Welcome to Dana's blog!

flowers and landscaping pics

One of the 3 matching pots that I made for my back deck:

The hanging basket that I made my mom for Mother's Day (ignore the gerber daisy--it was not part of it!LOL):

Our flowerbeds:

Business venture!

Ok, this will by NO MEANS make us rich, but it should be fun and might put a little extra money in our pockets!

The little town back home is goign to try to have a Farmer's Market. My sister just called and asked if I help her w/it! It will take some logistics, but it's only cheap booth rent and only 10 weeks. And MY out of pocket costs wont' be much at all! As long as ppl show up, I think this will work. I'm always giving produce away so this might be a good solution. Plus Mat will be in charge of radishes and peas (which might be hard to pull off cuz it doesn't start until June) and he can keep his profits. I'm going to make a few loaves of bread nad see if they sell the first couple of times......

Weekly menu

This will be updated later:

Monday: Turkey tettrazini (it was AWESOME!)

Tuesday: turkey salad

Wednesday: either turkey pot pie or turkey divan (I need broccoli for the latter)

I'll figure out the rest when I see how the week shapes up. I know one night will be a roast.

garden update

The sweet potatoes were a bust. Just not enuf water......or too early a frost (not really, but considering when we started getting rain, it is!LOL). So I guess I"ll be buying a bag of those for Thanksgiving day. Unless someone gives DH some (happened before). 

The asparagus looks AWESOME. Well to my completely asparagus untrained eye!ROTFL!

Mat's gourds are awesome. I guess we'll have lots to give away. Most of the plants have died off so we'll harvest those soon. I'm hoping they stay good thru fall. Another new venture we tried this year. I know DH will be glad to mow the part of the yard that they invaded.

tomatoes.......

We picked what little I've left to do. Good thing the crop was cruddy! I've got maybe 60ish pounds to turn into sauce tomorrow and that will wrap that up.

Then to get them out of the garden. We got several out tonight, but there is alot more. There are 2 new watermelon that I hope are decent cuz we're dragging those on vacation w/us.;) The celery is shot and I'm pitching Mat's hot peppers since he's stopped picking them. The bell peppers are going great guns! We'll have those as long as there are no freezes!

We still need to dig the red potatoes, but it's much too wet. Outside of that, the garden is kaput!

56 pints of salsa!!!!!!!!!!

Salsa time!

garden update

I was scared to venture there, but I did tonight (w/Mat as back up!LOL).  I  pitched 9 muskmelons to the pigs and have 8 for us. 3 will be given away tomororw, 1 eaten and the other 4 saved for the party on Sunday. I have 3 watermelon that are fine.  The carrots are OK and I didnt' see much in the way of tomatoes. We picked some to get rid of tomorrow, but we can pick tomorrow night and I"ll put up more salsa on Friday.

I was glad that it wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined.

garden update

I got 15 pints of salsa, and canned 14 of htem. Eleven of those sealed, which is good. But since there are alot of yellow tomatoes in them, DH will have to eat those pretty soon anyway.

We are almost done w/the 1st watermelon and I ate the 1st cantaloupe last night for supper!LOL I have another one on the counter nad I think it will be supper too!LOL

I also picked all the hot peppers and Mat and I will string them up so that they can dry today. There will be more later, but this will put a dent in them.

Presumably next week, I'll do more salsa. I have to can 56 pints so I'm about 1/4 of the way done. I've got quite a bit of spaghetti sauce to make too. Since the tomatoes are not doing all that great (grasshoppers nad blossom end blight), that's probably all I get. But I have enuf of everything else to hold us over for the year so that's OK.

Mat's gourds were trying to use my asparagus for uprights so they got a stern talking to after I untangled them!LOL I need those asparagus to live!LOL I don't care about the gourds so much!

My garden is GROWING!

Joey and I perused the garden adn I was FLOORED to count at least 10 cantaloupes adn 3 watermelons!!!!!!!!!! OH YUMMY! Hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll have fresh corn on the cobb too. Tomatoes are still green and the peppers are still small, but I"m patient.;) I found a HUGE head of cauliflower (I must be blind cuz I never see this stuff until it's huge!LOL) that we will have soon--OH YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Plus I found another asparagus peeking out at me tonight! That's 3 plants so far--WAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

My garden--asparagus, broccoli and peppers OH MY!

Mat told me there was asparagus growing and I was a bit reserved as he's not always accurate. And I was mildlly dissappointed as I started walking down the patch and seeing weeds. Altho his ornamental gourds are doing well. Then, at the very end, I saw them. The two most beautiful (OK, I might be a bit biased!LOL) asparagus stalks I've ever seen!!!!!!!!! I was THRILLED and now have hope that the rest may soon erupt from the earth! It's 2 years off before we can harvest them, BUT OH HOW EXCITED I AM!!!!!! Yes, over ASPARAGUS!

