End of June Garden Update!

I guess there is something wrong with blogger cause this is the only picture I could download. So here are Anthony's various pepper plants. We have harvested sweet banana peppers, jalapenos and green peppers! I am learning to love green peppers!

I will try to upload more pictures tomorrow morning. I am sad since I have some great pictures of the garden.

Happy Gardening!

Bedtime Cookies

After work today I decided that I had the energy to make the dogs' new cookies! Since I don't have any children, the dogs are royally spoiled, complete with homemade food, and organic homemade cookies. Since going back to work, however, I have switched from making them homemade food to a very good, really experience organic dog food, which they seem to be happy with. Here is my champion and best cookie taste tester. He is patiently wait for the cookies to be done. (Oh, and he is the cutest dog ever!)
First I cut up the piccolo zucchini and put it through my food processor, added two eggs, 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, some chicken stock, a pinch of salt and blended it all together. It actually made a really pretty green color!Then I added a cup of cornmeal and blended. Lastly, I added two cups of organic whole wheat flour! When you take the dough out of the processor it is really sticky. I knead the dough for a minute or so, adding a little more flour when it gets too sticky. Then I divide it into three balls.

Roll it out and cut out whatever shape I want! This time I did hearts.

Place on a non-stick cookie sheet and bake on 400 for 20 minutes or so.
Ta-Da, dog cookies! I use these mostly for bedtime. Usually I make smaller ones for everyday use or 'just because' cookies. When my mom and step-dad visited last summer they said my dogs were too fat, due to, too many cookies. So I made the cookies smaller, but kept the amount given the same. I am sure I will have plenty zucchini to make lots more! My dogs go crazy for cookies anyway, but it makes me feel better knowing what exactly is in them.
I did tell the dogs, however that they were going to have share with a few friends. Sharing is not their strong point, but they are happy to have friends over to play, so they are learning to share. I am also going to freeze some and see how they defrost. If the cookies do well then I will be able to make enough zucchini cookies to last for a while. In the fall, I make them pumpkin cookies and those are there favorite, but the winter is a little sparse in the cookie making department.
This week is bringing cooler weather, so I am hoping that my garden will be back on track, it had slowed with it being so hot. My second planting of green beans are coming along nicely, I am hoping to have tons of green beans, maybe enough to last a couple months. (Fingers crossed)
All for now, one more day of work and then a day off! Hoping to go to the park, the dogs will be thrilled to go swimming, Anthony will be off to play golf with his friends so I will spend some much needed time with them.

First Harvest Monday!

I recently joined Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Mondays, this is my first week participating, in total I have 11 Jalapenos, 5 peas, some green beans ( I harvested about that many each day this past week) 2 eight ball zuccs, 3 one ball squash, and 1 piccolo zucc. I also harvested a bunch of corn earlier this week. I will weigh and wash all this stuff when my hubby is done cleaning up his mess in the kitchen! We are already eating zucchini and squash 3-4 times a week, so I think the dogs will score on this harvest and I will make them whole wheat zucchini/squash dog cookies!

The rest of the garden is doing well even in this heat. The five little pea pods are the last on my poor pea plants. They are pretty much all brown and dead. Sad! Anthony has become chief surgeon on the zucchini and squash plants. We have found all SVB grubs and removed them (to put it nicely) and so far so good. I have never done surgery on the plants before but have read about success! Maybe next year I will be more proactive in preventing SVB.

Well that is all for now, rough day at work and I did break my rule of wine only after 5pm in my time zone and started at 4:58pm.

Week 3-Doing great!

Alright we are into week 3 of keeping track of my grocery budget. Our goal was to spend $100 a week. We are doing a great job! Yesterday Anthony helped me come up with the upcoming menu, although working together on this was difficult, we made it. Since this week we really only needed produce we decided to head to our Farmer's Market, since another goal of mine is to either grow it myself or by it from local farmers! So here is the menu...


Saturday: Chicken Kabobs with Green Peppers, Onion, Cherry Tomatoes, and Mushrooms over brown rice. And salad.

Sunday: Lamb with Cous Cous and Brussel Sprouts ( Using the rest of the Sprouts from last week)

Monday: Poached Eggs with Holendaise Sauce and Asparagus.

