Garden After Vacation

I guess when you leave for a week the garden can change a lot.  Even though I gave Crystal free reign of the garden she didn't pick nearly as much as I thought she would. 

 She said she enjoyed the squash, but only picked enough for herself since no one else would eat it.  So this is what the garden looked like when we returned.  Pictures taken Saturday the 10th.

 we picked our first corn

 and a couple of cucumbers!

 tomatoes growing like crazy!

 my basil survived

 peppers!

 the lettuce went to seed

 large Swiss chard

 lots of carrots

 a few peppers in there

 I think that's an anaheim

 marigold about to bloom

 egplant

 eggplants

 cabbage

 lots of volunteers

 sunflowers!

 peas - dead, and beans still alive

  onions

 potatoes

 corn

 some stalks got blown over in the wind the night before

 our poor pumpkins

 some look OK

 and some are dying

 volunteer crookneck squash

 the crookneck I planted

 the butternut squash that is taking over!

 cantaloupe getting overrun by the butternut squash

 some strange plant, that I later found out was a weed called velvetleaf.  I tore it out the day after I found that out.

 cantaloupe growing

 butternut squash growing

 look at those peppers!

 some of them are huge!

 watermelon and cantloupe

 icebox and crimson watermelon

 dead zucchini plant

 thriving zucchini plant

 onions getting crowded by the zucchini

 sunflowers

 lots of watermelon plants

 neighbor's grapes

golden raspberries

 we picked our first watermelon on Sunday the 11th - it wasn't quite ready

 tons of squash from the 12th

more squash and zucchini on the 13th!

I have to say we at the best dinner that Thursday night after we got home.  It was all from the garden, and we ate the leftover trout that Aaron and Anthon had cooked.  All food we either caught or grew!!!  It was awesome!

One More Day Off, and a Health Fair

Aaron still had one more day off.  It was filled with working around the house and yard, and catching up on work stuff as well.  We did some mowing and started the sprinkler rotation.  It seems there are always sprinklers to fix.  I really couldn't tell you what else we did that afternoon.  However that evening we found another truck that we were interested in and contacted the owner.  It was looking promising, but we couldn't go look at it right away, because the owner was working all day, and didn't get back to us until late on Saturday. 

Saturday morning, after chores were done, we went over to the park behind the clinic.  The clinic was sponsoring a health fair.  The kids had fun going from booth to booth.  Some had fun things, but others they just got their stamp.  Once the card was filled up with stamps they were entered into a  drawing for a bike - neither of them won.  They also got tons for freebies - stickers, pencils, magnets, etc.  Only a couple of places had candy.  They also had snow cones, popcorn, turkey sausage burger sliders and grilled corn.  Oh and after the watermelon eating contest, they were giving away watermelon.  Randy (CNO) cut some slices for the girls and I, but when I went back to get some for the boys he had put the knife away, so he gave them these huge pieces!

The kids also enjoyed the bounce houses.  We several friends there too. They were putting stuff away as we left.  Melanie fell asleep on the way home.  I don't remember much about that evening.

Sunday was pretty typical. I don't remember anything out of the ordinary. This is why I shouldn't wait to blog!  However I had a lot of things happen in the next couple of weeks, so you'll see why I didn't blog much.