there goes September!

We finally did some garden maintenance over the weekend. It was badly overgrown, and a lot of our veggies were inaccessible. So we harvested what we could, hacked away at crazy vines, pulled plants that were all done, and made a whole lot of good stuff for composting. Many of the tomato plants seem to be about to produce another big crop of tomatoes, and it's still been pretty warm outside, so I'm hoping we get another good sized batch all at once so we can make some more sauce.

We got 21 butternuts (with about that many still on the vine) - it's a good thing these will store for months!

And lots of peppers that we're dehydrating...

The watermelons still aren't ready. Here's a new little one I just discovered this morning. The vines are taking over a huge part of the yard, and I'm wondering if I should be trimming them back so the plant can focus on the melons it has instead of swallowing our house.

We did some canning - more blackberry jam with berries we picked from Underwood Family Farms, and some marinara sauce to use up the tomatoes we had.

And finally, here's Pheobe trying to get in on our wedding pictures :D

Fork you!

A few months ago I was trying everything to keep the cats out of the garden. On some forum or blog, someone had suggested planting plastic forks, tines up, in the soil. "WHAT A GREAT IDEA!" I thought. And I did just that... shoved probably 300 little forks into the ground.

They totally didn't work (but THE SCARECROW did!). The garden is huge and overgrown, and there are no more walkways through it... the plants have overgrown every possible way through and around. So I find myself walking through one of the beds that has a tiny bit of space along it, only it's loaded with little fork landmines! I can't tell you how many tines I've snapped off, and I'm sure it's only luck that I haven't been forked through the foot yet. Now I shuffle through, barely lifting my feet. Kind of like you're supposed to do in the ocean for avoiding stingrays.

Gardening. I'm pretty sure we're doing it wrong, but it's been fun :D

Happy Tomatoes!

How can you tell... you might ask?

AND....

We celebrated our first anniversary!

Not quite...

And here's Neil with the first watermelon we picked! We were so sad when we cut it open and it wasn't ripe. But we have more growing, and we're trying to be more patient.

Some good things in jars!

Mmmm... fire roasted salsa, tomato basil sauce, and tomato jam:

Reasons & Excuses

I haven't blogged in a long time. This is why:

The garden is huge and out of control, and we've been super busy trying to keep up with our canning so that nothing goes to waste. We've processed about 300lbs of tomatoes, 40lbs of various peppers, lots of corn, onions, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, butternut squash, acorn squash... and most recently, eggplant and watermelon! We've made pasta sauce, tomato sauce, fire roasted salsas, tomato jam, peach jam, pluot jam, pear jam, plum jam, marmalade, pickles, dried peppers, and more. We've dried beans, tomatoes, peppers, fruits, and spices. Roasted sunflower seeds and tomatoes. And we've traveled and done lots of stuff with friends and family too. I've been taking a lot of pictures along the way, but when I've sat down to do a new post, I'm overwhelmed by all the catching up there is to do and I simply close the new post window. So this will have to do as an update, or I'll never get one done :)

I hope everyone has enjoyed their summer!