Wee Update... (Am I still allowed to use the term "wee" now that I'm not in the UK?)
Tuesday morning I walked downstairs to see that the garden had decided to invade the house....
I stood there perplexed until Dorothy came in and mentioned that it had frosted in the middle of the night so they had went out in the dark and picked as much as they could to save it. I felt guilt that the first thought that popped into my mind was that I was thankful they hadn’t woken me up to help. Hey, I'm not perfect....picking frozen produce is not my cup of tea. I did help spread some of it out to sun and looked up recipes for green tomatoes. I also take credit for everything my kids did all day....I grew those kids - I should get a percentage of their help right? Gaylord still had a lot of the garden left to pick, it was kind of sad to see the end of the garden. Rebecca had a blast picking corn and Alex helped with the carrots. Jarod was finally over his ear infection and very weak but he did do a bit of tilling. (We've been fattening him up all day as he didn't eat much while he was ill, he's already mouthing off and telling jokes again - glad to have him back to his old self.)
There are now buckets of corn, carrots, celery, squash, cucumbers, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and potatoes everywhere! We’ll (I use the term "we" loosely as I prefer to handle the produce while I'm cooking it, not all that goes on before it goes in a pot.) have to drag most of it out to the sun every day to encourage it to ripen and bring it back in at night. And during the day Dorothy will chopped, slice, and shred what’s ripe and throw it in a freezer. I’m learning a lot about gardening. Very impressed with how cheap it is! They use heirloom seeds which means the vegetables produce seeds each year so they save them and can use them to plant every year so no cost for the seeds. They save all their vegetables scraps and turn it into mulch and that’s all they use for fertilizer. They have a well for water….so there is basically no cost for the garden. Just a lot of labor and love.
I've enjoyed turning all those veggies into dishes, have made chunky garden spaghetti, minestrone soup, stuffed zucchini, chili, blueberry pancakes, tomato- mozzarella salad, apple crisp, banana bread, muffins....so much wonderful food when you have a garden in your backyard! (And to the people e-mailing me asking where are all the photos of the yummy food....sorry! We are always too hungry to wait for me to try to snap pics. lol)
Alex found a rock he likes...and grandpa’s hard hat.
Rebecca built Alex a ball pit in his sandbox.
Dorothy’s kitchen is done up in sunflowers, most of the items with a redish background.
She also has her own sunflowers growing outside so I wanted to take a photo for her of the kids in front of them. But Jarod has been sick since we got here with that horrible ear infection (I’m soooo glad he’s all healed up!) so I needed to wait until he was better. Of course the day he got better was after the frost so the sunflowers were a little wilted and Jarod was weak and pasty....but it still turned out cute!
Anyone have any green tomato recipes....I could use them!
