First Sunflowers

Yesterday, the kids and I went out and discovered that Bug's sunflower had bloomed.  It's not very tall, but is quite pretty.  And it looks like there are seven other blooms getting ready!  Seven!

It was also pretty exciting to see that the tomato plant is still alive and has bloomed.  Again.  It's not getting enough water, or is getting too much sun - I'm not really certain which - and keeps blooming and wilting without actually producing any tomatoes.  A little disappointing, but at this point I'm really just kind of thrilled that it's love at all.  If it bears fruit, that will be a huge bonus.

Really, our outside time yesterday was all kinds of exciting.  I finally remembered to buy birdseed, and Bug and Boo were all kinds of excited to fill up the feeder and sprinkle as much seed on the ground as we'd let them. 

My sister moved into a cool new house awhile back and had set aside some stuff at her old house that she thought we might be able to use.  And since my step-dad came back from Texas with a trailer, we were able to haul over a new refrigerator (Mom's old one, since my step-dad brought a newer one from their place in Texas for their house), some shelves that have already gone up in the studio and more for the garage, a spinning composter and an ancient lawnmower.  You know, the kind with no motor.

For the first time in my life, I mowed my own lawn.  And it was exhilarating.  I'm not naive enough to think that I'm always going to have fun with that, especially as it continues to get hotter and hotter here in the desert, but I certainly felt accomplished yesterday.

Then we got the composter set in place.  Bug and I pulled out some of the mulch that was left in it for a project we have planned, then dumped our first big bowl of compostable stuff inside.  Bug is so excited about it that he's decided that it's his job to spin the composter.  He even walked away from Phinias & Ferb this afternoon to go spin it when he saw me carry a bowl of scraps outside.

Add to things that Richard has been cooking with fire and we've been living in suburban pseduo-homesteader heaven for the past few days. :)

Market and McDonalds

Perhaps not two things I'd normally put in the same sentence, but that's how our day worked out. :)

This morning was not-a-million-degrees, so we decided to head out to the farmer's market.  I called Mom to see if she wanted to come along and she said my nephew had a school holiday, so they both joined us.  We loaded the boys into the wagon (maybe not necessary, but they loved it), and Boo into the stroller (which we hardly ever use, so she was thrilled) and headed out.



It was awesome.  I've really missed going to the farmer's market regularly.

And I brought home some pretty, pretty veggies.



(In addition to what's pictured, we also brought home corn, sweet potatoes and a bunch of pretty little apples.  And Mom picked up something called a lemon cucumber...which is a cucumber that looks surprisingly like a lemon.  Go figure.)

We hung out at the park for a bit.  The boys exploring and finding treasures in the dirt.



(Bug with an eraser shaped like a cat.)

Boo ran around trying to keep up, and beelining towards the mud.



So I ended up holding her a lot.  She was not pleased.



(This is the first picture of Boo where I think she looks like me at all.)

Then it started getting hot and we were hungry, so Mom suggested we move the party to McDonald's - a rare treat!  This is the first time we've been since Boo has been even kind of mobile and she jumped out there like an old pro.

(I was right there ready to catch her the whole time.  Honest.)







She ended up making it up to the fourth step before it got too steep.  My nephew was so amazing with her.  He cheered her on the whole time she was trying to climb, and helped her down when she thought she was stuck.  Very sweet.

Bug didn't stop moving once. ;)



(Haha.  While tagging this post, I realized that ALL of the veggies were already listed.  Guess we have some solid favorites.)

Miscellaneous June Gardening

Mom found a giant zucchini last week.  This sucker was tucked away beneath a tomato plant.



(And that's Bug's "Whoa.  This is heavy." face.)



This is a good example of what we're picking on a daily basis.  Less zucchini and squash.  Mom usually picks those (3-4 a day!) in the morning.  That bowl of yellow tomatoes is not small.  I think it's a 3 quart bowl?  I'll try to remember to look next time.

Still not coming up with many green beans, though the cucumbers are starting to come along nicely.

And, look!  Green bean teepee!



It's filled out quite a bit more this week, and the little sweet pea flowers that Mom planted in there are starting to bloom.  So there are some pretty little purple flowers tucked in there now.  Those are carrots in front, radishes on the side and cucumbers on the back.  And, behind the sunflowers, potatoes.  Awesome, isn't it?  My mom's green thumb just blows me away.

