4th of July

I was sad to not be home in NM for the 4th. Its one of my favorite hollidays and I love spending it with family. But I did have a good 4th. I got lots done in the yard and saw some fireworks, and ate a tasty hamburger from the gril with all the fixin's. Whats more to ask?

there were some other good things too. Because I was in Utah I got to see Malinda and her baby Peter. So Cute!

Because I was in Utah I also got to have lunch with Mandy, Fay, and Kimball. It was way fun. I only got this picture and it didn't turn out well because Kimball kept falling over. Mandy went out to get Kimball changed and when walking him back couldn't figure out why he kept falling over. She looked down, and it was because she had put both of his legs into one side of his shorts. Hard to walk like that! He looked like he had on a really tight skirt!











Here is Kate and I at the parade. Its a long parade. It might not be so long if it was a little closer together, but I guess things get spread out along a long parade route. It was a little dissapointing that only one of the high schools here has a decent sized marching band. LAHS was a lot smaller then these schools, but our marching band was decent sized. Anyways I got fried and so was tired out for getting lots of yard work done, but still managed to get a decent amount.

whats a parade without lamas?

The Orem institute had an interesting float. Joseph Smith was singing, and looked like the other prophets were waiting their turn. Moses looked like he hung out in the 60's a bit long though....

flowers equal love, too

Here are some of my flower picturess. Some are a bit older, like the pots, and have continued to fill out. I need to get a picture of the tree garden and window gardnes. The corner and herb gardens look the same as always, so might not picture them. One thing that makes me happy is how the gardens change as perenials take turns blooming, annuals and volunters join in and spread out. Its so cool!

The pink pot and square pot are some of favorite pots this year.

This one needed a few more flowers, and its put more out, but the folliage is still a bit strong.

Just like the pots, the flower gardens are just a bunch of different flowers, not a lot of rhyme or reason.


stump garden

Love my daisys this year. SO pretty! I need to get more this year for next.

front tree ring.

I had some left over pot stuffers and some smaller pots left so I just stuck some things in them. The first two are fine, but the last one is my "ugly pot" and it sits over on the other side of the house....

Not a great picture but here are the hanging pots in the back.

Here is the delphinium again. Its in the window garden which this year is planted mostly blue on the edges with some pink in the middle. Unfortnately the delphs are almost done.... oh well the cosmos and hollyhocks are starting to take their turn.

garden and food equals love

i love my garden. It gives me food and as we all know food equals love. So here is an update of poor quality pictures.





Beets. Who knew that I would like beets. I guess before I've only had pickled beets and they aren't that great, so I figured all beats are icky. Turns out I like fresh garden beets so I'm glad i grew some this year. They taste a bit like dirt, but I love jicama and it tastes like dirt so I guess its not to suprising... Anyways I decided to grow more beets since they did fairly well and you can use the whole plant. This picture also has the one turnip I've grown. Fresh turnips aren't so good. But once they are cooked they aren't so bad.














Here they are all washed up and ready to cook. I cooked them up for dinner last Sunday, along with mango chicken and jalapeno sausage dogs (left over from family reunion), and our first calabacitas of the year, along with strawberries from the garden.










Happy produce from the garden!










Yesterday (Sunday) for dinner we had calabacitas, chicken tikamasala (with spinach from the garden), and drop biscuits with the currant jam I just made a couple of days ago.




just the 2nd year and the little bushes were loaded!





NOt sure if they were totally ripe as they are so tart, but I didn't want to wait so that the birds could get them or they fall off (that happened to the saskatoon berries this year, only one bush produced a small handful and then the birds got them and I only got two =(


I got a little over two cups worth. I cooked them down and strained them and made a beautiful red still tangy jam.



The jar was prettier before we ate it.














I've started to get small handful of raspberries everyday. Usually I just pop them in my mouth when I go out in the mornings, but I decided to share these. They are starting to pick up a bit more which is good as the strawberries are slowing down a bit.



While I was looking something up on the web, I stumbled across something about eating mushrooms from your backyard. So I did it.