Tuesday: Steak in a crock pot, with carrots, onions, canned tomatoes, green beans with left over Mashed Potatoes!


Wednesday: Asian Chicken Stir fry with Zucchini, Squash (both from the garden) carrot, onion, peas (from the garden) over Asian Noodles (from the pantry)


Thursday: Left over Chicken and Barley Soup (from the freezer)with a salad.


Friday: Tacos with all the stuff that goes with them.


So yesterday we went to the market first and we spent $9.25 total. We did splurge and buy a big watermelon for $3, we couldn't help ourselves, we had it last night for dessert and it was SOOOO GOOD!

Then we headed to Schnucks on our way home as we needed eggs, shells, etc from an actually store and we spent $17.29! So our grand total for the week is $26.54! Woohoo! No coupons this week as there wasn't anything I could really use a coupon on unfortunately but I will keep clipping for the upcoming weeks!


Also our average weekly total is now $60.49 woohoo, well below our budget. I am very pleased with our progress I am hoping we can keep it up!

Surgery!

Not only am i hand pollinating my zucchini's, but now Anthony is performing surgery on them. We are doing surgery to get rid of these little guys.....
This is called a Squash Vine Borer(SVB) and they will kill zuuchini and squash in 6 weeks. They come from moths that I am pretty sure that my mother and friendly neighbor will not have to do with. This happened to me in both South Carolina and Georgia, however I did nothing about it and soon my plants died. This year is different, I actually I enjoy zucchini and squash and I am not going to succumb to the grub!!! This is what the vine looked like after surgery.

So I am sure you are now thinking, how did I know what this was and what to do.....well, in Georgia every sunday they had a gardening show on specific to Georgia and one of the sundays was all about SVB. So when it started to show up on my vines here I went to a great book I have and discovered that the moths are here too! There is not much you can do once it happens and surgery only has a small success rate. So while all my vines are infected we just did surgery on one vine to see how it goes. If the plant survives we will be attempting to do more surgery. Its always something new in garden, good and bad!

Sweet Gardening dreams!

Why do I garden?

I just finished reading the book The $64 Tomato, it was another great read. While the author, who was the main character of the book had more money then I, I found myself and lots of others that I know just like him. In fact, I read quite a few gardening blogs and I find it interesting that a lot of us are a like. Towards the end of the book he asked the question, why do I garden? He goes on to say he does it for the food and maybe that's the common thread among all of us, that we all garden for the food. But I think we all do it for much more than just the food. For me it's something I enjoy, its something that Anthony and I can do together and something that I know more about than he. Since he seems to know much more about cooking than I and well when it comes to dogs, most of the time we just agree to disagree.

I started gardening when Anthony went off to Culinary School. Since I wasn't there with him and I certainly didn't want to be, it was my way of helping him. If I grew fresh herbs of all kinds then he could try to cook things he might not have been able too. And that's how it all began. Shortly after the herb plant purchase, I bought a few tomatoes, a cucumber or two, 3 peppers and zucchini. The next year it was bigger and this year it is biggest. I try to be as organic as possible although sometimes the bugs get the best of me and I lose self control and spray the plants with some chemical that I will never be able to pronounce but that only happens once maybe twice in a season.

Another commonality I think that all gardeners is how a tiny seed turns into a huge tomato plant or a prolific almost annoying zucchini. There is something magical about this process of which you can study and read all the books you want and think you understandthe process but it is still magical, no matter how you look at it.

But lastly and probably the biggest reason I garden is HOPE. With each season it brings new hope. Hope that you will have a better year than the last or that new variety you picked out of a catalog will be your best choice yet. When summer is over and all the plants have given up, and the garden is sleeping, each gardener dreams of what will come next year. And lets face it, only the bugs remember what happened the year before, cause you can count on them coming back the following year. Each garden brings new hope , every year and even every season, maybe that's why they have become so popular in recent years, cause in the world that we live in everyone needs a little (or a lot) of Hope. So my question to you is why do you garden?

Future Crazy Road Trip

With our upcoming trip to washington we have been debating on whether to drive or to fly. Of course flying would be easier and quicker however drving would be an adventure. Sooooo the decision has been made and this is our mode of tranportation....

