Handmade Beauty Box and a garden update

Yes, I used to make soaps: sushi soaps (+ pickled ginger and wasabi soaps) circa 2008

A number of years ago, I used to make novelty soaps, so I was reading the Soap Queen blog religiously. But, then, I had to make time to focus on writing, and stopped soaping, though I made some good friends in that community.

One of those wonderful friends is Michelle (Within the Hive) whose post about Soap Queen/Bramble Berry's newest venture, Handmade Beauty Box: DIY Delivered, I saw on Facebook.

Handmade Beauty Box: DIY Delivered is a brilliant idea that I've been waiting for. I love trying out craft projects with kits and wished there were kits for making my own skincare and beauty products. They must have read my mind. :)

Anyway, Soap Queen held a giveaway contest asking for suggestions on what people would like to see in these kits, as well as to vote for a new logo, and I was one of two lucky ducks to win a three month subscription!

The first kit will be shipped in December and I can't wait! I'll post about the packages and also my results (hopefully, I won't embarrass myself too much), so be sure to check in and you can laugh (with me, not at me, right?) at my attempts. In the meantime, go check out Handmade Beauty Box at Facebook, Twitter, Intagram, and Pinterest to see if it might be something you would like to do!

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It's the end of July (ACK!!) and time to start preparing for the fall garden. Here are a few fall crops that hubby planted.

from front to back: gai lan, rutabaga, and kohlrabi

Chinese cabbage

malabar spinach - a first for us

There is plenty to harvest now though.

4 different kinds of basil: sweet, Genovese, Thai, and lime

about 80 heads of garlic

ginormous onions

harvested yellow onions; red and storage onions to come

 And look what else is growing in our garden...

3 little Song Sparrow eggs

How's your summer harvest? Do you plant fall crops?

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

What's growing?

It's already summer and I've not done a garden post in a while. In fact, I can't remember when I last did one, but, then again, I can't remember what my kids birth dates are either sometimes.

So, here are some random photos of the garden.

lots of garlic (right) and onions (left) with tree nursery in front

kale in the foreground

alpine strawberries that some people claim are full of flavor, but I think they mealy

various lettuces

trying out a special weed cover made from paper

banana peppers

eggplant in the greenhouse

nopal (that we hope will grow big enough to eat one day)

Asian pears in the orchard

black raspberries

These photos were taken over a couple of weeks of end of spring and beginning of summer, so there's a mix of spring and summer veggies.


And finally, because I've preempted "My Favorite Scene" today, I feel like I should at least have a video, so here's one of the guys and the chickens:

So, how about you? How does your garden grow?

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

Come closer!

When veggies are this beautiful, you just have to have close-up shots.

Our cabbage heads have been medium-sized, tasty and lovely:

This is the first garlic bulb we harvested.  Doesn't that look as stunning as anything in the Louvre?

Things look a bit wild in the garden, but the weeds are actually well under control, a pleasant surprise.

And here are some of my favorite weeders: the boys!

We're getting close to making a big batch of pesto soon.  Seems like we never make fewer than 5 pints at a time.

It is that time of year when we start processing food - freezing, canning, dehydrating.  This means it's also a good time to take a blogging break.  I'll be back reading blogs and posting in August, I hope.  :)

Are you processing your veggies?  Will you be taking a blogging break too?  Have fun with whatever you plan on doing for the next month or so! 

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

How does our garden grow?

Before I get into blathering about our garden, I want to give a shout-out to Product Body's fantastic Giveaway! Head over to The Soap Bar blog to find out how to enter; Joanna's products are incredible! You can thank me later.  ;)

Thinking about the nursery rhyme leads me to suspect that Mary wasn't the one being contrary; it was probably the garden pests who were contrary!  (Unless, of course, you take it as the political allegory that it is and from the view point of Elizabeth I, Mary was rather contrary; but I hate talking politics.)

All sorts of things conspire to make your garden a failure: rabbits, voles, aphids, caterpillars, chipmunks, and, yes, even birds.  They blithely nibble on your plants and berries, snipping off and killing young shoots before they have a chance to realize their dreams of becoming a full-blown plant.  The garden is a sad, rough place to raise a seedling.

Still, we persist, year after year.  Or hubby persists, and the kids and I help to nurse his eternal optimism.

So to answer "how does our garden grow", I thought I'd show some photos of the progress.  I think I took these photos Tuesday morning (June 7th).  These are by no means all of our garden beds.  Some are still empty (well, maybe just one or two are), and some I just didn't take close-ups of (example, cucumbers, squash, grapes).

A sweeping view of the south garden, outside of the main fenced garden. Our dilapidated chicken tractor is at the left-hand side. Hubby fixed it now though, so I'll have to show a photo of his handiwork some other time.

Looking inside our main fenced garden...it's hard to take in all 27 beds in there at once:

The bib lettuce, co-existing with the frisee:

The lettuce, nearly bolting, with some beets in the foreground, not quite big enough yet. Interspersed are dill that keep self-seeding in our garden.

Speaking of self-seeding, here's a volunteer lamb's quarters:

The cabbages are doing beautifully...

In fact, dh used one for cole slaw:

...but the broccoli is just getting started:

One day soon, we'll get some peas:

More frisee, cohabiting with the celery this time:

The asparagus are still going strong, amazingly:

as are our garlic, which won't be ready for harvest for another month:

Our strawberries are pretty much done:

But other things are just getting started, such as eggplants:

and sweet potatoes:

Regular potatoes:

Lima beans:

Peppers:

Tomatoes:

And green onions - front - (this is the half bed inside the main garden, and not the six beds outside the fenced area) and basil - back:

Dh made some yummy meals again. This was a faux gyros with brown rice instead of pita, and our tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes (since our tomatoes haven't ripen yet).  Complete with my homemade Greek yogurt and homegrown asparagus:

This was just using up some left over dilly new potatoes.  Dh made a homefries sort of concoction, topping it with one of our eggs.

We're actually low on eggs right now.  The heat shut most of the chickens down, and one hen went broody so she's not laying.  *&^% freeloaders.  We might have to dispatch with this current group and get a bunch of new ones.  Unfortunately, ds#1 is rather attached to one of the hens, Licorice...actually most of the hens except for Four of Five...so we may have to keep them for longer.  I never knew he was quite so sentimental. 

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