Monday Garden Club

Well, hello there, long time no blog! Before I get to the garden, I'll give a quick update on what the heck we've been up to since I last checked in.  I've been busy taking pictures.

  

The Gardener has been mowing lawns 2 nights a week (ours and one other), and just yesterday started a new garage project.  He found a 2 car garage on craigslist for cheap, so he bought it.  The only catch is, the garage is currently standing in someone's front yard, completely assembled.  The Gardener and his dad removed all of the shingles and a bunch of other parts yesterday, and hopefully by next weekend, he'll have the wall sections ready to be moved.  We need another giant project like we need a hole in the head, but doing it this way is much cheaper than starting from scratch, and our little one car garage, besides being too small for much of anything, is falling apart. Yeehaw!

The Gardener and I also celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary last Thursday.  We went out for dinner Friday night and displayed exactly how old we are by deciding not to go out for an after dinner drink and instead go home and SLEEP.  No, really, it was awesome and much needed.

The girls were gone for the weekend with Grandma N and Uncle T, boating and swimming (Apparently in their underwear and T shirts because somebody forgot to pack swim suits. Oops!)  and when they returned, look what they found inside a jar in the house!

A few weeks ago while on a walk through the garden, I noticed my parsley plant had been completely eaten.  All that was left of it was stems, and on those stems were lots and lots of bright green and yellow caterpillars.  I ran to find the girls and minutes later there were about 10 caterpillars in a re-purposed pickle jar.  2 formed a chrysalis and the rest apparently didn't appreciate their new environment because they didn't do much of anything and are still laying lifeless at the bottom of their makeshift cage, as removing them would disturb the remaining chrysalis which is attached to the side.  Anyway, look how pretty!

After admiring the beauty of the new butterfly, Mae released it onto a flower...

And while I no longer have any parsley growing on the garden, I have patty pan squash,

cucumbers,

LOTS of sunflowers,

watermelons,

tomato trees plants,

and we're still getting some broccoli!

I made 3 big jars of pickles last week, blanched and froze some broccoli and beans, and cooked and ate damn near my weight in summer squash.  I still have lots of produce to preserve and use up but I'm hoping I can get some roasted veggie pasta sauce made in the next few days, and when I do, I plan to post the recipe here, if I don't get distracted by Facebook, or editing wedding photos, or a dog eating yet another pair of shoes.

Anybody else gardening this week? If so, grab the Monday Garden Club button on my sidebar, paste it to your blog entry and link up below with Mr. Linky.