Jacob pictures

When I was putting together my last posts, I realized that I hadn't taken any pictures of my poor, neglected 4th child in about two months.  But I've got Grandpa to help with the problem this week!

Meeting Great Grandma...

Four generations

The Garden

The summer has been cold, and I've been busy with other things, so the garden has been slow-going.  But it's finally starting to come around.  

My fuchsia got off to a rough start, but they're taking off now.

Lettuce and onions in the front, with chickpeas, beets, peas, asparagus, and a few other things mixed in.

We've been eating zucchini for a couple weeks now - I didn't plant too much this year, but hopefully I'll have enough to freeze.

The bees love the oregano (front) and lavender (back).  That big white flower is from an onion, and the bees really like it too.  My neighbor told me that the lavender has a calming, drugging effect on the bees, which explains why Mathew hasn't gotten stung.  His favorite past time of late is whacking the lavender and bees with a stick.

The beans are starting to make - these are scarlet runners that make a 12" sweet edible pod - very yummy.

Some baby lemon cucumbers hiding beneath the leaves.

I finally took the lawn mower to the edges of the herb garden, since it was spilling out all over the grass.

We added blueberry plants to the rain garden, and have some huge berries.  Just waiting for them to ripen.

This squash plant is out of control - the runners grow a couple inches every day.  The right side of the garden has carrots, eggplant and tomato plants.

Mat's training a grapevine to grow up the deck, and the pot contains my "Mother's Day Tea" - two types of mint and some lavender.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!  Come back again soon!

Learning and Growing

Mat's been working on a couple of construction jobs and bringing home all sorts of cool costumes for the kids.

My first batch of home-start mushrooms.  Still trying to figure these out, but it's fun.

We officially started school last week, and Patrick is excited about writing 4 pages of "cursive" in his new notebook.

I'm quickly getting addicted to lacto-fermentation.  We made 2 1/2 gallons of pickles yesterday, and I started another batch of ginger ale, which is really yummy.  The worst part of the recipe (to my impatient soul) is "let it sit on the counter for 3 days."  The jar is an experiment in sprouting buckwheat.

It was finally warm enough yesterday to play in the mud, which then required a rinse in the sprinkler.