What going on around our house?

Sometimes I think it is easiest to talk about our lives through pictures. Or at least it has to be more interesting (since many times our daily routine is not).

Every year we but a big tub (or two) of cherries from a local farm. These are delicious tart cherries, already pitted. Grandma Dobbins got me started on this years ago. Cherries are absolutely my favorite fruit. Yum! Last year my aunt bought a tub and never even opened it. They offered them to me and so I went over last week and got them. The problem is that I forgot and left them in my car for about 6 hours. Needless to say they weren't frozen solid anymore (although they were still partially frozen, which surprised me). I needed to use them quick. So I made a double batch of cherry jam (oh so yummy) and I canned the rest. I wanted to can cherry pie filling but apparently the only thickening agent that USDA recommends is not carried in stores, you have to order it. So, cherry pie filling was out. Unless of course I wanted to buck the system and possibly feed my family bacteria laden pie. I considered it. Heck, Ma Ingalls didn't worry about the USDA...... Ok, I digress. Here are my three beautiful jars of cherries. Seriously, aren't they lovely? All I will need is to reheat them and add some sort of thickening agent and we have pie.

A couple weeks ago we went to a "farm" auction. There was a whole skid of egg crates. We left early, but my sweet, dear father in law picked all these up for us. I think we are good for a while!

Just a picture of my freezer dinners/bread. We are slowly eating these yummies. It is bad though because I kind of feel like I want to save this stuff, but really that is not what it is intended for.

Pretty arbor eh? About 3 months ago we ordered raspberry bushes, some trees and some grapes from a site on line. We never planted the grapes because we had no arbor for them. We thought of building our own arbor, just doing something make-shift to get them planted, etc., etc. Part of the problem is that we have so much shade on our property. Grapes need lots of sun. So, I saw this arbor at Lowes and really like it. I am not a fan of the orangey finish, but it is very pretty overall. So we brought it home, assembled it, and could still not decide where to put it. We decided that it will fit perfectly into our long term plans for our property, however we still don't know what to do with it fro now. So there it sits. By our garage, all looking pretty.

Patriot is doing pretty good. I will say though, for not being a water dog, he sure loves the stuff. This is one of the big puddles by the garden (gee I wonder why the mosquitos are so bad), and Patriot will just go and lay in it. He is a nut.

Here's the garden as of this morning. On the left side of the red bucket is all tomatoes, plus about 1/2 of the next row. We are just starting to see a few ripe cherry tomatoes, but we have tons of green tomatoes. Peppers finish off the second tomato row. The next row is spinach (died within a week), leaf lettuce (normally I love leaf lettuce, but what I have is only ok) and horseradish (for my dear hubby who like the stuff). The next row over is green beans that are almost ready to pick. That row also had beets in it but I already harvested and canned those.

Just another garden picture. This shows Gideon's, Anna's and Madeline's "little" gardens. we picked Gee's green beans yesterday and he was pretty excited about those. Even though he doesn't really care for green veggies. Anna's pumpkins are taking over the world (see pic), but there are only blooms at this point. Maddie's tomatoes are getting tall, but they only have one pathetic green tomato on them. I think maybe I didn't weed them out enough.....

Just one more garden picture. This shows the whole south side of the garden where my cucumbers, squash, melons and pumpkins are. Oh, speaking of pumpkins. My dear husband was weed eating around the electric fence a couple days ago and totally uprooted one of my pumpkin plants. I try and "train" all that vining stuff to stay in its spots, but this plant was a seed that I had bought of a certain type and it was the only one that had come up (I was pretty excited about it). So, later in the day I am out in the garden and I see my dead looking plant and I ask Ryan "did you weed wack my plant?" Poor Ryan, his response was "well, I tried to replant it." Poor guy. We did indeed try to replant it somewhere else, but this morning it was still looking pretty rough.

Oh, I am so very proud of these beets! I have never grown beets before and certainly never canned them. I grew up on pickled beets (and eggs) thanks to my Grandma. These are a thing of beauty to me. I plan to take Grandma her own little jar tomorrow. We will certainly be doing more of these next year!

Ok, so what is wrong with my 12 year old? Poor, poor Asher.

Leah is doing "quick breads" for the fair and she really seems to be getting in to it. This was one of her project. Make biscuits using a biscuit mix and make biscuits using the recipe in the book and compare the two. Here they are. The one on the left is Biscuit (a bit modified due to not enough mix) and the book recipe. They were both yummy, but the book recipe had more flavor and was more tender.

Making pumpkin bread using my coveted frozen pumpkin.

The next Beethoven? I think we will send this one to our piano teacher.

Here is Logan giving a presentation at his 4H class last Sunday. He is doing a project on gun safety.

So, we are officially up to date on life. The summer is going well for us. Right now we are doing a lot of 4H stuff and projects around the house. Canning season is pretty much here and I am sure I will be doing lots of that in the next few weeks.

Ryan and I's 14th Anniversary is coming up next week so we are going to get away this weekend. We are going to go to church Saturday night with the kids and then we are taking off for the night and all day Sunday. We are going to go out to dinner Sat. night and stay in a hotel. Then, on Sunday we are going to hit Kinds Island all day. Yeah! Very fun for us. It has been years since we enjoyed that park and just did adult rides for the day.

Julie