This is our little van that we bought last December. We love it and the dogs seem to feel the same. It will be 2183 miles from door step to door step. I am sure I will have plenty to blog about along the way. The exciting is, we will get to bring the dogs and I will ALSO GET MY STOOL BACK!!! (we will tell that story later!)

Harvests and Firsts

Today reached 100 degrees or so! After work I washed my water feature and then gave all the dogs a bath outside with the hose. They don't mind this at all, since the cold water feels great and they are dry in 5 minutes! I have been getting up earlier to let them out to play in the morning. They run around in the yard and I spend time in the garden, this is my favorite time to be out there. Living in the city you hear all kinds of noises during the day, but between 4:30 and 5:30 there isn't much but the occasion car.

Here is Kirby enjoying my water feature!!! Isn't he cute? See its all nice and clean and the water was nice and cool for his little feet!!
My first cucumber of the season!!! This is one that I attempted to hand pollinate, it must have worked!!! This little guy is the one of the slicing variety, YUM YUM!!!
My goal was to have atleast one FULL bag of peas, as you can see I got close. Obviously this won't last us through the winter, but I have a second chance in the fall. I did learn however that you can plant a lot more peas in a smaller space, thus creating a bigger harvest. We have already had one dinner of peas and they were DE-LISH!!!
Green Bean season has just begun. My goal is to have 5 total planting of green beans. Eventually my peas, broccoli and cabbage will die out and I will replace them with Green Beans! Yum!!While my corn was truly a flop, I did manage to get a decent harvest! After blanching and de-cobbing this harvest I ended up with 2lbs 2 oz. (I harvested some last week too) Not bad for munchkin corn. There is still quite a few ears on the stalks that I am hoping to harvest in a few days.

Well I am off to bed! Thursday and Friday can not come soon enough. (Those are my two days off) Tomorrow I am going to attempt to do some cleaning and maybe look into some raspberry farms. Raspberry Jam on homemade scones sounds so good right now!!!

Sprouts!

With the temperature averaging about 95 degrees and with the heat index reaching 105ish my plants have slowed a little. Of course my Zucchinis and Squash are happy as little clams but I have decided they would be happy any where. Here is my new variety that is starting to mature. The bigger one I hand pollinated about 2 days and the littler one I pollinated this morning!


I have recently struggled to grow green beans from seed I am not sure why but haven't had success, I decided that I would just go ahead and put the seeds in the ground and see what happens. TA..DA....

These are green beans that I planted earlier in the year obviously. I prefer the bush variety, they are just now getting into the full swing of production.

I am hoping that my little sprouts will soon take off and will be producing soon!!! Now onto the rest of the garden!

My little Eggplant! Isn't it cute??
Cucumbers!!! They are finally learning to climb the trellis!! No cucumbers yet, but the plants are getting big. Look, this is my water feature.....Maddie Grace's kiddie pool. I have to clean it tomorrow for now it is empty so we don't breed mosquitoes!! My first blueberry! Anthony and I split it this evening!! Please don't look at the grass growing, but look at that pumpkin vine, it is beginning to climb the corn! Anthony's peppers...we are beginning to harvest them everyday now!! Look at all those tomato flowers!! SCORE!!!

Alright that is it for the garden for right now, I have updated my harvest gadget. I still haven't decided whether or not I am going to figure out how much my garden bounty would have cost a store or not. I might at the very end of the season, to see whether I am came out on the positive side or the negative. I am thinking that more than likely it will be the negative though!

Sweet Gardening Dreams!

Grocery Stores and Coupons, UGH!

Today was our first day to the grocery store, coupons in hand and sale items listed. UGH! I am tired just thinking about it. Ultimately I saved $10.70 with coupons and lots more money due to the sales at this particular store. Let me tell you I am exhausted from this ordeal. We spent a total of $98.27. Yikes I know, but it is under my goal of a hundred dollars a week. WOOHOO! Now this time we did have to buy toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste and shaving cream, however I did have a coupon for all those which help quite a bit. So my average for the last 2 weeks is $71.12 which I think is great! Also we bought boneless chicken breasts for a $1.99 per lb, which there was 8 chicken breasts (total cost for our package $5.85) to a package so that actually made enough for 4 dinners. YAY! Along those lines we also bought Boneless Chuck Steak at $3.19 per lb, (total cost $4.47) which we divided up into 3 dinners. YAY! So I think that next week we won't have to buy any protein and we may have enough veggies from the garden that we will just have to buy salad greens some other odds and ends. I am going to attempt to make homemade bread so we won't have to buy bread either. Look at me Suzie Homemaker!!!

