The kids helped me prep my new flower garden… pictures of the finished product to come. 🙂
We had Memorial Day BBQ at my parents’ house, where Natalie and Ben each quickly found a group of friends to hang out with.
The kids also got to pick out new pajamas on Memorial Day. Apparently this is a very exciting thing, and that’s why Natalie wore hers to the BBQ. 🙂
The weather has been perfectly pleasant lately and starting to feel summery… I do love this time of year in California. How can we tell that summer is right around the corner?
The garden is in full swing! Corn, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, various herbs, and a couple mystery seedlings that came up on their own. We are super excited to make our completely homegrown, made from scratch organic salsa this year! Here is what one can do to know about how to choose a landscaper who setups the backyard as per your wishes.
Natalie wears her swimsuit around the house and yard just because (“choose your battles” and all that). We have yet to go to the pool or even play in the sprinkler this year, but don’t tell her!
Finding “roly-poly” bugs or pill bugs is a big thing for Natalie and her friends right now. She is studying one in the photo below. When she finds one she comes running to tell me excitedly, and wants me to put it in a jar and make a little home for it. Don’t ask her to touch it though– guess she’s not much of a creepy crawlies person.
Are you wondering what ever happened to our tidy little garden? Right now it looks like a tangled jungle of zucchini and tomato plants– wow, those things can really grow. The zucchini has been steadily producing 2-3 fruits a week for us all summer long, which has been wonderful, as it is a family favorite! When California got it’s heat wave a few weeks ago, the grape tomatoes finally turned red. I love putting lots of them in salads, and Natalie is happy to just pop them in her mouth. (Andy still maintains that he does not like the taste of plain tomatoes in a salad. How sad for him!)
This week we picked a large bag full of Roma tomatoes. It seemed like they all ripened at once, and we had to figure out what on earth to do with all of them this Labor Day weekend!
Andy made salsa… it tasted amazing! I made tomato sauce and used it to make three dishes of lasagna. Not bad! The extra effort of growing our own vegetables has actually been so much fun. I think we’d like to be farmers “when we grow up”. 🙂
The other morning I was working in the kitchen when Natalie marched in from the backyard and said, “LOOK MAMA, PEPPER!” She had picked our tiny green bell pepper… way too early!  I was horrified but the damage was already done, so we took some pictures to document our first vegetable harvest. (She has now been instructed not to pick anything off of the plants.)
Can you tell she was very proud of it? We tried to eat it but it was nowhere near ripe enough, yuck!
This year we planted our first garden! It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but always felt a little hesitant about because I don’t seem to have any natural talent for gardening (I’ve killed my fair share of plants). But anyone can learn, right? Two weeks ago we planted some seeds and seedlings, and I am happy to report that they are already growing happily!  It was very exciting to see cute little lettuce plants pop out of the ground this week in their tidy row, and the tomato plants already have some yellow flowers. So far, so good… I can’t wait to make a salad with our home grown veggies.
We decided to start with some family favorites. We’ve got two types of tomatoes, red bell pepper, green bell pepper, zucchini, onions, two types of lettuce, and jalapeño peppers.
This year’s garden is kind of experimental… we will see what grows well, and what sort of problems arise. We’ve already had someone snacking on one of the tomato plants (probably a snail), and in the morning I often see the neighborhood rabbits hanging around, but at least we’ve taught Nata to stay OUT of the dirt! That will help a lot.
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