Super Slacker!

Ok so its been a whole week, I know! It has been so hot here that no one wants to go outside or do anything! Its been 95-97ish with a heat index pushing it to 105-110! Too hot, so to be honest, we have been super lazy around here!

This past week, we went to the Cardinals game (they lost), harvested lots of stuff and worked alot in preparation for our trip.

I have been super busy at work, and I am so glad my boss will be back, since we have one girl go crazy not be at work all week, one guy put in his 2 week notice and another that is ready to just plain quit. Lovely, I know! Poor bossman is going to have lots to deal with when he gets back.

Alright, I will try to get some pictures of the garden, as it is totally out of control and tomatoes are rolling in like crazy!!!

Harvest Monday

Yea for a colorful Harvest! A lot of this stuff, was picked just yesterday, there were actually 4 lemon cucumbers, but we had two for a dinner salad along with tomatoes. DE-LISH!!
It's been so hot, that I have not spent a lot of time out in the garden so a slicing cucumber and a piccolo squash accidentally got huge! Oops oh well! We are entering the phase of giving away squash and zucchini because we can't keep up!

I unfortunately have lost count on what has been harvested, partially because I have a wonderful husband that likes to help himself and doesn't write it down, he just yells from the kitchen, what he has harvested! Anyway, hope everyone is having a great Monday!

Friends and Fall Planting Plans

These are our horrid little friends! I really dispise them! They ate all my blueberries, drive my dogs crazy and occasionally eat a tomato or two!
Normally there is like 12-15 in the power line, sometimes I wish it would zap them, cause I know they are up there plotting to get my garden!

Fall planning has begun. Here my poor hubby is ripping out this small tree that has decided to sprout up! We ripped the peas and the trellis out and will plant more peas later this summer! I need to read about what to plant and when as I have never done a fall planting, but will be attempting this year!

Thank you Anthony for always doing the hard labor! You are the best!

Famous Basil

Once a week Anthony has to come up with a breakfast special at the Ritz, so a week or so ago he decided to make mini quiche's and put fried Basil on top. WELL....the basil that they had at the Ritz already was to big, it was sweet basil, so Anthony decided he would use mine! Enter African Basil!!!
This bushy little plant is planted next to my tomatoes, to help with the bugs and is growing like crazy! Anthony pinches off the tops about every other day and it just comes back with great gusto. So if you are ever in St. Louis and head to the Ritz for breakfast and find a little fried basil on top of your delicious quiche, more than likely you are eating basil that I grew!

Pumpkin Hopes and Dreams

Here is my first pumpkin! I know it is small, but I have high hopes for this little guy. Like Pumpkin pie. This picture was actually taken about a week ago so it has actually doubled in size!!
I can't find anymore pumpkins on this vine or any others, but I am hoping for more! PLEASE, PLEASE!!!

Harvest Monday

This may be my biggest harvest so far this year!! I am so proud! LOL! I harvested two more Piccolo Zucchini they are not pictured because I already fed them to my dogs! I also had two Cucumbers early in the week too!
This like cucumber I am most proud of, its a Lemon Cucumber! Although I had it in my head that it would have a lemony taste to it, IT DOES NOT! Here is more of my harvest in the background.
My squash and zucchini continue to produce even though they had to have surgery due to SVB's, so I guess we were successful, everyday I go out there thinking I will have dead plants, but they seem to be happy! We had some rain yesterday and last night so the plants are especially happy. I am hoping next week I will have some heirloom tomatoes as they are starting to ripen! All for now, back to work I go! I am so glad that I joined Harvest Mondays over at Daphne's Dandelions as I like to see what others are growing!

No Judging!

WOW! How does one have so much crap! Anyway, this is what my basement looked like before!! I know its bad...

So I know its bad and please don't judge me by my basement! I promise I am a good housekeeper, not a great one but a good one! When I got home from work, I told Anthony that I wanted to tackle the basement, so bless his heart he joined me in the basement. Now it isn't a finished basement obviously, but the washer and dryer are down there, and it stays dry and cool down there so it works as a storage area too!

Here is what it looks like after about an hour and half! All done! Two bags of garbage, two bags of goodwill stuff and one box of old suits that I am sending to a young junior handler. I feel much better about my basement and next we will tackle the basement and Anthony's tools and other manly things. There wasn't, but one battle over stuff in the basement, but I know there will be MANY battles over the stuff in the garage! My plan for the garage is to buy containers for Anthony to put like things in and have it all be stackable and organized. I would LOVE that! Alright, I am glad that we accomplished another goal of de-cluttering our lives. Only a few more things to go and then it will be all debt relief!