I have decided that just because I have to work 38 or so hours a week doesn't mean I can't do all the things I enjoy, i.e. baking, gardening, etc. I have learned that when I do things like baking I just have to do bigger batches. I am going to make dog cookies this week and I will just make a double or triple batch and then freeze the rest. I CAN DO THIS! I am still learning how to be a great wife, good mommy to my dogs and a house cleaner/laundry worker, it is all so hard but I will keep at it and I refuse to give up. I CAN DO THIS!

Ok enough about money, onto the garden. Anthony and I picked a bunch of corn yesterday...cooked it...and actually it was very good. I blanched half of it, cut it off the cob and froze it, for later. In total, I had 15 ounces of corn kernels. There is plenty left on the stalks and I am hoping that it will mature into big corn. We will see. In the meantime, the zucchinis are doing well, more and more tomatoes are beginning to turn red and we have began pepper harvesting season. My peas are still hanging in there and I make sure to check them everyday. The green beans seem to be in full swing now and I am harvesting two handfuls over other day.

Alright time for bed, work in the morning, I explained to Anthony tonight about hand pollinating but I am pretty sure he thinks I have lost my mind. He just smiled and said, 'ok honey, we'll see.' I guess I will get up and pollinate in the morning. Sweet gardening dreams!

Hopey-ona-Ropey

Well like my mother has said, dogs lives' always have a beginning, a middle and a end and it is always too short. Many dogs have come in and out of my life, some more special than others and some have taught me more lessons than others. Hope (aka Monk or Hopey-ona-Ropey) came into my life by total accident but is here to stay forever. On December 14th, 2003 I arrived at the Bellevue Humane Society to rescue one of our Gordon Setters that had been turned in. While walking down the long cold aisle of the humane society I found Windi (gordon setter) and directly acrossed from her was Hope. Hope was so happy to see me and as she jumped on the fence I realized that she had a cowlic up the back of her neck just like Queenie (my first dobe) and at that moment I knew I needed to take her home. The first thing I had to do was get Windi out and then second was to bust out Hope too. I called home and got Mom on the phone, I begged her to let me bring her home, ultimately it was Jeff that said, bring her home. So I loaded both, Hope and Windi up in the back of the Mazada, no crates, no blankies, no nothing! Bless both the girls' hearts they slept all the way home, I am sure relieved to be the heck out of that place. Once home, I unloaded the girls and read Hope's paperwork, her actual name was Galadriel! Yikes! So that night at dinner we as a family decided to re-name Hope. Techincally, we named her Hope, in 'hopes' to find her a new home. It was Christmas time and she was so cute, how hard could it be. Truth be told, we never even looked. 4 days later, Queenie passed away of Spleenic Torsion. I was devasted, she was my whole world, and to this day almost 7 years later I still miss her. Maybe someday I will get around to telling her story but even now it sometimes brings me to tears to talk about her. Back to Hope, she has never left and has turned out to be the best dog. HOWEVER, I could write an entire novel on all the things she has eaten, to include, 3 bags of chocolate chips (on different occasions), a quiche, homemade pumpkin pie, multiple stuffed toys (to many to count), plastic of all types, anything she might find in the trash and her latest adventure the enalapril. We paid $98.50 to bust her out of the humane society, but I am forever in debted to her for being there for me whenever I needed her for the last 7 years. She lived at school with me, and we used to dress her up in a pink tube top with bows on her feet and take her to parties with us. She drinks beer from a bottle and is all round great ambassdor for the breed. So her beginning was completely unplanned and her middle has been nothing less then crazy, and as we approach the golden years I am going to each enjoy each moment I have with her. We love you Monk! Now stay out of the trash and off the counter!!!

