Garden pictures -May, June, July, August and September. :)

 Hey folks! Summer time is my busiest time. i had every intention of blogging about our summer and garden progress, but the crazyness of life sort of took over. Summer seemed extra short this year. My garden was planted late due to traveling and weather. We went on a couple of small trips including a super cool Florida trip to Harry Potter World and a trip up to Michigan. I got behind with planting and kind of feel like i spent the entire summer just trying to plant the garden. Somehow i still ended up with a pretty good harvest.

i got a new pressure canner this year, and canned beans, tomatoes and corn.  We harvested over 100lbs of potatoes, and around 50lbs of sweet potatoes. We usually harvest more sweet potatoes, but the voles found them again.  i completely abandon everything during gardening season, so i completely failed log any of it.  i did take a lot of pictures though, and thought i'd share some.

As with every year, we deal with many gardening challenges. This year was no different,and i'm listing them here for my own benefit.  Cucumber beetles were terrible this year, and infected almost all of my summer squash with mosiac virus. The white patty pans seemed to be most resistant, and i was able to grow an abundance of them. We had a ton of rain in the spring which also caused problems. Many of my neighbors lost their tomatoes just from the rain.

My tomatoes had Septoria leaf spot, this year. They really struggled, although i was able to harest a lot of tomatoes the plants themselves just looked terrible. The ast couple of years my tomatoes were hit with late blight and bacterial canker, which almost wiped them out. So although the septoria was annoying, it was somewhat managable.

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i'm sure you can tell i had a lot of fun taking pictures of my harvest.  i really enjoy the colors and variety. This was my first year growing the Blue Beauty tomatoes. They are absolutely gorgeous. Athough they a rough start, they continued to produce long after the other had died back.  The flavor was okay, nothing spectacular...but the deep blue, purple color definitly made up for it.  i'll be planting them again next year, just for the color. :) 

i didn't not plant much of a fall garden this year. i do have a variety of leaf lettuce, kale, carrots and sugar snap peas planted.  Our weather is quickly turning cold, so i'm pretty much done with the garden until spring. This winter i'm looking forward to slowing down, finishing some projects and starting some new ones. 

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. ~William Blake

Checking in!

Hey folks!  i seem to have fallen of the earth again.  i was hoping to keep up with blog updates, but somehow it always gets neglected. i'm really going to regret the lack of updates when i look back on it in a couple of years. i have a terrible memory and really rely on it as a personal journal and record of what we do each year. One day soon, i may add a few back posts to fill in some of the gaps.

This past summer was especially busy with a trip to Michigan and a trip to Florida. i have so many gardening posts half written that will probably never be posted.  Garden season was busy, which turned into a busy canning season and then back to school. 

My boy started high school this year  and joined the marching band.  My girl joined the IVE basketball team. So our fall has been filled with  Friday football games (for the band) and weekend Band competitions and Basketball games. Lots of driving and late nights picking up from practices, away games and competitions.  i enjoyed seeing my kids do their thing, but am quite relieved to have a break from it for a while.

i've been busy working on all kinds of things. As soon as the weather changed i abandoned the garden and started binge crafting.  i signd up to vend at the local school fall festival, so i began making a variety of different items. 

This was my first time setting up in years. It was both exciting and intimidationg. It's difficult to pour your heart and soul into something and then put it out on display for all to see.  For the most part the comment i received were kind, but i dd have several people look and work and say it looked 'tedious' to which i replied 'it's a labor of love'.  It's such a small festival i really didn't expect to sell anything, so i was pleasantly surprised when i did. Not a lot, but good for the size of the festival, and better than i expected. i do need to work on my set up.  i made a bunch of clip in hairwraps, but they ended up hidden in the back and were totally overlooked. 

i started playing in the glass shop again, which i seem to do once 3-5 years for about an hour. :) i'm hoping to stick with it a little longer this time. i've been working on making these freeform glass leaf pendants, which i hope to eventually incorporate into my beadwork. 

So, yeah. Things have gotten busy and it seems that as the kids get older no matter how much i try to slow things down it all just seems to spiral out of control.  i will try really hard to update the blog more often, and i still intend to one day post the dozen drafts that i have started but never finished. 

i do have a giveaway going on over on my Facebook page. So if you get a chance stop by and enter and check out all the pretty things i have for sale!