Boys Will Be Boys

Posts Tagged ‘garden’

One thing I love about Oregon is how green it is.  I cannot stand the rain that is responsible for all this lushness though.  Once the rain ends it’s like this mad rush to get things planted and hope your garden has enough time to produce.  Last year we were rainy until nearly July so our garden took a hit.  The tomatoes didn’t have enough warm weather to really ripen and there were lots of green tomatoes around!  I’m watching friends all over plant gardens in May and we are happy to have things in the ground by Memorial Day.  This year isn’t much better but I’m still hopeful for a decent garden.

Last year was experimental year since it was the first year we had our garden.  I wasn’t entirely sure what would do well, what would taste good and we put in a TON of things.  I also learned that we didn’t eat some of those things really.   My planting this year wasn’t as crazy and I went with things that we love to eat.  I’ve tried to learn as much as I can about the whole thing and have a great book my best friend recommended me:  Vegetable Gardeners Bible.  I’ve also done a lot of reading on companion plants and which plants like to be next to one another (like peppers and tomatoes).  We also have a herb garden next to the deck that had tons of herbs we weren’t cooking with so I didn’t go crazy on that this year either.   Lots of my herbs came back so that was a nice surprise this year.  We have a strawberry patch, the blueberry row and the mint gone wild patch also.   

Our garden has:  Spinach, lettuce green mixes, celery, carrots, few different types of onions, LOTS of peppers (both hot and mild), tomatoes (black cherry, grape cherry and 1 sweet Oregon) and our crookneck squash. 

Our garden – looking towards the deck from the tomato & pepper side. 

Besides the garden we’ve done a lot of other planting.  I put perennials in the raised beds instead of bulbs.  I don’t know what I was thinking putting bulbs in them last year but now these perennials should fill the beds in nicely.  Hopefully they work out together or I’ll be transplanting things somewhere else. 

The bed has yarrow, dianthus, columbine, hebe, Mexican oranges, salvia hot lips and Coreopsis..think that’s all. 

We tore out some lavender plants from the front that just looked out of place along the hedge.  I don’t know what they were thinking putting them there.  They were unruly and seriously ugly there.  We’ve been meaning to replace them and continue the hedge but I couldn’t figure out what type the hedge plants we already had were and I wanted it to match.  Finally I found them and even Patrick tried to tell me they weren’t a boxwood when I was dragging him across the nursery.  Sure enough, a match!    We also bought a Yew to match the other Yew’s out front and hopefully with time it will hide the electrical box.  It’s just nice to have more projects done! 

You can see the small boxwood hedges just a little bit here but the yew is to the left hiding kind of behind the tree. 

One of my favorite things is Mother’s Day and not just because I’m a mom now but because my present from my husband is my nursery trip for the annuals in my baskets and pots.  I love picking out different flowers to put in my pots and baskets.  This year I didn’t quite get to do it Mother’s day weekend because I spent that studying for exams.  I did get my nursery trip in eventually though and all my stuff planted!  They are just now really starting to bloom so I imagine in a few weeks they’ll really be filling in.

Have 2 of each of these out front.  I had a thing for the purple/pink obnoxious colors this year. 

I’m sure more pictures will be coming the blog way as the garden starts to flourish and the colors start to show….of course we need some sun for that to happen! 

I’m trying to round up our garden pictures from the summer and sort through them to eventually upload onto Flickr.  But in the meantime here’s some of the rewards of having a nice garden.  Last weekend I was on a mission to get some things made and frozen before the rainy season hits us.  I made my second batch of spaghetti sauce (so imagine this as my second pot & counter of tomatoes this size).    I let the pot cool and then we freeze them in Ziploc bags so they take up less space.  We use them fast enough that I don’t worry about them going bad and we have a really nice frost free freezer in the garage. 

(Tomatoes and the sauce simmering) 

I also whipped up pesto from some of the basil we had.  I use almonds instead of pine nuts though because the price of pine nuts is a bit much imo and I like almonds.  We freeze them in ice cube trays and then I put them in a Ziploc bag.  I did this same process when making baby food so I have oodles of ice  trays on hand for it! 

