Gardening 101

This morning has been extremely productive. Got a load of laundry drying and one folded, dishes running in the dishwasher, sweet potatoes steaming (to be frozen for Ruthie), crock pot full of chicken bones for stock, and I actually already showered! Next step: Hair. I dread doing my hair - I even tried to trick...ah, I mean teach Russ to do it so I could have him do it every day... didn't go so well - and am thinking maybe I'll just pull it back today (even though this is a terrible look as my hair is just a little too short) as I have more important things to do... The girls went down for an impromptu nap (is the Lord good to me or what???!!!), so I decided to go spend some time with my garden. :) I haven't taken pictures of the growth for a while, so I thought I would take care of that and let you see where we're at.

The lettuce was just bitter and kind of weird (I think we're past its season), so I just ripped that up and have some cucumber seeds in that spot - still waiting for some leaves to hopefully sprout. So, if it looks like there is a lot of dirt, just pretend there's a big, beautiful cucumber plant there with prickly baby cucumbers waiting to grow big and strong. We've also used a lot of our herbs and are waiting for them to grow up again. Need to buy some more too...

Our 2 peppers. Noa always wants to touch the "mommy pepper" and the "baby pepper."

Here are our Roma Tomatoes. We also have a tiny Heirloom Tomato plant right beside it, but it doesn't seem to be fairing so well. It is a bit younger though, so I'm hoping it will sprout up soon. Noa calls these "daddy peppers." I haven't told her that they are tomatoes yet because she really likes tomatoes and I'm afraid she'll try to pull them off. Can't wait until they're bright red though!

Our Yellow Squash has been a little bit more productive than our Zucchini plant, but I still feel like I could be getting more out of them. Oh well... it is my first time. I think we'll eat this one tonight!

Yesterday I noticed we had some "friends" visiting (or maybe taking up residence) our Dill plant. I read a little about it on-line and decided to let them stay since they'll turn into pretty butterflies and will actually help our garden. I'm a little dilled out anyway.

And last but certainly not least... Someone was nice enough to give us a few cucumbers. I knew we wouldn't eat them all right away (and actually, I think one is still rolling around on the floorboard of the car - we can eat that one tonight) so I quickly looked up how to make pickles. I used red wine vinegar (all we had), coriander, black peppercorns, kosher salt, water, banana peppers from the garden, garlic... I think that's it. They are so pretty! I can't wait to taste them in a few weeks to see if I actually have a knack for it. I sure do hope our cucumber seeds bring some our way!!

Next year though, I don't think I'll be so skiddish about what to plant, how much to plant... I think I'll go crazy and just throw much more in there than I did this year. It is so fun to watch it grow and learn about God through it!