Monday, June 18, 2007

June Garden Update

Here's a quick update on the garden....

The Good.
We have more zucchini & yellow squash than we know what to do with. The plants have really taken over their bed. We already have multiple loaves of zucchini bread in the freezer. Feel free to pass along your summer squash recipes. I'm harvesting cukes and peppers (both sweet and hot). The lettuce is growing tall and will likely bolt before we can pick and eat it all. 2 rows of lettuce is definitely enough! Beets continue to grow, I've picked a few and made some yummy pickled beets...Mmmmm. Lots of green tomatoes! I'll keep them on the vine as opposed to frying them

The Bad.
The green beans got hit hard by the late freeze. Only a few plants survived so I decided to let them go and produce some seeds I can plant later on this fall (and not have to buy them later too). They're next to the summer squash so they are being pushed over and crowded out a bit. I hope I'll be able to save enough seeds for a few rows. Some of the onions have been hit hard by the hot weather so I harvested the ones without green tops. They'll make great pearl onion for chicken pot pie! There are a few onions left that I hope will grow fat and taste great on a hamburger.

The Ugly.
I pulled the cabbages out. The cabbage worms had bellied up to the buffet and were having their way. I didn't want to use insecticides so I just pulled them. Cabbages grow great over the winter here so I figured I would just delay planting new ones until this fall. I replaced them with some Japanese eggplants. They're doing much better! The garlic also got hit hard by the scorching heat. Without soaker hoses where I planted them, they just didn't get enough water. Chalk it up as experience but in only a few short months I'll be planting more.

I hope your garden is doing as well as mine. I think the key this year had been then soaker hoses in the beds and the fresh compost courtesy of the City of Columbia.

Has it really been a month???

Okay, I know it's been a long time since I've posted anything and I know you just can't get through the day without knowing what's going on. It's about 6:30 Monday June 18th. In approximately 4 hours we leave on the family vacation to Atlanta to see the Red Sox play the Braves! Yeehaww! We'll be camping at Stone Mountain all week. I haven't seen the kids this excited in a long time!! We hope to visit Callaway Garden for a day also. With the Coca Cola museum in Atlanta too, I think the next 3 days will fly by! I'll be posting some pictures and stuff later in the week when we get back.

So what's been happening with me the past month you ask. Well, here's the short list..... Kimberly has been accepted to nursing school and will start this August so we both have been working a bunch of overtime to pay for the tuition and books. The bad part of that is I don't get to see my wife as much as I would like. Yet another reason too look forward to the aforementioned vacation!

We've caught a bit more of the home DIY bug again. I've primed and painted the hallway. Installed a new programmable digital thermostat, and WILL finish the bathroom by August 1st!!! Really!!! Speaking of home projects...... we had an incident with a forgotten bathtub running. The nice hardwood floors in 2 rooms & a hallway took a big hit. It took about an hour to clean up the water and the floors were starting to buckle bad. Following some advice, we borrowed a dehumidifier and ran it for a few days in the affected rooms. It reduced the swelling & bucking by about 90%!!! There are still a few bad spots but now we can wait until we want to have all of the floors refinished on our own schedule instead of having to shell out money to do it now because it looked so bad. I won't mention by name which wife of mine forgot she was drawing the bath or the child who thought it was a good idea to stuff cotton balls in the overflow drain after being told that the drain serves an important safety purpose. I hope you never have to use this little trick.

I have a line on a cadaver for Colonel Mustard. I guy from work just combined three old Ford trucks (1974, 75 & 77 F100's) to make one good running truck. He was mostly after mechanical parts, so he has many old body parts left. When he's totally done I'll make like Dr. Frankenstein. Slowly but surely Col. Mustard is taking shape.