Summer Photo Dump 2

Sitting here in the beautiful weather taking a break from decluttering (and just finished cleaning up a shattered glass of water from the patio so I need a little downtime!).

We have had an amazing year for early summer gardening. Lots of beautiful heads of broccoli and cauliflower, and more kale, chard, lettuce, peas, and berries than we can eat! Tomatoes are just getting started, and we have some beautiful peppers growing, along with green beans starting to blossom. Our plum and nectarine fruited for the first time this year, so I'm excited for them to ripen up.

We made our first trip of the summer to Glacier. John is hoping to make another...I'd love to go again but not sure we have the time. It's such an amazing place. I can hardly choose which pics to include because every single one is so beautiful (even though the pics don't begin to do it justice!). This year we camped with some friends who have property right on the edge of the park. The kids had so much fun hanging with their friends (and we did too!).

There was still snow at Logan Pass. Brrrrr.

This pic is courtesy of Archer. It's a little blurry but I love it!

We had a good amount of rain while we were there. Here we spent some time drying off at a restaurant with fries and milkshakes.

The "weeping wall" was more like the gushing wall!

One of the more memorable moments of the trip was when we were headed down from Logan Pass and it was SUPER foggy - as in we were driving about 10-15 mph some of the time because it was so hard to see. Well, some rocks fell down onto the road ahead of us and John slowed down even more because of the small rockslide...and then a softball sized rock hit our hood! Thank goodness for the Linex paint job, and we were also very thankful it didn't hit the windshield. 

Berries!

We picked our first strawberries of the year yesterday! This was the second picking of honeyberries so far. Too bad the weather has been so cool and cloudy in the last few weeks. They will probably be ripening up slowly!

Beach & Pool Day

It has been HOT! We've been in the high 80's-90's since school got out! The boys have been spending their days in the water...hopefully our little easy set pool will last through another summer, but I'm doubtful with as rough as they are. 

We spent the morning at the beach today, and then (since we realized that all of our buckets and shovels had disappeared) we hit the dollar store for some summer toys. We are now stocked on pool noodles, squirt guns, water balloons, sand buckets, etc. Hopefully these boys will keep busy because they are already driving me just a little bit crazy! 

We came home and they hit the pool. They go in the pool, then jump out and dry off...and repeat...and repeat...and repeat...

We also have been picking strawberries like crazy! I love summer! I can go weeks without grocery shopping...and let me say, anything that keeps me from grocery shopping with all 3 boys is AMAZING!

The second pic gives better perspective to just how many berries we got that day! I love our little berry patch. 

Work & Play

That's what we've been up to.

Lots (and lots) of this:

And then some of this, on the in between times:

But the end is in sight! The greenhouse is coming along, and we just have a few more weeks of soccer (although the boys are wanting to play basketball next...we shall see...). We will still have cub scouts and swimming lessons, but that's manageable. And I can't wait for the greenhouse to be done. I have big plans for a fall/winter garden this year!

Oh Deer!

Last night we discovered that the deer broke into our garden. We have suspicions of how they got in (there is a low spot in the corner next to our neighbor's gigantic arborvitae), but they completely destroyed our baby fruit trees, eggplants, chard, kohlrabi, and I'm sure plenty more that I haven't discovered yet. So sad. While I used to love deer, they have definitely become an irritation to me since we moved to this house. 

Luckily I had just picked a bunch of tomatoes yesterday, so they could only feast on the green ones. And of course they completely ignored our wormy apples that were destined for our neighbor's house (because they don't have a garden and they LIKE the deer over there!).

Tomatoes!

We have been getting tomatoes for over a month now and it's amazing, especially considering that in years past, we've actually had to ripen our tomatoes in the garage. So far, I've canned 7 quarts of sauce, 13 pints of salsa, and dehydrated diced tomatoes, tomato leather, and tomato slices. Up next is canning some more sauce, and then if there are more left, maybe some diced tomatoes or whole tomatoes. 

We are still getting cherry tomatoes too, but the boys (well, Preston & Archer...B doesn't like them) are starting to get sick of them. I never thought that day would come!