And Mat had reported huge heads of broccoli, last time I had checked there was NOTHING. Sure enuf, I saw that all 8 plants had heads waiting for me! We are having 2 steamed for supper tonight!!!!!!

By now I was convinced he knew more than I thought and sure enuf, long stringy hot peppers are waiting to turn green. And I SAW SOME BELL PEPPERS!!!!!!!! We haven't had stuffed peppers since last fall so what a treat that will be!

Needless to say, I'm thrilled about the garden.;) I get giddy like this every year tho. I'm pretty sure it's a sickness..........LOL

garden pics

Look at this pea's bloom!:

gardening!

Ok, the garden is planted! At least as far as it can be for now. I need to get 4 cauliflower starts and Dh needs to rototill where the vining stuff goes and then we are good to go. I"m currently watering stuff as it's so dry here. I need to go move the sprinkler in a few....

AWW gave me almost an entire flat of tomato plants! I'll be returning lots!LOL

The bread is baking now too. So in about an hour, I"ll be able to crash for the day.......

Weed-be-gone

I just spent an hour hoeing around the house. The flowerbed around the pool is fine. And now the house is too. Dh wanted me to stay on top of them adn sinc eI am leaving........but he will probalby not be happy about how much dirt is in the yard! I have this thing about NOT leaaving the weeds (some of which just grow anyway) in the beds so I used the hoe to drag them all out!LOl

The boys are under the deck looking for bugs. I *accidently* missed the pots when watering the flowers and it went thru the slats onto them.:)

Ok, off to practice!

ironing, laundry and cooking

I had a bit more laundry to do today (trying to get ready for this weekend) and I worked out, showered, and Mat and I got the rest of the garden planted. DH is going to have a cow. It was fairly dark last night and he wanted the potatoes and onions planted so we did. I started planting and I couldn't remember WHY I picked ther e(my head was POUNDING) and this morning when I went out and could SEE, I remembered why. We now have the rhubarb (perennial) growing int hemiddle of a row! UGH! The upside is that I stuck radishes and 'quick' growing spring stuff around it so maybe he won't be as upset. But he is the one who wanted the row moved.........LOL So the potatoes, onions, peas, spinach, radish, beets, romaine and regular lettuce are planted. That's probably going to be all there is to our spring garden.

I got all the ironing done too. We have our family pics tomorrow night, but we are wearing all those sweaters we bought for the IL family pic that didn't happen!LOL But I needed to get everything ironed for Easter Sunday.

Spring flower pics!

Weeds........rain.........

It was to rain all day tomorrow so I got around the pool done. I just don't have it in me to gte that last little bit of the house. I went ahead and put out the grub killer. It said to wet after application and I figure God's helping me there. So next week, I'll touch up everywhere and hit that  one spot in front of the house.

Joey still hasn't done his bookwork, but oh well. He and Mat have been outside w/water guns and bikes and running and looking at daffodils, etc. Can't beat that for school IMO.

SORE!!!!!!!!

I am so sore from all that weeding! And probably some of the workout yesterday, but mainly from weeding. I had a hard time getting out of bed, but worked out anyway, ironed and promptly headed outside to weed some more. I now have three sides of hte house down and the flagpole flowerbed. I'll have to do that again next week cuz I wasn't getting the roots though. Grrrr And I had about half of hte front of the house done. Unfortunately the half that's left is BAD. Then to get around the pool. I'm hoping to do the front of the house tonight (if it's not raining) and around the pool tomorrow. That will knock out the 1st big weeding of the year. I think we are goign to venture out Thursday. I haven't seen one of the librarians in ages and she's got Vera Bradley purses to show me!LOL Plus I can go back to the nursery and get some things I need and go to Walmart for the rest.

Mat's done w/school and Joey hasn't started. I'm kicking them outside to play pretty soon tho. They are calling for possible showers this afternoon so I want to make sure that they get outdoors for a bit.

Weeds and baseball

After supper, the boys went out to practice baseball. The season will be starting soon and they need all the practice that they can get!LOL While they did that, I weeded some more. I got a section of the back flowerbed done. I also planted the pansy that I got a couple of weeks ago and promptly forgot about! Not sure that it's going to make it. Then I emptied the 2 broken planters and pitched those, picked up MORE wood from the deck builders (major grumbling about them not cleaning up AT ALL) and inventoried the garden stuf in the garage. I spotted 5 NEW planters that I bought on clearance last year. That replaces my broken deck planters and my 2 for Mother's day! I don't know that I"m going to have enuf dirt so I need another bag of that. I found grub (for japanese beatles) killer that needs to be applied, but I need DH's input on that. I hate to do it, but I have GOT to find a way to control these things w/o constantly spraying the trees! I'm praying that this is the answer.

They are calling for possible rain tomorrow so I"ll get out int he afternoon and try ot get the rest of the south side of the beds done. That will not be pleasant. But then the front won't be a walk in the park either......

WET WET WET!