Week 2...of coupons and dinner menus

Ok, so this will be our second week at dinner menus and coupons. UGH, I am exhausted just thinking about it. We did survive a whole week of not going to the store and I have a plan to go Sunday. I have my coupons cut thus far and have researched the different grocery stores and I think I am ready to go. I am, however, not going to buy produce from the grocery store I am going to go to the local farmers market and buy from the farmers. While I am growing almost all my own veggies, my spinach and other greens have bolted due to the hot weather, so I think we will head down to farmers market and see what they have. So here is my menu...

Saturday: Lamb Chops with Cous, Cous and veggies
Sunday: Chicken with Rice and veggies
Monday: Whole Wheat Tortillas, tomatos, black olives, artichoke hearts and feta. Remember its meatless monday!
Tuesday: Steak with mashed taters and veggies
Wednesday: Hamburgers or Hotdogs
Thursday: Fish with Pasta and peas
Friday: Darcie's Choice

We spent $42.18 at Costco yesterday. Which brings our running monthly total to $43.97 starting on June 10th. Now at Costco we bought hot dogs, buns (both hot dog and hamburger), blk olives, honey, and feta. These things will last for a very long time so I guess that I could divide this cost over 3 months or more. Oh well I am not going to be that OCD.

Happy Gardening!

Hand Pollination 101

I recently have discovered that I have very few bees, so few so that I have more zucchini dying then growing and being edible. So I decided that I would start to intervine and pollinate them myself, now I know I am playing with fire when it comes to the inter-workings of mother natureal but desperate times call for desperate measures. So here is the steps that I use to hand pollinate my veggies. It is very simple and I have already had success take tonights dinner for example that was zucchini and squash that I pollinated.

Step 1: Find and use trusty gardening scissors
Step 2: Identify male flower and cut it off the plant. Notice no little fruit behind the flower.

Step 3: After cutting the flower off, peel the petal part back or off leaving just the stamen, you should defimitely be able to see all the pollen. Step 4: Now identify the female flower. Notice the baby fruit directly behind the flower. Step 5: Take the stamen of the male flower and gently rub it on the stamen of the female, thus leaving some of the pollen on the female flower, you kind of see the pollen on this female flower but my camera was trying to focus on my ants and not the pollen. I have a lovely ant problem, however they don't seem to be hurting anything and they are just little sugar ants. Not fire ants, thank god!

Step 6: Watch the fruit double in size in the next 24 hours! You will know that it has worked if the flower closes up and doesn't fall off right away!

Great Find at a Lowe Price

So after reading a post about great finds at Lowes I decided that I would venture out to our local Lowes (its probably 8 blocks away) and see what I could find. I needed to buy more green bean seeds as I am struggling to get a second crop going, so I decided Lowes would be the place. I roamed the rows of flowers and I have to admit the flowers did not look very good and felt that our wal-mart had more at better prices and that looked healthier. Then as I was headed to the registers bean seeds in hand I stumbled upon these....

They were sitting on a shelf marked SALE $9.99. I stopped and looked thinking, WOW that is a good price since most troical fruit trees are $20 or more even for that size. Then I looked closer and on the actual tree it said CLEARANCE $1.00. I was delighted to say the least. I quickly grabbed one of each tree, Meyer Lemon, Mexican Lime and Dwarf Orange and headed to the register. The sweet girl at the register started to ring my potential purchases up and I said to her, 'Are these really a dollar?' She looked at the screen and then looked at me and said, 'yup they sure are!' I was thrilled and joked with her that maybe I would have fruit in 12 years since they were so little. I brought them home and placed them on the patio knowing that when Anthony came home and saw then he would lecture me about spending money on stuff we didn't need right now. Enter Anthony....I took am outside to show him my little trees and of course his first comment was, 'how much were these?' Expecting me to say $10 or more I am sure, so when I answered with, 'A dollar!' He seemed pleased with my purchase.
Who knows when I will actually get fruit but in the meantime, I transplanted then into bigger pots and plan to have their first fertilizer day sometime next week after they settle in. I will have to bring them in the house in the winter but other than that they should spend a lot of time outside.

Successful Breeding!

