Fresh Picked

(a little dirt under the fingernails never hurt anyone...) :)

Just some news....

No big news yet... except for the fact that our home study is finished!!! We are within sight of one goal... getting our profile "in the book" from which birth parents choose the family for their baby! We do have some more paperwork and a "dear prospective birthparent" letter to write. So your continued prayers are appreciated! This whole process, while sometimes slow, has been very positive! We have really enjoyed working with each person at our agency, and we really appreciate all the support we have received from so many of our friends and family!

But in other news... Whew. The month of March just flew by!! Like in the past few years, my grandmother was able to fly down from her home in Idaho and be with us for about four weeks.We enjoyed doing things with her - like visiting some pretty sites around East Texas - March is the perfect time of year to come visit this area!

 My parents - we enjoyed having both Mom and Dad off work for spring break. We sure missed having my sister here, though!

We also enjoyed having some friends visit! The spring flowers are so pretty! We spent part of one afternoon just looking around (and taking lots of pictures!) :)

Our tradition while Grandma is down here, is for her to help me put my garden in. Here is this year's garden. Fewer plants in this area. I decided to grow my cucumbers over by our (new!) fence and let them climb the chain link instead of all my tomato plants! :) 

So that is a (very brief) synopsis of our last month! Hopefully, I will be a little better blogger in April! :) Next post: Finished Object Friday!

The Garden Times

In this edition of the Garden Times, we will visit my garden and see how much it has grown since our last visit!

I'm not sure if I should be surprised or not, but it has grown rather well!!

I've gotten a bit of ripe fruit - mainly cherry tomatoes. I seem to do really well with those, but the stawberries have been really good - the few I've picked. This are my biggest so far... any strawberry tips you have would be greatly appreciated! :)

And I have a bit of fruit that I am eager to get ripe!

Here's something else colorful - in my herb garden! :)

Around the house

Happy Friday!! This week has been rather busy for me, in case you hadn't noticed! :)  But I'm ready to get back into a little more blogging! :)

It has been a little while since I did a post on my little garden. It is growing by leaps and bounds! Love it!! I am so ready to have some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers...

The cucumbers are doing great, by the way... see them in the left corner of my little plot? I did end up planting a few more seeds in the ground. I think they actually do better that way rather then starting them indoors.

Here is my little garden "annex" at the front of our house:

That is peppermint taking over, with basil and a little bit of dill. :) Yum! :)


Last Friday was our favorite sale!! I got a few things, some I will be sharing later.. :) Here are a few of my favorites.

Dishcloths!! They are much easier to buy for 25 cents than to knit myself. It's a shame that people don't recognize what they are - most of them were marked "potholders." (I wouldn't want to handle a hot pan with one!) They washed up rather well!

I also got a few assorted glass containers. My favorite is that ice bucket. (Which incidentally did not come with a lid, but Mom and I found one in a different spot - I think it matches rather well!)

After a bit of scrubbing, it is serving it's purpose wonderfully...

It almost makes doing laundry fun! :)

And it is the perfect container for my homemade laundry soap! :) (which I am still enjoying, by the way. I will certainly be making it again!)

I'd rather be in my garden....

I got my garden done - like a couple of weeks ago! I haven't told you about it yet, have I? I guess I've had so many other things to blog about - like books! and chairs...  :)

(I love a new pair of gardening gloves!)

My little garden has been getting along rather well....

(The sticks are to keep the kitties from "soiling" my soil. *insert rim-shot*)  :)


The first bit of fruit this year!

The marigolds are happy! I hope they help keep the nasty bugs away!

Here's my cucumbers:

Lovely, huh? But they are starting to make a comeback. I hope so! I sure love cucumber salad!!

So why would I rather be in my garden? 'cause I had jury duty today, that's why. I know it's my civic duty, but.... :)

ETA~Thankfully, I didn't need to actually serve on a jury. So I got home in time to play a bit in my garden! It sure enjoyed the drink. :)

Last Harvest..