Archer and his little friend helped me pick tomatoes yesterday

And just a cute picture of my little guy waiting to pick up the biggest boy from school.

Garden Harvest

Our garden is finally picking up! We have an abundance of green beans and cherry tomatoes, along with some full-size tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, raspberries, and of course we're still trying to keep up with our rhubarb, kale, and swiss chard. Our corn stalks have small ears on them, and I'm pretty sure we have a kohlrabi that is ready to harvest. 

I'm so sad it's August though...that means only a few weeks left of summer here, and I'm definitely not ready for (1) cold weather, or (2) school to start.

Bikes, Gardens, and Bees

That pretty much sums up the last few days.

Bike ride along the lake on an area of the centennial trail that we will likely not repeat (part of it was right along the main road with no barrier in between...not ideal for small kids on bikes!), followed by frozen yogurt. Super exciting for the kids. Mostly just stressful for me - the bike riding part anyway!

The neighbor's grandsons have been staying with them, so our boys have some new playmates! It's been so nice for them to have some friends right next door (all of our neighbors are grandparents, so we are slightly lacking in the young kid department in our neighborhood!).

Poor B was over playing in the neighbor's yard when he got to experience his first bee stings. Yes, 2 of them. Thankfully he is not allergic...in fact he barely swelled up at all! 

And in garden news...we are getting lots of strawberries and more greens than we can eat (and we eat a lot of greens). Just today I harvested kale, Swiss chard, red lettuce, romaine, and bib lettuce. I gave away 3 large plastic sacks full, and we still have plenty for us! We've only had a couple of ripe cherry tomatoes, but we have lots of green ones on the plants. The raspberries and blueberries are just starting, and they seem to disappear before they come inside! Our snow peas are done, and I think it's maybe gotten too hot for our other peas as they have really slowed down. Sad, but hopefully we'll have green beans and plenty of zucchini and cucumbers soon!

Garden & Sunshine!

97 degrees today. It was amazing. I'm pretty sure that my heat-deprived body is happy once again! 

This morning I took the boys to the splash pad at one of the parks (I don't know why I do these things...there was a daycare there that had about 20 kids plus the normal park-crowd. Ugh. We are staying home tomorrow!). This afternoon they spent pretty much the entire time in the backyard. Mostly in the pool. 

I picked strawberries and pulled a few weeks. And marveled at how pretty our garden is, even with the abundance of weeds! I'm looking forward to another hot day tomorrow, and I'm definitely excited that John has a short week this week. 

Spring Garden

Despite the snow, hail, wind, and frigid temperatures, we finished planting our Spring garden today! Normally, I wouldn't have planted it quite this early, but since we're going on vacation soon, I am feeling a bit of a time crunch. Plus, I started my seeds a few weeks ago (a month maybe?) and they were getting a bit out of hand already!

Our garden has required a LOT of prep work...first the fence, then some major excavation to clear a garden area, and lastly (?), massive amounts of pruning the trees that have been neglected for at least the last 10 years so that: #1, they will be healthy, and #2, they won't block too much SUNSHINE!

Thankfully, we have a friend with access to some machinery and large trucks/trailers! We ended up taking over 20,000 lbs to the dump (so sad but so necessary!). *by "we" I mean John!

We planted a bunch of new fruit trees (2 apple, 1 pear, 1 nectarine, 1 cherry, and 1 plum), and we have 1 more nectarine to plant. I also planted Brussels sprouts (not sure if we'll be able to grow these in the spring, but we LOVE them so thought I'd try!), kohlrabi, beets, carrots, kale/chard/lettuce/various other greens, radishes, broccoli...and I'm sure I'm probably forgetting a few things! After my spring seedlings were in the ground, it freed up space to get my summer seeds started. I have some that I need to wait a few weeks to get started, but most are going!

The boys helped me out with the garden by making row markers, and they also did some planting. I will admit that I made them go inside after the first few rows of seeds because it was so chaotic! I'm not really sure that anything got planted in the appropriate way or spot in the garden, but they are covered with dirt somewhere in the vicinity.

So now some garden pics! I'm so excited that it's coming together. I'm hoping that next year we'll be able to put in some raised beds, but it wasn't in the budget this year!