(Basil & Pesto Cubes) 
Recipe for Pesto here:  Easy Pesto

I also made zucchini cakes, similar to crab cakes.  I have had lots of zucchini lately thanks to our wonderful neighbors, Carl & Linda.  I didn’t take a picture but I found the greatest recipe for Zucchini Cobbler.  I made it a week ago for a neighborhood get together and nobody could believe it was zucchini.  They all thought it was apple!  It’s delicious and a great way to use up zucchini!!!   I’ve made the recipe a few times and each time it gets rave reviews.

(Zucchini cakes and the work area as I was prepping for pesto)
Zucchini recipes here:   Zucchini Cakes & Zucchini Cobbler 

(a lot of my recipes, like these, come from allrecipes.com )

Pictures of the actual garden coming soon! 

Saturday was one of those intermittent rainy Oregon days.  That usually means, get stuff done outside when you can.  We started off early by getting the rest of my compost soil for my garden bed and then I hit up various stores to fill in the gaps of veggies/herbs I still needed.  Lastly, I had to get Lowe’s to price match the 99cent Margiold/Petunia sale that Home Depot was having.  All the while, hope that I can get home in time to get things planted before the rain stopped me!

I get home, change into grungy, dirt friendly clothes and get to work plotting out that last part of my garden.  While out there I have Braysen, my friendly helper, telling me to plant the Marigolds.  I told him I wasn’t ready yet and he kept asking impatiently If I was ready yet.  Well, I’m trying to get things in the ground as it starts to sprinkle and I see him grabbing my flowers so I turn to tell him to knock it off. (nicely of course!)  Here I am hunched over my plants and I twist around to him when I feel this sharp pain in my back.  OUCH!  I tell Braysen to go get daddy and tell him that I’m hurt.  He runs inside and tells Patrick, who tells him that he can’t right now.  I don’t know what Braysen told Patrick but I told him to go tell him it’s important.  He still didn’t come out haha.  Well, I get myself  upright although painfully and tell him what happened.  It’s the same pain from a year ago when I had a slipped disc.   Nice numbness feeling through  my leg to my calf.  Sciatic pain (feels almost like the pregnant sciatica I had!) and of course this horrible lower back pain that kills to sit down and put pressure downward with.

But the good news is:  I have my garden planted!   haha A garden post to be coming soon!

On the other good news:  I have someone coming to clean my house tomorrow before family arrives, just so I’m not bending over toilets and stressing about my dirty house!

We just need to worry about getting the bedding and towels all washed & ready.  The car needs to be majorly cleaned / vacuumed before they get picked up in it!  Also, need to do the rearrangement of car seats in it so we can fit people.  Of course I also need to get some Rubbermaid boxes full of baby clothes out of the guest room and into a temporary spot until we can get people over to go through them and stake claim before I sell them off!  Not too bad really but still lots to do in the next 2 nights and with swim lessons tonight & tomorrow nite’s meet up to get Miss Lush (a bag …a whole other post..one in which you’ll think I’m even more bag cray than some realize).  Yup, lots to do and running out of time!  The grocery shopping was done last night…a fun 2 hours worth of it and I didn’t get home until nearly 9.  But we are getting there!

I did get Braysen signed up for a summer soccer camp and a summer swim lesson session.  I went with just the 3-4 year old soccer camp instead of the 4-6 year old camp because I think he will do better this go around with the younger age bracket.  The swim lessons switch to summer schedule so he’ll be doing basically a 2 week session where he goes every night from 6-6:30 instead of twice/week.  I’m not looking forward to driving him every nite to Newberg but I don’t want to stop his lessons now.  We’ll have a bit of a break after soccer camp until August because I don’t want him in camp during the day and swimming at night.  I figure we can pick back up in August and I think they start up the 2 night a week ones at that point.  Newberg also has a Sat. morning Soccer thing for younger kids in the fall that starts in Sept. so if Braysen does really like this soccer stuff we can get him going on that.  I am pretty excited to get him in these sports camps and fun things. He’s finally at an age where he is old enough to do it.   Then we the logistical side of getting him to / from places when we live in between the 2 towns that he can go to for these things.

Summer of fun here we come!  hehe