Saturday market goodies

This was my first visit to the Saturday market in a neighboring town. There were several participants, and I found lots of goodies:

nice red onions with tops still attached
organic yellow squash
organic elephant garlic with top still attached
organic turnip greens
French bread
homemade granola


Next time I will take my own repurposed plastic bags. I don't normally use plastic bags, but my mom will give things to me sometimes in one. Normally I just take them to the grocery to be recycled, but I'll save a couple for weighing produce at the market.

The makings for aloo gobhi

This makes me smile.



Having grown the 2 main ingredients that I need to make one of my husband's favorite dishes. And the fact that they are ready to harvest at the same time.

The two faces of Gabby

Here's Little Miss Innocent, lounging on the back of my chair:




And here's The Tiny Terror, lounging on the guest bathroom floor amidst her handiwork:

Black and red beauties

I picked the first blackberries and raspberries of the year today! The bushes are loaded with unripened fruit, so in the next few weeks we will be doing a lot of harvesting. The wild blackberry bushes along the edge of the woods are a little behind, so we should have berries for a while to come.

weekend of ordinary goodness

This past weekend was a good one for our family. My husband got his bicycle back from the shop, and proceeded to ride 70 miles on Saturday, then came home and mowed as long as the rechargable battery on the mower held out. We did a few of the 'little things' that get put off all the time--hosing out the trash can, recycling containers, hampers, etc and letting them sit outside and be sanitized by the sun. Much laundry was hung on the line, in anticipation of more rain coming a couple days later.

Sunday my husband rode his bike the 30 or so miles to my parents' house, I drove over, and together we spent most of the day with them. We all spent a few hours outside, pulling bugs off the squash plants, using the hoe on weeds, digging up spontaneously-growing heirloom tomato plants to send to my house, transplanting lots of marigolds (what a stinky flower!) next to the squash plants to try and keep the bugs away. My husband again was mowing a yard, but this time he used my parents' riding mower. He managed to get in an hour or so playing tennis with his brother and nephew as well.

We came home dirty, sweaty, and quite frankly stinky, but we both felt the satisfaction of a day well spent.

Springtime goodness

Yeah, I didn't get a whole lot, but I only planted a few green peas, just to see if they'd grow. I took this whole first harvest and put it in a big pot of veggie soup I made tonight. Yum!

Freecycle

I love giving things away on Freecycle! Really, how can you beat it? It's free, it's a wonderful way to recycle, and you get that good feeling of knowing you are helping someone out. In the past we've Freecycled:

a treadmill (to a Humane Society--for people *and* the animals to use)
big bags of styrofoam peanuts (part of a tactile experience for autistic kids)
truck box
used VHS tapes (to a Vo-Tech school)
women and men's clothing
2 kites
loveseat and couch cover

Today I gave 35 plastic flower pots, in various condition, to a local lady. She was so excited to get them, and I was so excited to get them out of my house (first stored in the crawl space, then in the garage for the last couple of months.) Some of them are pots we purchased plants in at our local nursery, and some are the type pots you can buy at any big box store.




By the way, my CSA gladly takes back the little flimsy four packs that I bought plants in from them, as well as the hard plastic trays. Check with your CSA, local farmers, or nursery. I bet at least one of them would be glad to reuse them and not have to put out the money that each container represents.

What's growing in my garden

Cucumber



Dill




Bell pepper



Cauliflower! This one deserves an exclamation point because I did not think it was going to happen. I've never grown it before, and the leaves just kept getting bigger and bigger, until I thought it was going to be just leaves. I was ready to cut them down and start something else. But I'm glad I waited just a wee bit longer. The husband will be having plenty of aloo gobhi, that's for sure!

I've also got zucchini and yellow squash blooming, but no pictures of those.

What's growing in your garden?

Drying rack or kitty jungle gym?

I usually use my outside clothesline but for a while we had day after day of rain, so I pulled out the drying racks for backup. Apparantly this presented a wonderful climbing opportunity for Gabby. Can't say I blame her--looks like fun to me!

Garden visitor

I love these Asiatic lilies in my backyard. There are so many that they will have to be split when the time is right. But even better is when I see hummingbirds or butterflies enjoying my flowers.