...for this years garden. These cool nights we've been (finally) having finally got to it! I need to go pull the plants! but first here is what I've picked so far:

See those tomatoes in the corner? That is just a handful of what's left out in my garden! What to do with all those tomatoes?? They're still green!! I'll show you what I did with the few I've picked so far...

Fried Green Tomatoes!! YUM!! A good ol' southern favorite! And yes, people still make this, although Mark wasn't sure he had tasted it before. He wasn't so sure after the first bite, but then he took another... He decided that they do grow on you! Here's the process:

Items needed:
Green tomatoes
flour
egg wash - I put a little milk in mine
cracker crumbs
oil for frying

here's how:

I fried them until they were tender:


And then sprinkled them with salt (go easy... I got mine just a tad salty.) :)

YUM!

We had ours with black eyed beans and snaps with rice. I drank iced tea... how's that for a southern meal?

Anyone else had fried green tomatoes? Oh and any other ideas on how I can use up my tomatoes? I'd hate for them to go to waste! :)

Chari Tree Chat

First a garden update:

I love this picture! The frog thinks he's invisible. I actually did wonder what that crazy growth was on my pepper, until I got a bit closer! :)

Oh, and the mystery has been solved!

I've gotten two cantaloupe off of my "mystery vines!" They are pretty good, mainly because I grew them... they aren't very sweet! :)

This week is one of the busiest of the year for our family... Our annual Birthday Week! :)  Angie's birthday was Saturday (Happy birthday, sis!!), mine is tomorrow, and Dad's is Friday (Happy birthday, Dad!!)!  :)  (Sunday was a special day as well, my Dad's mom would have been 82. We miss celebrating with her as well!)

On to more pictures...
Saturday we celebrated Angie's birthday with cake and presents at our house.


Sunday we celebrated my birthday at Dad and Mom's for dinner.


Monday evening, I had a birthday dinner date with my hubby! (and he even took me to do a little shopping!) :) When we left the restaurant, we saw a beautiful full arched rainbow! (Unfortunately, I didn't think to get a picture of it right away, but here it is just a bit later - it had faded some.)

I hope you all have a great week!! It's is really hard to believe that September is almost here!! Wow. Happy birthday to me! :) 

Eye Candy...

('cause I'm tired of thinking about worms...) :)


I picked up this pretty vase at our local Salvation Army on Friday. Mom and I had to do some last minute shopping for VBS, and that included a trip to a thrift store - bummer huh? ;)

I love the design! Especially how it is scalloped at the top:

I filled it with crepe myrtle from our front yard. Such a feminine flower - and they are so pretty all around town right now!!

Hope you have a great Tuesday!!!

This means war!

I was not happy when I went outside today and realized what had happened to my tomato plants. But first a pretty picture of what I picked from my garden...

Yummy!!!

Someone else thought my garden itself looked yummy - in fact, they helped themselves to this:


My poor tomato plants!

Here is one of the culprits:

He is a mean one - see that stinger on the right? I used my garden tools to remove him and his friend and drowned them in hot soapy water. (I wasn't ABOUT to actually touch him - even with gloves on.)

So now my garden is dusted white, which I am not particularly happy about. But I also wasn't thrilled at the prospect of picking off worms all the time. I use Dipel Dust which I bought when my broccoli was attacked by cabbage worms. Where do all these guys come from anyway?? :)


Oh. well. Coming later this week - VBS recap! :)

I have a UFO...

in my garden!! (an Unidentified Fruitful Object!!) :) I know, another gardening post so soon... please excuse me. We've been very busy with VBS this week. It's been going great! So exciting to see kiddos having fun and learning about Jesus. :)

So on to my UFO...


So what is this? A Cuke-a-lope? Cant-a-melon? Punk-a-lope? Mel-a-cuke? Or just something simple like a watermelon? (I've never grown one you see.)

