Gardens make me happy

With a new puppy this year (she already destroyed all my new strawberry plants) I didn't even bother trying to plant a garden out back (it's killing me).

To cope I've been planting petunias like mad. I've always loved this beautiful little flower....and the name just makes me smile for certain dorky reasons.

Strawberries!

Since winter apparently decided to bypass Boise this year I've decided it's time to move on & start playing in the dirt, that always makes me happy.

I bought 6 dozen strawberry plants from a lady here in town who's thinning out her parent's strawberry patch. They're a mix of June & everbearing.
I am so excited to plant these babies! Mmmmm...

You know what that means this summer:

What a week!

Oh my goodness... what a week!
This week has been crazy-whirlwind busy for us.
After Tanner & MacKenzie left on Sunday we threw ourselves into the work week with Erin putting in an additional 20 hours of overtime including late nights, bringing work home, & going to bed at 2 am & up at 5:30 am..... in addition to being on-call. (yuck)

While I was chatting with our friend Ryan this morning & feeling sorry for myself & all the time I missed my family this week I decided that I needed an attitude adjustment & look at all the good stuff that happened this week.

Here goes:

#8: Thanks to my amazing sister-in-law Anne I discovered these
(taste like a Mounds, not sun-tan lotion)


#7: first "harvest" of the summer from my tiny garden

#6: I got a new sundress on sale at Target for under $13


#5: We found this wonderful awesome yummy double chocolate pie @ Costco. The top layer is made of ganache... which leads me to the next item on my list.


#4: the invention of my new favorite saying
(are you ready for this?)

"Oh my ganache!"

(great, huh?)

#3: I got a Superman T-shirt at Old Navy for $10.50 (they have Iron Man, Captain America, Spidey, Batman, Wonder Woman, all kinds of DC/ Marvel, only in kid's sizes though... I just bought a large)

(click here to view the Boy ones)

... & I totally want this one:

(click here for Girl's)

#2: It was Harry Potter's Birthday on Friday!


#1: At the end of it all I get to come home to these guys & they make it all worth it:

First pie, first snow, final harvest

So Fall is finally here, yippie!!!

(and in Idaho, Fall also means snow)
I LOVE this time of year.... so much.
I made the first apple pie of the season last weekend for Conference.

Today we woke up to our first snow (Rick was out hunting in it) which also meant a rescue mission to harvest anything & everything left in my garden (ready or not)... it'll just have to finish ripening up inside. Now I get to make lots of salsa with all these tomatoes... bummer.

Oh yeah, and one more milestone today: the first pumpkin bread of the season too.What a yummy time of year!

When in Rome....

I figured after living in Idaho for 5 years now I should break down and try to grow potatoes, I know at least those are supposed to be able to grow around here.

My garden is now 1 month old. That's kind of deceptive though since it's really only started growing in the last 2 weeks. I was so excited & got it in on time/ early this year & then we had 2+ weeks of solid rain & clouds.

It was like Seattle, the only thing that grew were the weeds. So a few weeks ago I replanted what didn't sprout & have been trying to talk my tomatoes into growing.

I love my lettuce!

This year I planted lettuce, spinach, carrotts, green beans, watermellon, cantelope, zucchini, yellow & scalloped squash, cucumbers, jalapenos, red & bell peppers, onions, & tomatoes.

The tomatoes are retarted, they don't realize that they are too small to start growing flowers & tomatoes but nonetheless, the midget plants are trying. I put the tomato cages around them today.

I couldn't even take pictures of them, they look so pathetic. Not like last year's giant tomato monsters.

Oh well, at least they're salmonella free right?

I love gardening, even though I have vertically challenged plants this year I just love to be able to go out and mess around in the dirt for hours.

Busy week(s)

Sorry I've been out of the loop lately but summer school has been keeping me busy. Here's a bunch of pics so you can all see what we've been up to:

The kids (us too) did some cleaning...

Olivia & I baked a Mother's Day cake:

Rick ended up celebrating his Birthday 3 times:

(click on the links for movie trailers)
1. Iron Man the Saturday before his B-day
2. Rayman Raving Rabbids Wii game on his B-day
3. Prince Caspian, apple pie, & shooting with Rich the Saturday after his B-day
(does that make him 35 now instead of just 33? hmmm....)

Trevor had his last soccer game:

....I finally got my garden in,

thanks to help from Aleisha.
Now we've got a 3 day weekend, so far it's been spent helping friends move & do yard-work-type-stuff. We were going to go for a picnic & go fishing but the weather decided to thunderstorm instead.
Maybe Monday.

Kids in the garden

It was sad to leave my wonderful garden behind when we moved but the buyers said since they don't know anything about gardening if I help them out I'm welcome to whatever I want. Yes!

I love this picture, we had two volunteer sunflowers this year & this one was just too pretty to resist. Gorgeous photograph, if I do say so myself.

Aunt Roxie would be proud... I call this my "going to Farmer's Market to sell my wares" box. Not that I actually sold my stuff at the market but every week at church I bring a box like this to give away. We've got zucchini, summer squash, yellow squash, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, spinach, onions, & tomatoes.

Yes, these are my zucchini plants. They were monsters, as you can see,

Olivia literally could get lost in them.

Mmmmm....doesn't that look good?

I was pretty proud of my lettuce, it went insane this year.

just a cute pic of the kids to keep the grandmas happy...

I call these last two the battle of the cucumbers -vs- the squash plants. One poor roma tomato plant got stuck in the middle & if you look closely you can see a cucumber vine taking it over too.

Garden time

Olivia discovered today that you can eat what comes out of the garden...yum.
Trevor thinks the lettuce is cool but mainly likes hopping from stone to stone.

I am just excited that the plants are taking off, we think we got the bug-thing figured out.

(thanks for the advice, Kim)

Monster zucchini!!! yippie!

This will be my first-grown tomato...

Followed by all these lovely romas & plenty more blossoms are on right now too.

Surprisingly, & to my utter joy the green beans are making a comeback!

Awwww...

Experiments, bugs, & stuff

I just thought this was the cutest picture, we were out for one of our walks in the cemetary across the street. My family is so cute!

So Rick's parents are here & we tried a little experiment in the backyard the other night. Coke & Mentos...FYI the diet coke went the furthest. We love "Mythbusters"...

OK, so mad...my garden was growing so well & looking oh-so-cute. Then wham-o, bugs!!! So I sprayed for them & I think it melted some of the plants (arrgh). I took pictures in the hopes that someone (Dan & Kim...hint, hint) could tell me what's going on & how to fix it. HELP!