Around Home: My Parents' Garden

Here's an update on my parents' garden!  It seems that every year at this point in the summer, the garden has started to look awful but continues to produce beautiful fruits and vegetables.  Have you experienced this too?  The squash leaves have all turned yellow and withered, the tomato plants look wilty and unruly, and the watermelon looks like it died (actually, it may have.  My mom stopped watering a few days ago because a rabbit had three babies in our melon patch!).  Not to mention that squash bugs and Mexican bean beetles have unfortunately moved in on the zucchini and green beans.  Nevertheless, the harvest I made on Thursday shows that things are still going strong.  I got a large bag of tomatoes, three cucumbers, four eggplants, some unchewed green beans, two green peppers, a handful of jalapeno peppers, a butternut squash, and a watermelon!

Around home: My parents' garden

Keeping with the gardening theme from the last post, I wanted to show off my parents' garden. We convinced them to start a kitchen garden last summer as an experiment, and this year they've really run away with it! Last year the garden amounted to their neighbor tilling up some sod, planting some things, and putting a rough metal fence around it. Of course, the squash and weeds took over. In an attempt to keep things more orderly and accessible this year, my parents put in raised beds, simultaneously making it more permanent, beautiful, and organized! They daily receive accusations disguised as compliments about the "best looking garden in the neighborhood." Who knew they'd entered some sort of unspoken small-town contest? Anyway, the garden has really flourished in our hot weather. Check out the photos!

The garden on June 19.  Looking orderly and hopeful.

The garden on July 1. Looking like the squash are already taking over!

More photos below...

Around Home: Patio Gardening

Things are starting to pick up here as we approach mid-summer. We will be moving in less than two weeks, staying with Grandma for the rest of the summer. Before our big move, I wanted to document what's going on in our humble little patio garden. Enjoy!

The whole patio crew. Rosemary, basil from seed, basil from starters
(we got impatient!), spinach , cilantro, lemon thyme,  super sweet 100
 cherry tomato, angora cherry tomato, and rutgers tomato.

More photos below...

Just Around the House

Just want to share a few things that are going on around here.  First of all, look at the new spools of yarn I bought for $3 each at an antique fair!

The blue cotton is already being worked into a knitted scarf for me!
Also note the beautiful antique embroidered tablecloth that my mom gave me as a wedding shower present.

Another project that I've been meaning to blog about (but probably won't do a full post on now that it's so late in the season) is the garden we've kept with my parents.  It's been a joy to see such a full garden grow from just tiny seeds.  The squash has really taken over this year!  We've learned a lot from doing a garden, and have had fun using the produce.  Tomorrow I'll be making pesto with my mom, and Wednesday I'll be learning to can tomatoes and salsa with my grandma.  Anyway, here's a couple photos of the small harvest we took home with us after a weekend at my parents'.

Acorn squash, watermelon, spaghetti squash, crookneck squash, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, banana peppers, and carrots!

Look at these crazy colored carrots!