....and the Garden Grew

So, on the surface, it looks like these are back-to-back garden posts, but I'm making them approximately 3 weeks apart, so there has been tremendous growth and serval 'harvests.' = )

A harvest of sugar snap peas, we get this many, from 5 plants, every 3-4 days!

No before picture, because I couldn't wait any longer to enjoy our first cooked squash of the year!!!

This was the second squash harvest, the big one was intentional, the smaller one was not.  I was attempting to adjust the smaller one so that I could grow more easily, but it popped right off as I was adjusting it.  Grace was disappointed that there was not more to be had after we cooked them up! 

Yesterday's heartvest*, before the kids ate all of the sugar snap peas!  We probably had double the amount here, but they are so tasty!!!

The tomato plants are massive!!!  There are dozens of tomatoes on each one, but none of them are red yet!

I scored a freebie Cabbage plant at a rummage sale, and i think it's transplanted well, but not growing super fast.  The sugar snap peas do block a little of the sunlight, so that may also be affecting its growth?

The sugar snap peas have all outgrown their supports!  They seem to still be making new flowers and plenty of peas though. = )

It turns out that we did not give our squash plants enough space, because they are all crowded, but producing squash at a fantastic rate! = )

The green onion plants are huge and gave us a few shoots for our fried squash today.  yum!!

At that same rummage sale, I also got another tomato plant, but it doesn't seem to have transplanted very well. = (

One of our (5) cucumber plants has a flower!!!!! 

One of the pumpkin plants has taken over the garden, and the smaller one is trying to stake it's claim.  The smallest of the pumpkin plants hasn't really taken off yet, so I'm not sure if it will.

The tomato plant we had last year produced more tomatoes than we could even pick, and from one of the fallen tomatoes, a plant has grown!!!  It's having to fight for it's place in the garden, but I think it might have it's niche! = )

We already have a laundry list of what we want to grow next year, and I'm sure we will not have enough space!  

later days

*sarah coined it, and Emily loved it!

Garden 2023

During some of our warmer days in early spring, Billy and I filled up the raised bed, and refreshed the soil in the old garden.

It was still much to risky to plant outdoors, so the only thing we had in the garden was our onion pile from last year.  At the end of last summer, I pulled up all the green onions and offered them to neighbors.  Any unclaimed ones were tossed into a pile in the raised bed, which was being used as a kind of compost bin.  They seemed to have survived the winter, and so instead of covering them, I dug up the whole lot of them and transplanted them to the corner of the raised bed.  They have been so happy, and even flowering in their little corner!

Since they survived the winter and spring, they are ready to eat as needed!  Hopefully they will spread along the edge of the bed, and that can just be their new home! = )  I kind of think of them as a little wild at this point.

3/4 of the squash plants Billy planted are flourishing in the raised bed, and 2 of them have tiny squash, that may or may not be pollinated.  I haven't seen them flower yet, but maybe I just missed it?

Our sugar snap peas are happy campers!  They liked their strange cages that I bought, and have had flowers for a few weeks now.  We even spotted some baby pods!

I bought four tomato plants at the spring farmer's market.  I planted two in the raised bed and two in the ground.  Last year, the single plant that I purchased produced more tomatoes than I could eat, so four seemed a little bit like overkill, but with all the freeze and frost we got in May, maybe not.  Not a week after I planted the ground ones, and some creature came along and ate the stem, leaves and all!  = (  I think it must have been a bunny, and the ones in the raised beds were spared.

An inspection today showed not only a large collection of flowers, but also a few fledgling tomatoes!

In the ground bed, we have two happy looking pumpkin plants, and possibly a third!

And Emily and I enjoyed our plethora of cucumbers so much last year, that we took turns trying to get the seeds to grow.  She even started some inside, and then planted them outside.  It looked like none of them would grow, but today, it looks like we might have 5 tiny plants growing!!!

There are many weeds and other plants that sometimes look like one of our desired plants, so these may actually be less exciting, but we'll keep an eye one them!

Our garden is still so small, I wonder if seeing the flowering and growing plants ever gets less exciting?

later days

Collection of Other Recent Activities

 I don't know if the preparation and return from our Great Wolf Lodge trip just took over, but I feel like September was a crazy busy month.  October has not slowed down much, but at least enough that I finally have time to blog about it! 

William was selected to test for his next karate belt.  So, Emily and Juliet made up a sign for us to sport at his belt test.

Ready to go!  That is his Sensi in the background.

Testing.  They test in groups with others at their level.  They start with the lowest rank and move up, so Billy missed him actually testing (right at 5,) but surprised him when he came over wearing his new belt.

Success!  Sporting his new 11 Kyu belt!

Grace and Juliet unpacking a gift box from Zoey.

The Saturday after our trip, we headed down to Eaton Rapids to play some board games with the Cornishes.  We were there most of the day, and played 3 different games (at least 2 times each.)

What the other room looked like, with 10 kids:

And, because we were feeling wild, we drove back down early the next morning to drop off our crew, and made an adult only trip to the Renaissance Festival!  

It was a really fun time.  I don't know that I'd seen the shows in years, since we always had so many small ones of which to attend.   That said, this is the only picture that I took.  

The lines were wildly long when we arrived, and got longer and longer throughout the day.  They were running out of some of the more popular foods (like turkey legs.)   I'm sure there are many reasons it was so packed: they weren't open last year, it was a beautiful day, it was next to last weekend.  Even so, the sheer number of people was astonishing, and I'm so happy the kids were tucked safely away.  Unsurprisingly, but hopefully not terribly biasedly, I think that the Texas Ren Faire does it so much better, or did, the last time we were there, many years ago, but coronavirus has changed so much, it could be just as bad there.

On October first, we went out delivering Boo Bowls!  Filled with treats for our friends, we dropped off what we hope was a pleasant surprise.

When we went down to Eaton Rapids to deliver one for the Cornishes, we saw signs for a rummage sale at a nearby church!  So, I sent my friend a message letting her know that my car was parked in fron of her house because of our fun delivery, but that we were going to the sale.

They had massive quantities of goodies, and all of my crew found something!  William found a foam dart gun, and he liked it so much that he wanted to take pictures of it with my phone.

Juliet helped him set up his target cans.

When we were at the farmer's market in Cadillac, I saw some tasty looking cabbages.  I'd been in the mood for some of my Grandmother's New England boiled dinner, but didn't want to cart the cabbage home, along with all of our vacation things.

Last week, at our local farmer's market, I found a beautiful cabbage, but this thing was a beast!

I only used about a third of it, and it made an entire crock pot full, plus a bowl full.  The bowlful I tossed in a bag and stuck in the freezer for another time. It came out very tasty, though I seemed to be the only one who liked it.

In the Kroger, freebie, catalog that they sent out last month, they had half a dozen pintrest worthy ideas for spooky treats!  Since I've not been on pintrest in a while, this was a delightful surprise.  

As it turns out, I've set out to make all of these this season, apparently.

The little mummy oranges are so cute! The kids tried to eat them first, despite having a stash of unwrapped ones!

On the same day I bought the cabbage, I also bought a pie pumpkin.  Alice helped me cook it up so that we could make some pies.  It was so big that it made 2 pies, 4 crustless pies, 20 pumpkin chocolate chip cookie/muffins, and enough for a pumpkin juice recipe (that was not a big hit.)

The kids are all really excited about the ghost fruit kabobs, so I guess we'll be making those next.

later days