The Howard's: My Garden

Thursday, June 25, 2009

My Garden

This was our first year planting a garden and even though I have a million things to post about right now to catch up I just couldn't go another day with out journaling how much I love my garden. I took these pictures about a month ago when everything was starting to bloom. This was our first tomato we picked and my first squash blossom.

Now I have tomatoes and squash coming out of my ears. As well as cucumbers, spinach & corn. It has been so wonderful to cook with our vegetables and everyone is loving eating it and eating so much healthier. Yesterday I got home from Florida about 4:30 in the afternoon and then we rushed off to a 6:00 p.m. t-ball game for Joey. By the time we got home at 7:00 I had to come up with dinner quick. Scott marinated some chicken and grilled it while I cooked up some squash and sliced some tomatoes and we ate it with the chicken. It was so yummy and healthy.

Tonight we had grilled pork chops and ate some of our corn-on-the-cob and squash and spinach. Not real big fans of the spinach but it was ok. The other project I tackled today was canning some of our tomatoes. When I got home from Florida there was about 30 tomatoes on my kitchen window sill and my mother-in-law said she had about the same amount. So today I stewed them up and then bottled them. I only got 6 quart jars but better than let them go to waste.

It took me most of the day to do the tomatoes so after I cleaned up and started making dinner Jan shows up with a flat of 16 packages of tomatoes that her sister brought to her that needed canned. UGH! and YEAH! Ugh because I'd just spent all day doing it and have lots of work to catch up on tomorrow but yeah for food storage. I decided I had to do them tonight. So after dinner was cleaned up and kids getting ready for bed about 8:00 I started in on the second batch.

I didn't stew these but just diced them and water-bathed them. Scott felt sorry for me I think because he came and helped me and Jackson even helped some too. So now it's 11:30 and I just put in the last batch. I got one pint jar per packages so 16 pints of tomatoes. Not bad. One more hour and I can go to bed and probably dream about tomatoes!

first squash blossom

first tomato we picked next to the cute pot Jackson painted for me and gave me for Mother's Day.

1 comment:

Amy Lee said...: Wow. That sounds so exhausting yet rewarding. I hope you find lots of ways to enjoy them.; July 1, 2009 at 9:11 PM

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Card Design

I made my Christmas Card this year and after showing a few people and getting feedback they all asked if I could make theirs. So I decided, why not. I am not limited to Christmas Cards. As you see I've done a few baby announcements and a birthday invitation. I could also do wedding invitations. If you're interested, just email me with your picture(s) and an idea of what you'd like it to say and maybe an idea of your style. I'll do an option or two and email back to you. You get it printed wherever you'd like just like you would a standard photo although if you use Walgreens or Walmart I would suggest doing send out and not one-hour. One-hour prints very dark and doesn't stay true to color. I'm charging $15 for a 4x6. I can do any size you'd like but there is an additional $3 charge for other sizes. It's best to have your envelopes and check into your printing options before we decide on what size. Any questions just email me at scottshelley@cableone.net. Thanks! Below you'll find a slideshow of some of my samples. Let me know if you like one of these. Your card will be original but could be similar to someone else's or to one of my samples.