Mom's Garden

This summer I have spent a lot of time with my mom at her house. My mom's garden takes a lot of her time but is so wonderful. I brought my camera with me the other day and took some pictures of her garden, her flowers and her orchard. I'd like to share a few with you all. The camera cannot capture all the beauty and color that these places hold for me, but it does hold memories for me. So, enjoy...

Here are some yellow water melons. They are very delicious and someday when I have my own place, I too will be planting and harvesting these melons.

Here's mom picking cucumbers. Behind her are the broccoli plants.

Tomatoes not yet red...well there is one in the very back that is pink...don't know if you can see it.

This is a new melon that Mom has never tried before. I don't know it's name but if you look closely at it, it looks like an ugly winter squash. The outside of the melon is very bumpy and lumpy.

Here is a spotted watermelon. Kind of cool huh?! The leaves of the watermelon are also spotted...green with yellow spots.

Above are some peppers...they start off yellow and then turn red.

Here's one of the giant pumpkins that she is growing for my husband. She's very worried that it won't get as big as it needs to before the frost finds it this fall. Because our spring lasted so long the plant didn't grow very fast for the first couple of months.

Here's another view of the garden. Starting right in front and left by the shovel you will see beets, then carrots. If you look carefully behind the carrots are some re bar posts...below them are peas...Mom started a second batch of them a few weeks ago. Behind the peas are onions and then you can't see the melons. After melons are beans then the cucumbers and then corn. The corn cuts the garden in half but the corn is the last thing you see in this photo. There are more beets, carrots, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, melons, and raspberries behind the corn.

I wanted to show you how large her onions are...but I forgot to put something in the picture to show the comparison. If you use your imagination, put your hand out there to grab one and the bulb of the onion will be almost as large as your hand. Hope you've enjoyed the tour of most of my mom's garden.

It's been a long time since I've gone to any kind of amusement park...or indoor activity thing. A few Saturdays ago, SM and I took two of our nieces to an indoor amusement park. We were able to ride on a merry-go-round, bumper cars, and some spinny thing.

SM looks like he is having a little too much fun bumping the cars of all the little kids. I was afraid someone would start crying after seeing his face as he came at them as fast as the bumper cars could go. Luckily, no tears, just a lot of laughter.

I don't think I have ever been on a merry-go-round like this. It was a lot of fun but didn't seem like we went around long enough. Oh well, I wasn't going to go spend more money just to go around again and again. Once was memorable enough.

Lots of smiles all around!

And this is the school bus that flies up through the air, and then comes back down and then goes back up....again and again.

I had a great time, as did SM and the girls. One of our favorite things was the magic show performed about an hour after we had been there. This magician was a lot of fun. He may have not have tricky tricks but he had so much enthusiam that we just had to laugh and enjoy ourselves. Hopefully this was a memory that all will remember.

Apricot Nectar

Have any of you ever made apricot nectar before? I grew up drinking this nectar from heaven and was so excited to make some for my own family. In the above picture, I'm holding the honey before I add it to the nectar.

This machine makes making apricot nectar so easy. It takes the cooked apricots and separates the juice from the pulp. This is the same machine I'll be using this fall to make homemade applesauce. I don't know what it is called but it is so nice and makes the smoothest nectar and applesauce.

Do you see all those jars of nectar? Oh so yuumy!!

We made twenty quarts of nectar today. Not all the apricots have been picked and so I plan on making a few more quarts next week. The fun point of the day was when we were picking the apricots and decided just to shake the branches, hoping the ripe apricots would fall to the ground...which they did...and then we just picked up the fallen apricots and brought them in the house to make into nectar. It didn't matter that they were bruised, we were just going to juice them anyway. And this is how beautiful they turned out!!

Apricots!!

This week the apricots started ripening on Mom's trees. Being the wonderful mother that she is, when I asked if we could can some apricot/pineapple jam, she said yes. So, we started early by picking the apricots...and then we had to wash them.

And then I needed to cut them and pit them. I wore one glove because I wanted to prevent the staining of my fingernails...such a vain thing...but I've done this many times before and I didn't want to end up with yellow fingernails.

And then we cooked the apricots, blended them a bit, put in the pineapple and honey, and let it cook more. After it was just right...we put them in pint bottles.

We ended up canning 4o-something pint bottles of apricot-pineapple jam. Oh, I'm so excited to have that yummy stuff in my food storage. Thanks again Mom for letting me make a mess in your kitchen and for showing me how to can this jam.

Baby Shower

I grew up next door to my cousins. It was nice to have four girl cousins since I had three younger brothers and one sister. Here are three of the four cousins...at a baby shower for the fourth sister. Great baby shower ladies!

This is my cousin who is closest to my age. We used to play for hours and hours together. I've enjoyed following her on her life on her blog. It's also been fun just to get together to talk.

Here is my grandmother, my aunt and my cousin.

This is the receiving blanket and two burp clothes I made for my cousin. Even though this is her first baby, she doesn't know if she is having a boy or girl. So, this is the best I could do...a blanket that could be for a boy or a girl.

And here is the special lady...ready to have the baby but baby is not ready to come until the middlish of August.

Here is my sister and cousin. This is the cousin that hosted the baby shower. What a great event!

And finally the best picture ever. My sister, mom and me!

Our Garden

Our garden is producing!! I feel like an expectant parent who finally has offspring to show to others. Here we have one of our first tomatoes. It looks kind of red but really is an orange tomatoe.

And here are some of the peppers. Yum!

Every thing is growing very well. The heat is causing things to grow and grow. Now we just have to remember to water it so that it doesn't die.

Here are the Anahiem peppers. Anyone have any good recipes for this pepper?

Jeremy has been working very hard to keep the tomatoes in their cages. I'm not sure if they are very cooperative but he's doing his best.

Quail Eggs & Cucumber

Mom was working in her garden yesterday morning and came across this nest of quail eggs. Unfortunately, Mamma Quail had already abandoned this nest and so the eggs weren't viable, but it is still neat to look at.

Mamma Quail put these eggs right under a very large cabbage leaf. They were well camouflaged and protected. I wonder why she had to abandon them.

This is a cucumber. Usually when they grow they straighten out but this one never did. It almost looks like a giant cut worm. I'm so excited that the plants from the garden are producing veggies. It's so yummy to have all that fresh food.