Garden Update

My zucchini's love this weather and seem to have completely recovered from their surgeries! That is Kirby in the background so you can get an actual size comparsion. They are huge, lets just say!
Green peppers, I am learning to love them!

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!! This is only a few, but there are tons turning red!! WOOHOO!!

It is also only July and they are already out of the top of the cages!!! Not really sure what to do now?

This is a side view of the garden beds!

That is it for the garden, the pumpkins are coming along nicely, I need to get out and cut down the sad, munchkin corn and then mulch the bad heavily for the pumpkins for the rest of the season. The green beans have some sort of blight going on so I am happy that I planted a second crop. I will be planting a third and fourth soon.

Tomorrow is a work day, but I am hoping to get some gardening done afterwards. I will have lots to post about on Harvest Monday, Yippee!!

Anthony's been gardening....

So after yesterday we have decided that next year we will do an 'Anthony garden' and a 'Darcie garden.' Since I was at work all day, my wonderful hubby took it upon himself to do unsupervised gardening, scary I know. So this is what happend....


The basil and the rest of the herbs have been split into several pots and the rest of the tomatoes have been planted and various other things have been moved around. Although I welcome the help, I am little scared when I come home and find him outside with a shovel and other tools. I wanted to wait until the basil got a little bigger before transplanting it, but so far it is fine so I guess it was big enough to handle it. Mom, a couple of those pots are coming your way, as well as that oregano that is in the bottom right hand corner of the picture above. Also the first picture has a pot with Thyme in it for you too!! Soon you will be cooking with fresh herbs, yummy!!

Being A Slacker!

I feel like such a slacker these days...I don't know why but I have been super exhausted and just haven't had the motivation to deal with blogger. However today I realized it isn't blogger, but that it is my interenet, guess I will be calling charter tomorrow! UGH.

Anyway due to all the heat, my japanese maple is very tired and sickly. I moved it into the sun room out of the direct sun light and hope that, that will make it alittle happier. Where it sat in this picture was right by the back door where I could enjoy it all the time however, it gets sun all day here, I guess thats not good for the little tree.
This sprite tomato plant is AMAZING. You should see all the tomatoes it has on it! Its definitely the superstar of my tomatoes this year! The extreme heat doesn't seem to bother it which is nice, a lot of the others have curled up leaves caused from heat stress. Not a lot I can do about it, but pray they will all pull through.
My baby basil is coming right along! Anthony is super excited!! Mom, some of this has your name on it!!!
All for now in this post. I have so much to catch up on its ridiculous!! I will get there!

Who's got the coolest bug...

This girl!! Unfortunately, blogger will not let me upload the picture. So lets play the guessing game....Hints....it is good for the garden, and it is green! Maybe the picture will post later!

One Week of MY COOKING!

Last night kicked off the week of my cooking dinner for Anthony. Scary I know! However, I didn't cry and last night was the hardest night of the week as it was MEATLESS MONDAY! I made pasta with zucchini, and a butter Parmesan sauce and a roasted corn, green bean salad! The pasta was delicious and the salad just wasn't for me, however Anthony loved both! The salad called for jalapenos but since I don't like them I substituted them from green peppers which worked for me but Anthony would have loved the kick the jalapenos would have given it.

Tonight will be a new recipe and hopefully there will be no crying again as alot of my attempts at cooking end in me crying!

Pictures of my dishes later!

Oh and lastly we went and saw Toy Story 3, soooo cute!!

All for now, I have to get back to work!

Harvest Monday

So I am totally behind I know, but this is my harvest! I also harvested one more tomato and 4 more zucchini's earlier in the week!

The dogs are almost out of there cookies, but I definitely have plenty of zucchini to make them more.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Happy 4th of July!

Anthony and I just got back from watching fireworks in a nearby town. For a small town, I thought they were pretty good. This year was by far better than last year, since Anthony worked nights last year and this year we both worked, napped and then went to watch fireworks together! It was great!

Watching the fireworks made me remember all the years we lived on the beach and we used to light them off over the water. Now Washington in July, could be any type of weather, and I remember all types, but mostly cold and wet. I think this might be one of my dad's favorite holidays as he was always in charge of blowing stuff up and he would always spend tons of money too!

I hope everyone had a great fourth and celebrated this great nation's freedom with great friends and family, near and far.

Ice Tomatoes

Does anyone know anything about Ice White Tomatoes! I was so excited to find this variety at the herb society sale a while back and I have to say this is probably the most impressive tomato I have. It is very elegant and the darkest green I have ever seen in a tomato plant. However, it does not have many tomatoes on it. In the two pictures below you can see they are starting to ripen, but they are yellow?

