Life In Photos #25 (plus an award!)

Between a little rain, cool weather, and the little miss being gone for a day this week at Mimi’s house, we didn’t do any big walks! Just the short round trip to the post office. And since most of my pics come from fun things spotted outside, it made for a small photo week.

This event is so rare I had to capture it! My little still naps semi-regularly, but it is a rare day she gets so tired that she just crashes out on the couch. So cute!

My tomatoes went insane this year. I have already picked about twenty-five, and I have more than twenty still on the plants outside – and I only planted TWO TOMATO PLANTS. I will certainly be learning to make sauce this year!!

We put a blanket down on top of our rapidly deteriorating already-fixed-by-duct-tape computer chair, and it has become Edgar’s new favorite spot.

And lastly, I baked my third new recipe of the month – Crunchy Nut and Honey Cookies. They came out just fine, but certainly aren’t anything too special so I’m not going to dedicate a whole post to the recipe. Yummy though, and I discovered I like macadamia nuts! Whoo!

In lieu of the usual Instagram roundup (since I wasn’t too active on that this week anyway) I’m going to share an award! Jessica of The Pyreflies nominated my little blog for the One Lovely Blog Award! Thanks so much!!

The Rules Of The Award
1. Thank the person nominating you and link back to them in your post.
2. Share seven things about yourself.
3. Nominate fifteen or so bloggers you admire.
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know.

So here we go, seven random things about me:

1. I really love to write, but never do it anymore. It’s a confidence thing.
2. I adore piano music. I find it so incredibly soothing, and inspiring. It’s usually my go-to choice when I draw.
3. I absolutely hate the taste of cherry, real or artificial. It’s kind of a gross story, but suffice to say it was ruined for me in childhood.
4. If I were rich, I would own an absurd amount of shoes I’d probably never wear.
5. My one vice is soda. I don’t smoke, or drink alcohol, but at the end of the day I do love a Pepsi.
6. I feel naked if I leave the house without earrings.
7. I’m pretty sure I’d have a mental breakdown if I had to live without lip balm.

 

And here are thirteen of my favorite blogs (participate if you want to!) that I’ll nominate. Some I’ve followed for awhile, some I’m new to, but they are all blogs whose posts I look forward to in my inbox!

Fiction Incarnate : Gamerwife : incendiarism : My Life as a Teacup : Bookworms in Dresses : Sword of Nerdom : The Beauty Glitch : North East Nerd : Awkwardly Alive and Pleasantly Peculiar : Scrawny Girl : Sincerely, Sara : The Pyreflies : Nerd In The Brain

Check them out if you haven’t!

Homegrown: Garden Update #2

Recently we had some thunderstorms (circa two weeks ago?) and ever since then my garden has started growing out of control! Tomatoes and peas everywhere! It is so satisfying to go and check daily, and see how everything is coming along!

The peas have gotten so tall they don’t even fit in the frame! Also, you may notice something missing from the first update. The broccoli is gone! I finally gave it the boot. It had the same problem as last year where the plant itself grew huge but there were just NO florets. Whereas my mother-in-law has these teeny plants with HUGE florets on them. Why not me?! But the main reason I dug it up was the leaves were so big they were smothering my carrots, and that was a no-no. Two carrots didn’t make it (too small, not enough time to flesh out) but at least the rest are doing well.

The lettuce is doing so great! I’ve already harvested three huge bunches (each one lasted about a full week, and we use it daily), and then I just harvested all this lettuce after taking the pics. Hoping to get at least two or three more bunches out of it!

The peas are just going nuts. They apparently don’t care that they’ve run out of trellis to grow on, and just keep going up, up, up! They are now taller than my 6′ 2″ hubby. As for when I pick them, it varies. If I want to use them in a stir fry, I’ll pick them when they are skinny like this. They crisp up so nicely in the pan that way. If I want them as a fresh snack to much, or for a salad, I wait until the peas get fatter and then that have a great crisp crunch!