No worries, its just a puffball which is the easiest to identify. It can only be confused with an "earthball" which would've just made me sick and not killed me. But I didn't confuse it, I fried it up in butter and ate one piece. Then since that didn't kill me I ate the rest the next day. Tasted like butter.













Think this one is edible but since I can't identify it for sure, I'll have to let it go. Didn't get a picture of another one I tried to figure out yesterday...









So on the way home from the reunion I was feeling bad about being the only one to not get to hang out with some family so I stopped by a garden center on my way home and picked up another Himrod grape to replace the dead one out front. I talked to the grape the rest of the way back about how its in a great spot and I'll trim it way down in the fall so it doesn't dry out like the last one did ( I think it grew so big that its roots couldn't replace the winter moisture lost). Then when I got home, I noticed a tiny sprout at the base of the dead one. Sure enough in a couple of days it had put out 3 leaves and grown at least an inch a day. It was alive! YAY! I couldn't just get rid of the new grape, we had bonded! So now I have two out front. The old one is now bigger then the new one. I can't believe how fast its growing! (in this picture you can see an edge of evening primrose that is just gorgeous this year)

Here are garden pics. Yes my garden is messy. Oh well. I'm over it.

Potatoes

Carrots (brocoli to the back left)

peas and lettuce just about all done. (rhubarb back left)

Cucumbers just about ready to start

Cucumbers and melons to left side, tomatoes in the greenhouses (only one of them is almost to the top

Beans. Couple have blossoms on them today.

Peppers to the left, Onions in front, and zuchinni behind.

Picture of banana bread since this is a post on food, and I didn't take a picture of the rhubarb cake. It was tasty!

Family Reunion Day 3

Ok, didn't get pictures of this day. So I'll refer you to the other blogs, and maybe steal some. Try Melanie's, Mom's and Amy's as they are the ones that have posted about the family reunion so far.

Bethanie and Aaron provided a scrumpteous breakfast of hootenany pancakes and sausages. YUM. BTW forgot to mention Day's 2 tasty dinner of enchaladas by the parkinsons. thems are some good eatin!

Some went to hike angel's landing. Others stayed at the houses to enjoy the pool and take it easy. Some went back to Zion's to do easy stuff. I went with the latter group. We did the weeping rock and saw the little museum.

It was fun to eat our lunch in the coolness of the weeping rock. I think my parents should put in a similar setup on the west side of the home!

Then we went back so I could work on dinner. I turned on the gas grill to let it heat up. The greese underneath caught on fire and I almost burned down the house. Not sure if that grill works very well anymore.... brought way too much foood, but everyone seemed happy. I think the biggest hit was the chocolate milk =)

We did more olympic events. Amy has put pictures of those up so just check out her post: Then Amy made this tasty apple desert thingamajig. And there was bedtime, singing, and general hanging out until the day ended.

more garden updates from earlier in the season

Here are a bunch of pictures that I took earlier in the year.

First two show the star of bethlehem flower that comes up every year and look so pretty.

This picture doesn't look so good, but this was pretty pink phlox and the star of bethlehem

Couple of tulip pictures:

More forget me not's but I need to get rid of them because I hate dealing with the seeds.

With the spring flowers we got a little crazy with the bundt cakes. As you may know those have holes in them and so Mama fixed them.

Ones of these was in honor of Aaron's bday. Sent a picture to Aaron and then ate it all up!

Once the star of bethlem flowers dye, I clean out the bed so its ready for planting. Here are som before and after pictures.

Couple more pretty flower pictures, although the color of the roses washed out.

Especially love the delphinium this year!

So the dandylions did well too this year. Mama has taken on the lawns more this year and the number has gone down.

The peas are just about done as the weather got hot all of a sudden. But they were enjoyed while here (most mornings I had peas and letuce from the garden as I grazed).

The great thing is the strawberries are on. They make the greatest breakfast (this picture doesn't look like that many, but it actually was quite a bit.

I also needed to thin some beets so I cooked them up and mama and I ate them. They were actually pretty tasty.

In the spring I used quite a bit of rhubarb. I accidently left a couple out and they got wimpy so I put them in some water and the ends exploded.