My sunflowers
Okra Flower
Okra
Me with my okra
Grasshopper that visited my fig tree
Lots of green tomatoes!
Golden Tomatoes
Basil anyone?
Friday Updates
I am thinking of doing a regular update post at the end of every week. I seem to be doing a lot of random update posts lately, so I think I will just start doing a Friday Updates post.
Adoption update: No news. There haven’t been any referrals this week from our agency. The courts in Ethiopia are now officially closed until sometime in October. There can be referrals during this time period, but no court dates will be heard. (Court is what legally makes the child(ren) yours, a referral is a child(ren) matched to you from the agency)
Running update: Last week I got my three runs in, even getting one in while in Colorado. This week no runs. 🙁 I might try to get one in tomorrow morning. I was making good progress until this week, so hopefully I can get back on track next week.
Push-ups update: We are total slackers! Vacation definitely put a hold on our push-up regime! Hopefully we can get back on track next week and get week 2.5 done!
Other random stuff:
Last night we had a nice big storm that brought us .5″ of rain, lightening, and wind. The wind broke one of the nicest branches in the above tree and it is currently hanging down into my tomatoes. Luckily my tomato plants will be just fine and the tree should survive.
While we were in Colorado we were able to score lots of great stuff for Tom & Jerry at thrift stores. We bought lots of books, wood puzzles, blocks and legos, and a shopping cart seat cover. We love to go thrift store shopping in Colorado, we always seem to score better stuff there. We also received books from Matt’s grandparents and his parents.
We found out that Jason and Michelle were having a girl and I snagged some adorable shoes and a hat from the thrift stores.
I will do my monthly update of the Carbon Challenge tomorrow. I am running a little behind right now. I should have taken the file with me to Colorado!
I hope Matt will have pictures added to his last post by tomorrow. FYI I do not love road trips as much as he does! I like them for a couple of hours but that is it. I do not like being in the car for that long, but we do manage to have fun together and the time goes by relatively quick.
Okay I think I am done rambling!
Figs!
My little fig tree has been producing figs faster than I can eat them (Matt is still not sure about them). So I decided to learn how to make jam. I found this recipe and the batch size looked just right for me and Matt (he loves jam so I figured this would be the way to get him to eat the figs). I decided to skip the sesame seeds it called for (I didn’t have any) and follow some of the reviewers suggestions of adding cinnamon. I also cut the sugar to one cup but did add two tablespoons of honey. I forgot to add the lemon zest, but I think that is okay.
Here are the figs when they just started to simmer:
Here they are about an hour into the process:
…and the finished product:
I did give it a try this afternoon and it was pretty good. I think it might be better chilled, it was still warm when I ate it. It wasn’t as sweet as I was expecting based on the reviews, which is good, because I don’t like my jam too sweet. Overall it was a really easy recipe to make and didn’t take a lot of effort on my part! Anyone want to share some of their jam recipes?
Harvesting
One of my biggest joys every day is going outside and seeing what I need to harvest. I’ve been getting a little each and every day and everything is tasting yummy. Mostly figs and banana peppers right now, but soon I will have tons of tomatoes. (I also have a ton of basil, so if you are in the area and need fresh basil, come on by) The garden is providing us with a decent amount of our fresh fruits and veggies and I cannot wait to expand the garden so it can hopefully provide almost all of them.
Gardening websites can make you think you need to spend a lot of money on tools and gadgets to make the job easier. Last week I saw this basket and thought that would be nice for picking my fruits and veggies, and then I saw the price, $35.00! There was no way I was going to pay that much for a basket. I decided I would look at Goodwill over the weekend and found two different baskets and spent a whopping $1.98. (One is pictured above with this morning’s harvest in it.) Now I can harvest keeping both hands free and not dropping stuff, which to Tank means that one is his! By the way he doesn’t eat them, just carries them around.
Goodies from the garden
This year stephanie planted Banana Peppers just for me. She must love me, or something like that. This one plant has been producing peppers like crazy. 2 months ago we pickled 2 jars worth. Today we took about 15 more peppers and pickled 3 jars worth.
3 weeks of pickling can’t be done soon enough. I don’t know why, but I really dig pickled pickled banana peppers on sandwiches.
(click for crazy close details)
the finished product
(click for crazy close details)
It's Springtime!
I absolutely love spring! It is by far my favorite time of the year. I love watching everything come to life again after the winter. I am so lucky to live in a state where spring comes so early and winter is so short. I cannot wait to start gardening and hopefully will get my garden redone this weekend so I can get my seeds sown.
My peach tree is already starting to get leaves and blossoms. I am so excited to see if I can get peaches this year. A little history on my peach tree and why I am so excited it is getting leaves. I planted one peach tree last spring and it promptly died, so the nursery gave me a replacement but said I had to wait to fall to pick it up and plant it because it was already too hot here to plant any more fruit trees. We planted this tree in early fall and it lost all of its leaves immediately and it wasn’t even cold yet. So, I was worried it was dead but decided to wait until spring to see if it came back. It did!
For those of you who are now insanely jealous because it is so sunny here and you are buried in snow, just remember you have the right to brag in July and August when we are suffering from heat stroke.