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Strawberry Patch Installed! YaY!

My house is a mess.  We are leaving for Vancouver tomorrow and leaving the kids with someone else all day and night.  I have to get my groceries ordered before we leave.  I need to do a little shopping and pick up our produce.  There is A LOT to get done.  But...it was also sunny!  Those of you who live or have lived in the Pacific Northwest know what that means--I spent a good portion of the day OUTSIDE!!!  I even wore shorts and a t-shirt.  It was bea-u-ti-ful! 

One of the things I have had on my "to do" list was to get some strawberries in the ground.  We had a garden party at our house last week and I was blessed with several free containers of runners.  But, it's been pretty yucky most days since then.  So, today a new friend and her daughter (Koa's new friend) came over to help me make the border for the strawberry bed.  We quickly realized that my chainsaw was dull and that project was going to last WAY too long, so we abandoned that and let the kids play and paint together.  Then after the kids went down for their nap I escaped to finish my strawberry patch and made an impromptu border that will never last...because I have little boys who love sticks too much!  I am so very excited to have strawberries and to have my very first gardening project done!  Yippee!  Summer is right around the corner!

  
 
I also learned at our garden party that sunflowers help pull the lead out of the soil.  Since I planted the strawberries near our house that probably hasn't been painted since the 50's, I pulled out some of the seeds I had saved from Koa's sunflowers and planted a row of those closest to the house.  Hopefully that will insure that we don't get lead poisoning from our strawberries...

Now, off to tackle my "to do" list...in a hurry!

I Don't Have The Hang Of It, Yet

Today I tried to capture our activities in picture and video, but when I tried to share via Twitter my plans were thwarted.  So, I will have to post the old fashioned way.  Here are some pictures from today's harvest...

    

   

 

Here's a video of Koa's latest for your viewing pleasure: Download MOV-0003

   

 

  

 

While We Were Away...

When we left for our month-long road trip life was a little bit crazy.  The last week before we left Zak and I has several meetings with individuals, Zak had a sermon to prepare for Sunday, the day we left, and I had snacks to finish preparing to get us through the month (other than the cold items, of course).  Our sweet friends, the Cousers, were staying here until their house was available for them to move in, but they had left for camp for a week.  So, we also had to coordinate who would water the garden while they were gone.  Oh, yeah, and then there was packing...

Needless to say, some tasks went undone.  One of those was trellising our beans and tomatoes.  I knew this could be an issue, but really, how much can plants grow in one month, right?  Well, here's my answer...

  

 

 

Before

After

Yes, those are the beans taking over the tomatoes and the tomatoes taking over the red cabbage.  Oops.  Thankfully the corn did not need trellised...

Before

After

And this is the bounty we gathered just on the first day...

17 Cucumbers!

Holy Moly!  So the next few days we spent some time straightening things up a bit and getting tomatoes off the ground so they don't rot!  It's not the most efficient way, but we kind of surrendered that idea when we abandoned our poor garden in trellisslessness.  Here are some of the improvements that have been made and why we still have a bag that has not been unpacked...anyway I'm blaming the garden...

 

Before

(See the red cabbage playing peek-a-boo)

After

(from both sides.  Who knew that romaine lettuce would turn into a Christmas tree when left to its own devices and why didn't those silly Cousers make a salad or 16?)

Our little pumpkin patch needed some tidying as well...

 

Before

After

Now our pumpkins, carrots and zucchinis can do their thing unencumbered by rogue yucca plants.

Can you believe that our peas are STILL producing?  In fact they are still blooming!  I thought they were done before we left but we are still snacking on fresh peas.  Here is a picture of things to come...there are going to be millions!

 

And here is one of Koa's red sunflowers that he picked out and planted just for fun...

 

And while I was belatedly trellising our garden Zak was working on his own project...

 

Now we have plenty of split firewood for our very cool fire pit!  Bring on the homemade ice cream!