And look at how tall the sunflowers have gotten!



They're 11-12 feet tall, now.

I loved seeing this guy tucked in with the bright yellow ones.



And a better picture of the corn.



Puts my little dirt patch to shame.

Corn

There's corn in my mom's garden!  Corn!



This is particularly impressive given that my mom's backyard is not all that large, and the corn itself takes up something like 16 square feet of garden space.  It's a tiny spot, really.

This picture was taken earlier this month, when we were happy-dancing that there were three little ears of corn coming up.  We thought that might be all there was.  At last count, about four days ago, there were 41 ears of corn.  Forty one.  There had been 35 when I'd counted three or four days earlier.  Looks like we might be feasting after all!

And that's not even considering the tomatoes.  There are two tomatoe plants and it's possible that one of them is related to kudzu.  It's taking over everything.  It's completely overpowered a rosemary bush, is stretching over the second tomato plant and into the sunflowers on one side, and is just about to choke the life out of a zucchini plant in the other direction.  It's crawling up the fence and has spilled over the garden wall to cover half of a large planting of lantana.  I'm picking tomatos every other day and routinely filling a large mixing bowl just off of the one plant.  It's insane.

Mom and my sister are both off of nightshades for the time being, and there are way too many tomatoes for me and my family to eat by ourselves.  We're snacking on as many as we can, but I've started cutting them up and freezing them, too.  So far we've put away 13 pints, and I'm pretty sure that I have about that many still sitting on my kitchen counter waiting for me to deal with them.

In terribly exciting news, the sad, sad little tomato plants in my garden have actually bloomed.  I noticed today that one of them actually has four tiny green tomatoes on it.  I was so excited that I almost fell over.  Tomatoes from my own backyard!  I mentioned it to Bug while we were making dinner and it stopped him in his tracks.  He wanted to go see and pick them rightthatverysecond.  I'll try to get some pictures of these plants for comparison.

First Harvests

In addition to the sunflowers, Mom's garden has already started producing a fairly nice bounty.  She's collecting a good number of tomatoes, zucchini and squash daily.  The radishes are ready too, though I'm really the only one who seems to be eating them - and I've learned to like them only because Bug enjoys picking them so much.

It's been a lot of fun to go over every day and help to pick the ripe veggies.  And even more fun to take them inside and immediately turn them into lunch.



We also picked and cooked a number of the radishes, though I forgot to take a picture of them.  I was pleased to discover that cooking radishes mellows them quite a bit.  First attempt was tasty, though a bit bland.  I'm looking forward to experimenting now.

And, even though they're not quite ready yet, Mom let Bug pick a couple of carrots.  We all agreed that they were quite tasty.

Farmer's Market Day

I didn't even know that peppers came in purple before today, but I found this little guy at the farmer's market in downtown Phoenix.  Or at the urban market next door, rather.

The farmer's market was AWESOME.  So much yummy food and beautiful artisan items.

I really intended to only go and look around today.  Kind of get a feel for the market.  But then we ran across a woman who was selling, among other things, hand-knit socks for kids.  Wool socks.  For five dollars.  And they were cute.

Bug didn't pick the pair I'd have bought had he not been there, but I'm glad that he was able to choose the ones he liked.



He'll have some (cute!) toasty toes in those this winter!

We're also enjoying some yummy tomato candy (as Bug calls them) today.

Today I Love...

...that we spent last night catching up with an old friend and her husband.  (Oddly enough, who also just made the Houston-to-Phoenix move!)

...that Bug requested tomatoes for lunch today, and we were able to walk out into the yard and pick some for him to eat.

...that I get to spend this afternoon ticking fun things off of my to-do list with my family.  (We have planned: library, fabric store, storage building.)

...summer skirts, and that I'm wearing pre-pregnancy clothes again!

Things That Make Me Happy

Though, perhaps I should have titled this post "Things that make me happy, that I've taken photos of".  Though, that's not grammatically correct, is it?  Ah well, you get my point.

In the chaos that is our house pre-move, there's not a lot of picture taking going on around here.  We can barely get through the living room, much less find a clean spot to take a picture of anything.  It's frightening in here.  (And it smells funny.  I don't quite get that one.)

BUT.  But, I did snap a few pictures today of things that are making me smile.

First up, the tangle that is our pseduo-garden.

