Garden 2009

We planted a garden again this year, and this is the bounty we harvested earlier this week.

We picked tomatoes, mint, basil, stevia, lemon balm

and - yes - pumpkins!

Oh, I love the colors!

Junior has been a major help, doing almost all of the garden harvesting. He loves the garden!

Earlier in June we harvested some zucchini and yellow squash. Unfortunately the squash bugs got to our squash plants, and they are no more (even in spite of us trying to intermix the squash and tomato plants, which was supposed to help ~ if you have ideas for us for next year on keeping squash bugs away, please let us know!).

Garden Schmarden!

It's that time of year again.

Yes, the "Syl, you need to pick from the garden"/"No, Jon, YOU need to pick from the garden"/"Syndi, go pick from the garden" time!

And here is a brief glimpse of the pickings from the other day.

I went out to mow the lawn, and decided to run by the garden. I picked out a few large weeds, then saw some way-too-big cucumbers and next thing ya know...well, I never did mow the lawn. In fact, it's almost been a week, and I still haven't gotten to the lawn. There is just so much to do around here. And, of course, there's that huge timesucking machine called facebook.

Well, to identify the harvest, clockwise from the bottom left:

parsley, cherry & grape tomatoes, string beans, yellow squash, cucumbers, and green peppers.

And what we've eaten so far has been delicious!

Or delici-o-so, as the kids like to say.

Time's A-Flyin!

The Caruvana family has been so busy lately, we just haven't had the time to update the blog. After Mom's death, we've had the end of the school year, bringing Aunt Lorrie home, arranging Aunt Lorrie's move to Texas, moving Lorrie's things from the house, packing Lorrie's storage unit on a truck to ship to Texas, the close of Awana (complete with hours [days] to create a slideshow video), and preparation for VBS (which starts next week).

Syl is teaching for VBS, so has been working to decorate her room, prepare her lessons, etc. And of course, when we came back from Michigan after the funeral, spring was in full blossom here in Georgia, so the lawn and garden have gone wild with growth, requiring lots of time. Syndi is having school testing done this week, so that takes more time. Jon was on deacon patrol in May, so he had to lock the building up after services.

Yes, it's been a busy month-and-a-half. Syl and the kids will be leaving for Michigan in only a week-and-a-half (right after VBS finishes), so we'll be crazy preparing for that. Jon will have time to post after they leave, but no family members of which to post any pictures. So we'll be back in full swing sometime around mid-summer. Hopefully we'll have the Awana slideshow posted for all to see in the next day or so. It may be large, though, so it may give people difficulty in loading.

Probably, y'all are just as busy as we are, so won't even have time to read this. That's OK. 'Cause I really didn't have time to post it.

Garden Prep

It's that time again - time to get the garden ready!
So I spent the evening tilling the garden. At 6PM it was an overgrown patch of green weeds. By 7:30 it was a cross-tilled patch of rich brown dirt with perfectly spaced rows...just what every obsessive-compulsive engineer wants in a garden!
In a few months, we'll be posting pictures of our overgrown garden. Hopefully we'll have shots of the mounds of tomatoes we're harvesting also.

Garden Flourishes

Our backyard garden is flourishing in spite of the Georgia drought. We do water it every 2 or 3 days, but the right mix of shade, good soil and God's grace has helped it to grow. (Of course, without God's grace there would be no shade or good soil, so it's all His doing!)

This is our garden on June 2. Tomorrow I will take a picture, add it to this post, and let you see how much it's grown in the last 1-1/2 weeks.

Our tomato plants are going gangbusters. I've had to start topping them to limit growth already. Lots of little tomatoes have appeared. Butternut squash is in the foreground.

Our zucchini and yellow squash is doing quite well, too!

More zucchini and yellow squash. To the upper left are the cucumber plants. They have really expanded this week and have literally hundreds of flowers under those leaves. Maybe tomorrow's pictures will show you.

And today's first harvest of zucchini! With a nickel for scale. A yellow squash was picked last week, but Syl chopped it up and served it for dinner before I could snap a pic. At least it tasted good!


Added: This is our garden on June 14. It has grown quite a lot in the last 12 days! The dirt spots are virtually covered/ The front corner even has the canteloupe growing wild. We'll see how that goes. Praise God for His abundant blessing!