Growing Garden

The garden is beginning to take over my life.  Which is a good thing of course.  Other than the fact that we have had zucchini and squash 7 out of the last 8 days - we're loving the fresh veggies, and we finally had CORN last night!  No pics because it's in our bellies.

We have already eaten 5 tomatoes off of this plant.  Not too shabby. 

Patio peppers.  We finally have some freaking blossoms.  Got Em!

Some patio Bush Cucumbers.  Since they're bush cucumbers we're hoping that in case of frost we can slide them inside and have some yummy late cukes.  

Back patio garden including tomatoes, a pot of late peppers, and a few pots of late zucchini and squash just in case we're not sick of it by September.

Lettuce growing very well in the planter boxes Little Winger and I built and painted.  I just started some seed and Mustard greens in another one.  We should be eating fresh salads well into November.  

The boys were hanging in Winger's bed posing for some pictures with Super Greeny.  New Edition grows a natural mowak.  What a little badass. 

Little Winger in and amongst the pepper plants in the big garden.  We have harvested approximately 30 jalapenos, 10 green peppers, and 4 banana peppers.  

Looking for something to pick.  

JACKPOT!

Heading home.  

The entire family (besides Expletive) is heading camping this weekend so "Miwa" gave Winger a little rod and reel to cast toward some fish.  If only his dad knew the first thing about fishing he may have a shot at catching something.  


Keep it real fresh.  

Summer has finally arrived!

The first cucumber and pumpkin awoke with me yesterday morning.  The "vine" garden (cukes, tomatoes, squashes, watermelon, and pumpkin) is Eden-esque with all of the rain and sunshine we have been receiving.  Now the real fun begins....

Sorry for the crappy quality.  They were taken with my non-video, non-touchscreen, non-email, non-voice anything, very reliable cell phone.  

Keep it real, summer. 

Weekend Before Europa Trip

Super Greeny, Moms, and myself are heading to Vienna, Austria next week.  Before leaving there were some very important matters that needed attended to - mainly - picking raspberries, making raspberry wine, and racking our other wines.  Curt, Winger, and myself ran to Snyder's Berry Farm to pick some raspberries (no pics), and then Curt and I completed a wine trifecta for the day.

Here's a picture of Curt cleaning the carboy preparing for our strawberry wine to be racked in to:

The strawberry wine had been in the primary fermentor for 2 weeks.  It's now resting with less sediment in the secondary glass fermentor.

The far right carboy houses our Strawberry Wine.  The pink hue gives me the feeling that we'll be sipping with our pinkies raised while watching double rainbows - but it smelled awesome.  

The middle carboy is full of our orange wine, which we racked into the empty carboy.

The "Ale Pail" was cleaned and sanitized for our raspberry wine. 

Here's an up close look at the Strawberry Wine:

We now have Strawberry, Raspberry, Orange, Small Orange, Dandelion, and Apple Weis made and aging.  Next year at this time is going to be unreal.

Quick garden update.  Our little peppers on the back patio got munched:

Here's what they used to look like:

If I catch the culprit, they're gonzo.

Here are a few of the potted plants.  The tomato plant is in the back.  A pepper triforce is in the back to the right.  Zucchini and Long Neck Squash are in the pots in the front:

After a long, hard day of picking, gardening, and wining - here is Curt, Winger, and myself enjoying a few beers (Curt and I) while watching some fireworks.  

Keep it real cherry pickers. 

Ketchup Blog

Understand and accept my complaining - I like to write stuff here in this internet space but I lack the time to do it.  I'm not good at it, but I enjoy it and would love to be able to do so more often.  IF I could blog more often, then I would not have to publish a post recapping the last 3 1/2 months. 

Heck, pictures are fun so I'll do it anyway.  The late April/May/June of garden/outdoor season in pictures for the Awesome household (mainly Winger and myself unfortunately [because Greeny is always holding the camera {but that just means that I'm doing all of the work] ]), 2010.

To kick things off here's an Easter shot of the fam.

Here's Little Winger, New Edition, and Myself preparing the small garden we keep at our house.  Currently we have some thriving beans, onions, lettuce, cilantro, mint, and pumpkins in this small garden.  The two large gardens at the farm are what keep us busy.  

Cute?!  You should see me after a hard day of work in the garden!

Greeny and New Edition after a bath.  He's staring in the direction of the TV - I think there was a Pens game on.

Here as promised is a sweet picture of Little Winger, Kody (the awesome bear I named from the zoo), and myself. 

The first patio fire of the spring/summer. 

Winger's first ever S'more...

...and his second.

Peppers in the back patio planter box.  These random dudes were left behind when their older brothers and sisters were moved to the large gardens.  They stayed indoors for a few weeks seemingly too long.  Could be an awesome late, late harvest - could be goners depending on first frost.  Either way I enjoy the challenge.

 

If there is one phrase we have heard more than "go uppa barn" over the past few months, it would have to be "go pit berriz."

...So we did...

Every day - and sometimes night.  We have a great harvest and there are still more to be picked in the sunnier locations around the pasture.  The harvest could have been much larger had Winger not eaten 1 out of every 4.  

We're planning on making some jelly and/or preserves - and some wine. 

Three weeks ago we got our first tomatoes from the patio plant.  She's doing unbelievably well.  We're going to have 3000 beautiful fruits from this plant.  

Pizza on the grill the other night...

...and a fire...

...and then this happened at some point of the night...

And then Greeny and I woke up with hangovers.

Free, transplanted Rose of Sharon bloomed the other morning, and despite our worst heat wave in 5 years...

...Winger and I hung outside all day - building planter boxes so as to not waste a bunch of wood scraps, mowing, gardening, and...

...hanging in the shade with Sidecar.

Lastly, the boys spending time with Mommy since she's home for the summer:

I'll get some garden pics uploaded here in the next week or so, which means I'll probably post something about them in October.  

I would also like to detail our fall planting/harvest for the garden this year.  We'll see.  

Keep it real yinzers.