Ok so I am pretty sure I am AWESOME! My first time breeding plants and I have success! Look at Zucchinis and Squash! Woohoo! This morning when I got up the flowers weren't awake yet (it was 4am as I had to be at work at 5am) so I am hoping to get some more breeding done tomorrow! I attempted to pollinate cucumbers today but that was so hard as the flowers are so small and the plants are not very big yet so we will see how that goes!
My pie pumpkins are growing like crazy, the corn needs to hurry up and get out of the way!

Newly planted watermelons a little late, but I am sure they will be fine!These are Sprite tomatoes which are the heirloom variety of cherry tomatoes! Yum!

That just a quick garden update, I also planted my second set of green beans and I transplanted some herbs into bigger pots. I wish we were some where permanent so I could put them in the ground. Maybe someday!

The Strawberry Patch

A few weeks ago I decided to go to the strawberry patch, now as many of you know, I have drug poor Anthony to a pumpkin patch, corn maze and the sunflower festival all before and lets just say he was less then thrilled. So once again, I drug him along on a new adventure. He is suck a good sport. Growing up in Florida, he has been to a few (about a hundred) strawberry patches before, where as me a Washington kid had never been to a strawberry patch. So we jumped into the car and drove about 45 minutes to this strawberry patch, let just say it was a good thing that we left early. We were on the road by 7:30a, and when we arrived at 8:30am (we had to stop at Starbucks along the way) they were getting ready to take the last groups out to the fields. Whew, we made it!
These are pictures of the patch, it was huge! So fun, there were kids, adults, grandparents people of all ages, very cool.

Anthony taking a little rest from all his picking! He is such a good sport!

Us all done picking berries! I definitely got a little sun during our 45 minute picking adventure!Anthony picking Strawberries, he was very picky about the berries he picked, me on the other hand, if they were pink/red I picked them. Anthony told me, that before we went and picked anything else I was going to have lessons on how to pick. He is a party-pooper sometimes!

We had a great time and our friend Tara went too! We were sad that Mitch (her hubby) couldn't come too, but he had to work. Next we are going to pick raspberries and blackberries. I would like to make jam but I don't have anything to can it with so I guess I will just have to wait since my grandma said she would give me her caner and jars, YAY!!

Harvest!!!

Anthony and I just got back from being out in the garden and look at what we found.

Yum!! I updated my harvest total too! I thought my peas would be dead by now, but the more I pick the more the little vines produce! The vines don't look very healthy and the pods aren't as big but the peas are still tasty, so I will keep picking!

Cardinals WIN!!!

Last night Anthony and I went to the Cardinals Mariners game. While I have become a big Cards fan, I still love my Mariners. I mean who wouldn't when you got to grow up with Ken Griffey Jr and Randy Johnson on your home team. In the past the Mariners have had some greats but as a testement as to how long I have been away from Seattle, the only player I recognized was Ichiro. Sad I know, but its true. When the season first started I was happy to see that the Cards has relief pitcher Ryan Franklin, who was formerly a Mariner. Last nights score ended up being 9-3! With a win for Wainwright, who has the stature of Randy Johnson, who is a super sweet guy. Anthony and I had a great time and hope to be season ticket holders someday!

First baseman Alberto Pujols stretching and warming up!
Above and below pictures are of starting pitcher Adam Wainwright! He is so tall!
Apparently the Cards were sure that the 2nd batter for the Mariners was going to steal, they threw to first base like a million times!
Somebody batting, we got to sit 17 rows up from the field. Thank you Starbucks customer Dave for the tickets!! Starbucks has some really awesome perks!
Arch from the stadium!
Hotels from the stadium.
The boys, Brendan Ryan (SS), David Freese (3rd) and Lopez (2nd) chatting while we brought in our relief pitcher Motts!
Albert Pujols hitting a double to score run #9! Woohoo!!!

We had a great time and am so greatful for the awesome tickets. The weather was amazing, at 6:05pm when the game started it was 87 degrees with a nice breeze. We ended up only spending 25 dollars total! The tickets were free which cut out a huge expense, but then we road the Metrolink for $9 dollars round trip for both of us and then we each had a beer which was $16 dollars. I think that is great for a baseball game. It is thundering, lightening and POURING at the morning but I am sure it will pass and then I am going to head out to the garden. More later!