My tomatoes are also getting giant again. After the big thunderstorm day we had, they got so big they tipped completely over, so as you can see we reinforced the metal cages with a little wood corral system that is working quite nicely. One big branch did snap off in the collapse, but I’ve still got plenty of tomatoes coming in! Four more bunches like the ones pictured! YUM!

I can’t wait for those tomatoes to ripen up. . .I have so many plans for sauces to try out and can! I definitely can’t wait to have a second bed for squashes next year, and I think I’ll try peppers instead of broccoli next year too. I really dislike peppers, but my hubs loves them and hopefully we can get the little on board with them too. Also, sunflowers!! They are just so big and happy; my yard must have some.

If you garden (veggie or flower), what’s your favorite thing to grow?

Life’s A Garden: Dig It! {Part 1}

Oh, gardening. It’s something I’ve always had an interest in, but for some reason never really given a try. Last year, my husband and I decided to try a garden in our backyard. His parents warned us the soil was not suitable for growing, but we decided to give it a go anyway. It can’t hurt to try, and would only cost us the money for seeds. To sum up – they were right! What things did grow (spinach was about all that made it) were immediately eaten by some outdoor critters.

However, I didn’t want to give up on the idea of growing my own veggies! Last year I was part of a farmers market (selling my baked goods) and I really got into the idea of growing my own food. I still purchase some at the market, but I like the idea of being able to walk into my yard and pick fresh food that me, myself, and I cultivated!

So this year I decided to try out having a container garden. I put in a fair amount of research in terms of what types of veggies are suitable, what soil is best to buy, and how to grow from seeds. I also wanted to keep it as low cost as possible, especially if like last year, it wasn’t successful.

Luckily the low cost was easy enough. I headed to Home Depot for two five gallon buckets, and I also managed to find some of the big plastic tubs in clearance. Their lids were missing (hence the clearance) but that was perfect for me! And I got one big tub with rope handles from my mum since the bottom was cracked. Not good for storage, perfect for a container garden. I recruited my Grampa and his massive drill selection to add drainage holes in my containers and I was good to go! The total cost of the containers was less than $15. I can handle that!

The soil was my big spend. But, it’s necessary and if you preserve it well, it’ll last you for a couple years. I use Miracle-Gro Moisture Control soil in all my containers.It’s recommended for container gardens, and has worked great for me so far! I used it for both my big outdoor containers, and my teeny seed planters for when I started seedlings.

Scooping dirt, tamping it, and placing seeds with my little miss!

Since I was planting everything from seed, I had to get transplants growing early for my broccoli and tomatoes. Using the Farmer’s Almanac website to get a rough idea of when the last frost would be, I planned out when to start my seeds so they’d have 8 weeks of growing time before transplanting to the big containers. Our apartment has a big sunporch in the front which was a perfect place for the seedlings to start. Plenty of sun, and safe from the elements. Which turned out to be necessary thanks to a freak snowstorm in MID MAY! But my little sprouts were safe and sound, and grew nice and healthy.

Broccoli towards the back, tomatoes up front.

As you can see, I went a little overboard with my seedlings. I was afraid some wouldn’t germinate so I planted TONS. Luckily, I passed some tomatoes and broccoli on to my mum and grandmother so they didn’t go to waste.

This was about one week before transplant day. The two pots furthest back are Marigolds and Zinnias, grown by request from my daughter.

The first weekend of June rolled around and I transplanted everything into the big containers. Originally, this was supposed to be just me and my daughter’s project (my hubby is happy to EAT freshly grown veggies but the gardening aspect just isn’t his cup of tea) but three days prior to planting day, I broke my ankle. So the hubs kicked in some manual labor (hauling five 70lb bags of soil for me!!) and we got it planted. Since I wasn’t planning on having a blog yet, I didn’t take any photos on transplant day. Shucks. But, I have PLENTY of photos for Part 2 of this post – the current state of my container garden in it’s new outdoor location. So stay tuned!

Do any of you have any form of a garden? If so what do you grow?