Wildflowers waking up

I love the wildflower garden in the early morning when all of the flowers are getting a bit of sun, opening up and coming alive!

Beauty at its best

This was the sky tonight between our Island and Canada.  It was a perfect “date” night to drift and reflect on our wonderful vacation rather than work on the yard!!

Long Beach

We spent this past week at Long Beach in Canada.  You can see by this picture taken our first early evening there EXACTLY why we love this place.

I am playing catch up but will post more about our stay with fun pictures, the wonderful book I finished reading (which could not have been more appropriate for this vacation) and the historical house that captivates me!

Harvesting

Fresh lettuce daily

It’s a special time of year when you are finally “eating” what you’ve sown.  A few of our garden items have been producing very well in this wet summer we are having.  Here is a peek into some of our harvested meals.

We are growing head lettuce, romaine lettuce, and purple leaf lettuce.  Every day it’s great to have a choice of which fresh lettuce you are going to eat.  We grow most of this to feed the rabbits, goats and chickens as well as ourselves.

Kale chips

With our lettuce we have our kale planted.  We have 5 huge plants full of thick heavy leaves perfect for kale chips, soups, and kale salads (the teen’s favorite).  She uses just the kale with apple cider vinegar and some taco shredded cheese.

The pea plants are producing in one spot only.  Some of them have become molded from the rain.  We have a second planting of 18 plants almost ready to go into the ground.  We are still getting about 7 pea pods from each plant but we need WAY more for my kids!

These were the only strawberries we collected this year from our plants. We lost quite a few plants to rabbits/voles this spring.  They have been replaced but won’t produce until next year.

Beans and basil are doing well.  This is a store bought tomato as ours are not ready yet but with fresh basil, this caprese salad was awesome!  The beans did not make it past washing them.  The kids ate them immediately.  Luckily I have a previous harvest already blanched and frozen!

One of the last 3 jars of peaches left from last summers canning.  Still a sweet treat.

Looking forward to the many more items to come!

Cherry Season!!

It’s cherry season here. It’s a little early and unfortunately the cherries are splitting because of all the rain we have had.  But we were able to take the kids and get a good few bucket fulls of sweet beautiful cherries.

I process our cherries 3 ways to have throughout the year:

1) Canning them

2) Flash freezing

3) Cherry Pies stored in the freezer (these are just like store bought, you pull them out and bake them when ready)

You can see our recipes (and the awesome technique for pitting) on our Facebook page here:  Cherry Season

Rainy Day Gardens

We have had so much rain this season.  It’s not even fun to be outside as the bugs are overwhelming in the early morning and from dusk until late evening.

The gardens cheer me up with their happy little flowers.  This wildflower garden is a bit wild as I can’t get in there to thin it out even when raining as the mosquitoes attack!  I love the pink, orange, purple and yellow all blending together.

Along the garage the red and white impatiens compliment the red and white of our old farmhouse.

The entry way to the house is dotted with color.  However, there is one dark black thing that doesn’t belong.  She insists on cutting through this garden and hits a plant here and there!

In the mini rose garden I truly believe Mary is praying for some dry weather.

And while so many flowers are starting to bloom or in full bloom, others are losing their luster and filling their little sleeves with seeds to fly away in the wind when they are done and start little plants for next spring.