'm so glad because the very next day my cilantro started growing!! I only tried basil, cilantro, oregano and parsley, but 3/4 seem to have worked!! It's so exciting! I just don't have any know-how for this sort of thing, so for it to work so easily makes me very pleased.
I was reading a blog which mentioned that if one wanted to grow wheat grass for Easter, it should be started at least 9 days before. This is slightly more stressful than the above, since I had a deadline, but I decided to put my food storage to use and see if I could get my wheat to grow. (I used Turkey Red wheat, for anyone that cares). I was a bit nervous that on day 5 it only looked like this:
But by easter morning it had thickened out and turned into a full blown head of troll hair!
I want to try eating it (don't they put it in smoothies at Jamba Juice?) but I'm not sure how. I thought about just adding it to my oatmeal/scrambled eggs and other things and just see how it tastes. Suggestions anyone?

And finally, no post is complete without a picture of The Frog. He just adores being outside, no matter the temperature, so we can't wait for the temperatures to start acting spring like! Here he is smelling a tiny flower he picked off a ground covering.

Pumpkin Porch!

Because I got such a late start on my garden, there were only so many things that I could still plant, so I ended up planting 3 different kinds of pumpkin and also 2 butternut squash plants (Because I LOVES butternut squash). I've started gathering them to greet all our visitors. Sadly, we got our first frost last night, and so I doubt if we will get anymore. I think I may pick all the partials and display those too :)

Fall is here!

I've been loving eating fresh food from our garden. I always forget how garden tomatoes are INFINITELY better than those from the store. They taste completely different! I can't believe it!

I was a bit late in planting most things, so I ended up doing a lot of squash and pumpkiny things. Look how cute this little guy is! He's sitting on my kitchen table and I feel like he smiles at me whenever I walk by. We've also got a big orange pumpkin and a white one about the same size that are about ready to pick! I'm excited to carve them up, but also nervous because I've had such fun watching them grow and kind of feel like I'll be doing it to old friends. I want the designs to be just so. Any cute ideas?

Garden Stuffs

It's been so fun to work in the yard, without having a gigantic belly. Also, we have officially been living here for a year now, so I've now seen all four seasons of all our plants. I'm hoping to get a plan written down and calendared so that nothing goes un-pruned that needs it. Unfortunately, a lot of things were neglected this Spring, with the crazy weather we had.

We have a peony plant that was being attacked by another and several of the blossoms had broken stems by the time my mom and I rescued it. I decided to try to save them by bringing them inside. I don't know what it is, but I just LOVE having fresh flowers around- especially these! For some reason, they make me want to plan another wedding. :) Wouldn't this make a great center-piece?

I also finally got our garden planted- very late. I wish I had been more on the ball and started some of the cooler weather veggies, but I did manage to get corn, 3 kinds of pumpkin, butternut squash, basil, parsley, chard, beets, carrots, and interestingly enough, I've had some volunteer tomatoes pop up like crazy from last years harvest. I'm going to try to nurse them and see if they'll fruit before the frost this fall. We'll see...


The Frog has been very patient with me, just exploring the yard and tasting all the rocks while I get my work done.



I wish I looked that cute in hats :)

Weekend With Nanny!

We had a very special guest this past weekend! Jay's mom came all the way from Massachusetts to meet The Frog and help out around the house. We now have leftovers for the week and 3 of her amazing pies (two in the freezer) to show for her visit! She even toted Macintosh apples all the way from home to make sure we had her best pie. Thanks Nanny!

Other than that, we have had very little excitement around here.  Our neighbors are still stopping by with gifts and food and we just can't believe how thoughtful and generous our neighborhood is.  They are surely making our "baby adjustment" much easier.

Our garden is really flourishing now.  We have tons of tomatoes in several varieties and we have soooooo many pears we don't know what to do with them all!  So far we have 12 bottles of pears (and will do 12 more- thanks mom!), pear honey, apple-pear sauce (we have an apple tree as well) ad several large sheets of pear leather.  Perhaps I should look into getting a food dehydrator...  

Any pear recipes (especially ones that freeze well) that anyone would like to share would be fantastic right about now... OR feel free to stop by and take a few (or a lot) home with you. :)

The Frog is a greeaat sleeper during the day (notice the button impression on his cheek from leaning on me- this kid can fall asleep in almost any position, as long as he's being held.)  but hasn't been sleeping as well at night (and therefore neither have I) and so we finally decided to give in and let him sleep in the "big bed" with me.  Man, what an improvement!  I still feel like I could sleep at a moment's notice, but I don't feel grumpy today, and I can cover the huge bags under my eyes with makeup again!  I think The Frog slept much better too because he was awake for a four-hour stretch this morning!!  Perhaps it was to commemorate his third week of life and the last day of September.  Man, I can't believe how the time flies!

A Bit of Everything, Mostly Nothing

Though lots has been happening lately, I haven't felt very inspired about documenting it.  I think I've had too many journal-ish entries as of late, and was hoping for something more interesting.  However, I've just been spending most of my time keeping up with the cleaning, reading other peoples' blogs, and noticing my belly increasing in size.

One bit of excitement- we've started getting tomatoes on our plants!!  So far, only our mini, yellow, pear-tomatoes have ripened, and I haven't yet had a big enough harvest to populate an entire salad, but they're yummy enough to pop in plain.  Even though I didn't spend one cent on plants for our garden, between gifts from my mother and a neighbor, we somehow ended up with 12 tomato plants of various species- all planted within two 3x4 foot boxes.  Here's a glimpse of the massiveness of our tomato tangle- I hope I'll be able to reach them all! Needless to say, I've already started researching tomato recipes... if you have any great ones, I'm alllll ears.

Everything else seems to be going just great!  Jay has started having "official business" to attend to, and I've been lucky enough be be invited to a couple of faculty breakfasts the past couple of days.  It's funny to all of a sudden be on the other end of the spectrum in academia.  I'm not old enough to be married to a professor.

We had another uneventful baby check-up on Monday, and I've so far gained 19 pounds during this pregnancy, which means I'm allowed 6 more pounds in the next 3.5 weeks.  Wahoo! Bring on the ice cream :)  I must admit, for as comfortable as I've been the last 8 months, I really can't complain about anything.  However, in the past couple of days, I've noticed that it takes a great amount of effort to get out of my chair, so I have to be sure I don't need to get up for awhile, every time I sit somewhere comfy.  (Which is usually to read yet another birthing/nursing/baby book.)  I have three more preggy-books to finish and 2 more to peruse before I'm willing to lose the belly, and then I can get back to reading "normal" things...  I have a real hankering to read a really great novel.  Any recommendations?

Reaping the benefits of our home's previous owners...

I really hope this doesn't happen.

On a pleasanter note, our rose bushes are in bloom!  They are soooo pretty!  And even MORE amazingly, I was able to take a decent photo so that all (three) of you can see :)