Garden glory

Because it takes an extra step for me to share photos on this blog versus sharing straight to Facebook, I'd not posted here in a long time. But, since I'm in town with wifi and nothing better to do (a complete lie), I thought I'd share some gardening pictures because even though I haven't posted in a year and a half, we are still mostly small-scale homesteading.

Hubby among the okras.

Our grapes finally did something this year! It's because, for some strange reason, the vermin you call deer haven't mowed it to the ground like they usually do.

Peek-a-book, winter squash!

Some sunny summer squash.

Corn! I get so excited about corn.

The requisite zucchini

We have had really nice potatoes this year so far. No vole or insect damage.

A typical harvest: mostly grown, some scavenged (chanterelles).

Dinner is served!

And where you find zucchinis, you can find zucchini products. This was a particularly tasty muffin recipe. Very moist. I didn't need to smother them with butter like I usually do with muffins (because, IMO, the only good muffin is one that has been thoroughly killed by butter). 

Most things have been growing well for us this summer...except maybe tomatoes...even the peaches, which is the next post.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random Tuesday...thoughts and stuff

With any luck, by the time you read this, I should have arrived in Vancouver without getting too sick on the airplanes. Doing my annual visit-the-folks trip is always fun and stressful at the same time.

Wanted to leave you with a few pretty pictures of our harvests. This is our gai lan (Asian green; related to broccoli, I believe) that we blanched and froze:Just look at the cute (and tasty) flowers on it!We also harvested a large black trash bag full of basil - regular Italian, plus lime and lemon basils. I washed them, and you can see the boys' hands in this photo as they picked all the leaves off the stems.Dh did most of the actual processing work making the pesto, using up a whole bottle of olive oil (we like the Spectrum Organic ones), and about 6 lemons. Yum!! Here it is, in its blurry glory (darn shaky hands):What have you harvested or processed in the past week or two? I know some of you have already made luscious jams from various berries!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

The passing...of a chicken and of the week

I missed my Tuesday and Thursday themes, obviously. Between being out all day and the internet connection not working, blogging just never happened.

I was going to recap the week with a few photos, but first, I have some sad news to report. Our favorite chicken, Alpina, died this morning. It looked like she suffered from an impacted egg. Alpina was the smartest (I swear she was smarter than some dogs I've met) chicken with a spunky personality - would never let one of our roosters mate with her, would be the first one to come running when you have a bug for them, and would try to knock food out of your hands if you don't feed her fast enough. It's always fun to watch chickens, but doubly so with watching Alpina. We'll miss her a lot.Remember the dill we were drying a few weeks back? Here it is, dried and put into a jar. It smells wonderful!And here is some of our dill on buttered new potatoes that we just harvested a few days ago:Speaking of harvest, I can't remember if I showed you the one measly strawberry harvest that we got this year:I hope that next year's harvest will be less pathetic. We've put in a new bed this spring.

This is the first wild black raspberries harvest of the year. We put them on the pan to flash freeze before putting them into freezer bags.And last, but not least on a random thoughts sort of theme, this is one of the plates that ds#2 made that I had wanted to sell on Etsy. But, it was sold to dh's uncle when the crew came to visit last weekend. Guess we'll have to make more!Speaking of Etsy, I noticed a lot of people have started ArtFire accounts as well. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me the advantage of one over the other, if you have a preference, and any other thoughts you might have on this. Thanks!

I hope everyone's week was a good one, with no sad news. Any good plans for this coming week and the Fourth of July weekend?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Thankful Thursday

I'm thankful for harvests from our garden!

This was the first salad of the season (last month). I believe it had dill, spinach, two types of lettuce, and a bit of little broccoli.I strung up some dill - and hung them in front of the sliding glass door in the dining area - that dh harvested a couple of days ago. This is only about a quarter of the harvest!Our strawberries aren't as plentiful this year, but enough for us to enjoy them with ice cream!Because I like Teri's interactive endings to her blog posts so much, I'll steal the idea from her. :) What are you harvesting right now?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Harvests, etc.

I didn't have a whole lot to write about, being out of the house most of the days this week, but seeing how Little Shadow Creations needed a non-giveaway post to comment on (*grin*), I thought I'd oblige.

This is just a small portion of the apples that we either harvested from our trees or got from our friends C and D's trees. They may not look like the Stepford-Wives-perfect apples you find at a grocery store, but these look this way because they've never been sprayed with nasty stuff.Besides, the dehydrated apples that came out in the end were pretty perfect, and so amazingly tasty:We dehydrated twice already, and may have to do more as there are still 3 large baskets full of apples in the garage.

I also need to rhapsodize about our bell peppers. We've had a very nice crop this year. Just look at these beauties:And last, but not least, I'd like to mention a great site that I found from Suzanne's blog (which is always a treasure) - Operation NICE. What a terrific concept! It wouldn't kill anyone to be a lot nicer to others. Luckily, nearly everyone that I've met in the Blog World have been wonderful human beings.

"Happiness depends upon ourselves." ~ Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)