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.

Monday Garden Club

I moved the plants outside into the greenhouse for good last Friday.  We still wheel them into the garage overnight, but they are now able to handle dropping down to 40 degrees without a problem.


There has, however, been one problem with the new arrangement.

Yesterday, after I flipped down the door to water the plants, the wind (That damn wind!) caught the back window like a sail and smashed it to the ground in several hundred pieces.

Less than an hour later, the Gardener was finished replacing the windows, and the greenhouse was back in business.  This is exactly why we save old windows. 
This time he added some more screws to the frame to make sure this doesn't happen again.

The girls and I went to a garden center over the weekend (I love to make the rounds this time of year.) and they each picked out a begonia.  They are both sitting patiently in the greenhouse until the weather cooperates a little bit more.  Today is another windy one but the sun is shining and drying up the puddles.



Peony shoots



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.

Nature Connections: January

Nature Connections

is a collaborative link collectionposted at the end of each monthon Living and Learning.
Its purpose is to showcase photos of childrenenjoying nature to inspire all of us to get outdoors more.

We must be in some sort of winter weather pattern that is giving us the most beautifully sunny and calm Sundays. The last 3 have been perfect for ice skating, so that's what we've been doing.


Don't get me wrong, the kids love ice skating on Grandma and Grandpa's pond, but since someone else *ahem* recently bought a pair of skates, he's been working on some fancy moves of his own.

Be sure to stop by Living and Learning for all of the other Nature Connections links!

More Ice Skating

We went ice skating again on Sunday. This time, instead of going into town, we loaded up the 4 wheeler and went out to my husband's parents house. They have a pond on their property that gets most of it's use during the summer months (with the exception of our once a year ice fishing expedition), but now that the girls and I have ice skates and the (4 wheel drive) Gardener has his toy, we can go out there for a little ice skating.
It was the most gorgeous winter day on Sunday. The sun was shining bright and there was NO WIND. A rarity around here! Even in the 20s, it was perfectly comfortable. The girls even took their jackets off toward the end because they were sweating so much under all the layers.

There was some snow on the frozen pond, but the Gardener didn't mind cleaning it up for us. It was just powdery snow, so it didn't hamper our skating one bit.

We brought along a chair for Binny to push around while she is still trying to get the hang of having 2 skinny blades strapped to her feet.
The girls also hitched a ride from Daddy...












It was a fun Sunday afternoon. Except for the part when Flash thought it was so much fun to run full speed into us and knock us over. Not funny, you little shit.

Tree Shopping

A few weeks ago, while Grandma Dee was still visiting, all of us including Flash, piled into the truck to go pick out our Christmas tree. Every year we go to The Gardener's parents' house and select a tree from somewhere in their 80 acre field. Of course these don't come pre-lit like the plastic and wire artificial set-ups, but I'll gladly take a messy, local, real tree over fake any year. Isn't that the tradition of the Christmas tree anyway? To bring the outdoors in? Plus, it's a fun excuse to get all bundled up and drive through the snowy fields in our truck, bouncing around with the 4 wheel drive engaged.

After much scrutiny, we chose this beauty.

Unlike Chevy Chase's character Clark in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, my husband remembered to bring along a saw.
The dogs were of little help.


After I strung the tree with lights (and in the process glued my fingers together with tree sap), the girls hung all of the ornaments. Some had to be repositioned after we found 4 or 5 ornaments hanging on a single branch. Part of me wanted to leave them there because it was so unique and a real work of art, I just didn't want any handmade ornaments to fall and be destroyed by a certain four legged shredding machine.