Garden

This week was our summer break! I worked on grading papers and reporting our grades and attendance. Getting one school year cleaned up and put away took a lot of time, but feels great! And now we'll be ready for "next year" starting tomorrow! Samuel will be in 4th grade, William in 6th, and Trevor in 7th!!! I can't believe it!!!!! We love taking our one-day-a-week off, so that means going through the summer. Summer in Lower Alamaba is the pits unless you are in the water, so we might as well save our free weeks for the milder months. Plus, we'll earn some time off for when the baby comes!

Last week I also spent a lot of time on my newest hobby: Timeline Figures. I'm working on getting all the little drawings I have made for our history program ready to share. Here's one page...

We use the Mystery of History for school, and it's always the highlight of our school day. I hope to have all the figures from the first book ready for others to use {for FREE!} by the end of summer!

In garden news: Tim's been bringing in tons of squash! It's so great! We eat it at least a couple of times a week. I also made a batch of pickles a couple days ago. Zack thinks it's hilarious that we have pickles growing in our yard! Here's some pictures of the garden now--it is so thick and lush. The pictures are pretty bad...but if you could have seen me sweating and swatting mosquitos and gnats, you wouldn't blame me for being in a hurry. :)

My one good picture:


We have tons of tomatoes out there. Is is just me, or do tomatoes take for-ev-er to ripen??? Once they turn the corner, we are going to have our hands full!! As long as we can dodge the bugs, we'll be making salsa! These are all tomato plants that Tim started from seed. 8 tomato plants on the left and our heirloom cucumbers on the right...


Here's our strawberry patch. Unfortunately, the berries are overgrown with a volunteer gourd from our compost pile...a little white pumpkin that is really cute. Also, Trevor planted corn in the back which has small ears on it now. And William planted lima beans *I think* in the front. They are covered with aphids or something, and I just have been too lazy to go attack the bugs.


Here's the squash on the right, with the yellow zucchini in the back. There's eggplants in the middle of the box, and kale on the far left. Also, do you see William mowing in the background?? Woo Hoo!! The kids are still at it. I think this is the 4th week they have mowed?! It's such a blessing to our family. They don't think it is...but I know it's so good for them.


Here's a closer view of the eggplants (in front) and peppers (in back), though there's not much to see right now.


This is our box of heirloom tomatoes, with basil worked in there. I made a big batch of pesto this last week. Got as much in the first week of June as I did all last summer. Hopefully I'll get a couple more big batches in before the end of summer. The tomatoes looks so shaggy and lame...not sure what to attribute that to? Being heirloom??


Here's another box with watermelon, squash from seed, a patch of tomatoes (that we don't know how they got there--maybe Zack dumped some seeds??) and foxglove (pictured at top). It's almost heartbreaking that I missed getting a good picture of the foxglove when it was at it's peak--it was stunning.


Lastly, the kids' box. William's bulbs are just starting to make some cool flowers (upper left by the red wagon). Trevor and Samuel have harvested several small white radishes and turnips (those are still in the fridge--what in the world am I going to do with them???) Someone planted some of my zinnia seeds on the left of the box, and I'm so glad they did. I love zinnias so much, and mine bit the dust while I was out of town. Zack's got something huge growing in the lower right--no idea if it's a weed?? Shoot.


And here's my one picture with live people:


Our next-door neighbors moved :( and gave us their swing set. So a week or so ago Tim and I went over and took it apart and brought it home. He's reconfiguring it to incorporate into our "treebridge". The kids have helped a fair amount. You should have seen Zack go down that slide the first time--he caught air at the end and landed hard on his back in the dirt. He got right back up though, and brushed it off. He held my hand the next time :).