Is this normal? Are they going to change to white or did I get a mixed breed plant? The tomatoes are tight to the stem, so I don't think they are ready but I am sad if they are going to be yellow instead of white. Although I do have to say they are the prettiest pale yellow color. Any ideas would be helpful?

Oh and here is a picture of one of bees! It is really hard to take pictures of a bee, they do not cooperate. LOL! Someday, I hope to have a hive!! Lord help my poor husband!!!

Hooray!

Yay, I fixed my blog! Sorry about that but I deleted some of the script needed to publish it I guess!! All better!

Another Hooray, because I FINALLY HAVE BEES! It doesn't look like I will be hand pollinating much longer if at all! Thank goodness, cause I am tired of getting up early just so I can pollinate. Its tough being a fake bee!!

Anyway more tomorrow, glad my blog is fixed, however I did learn something new about blogging!

Grants Farm

Yesterday after our picnic we headed to Grant's Farm. It is the original homestead of Ulysses S. Grant and was purchased by the Busch Family and is now open to the public. It holds some of the Budweiser Stallions and mares as well as some other animals. Here are some of the pictures we took. It was a beautiful day and I enjoyed the horses the most!! These two wanted out, they were very cute standing there looking out.
Here are some mares with babies, there are two babies but one was hiding and all you can see is his legs.

This is Carter, one of the stallions. He was very sweet and calm. On our way out he came over and visited with us.

Sleepy camel.

This was a cute little fox.

I want one of these!!! So beautiful.

Monster Turtle! Right before this picture there were a bunch of kids petting him/her!

Anthony and I dubbed this the ungroomed cocker spaniel of the chicken world! She was super cute, are really busy!

I loved this chicken! I think I want one of these when I get chickens!
When you first get to the farm they have you get on a tram and you ride through the deer and other exotic animal pasture. Isn't he cute?
We had a great time here too! Oh and the best part there was free beer at the end of the park! People in St. Louis sure drink a lot!

New Swimming Hole

Since yesterday was my day off, I decided that I would pack a picnic and when Anthony got home from work we had to the park. We decided to go to a new park that some of Anthony's co-workers had told him about. In the picture below you can see a nice little area that leads right down to the water. You can see a car, but it is actually a dirt parking lot and it is way off the main road. I think this will be the safest place. When we were over there, there was a man sleeping in his car and the rest of the cars were at the other side of the lot.

Here is a view from where we had our picnic. It is a very pretty little lake and there are no gasoline powered boats allowed. Unfortunately this means no jet-skiing for us but the dogs will enjoy it and I will enjoy knowing they are safe in the water.

End of June Garden take 2

So whatever my problem was or wasn't it is fixed this morning. I think the only things I didn't take pictures of were my herb garden and the mini corn/pumpkin/onion/watermelon field. So starting with this picture, in the foreground is my brussel sprouts that just keep growing, I am hoping I will get sprouts as they have become one of favorite veggies! Then my crazy zucchini's and squash. So far everyone has survived surgery and continue to produce. Maybe Anthony should have been a surgeon instead of a chef! On the other side of the zuccs and squash are my scallop squash they are still little but were planted quite a bit later. They are just now producing male flowers it won't be long now. In the very back are my cucumbers and my okra
Here are my cucumbers: I have Lemon, Slicing and Pickling. This is my first attempt at pickling cucumber and I just thought lemon cucumbers were cool. They are being rather stubborn about learning to climb, so I am using zip ties to try and teach them.

Here are 6 of my 19 tomatoes, there are tons of tomatoes on these I can wait to try all of them!

Baby Basil sprouts. Mom some of these have you name on them. They will be a nice size by the time you see them.

Yummy green beans, the ones in the foreground are about 2 weeks old and were directly sown into the ground. The bigger mature plants were seedlings I started inside and transplanted, both are doing great and I will be planting a third set soon. Anthony and I love green beans!!

This bed has a bunch going on. The peas on the left are finally dead and my broccoli, well I don't know what it is doing. In the foreground has beets, radishes, and a few carrots. Eventually all of this will come out and it will be solid green beans. In the fall I plan to plant peas again. Yummy!

This summer is going to be a great one. I have tons of things growing and am beginning to harvests everyday! This is my 3rd year and each year my garden has gotten bigger and bigger. I am hoping by spring next year we will own a home and I can have a more permanent garden space. When we were looking at houses to rent there were two major stipulation's: one it had to have a yard for the dogs and two it had to have a garden space. We definitely scored with this place and our house is cute too! We are very lucky to have the things we have and most of all we are lucky to have each other. All for now, hope everyone has a good day!