We’re still getting plenty from our garden, but it’s started slowing down a bit. Here are some pics from a few weeks back when we couldn’t quite stay on top of all the vegetables. We made the tomatoes into marinara sauce and Rocky loves cucumbers, but we couldn’t give the zucchini away fast enough.
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Here are some pictures from a Family Home Evening enactment of the story of David and Goliath. Leo played the part of David, and Fischer was some combination of Goliath and a Storm Trooper. Rocky was an excited spectator. Fun was had by all.
I forgot to post these picks, but we went with my sister Lindsay and her husband Regan to a pick-your-own orchard outside Charlottesville a couple of weeks ago to pick peaches. It was very hot, but still pretty fun. We ate quite a few of them (my favorite are grilled peaches with a mix of whipped cream and cream cheese), but canned most–peach slices in light syrup and peach butter.
The zucchini are in–in a major way. We’ve picked 2-3 every day, and so far have had zucchini with parmesan, zucchini gratin, marinated zucchini, grilled zucchini with ricotta, and just plain zucchini. Next stop: zucchini bread. This last week we had 3 or 4 days of rain and didn’t make it into the garden to check or pick. So when I went out yesterday I was greeted by biggest monster zucchini I’ve ever seen. I was tempted to leave them a little longer just to see how big they’d get. Here’s a picture of Rocky holding the biggest one–it’s almost as tall as him.
and it feels so good.
Marissa and the kids got back this weekend. I’m glad that they were able to go and spend so much time with Marissa’s family, but I’m glad they’re back. And my long nightmare of singledom is over (ok, so I didn’t mind getting a good, full night sleep or being able to read without interruption, but even that gets old). This has actually been one of the easiest transitions of them coming home.
I was out there for one week, and from that alone there are like 150 pictures, so we’ll putting up pictures from the trip in the next week.
Welcome back!
We picked our first vegetables from the garden: radishes. I’m not a huge fan of radishes, but they’re one of the first things to grow, and they’re easing to pick. Plus with a little bit of salt, they’re actually pretty tasty. Leo helped me pick some, and we had them with herbed butter and bread (herbs from the garden!) before dinner with Grandma and Grandpa.
The first picture is of the radish plants, the second is of arugula, which we also ate for dinner. Then there’s some more shots of the garden. We’re on about day 35 since planting; most of the vegetables are doing pretty well–there are a few that aren’t exactly thriving. But we’ll keep you posted on what’s fresh and ready for picking.
Fischer is now potty trained. He went in the toilet twice like 6 months ago, but has not been interested since. Until he went to the doctor yesterday. She said he’s plenty ready as far as his skills–just that it might be a power struggle thing (hard to imagine that with one of our kids, right?). But he came home and went in the toilet and has been going since. It’s been amazingly easy, but I guess I shouldn’t jinx it. Anyway, above are some picture to document this momentous occasion (these are for you, dad – I know you much you like toilet talk).
He’s had plenty of encouragement from Leo (too much, actually–we’ve had to institute a privacy rule) and from his toys. We’ve had him just in his underwear so as not to slow him down when the time comes, and as you can see in the last picture, he likes to put the pole of his horse down through his underwear so he doesn’t have to hold it. Makes sense. He also likes to put his underwear on backwards so you can see the picture of Lightning McQueen/Mac/Mater in the front, but I spared you a picture of that.
We’re back on the chain gang now, but last week we vacationed (I don’t really use this word, but it’s better than ‘holidayed’ – Marissa would say ‘partied’) in Duck, NC (The Outer Banks, also known as OBX) with the whole Romans crew. Eleven adults and ten children, all under one (fairly large) roof. The kids were very excited to be at the beach and with their cousins. Fischer wants to know when we can go back to the swimhouse.
I took a million pictures and narrowed them down to post some, but still had 50. So for now, I’ll post the ones of our family at the beach, pool and Wright Brothers Memorial. More to come later with cousins and at the house.
We planted our garden this weekend. We’re doing the Square Foot Gardening method. Each box is 4 feet by 4 feet and divided into 16 square foot sections. Depending on the what you’re planting, you can do 1, 4, 9 or 16 plants in each square foot. Here is my layout for this year. The ones in pink are Leo’s and in blue are Fischer’s. I bought the tomato and bell pepper plants and some basil; everything else is from seeds. As you can see in the pictures above, a few are already coming up. The neat thing about square foot gardening is that the soil is a mixture of pete moss, compost and vermiculite–no actual dirt (fewer weeds!). You can read more about it at the link above, but it’s supposed to grow more in a smaller space.
We planted the kids’ sections for FHE (with a little lesson on faith is like a seed). I forgot to take pictures, so I staged some last night (wasn’t going to tell you, but they looked staged, so what the heck). The kids were excited, but got a little tired of dropping seeds into holes after awhile. They picked out what they planted by themselves – not sure how well watermelon and cantaloupe are going to grow, but we’ll see. Can’t wait to try some garden-fresh vegetables! Next project: learn how to can.