Gardening

We finally had room to start a garden this year! I was so excited about fresh veggies and getting to can for the first time.

In the spring we did a family home evening where we sang. "The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden" and then we dug up a plot in our yard as a family.  When we started digging I didn't think we were going to get very far but we actually finished it that night!  Go Family!

Looks like fun, right?  We had fun!

 Here it is early on in the spring, hence Novalee in her sweatshirt in the kiddie pool.  :)

Making progress.  We never really thought it would grow so well.  The unexperienced (us) had doubts anythign would grow.  We started our tomatoes from seed early, early in the spring inside and they really didn't look like they were going to make it but they just shot up as soon as they were planted outside.  

 Well I didn't grow this butterfly nor is it in our garden but it was so pretty in our neighbors.  

I love where we live!

 

Our first carrots!  

 The neighbors have many sunflowers and over the years birds have spread the seeds all around.  We had a few spring up randomly.  They are pretty cool.

 I grew potatoes from rotten ones that I didn't cook soon enough and they started to sprout.  I just buried them and they grew!  

My first canning experience, GREEN BEANS!  My sister basically did it for me since I had no idea what I was doing.  5 quarts that is all I got from our beans...maybe next year I will pay better attention to the package and I won't buy bush beans.

 We have two blackberry bushes in our yard that have been here for years.  It was so awesome to be able to just pick blackberries from our backyard all summer long. I canned a few pints of blackberry jam and some blackberry syrup. 

Our conjoined cucumber. 

 Being without experience on gardening we weren't sure that anything would make it so we didn't thin anything out as it grew.  So we had cucumbers and currently tomatoes coming out of our ears.  This was just one of the many, many cucumber harvest.  I currently have several bags of them in the garage that will probably go bad.  Next year we will know better.

We also canned three quarts of salsa.  Not much I know but I didn't have gloves for the peppers and worried about blistering my hands.

AND we canned two, yes TWO quarts of pasta sauce!  It took 22.5 pounds and hours and hours later to get those precious two quarts.  I was pretty disgusted after seeing how much work was involved to get so little canned.  Wes asked me last night if we should use one for dinner.  Heck no!  Those things are precious.  We are going to have to celebrate something special to crack those babies open.  

I'm kind of over the gardening thing this year which is good since really all we have growing right now are some tomatoes and some not so hopeful watermelons.  

This year we added grapes, an apple tree and a cherry tree to our yard.  I look forward to when we can enjoy eating apples, cherries and grapes from the yard.  Next year I want to add blueberry bushes and raspberry bushes.  We are quickly running out of yard.  

I wish we could buy property somewhere nearby, pick up our house and plop it down and go from there.  I would be sad if we ever moved from our house but I could deal with more land. 

Plus Wes wants cows, doesn't that seem odd.?  

Wes a cattle herder?  

 Maybe someday. 

 :)