Pickled Cukes and Zucchinni Bread!

Pickle Cukes: boil 2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of water, and 1 cup of vinegar with a dash of salt. Cool, and poured over sliced onions and cukes (from the garden). When the cukes and onions get low, slice more up and ad them to the dish.

Made zucchini bread this week.

Next dish attempt -- pickled beets!!

The girls have been helping us weed and pick vegetables, but this week they ditched us for the go-cart. Had to share some pictures of the mud babes!!

Gourds

One corner of the garden is still a mess. It's where we planted our bird house gourds, and I've been afraid to get in there to weed because we can't see where they are coming up for us! Not sure what's going on there!

Annette and I enjoy crafts. She sews and knits, and I do the gourd crafts. Really hoping they still pop up for us!!

Solving the Problems of the World - One Weed At A Time!

Well, Annette and I got a little bit behind in our weeding! I don't know what happened!! We had such good intentions! I think it was a combination of weather, kids, hubbies, summer, chores... you name it, it probably applied to us!! Annette says that we have put a completely new meaning behind the word "organic" gardening!

Seriously, though, the times we did get together to just weed, we feel we made a huge dent in solving all of the complex issues of the world! One weed at a time!! Now, if only we could just get someone to listen to our solutions!!

The huge, out of control weeds have been taken care of! Now we are back on track and into maintenance mode! Which means that the garden, once again, looks like a garden! We have even been able to enjoy the first pickings of the season! Zucchini, radishes, chard, spinach, cukes, cherry tomatoes, and one green pepper!

Despite the weed issue, and juggling of garden time together, we are having a blast with our summer adventure!! And, honestly, weeding is even fun when you are weeding with a friend. I will confess, one week I think I did more complaining than weeding while Annette seriously tackled the weeds.

Annette has shared some veggies with her neighbors, and I've enjoyed some really great spinach and chard salads!

Happy July!!!

Adorable Fawn!!!

Awwwwwww!

We can't be too upset with the loss of our purple cabbage. My daughter and I saw a doe hanging out in the pasture next to the garden with the cutest, most adorable little fawn!! It is so tiny!!! A shiny brown with bright white spots covering it's back!!!

A nice steady rain here over night and this morning.

Deer and Racoons!

The racoon's have been back into our garage and are making some huge messes! The deer have found and raided our garden!!! They left their cute little hoof prints all over it, and chowed down our one lone cabbage plant. All they left was two little leaves and the clump of packaged dirt square.

Our seed veggies are popping up and looking great! The radishes, green beans, peas, watermelon, corn, and carrots have made their appearance and look nice and healthy!!

Nice

The weekend here was beautiful! Last week's rain has everything popping up nicely!

Dig In Dirt Blogs

Found a great blog for Gardeners! Dig In Dirt is a Garden Directory blog. There are all types of blogs to choose from. Serious, Chatty, Simple, Elaborate, etc.

There was also a weeding idea on Dig In Dirt, suggesting using newspapers for weed control. Not sure how that would really work, but sounded interesting. I have a friend that uses rags in her rows for weed control, a brother-in-law that uses leaves (he collects bagged leaves from city neighborhoods during the fall, stores them in his barn, and puts them on his garden after it's planted).