Another look at the garden

This has been a fantastic year for our garden. We contribute it to good dirt and consistent watering (amazing right?). So here are some more pictures so we can brag about how great our garden is.

This tomato plant is my favorite. At the nursery it was called Sweet 100 but the gal who was helping me said she calls them the gardners candy because sometimes they don't even make it in the house. It truly is producing lots of tomatoes so they do make it in the house and then I eat them with everything. This will be planted again next year because if I am ever going to get my kids to eat a fresh tomato it would be like this. 

This was early in the producing time. We got a lot of green beans from our two little rows of plants. Good thing I didn't plant more, no one but me likes them but they are so easy to grow. We did try out fried green beans which Justin said made them more edible. 

Another day of picking. More green beans, lots of small tomatoes, some big tomatoes, several cucumbers, and squash. Oh and some corn (that was mighty tasty) and a few apples (we are still working on the apples, knowing when they are ripe and such). 

Let me tell you about my squash plants. I bought a hungarian squash plant which makes a squash kind of like a pumpkin but bluish in color. I also bought a yellow squash and a zucchinni plant and we planted pumpkins and cucmbers (and later more cucumbers) and we had a volunteer plant growing which we really didn't know what it was. I haven't grown squash in a couple of years because we got squash bugs and they ate my plants. Well we did get squash bugs this year but after my plants were big enough that it really didn't matter. Look at that picture! There is one growing all the way to the opposite end of the box and out of it. They are growing into the tomatoes. They are everywhere. The zucchinni plant is not zucchinni, I don't know what it is but I want to grow it again. And I just figured out what the volunteer plant is: it is a winter squash. Justin's parents gave us a giant winter squash last year and we didn't know what to do with it and it got dinged so it started getting mushy so we threw it out in our garden (maybe it should have gone to the compost bin first). So I have a very hardy winter squash plant (I transplanted it and it still thrived) and really probably shouldn't be picking them yet. I wondered why they were thicker outer layer than the other squash. We also have four pumpkins growing so far. I shredded up 4 of my squashes one day and that gave me 22 cups of shredded squash. I still don't like squash bugs but they can have a go at my plants now.  

Yes, this has been a good garden year. Anyone need some squash or green beans? 

First Day of School

We survived the summer and have headed back to school. The older kids started last week so we have settled into our routine there. Get up and out the door. They were excited to start school.

Here we have Sam. He started fourth grade. If you flat out ask him he will probably tell you he doesn't like it but I think he does, at least a little bit.  But, it is "the hardest grade I have ever had." To which he is told: "And they just keep getting harder." We are supportive like that. 

Hannah is way excited to go back to school, after all, her teacher does this thing called super Friday. She doesn't know what that is entirely except that everyone else loves it. She loves going to school and learning and at recess she says she has started playing raquetball. Not sure how that works exactly but she loves it.

And here we have Michelle who started Kindergarten. She was very thrilled to start school. She had to wait a week after the other kids but was excited to go. And I am excited for her. Kindergarten helps my kids like each other again. One goes to school for a couple of hours and when they come home they are ready to play with the younger one without as many arguments. Here's hoping it works for Michelle and Ben. 

Camping Trip

We did manage a camping trip this summer and it included two hikes! This came as a dismay to some kids and was fine for others. It was fun to be up in the mountains for the weekend. Here are pictures from the first hike which was Silver Lake and Lake Solitude.
 

 

I don't know for sure who took the above pictures, but from this picture we can narrow it down. Every time we came to a big rock Michelle and Ben wanted their picture taken.  This was fine for the first quarter mile or so, then we tried to get them to just keep moving.
 

And this is what moving looks like for the little ones. They alternated who was on Dad's shoulders with Mom carrying one sometimes. And yes, Michelle wore a skirt the whole time, but then that is nothing new.
 

I believe this is Lake Solitude but don't quote me on that. We did this hike two years ago for Justin's birthday and there was snow on the ground (the kids remembered the snowball fight) but there was no snow anywhere around here.
 

But there was a cave. This was also remembered and this time flashlights came with us so they could check it out. There are sparkly rocks inside is what I was told (I was playing keep Ben managed).
 

We also hiked to Donut Falls which Sam declared not the greatest since he almost didn't get to climb any rocks. We had to limit how far we went because I didn't need anymore injuries that weekend (there will be a post of Michelle's injuries when I get the pictures off my phone) and my children are part monkey and feel the need to climb and jump over and from everything. It was a great weekend. Fairly relaxing and a dinner of dutch oven chicken and peach cobbler that were both declared delicious by Sam! He even ate the cobbler! Yes I am that surprised. Only a couple more weeks of summer left.