It looks most like a watermelon to me, except the leaves... and yes, this is still my mystery vine. I haven't got it figured out yet. :) This is the first fruit I spotted. And believe me... it has been difficult to spot anything - even red tomatoes - because this is my garden now:

For reference... this is what I started with:

Thanks, Grandma!! I think maybe a little of your green thumb rubbed off on me!! :)

Sooo.... Come back tomorrow for Finished Object Friday - VBS edition!! :)

The long awaited....

CUCUMBERS!!!!

I'm so glad to finally harvest a couple of cucumbers from my garden. Even though I have plenty of vines this year, it seems to be taking forever to see some fruit! These are beautiful though...

My cherry tomatoes are still very prolific! And isn't that basil great? It had a rough start this year. I'm not sure how many seedlings I killed before two or three plants finally survived!!

So what do I make with that? One of my favorite salads, of course!! YUM!!

Rainy days...

Make me so happy... :) When we've hardly had any rain, it's hard for rainy days to "get me down." My lawn was needing watered again, and nothing does it like a good rain. It's been falling softly all morning. Makes me feel like curling up with a good book and a cup of coffee. Oh, wait. I already did that this morning, during my morning quiet time. The Bible and So Long, Insecurity by Beth Moore. Great book(s)! :)

I wanted to share a little of my yard work from Saturday. It was crazy hot, but I got 'er done!

I cleared out my nasty rangy pansies. (They are a winter flower down in the south. After May, they start looking really sick.) I had bought a hanging basket of petunias for $5. There were four plants in that basket, and they are so happy to have some room! They started blooming like crazy! (the fertilizer probably helped a bit as well...) :) The ducks seem happy for some pretty company, don't you think?

I also weeded this part of the bed:

I know, it doesn't really look like much, but those are my two rose bushes and they seemed to take a big breath after I got all the weeds from around them. With the weeding and the fertilizer/bug killer, maybe I'll get more blooms this year. When am I supposed to prune them again?

My garden is going nuts! Especially my cherry tomato - hmmm... it must feel right at home.

My other tomatoes aren't setting well. Maybe too hot and dry to early? Maybe the rain will help. My cucumbers seem to be starting to produce!

I know this one looks a little wonky, but it will (hopefully) still taste good! At least it didn't dry up and fall off! :) I'm hoping for lots of cucumbers - one of my favorites!! Yummy!! :) I just love fresh garden produce!

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Now for some more good news!! Our friend Sis. Connie is off the ventilator!! She is doing well! So thankful to God for His touch. Thank you for your continued prayers as she still is fighting the cancer.

See you again tomorrow for Finished Object Friday!! :)

Garden Events

My heart is like a singing bird.
Christina Rossetti

Happy June, everyone! I do believe that summer is here already - it's supposed to be over 100 degrees this weekend. And it's been soo dry around here - Please, Lord, send rain! With all the dryness, I try a little harder to keep my bird bath supplied with fresh water. Here is a mockingbird enjoying a drink. :)

Here's the latest in the garden! Notice something missing? The broccoli. Oh. well. I tried, and it was fun to see what would happen. I think I know what went wrong - mainly the green worms that had the plants for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, supper, and midnight snack (if they were up that late...) The worms have gone, but the plants were probably also a little too dry. (I'm now watering a little while every day. The sprinkler has really come in handy!!)

Oh, and see the big yellow tomato? It is now on my window sill - not quite all ripe yet. I can't wait to taste it - my first Golden Girl. :) (Sorry for the fuzzy picture - I didn't double check it before I picked the tomato.)

I have also trimmed down all the lettuce - it was really bitter. (Again - lack of water.) But I do have some more coming up. Hopefully it will be a tad more palatable! :)

I am happy to report some baby cucumbers!! Hopefully I have much better luck this year - they are some of my favorites!! Yummy!! :)

And the mystery plant seems to be bearing fruit. I think it is a cantaloupe. Time will tell! :)

Thank you all for the sweet anniversary wishes! I will share about our little trip later this week.