We have tomatoes again!  Even after Bug picked and ate one!  Yay!



And, look!  A pepper!  I'd totally given up on that one.  Really.  I was just going to be happy that the plant itself had survived this long.  But, there it was when we left the house this afternoon, one tiny little I'm-going-to-be-a-pepper-when-I-grow-up.  I'm so excited about it. :)



Also, if you can believe it, a completed WIP.

A few days ago, I finally got around to wrapping up the cute little beanbags that I wanted for Bug for the studio.  (Even though we no longer have the studio.  Ah, well.)  Choosing a filling really gave me a lot of trouble for some reason.  I finally decided that washable was unlikely to happen so beans of some sort were my best bet.  Richard suggested that I try a few things out and see what I liked best.

We tried rice.  We tried split peas.  We tried lentils.

Rice makes for a nice heavy bag and the filling isn't so large or so hard that a parent or sibling who gets beaned in the head would get terribly hurt.  Split peas are considerably lighter and slide against one another nicely in the bag.  Lentils... Oh my goodness, the lentils!  I've decided that I LOVE lentils for beanbag stuffing.  They have *just* enough weight to make the bags nice to throw, but they don't hurt at all if you take a hard hit.  The bags fall really nicely and stay where they land (Richard's concern because of how the lentils move against one another).  It's luxurious.  Now I just need to find a good price on bulk lentils, because I WILL be making more of these bags.

I might even already have the fabric ordered.  *cough*



I've got almost half of the fabric cut for the Four Cousins project, but my sewing table is in a sad state and it's not much to look at anyway, so no photo of that yet.  I'll post one when it looks a bit more interesting.

And, no photo of this one, but it was the best moment of the day so far...

Richard and I took Bug out to lunch today and he got pretty sleepy while we were out.  (It was an early morning.)  He ended up falling asleep in my lap a little while ago.  I carried him to bed and was *just* putting him down when he woke up a little.  My heart stopped, hoping that he'd go back to sleep (I REALLY want to nap with him today!) and not fuss and and and.  And he laughed and murmured "I love you, Mommy", then rolled right over and zonked out again.  Melted my heart. <3

Garden and Other Goodies

Today, we were very excited about this:



Our second almost-ripe tomato!  We've been watching it grow for what seems like forever.  Ages ago (it feels like), our little plant popped out one little tomato and Bug grabbed it when it *thisclose* to being ripe.  He devoured it - though he did offer me one bite, sweet boy.  It was SO tasty!  And I was so very excited that we've actually gotten something edible off of the plant before I had managed to kill it.  That was a first.

(Last summer, nothing grew on the tomato plant, but I did manage to keep it alive all summer.  Also a first.)

Bug was so excited by the sight of an almost-ready-to-eat tomato that he plucked it right off.  We've been checking it every.single.day so I'm actually kind of impressed that it made it this far.

Two still-green tomatoes have been plucked in anticipatory excitement.  Bug tried really hard to eat the first one and ended up declaring it "too crunchy".  It was vaguely amusing though.  He *insisted* on eating that first green one.  We were on our way someplace, so sat in the car seat with it...taking a bite, exclaiming "yuck", spitting it out, taking another bite...

Bug, sweet thing that he is, offered me the first bite of his newest treasure.  It wasn't quite as sweet at the first one (also not quite as ripe), but was still pretty tasty.  He certainly seemed to enjoy eating the rest of it.  And he was really, really excited when we stopped and counted fifteen (!!) green tomatoes still growing on the plant.  And there are more blooms, too!

I am amazed.

In other news, I lopped off my hair this afternoon.  Perhaps a decision based on stress and hormones, but I decided beforehand that I would be thrilled with the results pretty much no matter what they were, and I am.  We took off about fourteen inches.  Yes...fourteen inches.  There were three women working where I went to have it cut and I think one of them just about passed out when she saw it all come off.

My hair is, admittedly, quite a bit shorter than I had intended.  I'll never really understand why stylists never seem to believe me when I tell them that my hair curls when it's short.  It was supposed to end at roughly my shoulder blades...and now curls up just below my chin.  I can *barely* get it into some semblance of a ponytail (and, thus, out of my eyes and out of the toddlers easy grasp).  But I like it. :)  It's definitely a lot cooler!

Time for bed now, but tomorrow I may show off some stuff that I'm getting excited about.  We'll see. ;)