Garden Harvest

It's hard to stop and take a pic when you're hungry and just wanting to make something to eat, but we did stop and take this pic of produce from our garden. Reeve and Kyle were happy to help me harvest garlic, cucumbers, and tomatoes.

We've been happily eating fresh tomatoes everyday now for the past week. Sometimes we eat tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but no one is complaining. They're the largest variety of Roma's that I've every grown, and they're very tasty. I also grew another variety of beefstake (I think). Reeve took this picture, and I thought he did a pretty good job.


We have more basil than I know what to do with! When we get back from our camping trip I think I will have to dehydrate it. I love having too much.

We also had an abundance of cucumbers, so I made pickles for the first time. We'll test them when we get back from camping.

We're going camping on Lake Michigan at the Point Beach State Forest. This was Reeve's idea. He's been begging to go visit the Great Lakes ever since we read about them. I'll take lots of pictures and post them when we get back :-). The last time we were camping as a family for more than one night was three years ago when we went camping with my Auntie Mary Lea and Uncle Rye and Cousins Elena & Austin in the Golden Ears Provincial Campground in British Columbia. That's too long for people who suposedly love the outdoors.

Our New Lawn Mower

We needed a bagging lawn mower. If you're going to garden organically you have to have mulch and grass clippings make a really good mulch. We have tons of grass, but we didn't have a bagging mower. We didn't want to go out and buy an expensive gas guzzling mower just for the bag, so we bought a Reel Mower. It runs on all of Reeve's abundant ENERGY.

It's very easy to push and we've got tough weedy grass. I actually think it's easier to push than our gas powered mower. It's certainly a lot less noisy and really easy to start :-). Reeve really loves to push it around. We find we want to mow the grass more often. I always felt extremely guilty using the gas mower all the time knowing we were causing more green house gasses, and now we don't have to feel guilty at all.

I took these pictures on Saturday evening when it wasn't terribly HOT. We're in a record breaking heat wave right now. Yesterday it was a 102F (38.8C) here, way too hot to be outside mowing the lawn. It's only supposed to get up to 96F (35.5C) today, and then in the 80's tomorrow.

Blueberry Picking

The kids and I went blueberry picking. It was our first time, and it was a lot of fun. The blueberries were tasty, big, and easy to pick. Reeve and Kyle loved it. We didn't stay terribly long because it was really hot and we were all sweating. We ended up with about 7 pounds. Now that we know where to go we'll definitely get an early start next year. I could only take one picture as my camera ran out of batteries.