Tea party

We had a nice tea party the other day. It was lovely. Complete with gf sandwiches, biscuits for dunking and milk and sugar (heavy on the sugar) for the tea. Everyone enjoyed it! 

He likes hot (warm) tea! And has a bonk on his forehead! Even holds his pinky up. 

C liked it too. Asked for more tea. Then, when he was done, he said, "tea party is over!" And pushed the teacup aside. 

They've asked to do it again. I will happily agree to that! 

Our harvest today

Beans, spinach, lettuce, mint, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers. 

Garden updates finally

I keep meaning to post about our garden, inspired by our dear friend, Sadie's  weekly post on their garden.  I would love to someday have an amazing garden with lots of time to spend weeding and taking care of plants, but well, maybe someday.  in the mean time, we learn something new every year and so far this year, i've been pleased with how our new efforts have lead to more gardening success. 

this year we decided to try a few raised beds.  to see if we could keep things sorta organized and maybe thwart some of the larger (rabbits and/or ground hogs) to stay away.  We meant to install a fence but never got around to it yet.  

we're having a hard time keeping up with the weeds, but thankfully i was able to get in there a few weekends ago and pull most of them and put down some of the "hay" we had around the yard from grass cutting. 

Here are a few pics. general overview of our large plot.  a bunch of bush beans in the raised bed in the middle, squash and cucumber on the right with tomatoes and peppers behind.  you can just make out potatoes and garlic on the far left before the raised beds of strawberries. 

beans, cucumber, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers.  we love the tomato cages, will get more of them for next year.  we've had lots of lovely beans to harvest.  i'll probably have to harvest lots soon and freeze them before they get too out of control.  we also have a variety of beans in there that i'm hoping to dry and save over the winter.  have a few cucumbers and zucchinis to harvest soon.  tomatoes are doing ok, i think.  not really liking the cool, wet weather we've been having.  lots of green tomatoes in there now.  we didn't get them started indoors early enough, but i think they've caught up nicely.  have 4 varieties this year. amish red, green zebra, beefsteak and one other i can't remember. 

here are our 2 rows of potatoes (different varieties) in with some flowers and you can just make out the lettuce towards the right.  beans and a few carrots in the foreground in our raised bed. we'll be harvesting garlic (background) soon, had lots of lovely garlic scapes this year. 

here's our garlic and rhubarb up front with our (very) weedy strawberry beds.  we bought 25 plants from Way fruit farm for $4, so i figured it would be a win no matter what.  we've cut off most of the flowers to help the root systems grow for next year.  something has been trimming them so my guess is we'll need more protection for them next year.  and our pile of "hay"  it's good for mulching the beds!  its good for compost!  sweet!  this was the second year for our rhubarb plant, and i'm dissapointed so far.  it flowered and i didn't know you were supposed to cut those off so our harvest has been very minimal.  and i LOVE rhubarb awesome time. 

a view from the back.  you can see some of the tomatoes, peppers and lettuce.  the lettuce has since bolted.  truth is we got overloaded with spring greens so i didn't keep it trimmed very well. 

and not in our garden plot, but here's one of our overgrown batch of raspberries.  we have early and late season berries so its kinda been hit or miss with when to trim them.  but, they grow very well and the berries are super tasty.  most of them don't make it inside. now just have to figure out how keep the japanese beetles from distroying them.  you can also make out the hostas that we transplanted last year.  just gotta keep those monster pricky weeds (thistle) away.  they're monsters!

and our sweet potato bags.  i'm very excited about these!  something tells me we didn't give them enough room to grow, but we'll see. also, see pots of herbs on the deck (and fallen into a hole hose cart)

doesn't this look like a massive hillside of weeds?  well, that's what we always thought it was.  surprise!  wild blackberries!

i've been trying to transform our massive hill of weeds with overgrown and transplanted plants from other places in the yard.  Here are some hostas that are in bloom amongst the weeds.  didn't really do any weeding before hand, and don't really plan on working very hard to control the weeds there.  would love it if it could manage itself.

day lilies on the hill too.  grow and spread, my friends!

see!  blackberries! 

our first harvest of beans.  yum. 

big bowl of lettuce

from the hill

not garden related, per say.  but here's one of our perennial beds. 

perty

Blueberry picking

17 quarts in 2 hours. 4 sweaty people. 1 boy eating lots. Another boy says, "we HAVE to come back"

And this too

And then these from yesterday and today too 

My kids are book worms

Common sayings in this house:

"Read books with me daddy"

"It's book time"

"Read books, Noah?" 

Snow fun

here are some of the fun things we did this year playing in the snow.  still didn't get as much snow as we wanted, but still had fun with it.  

here's a fun snow wall that daddy and noah built

it was really tall!

it partly melted the next day

and of course shoveling help is always fun

and a fun snowman!!  with hair!!

even tried snowshoeing a bit.  this lasted 10 steps.

and then this happened

come on you guys!!

found a nice seat in the snow

and a few videos. click on over to see!

N going tubing with his buddies!!

tubing from the top!!  going 31 mph!



and sledding fast into the bushes!  fun!