Dining Room

Finishing Touches

Everywhere I look in the house we have counters full of food from the garden. We need a bigger kitchen.
There was this concrete door sill that was between the backroom and kitchen. We kept a rug over it all this time and yesterday we finally did something about it. We used floor paint and painted wood grain into the wet base paint.
The space in between the door way isn't even that bad now.
The floor to the bathroom needed the divider too, so we purchased a $5.00 metal piece for that.

I have about 15 more things to do and I think we can say we are finished with the Mo House. They are are little things like above that we have just been living with..

Melon Petit Gris de Rennes

This morning I went to the garden and saw a melon that had turned colors. I brought my bride out to show her and now we had a problem. We didn't know when you pick the melon. So we looked it up and found out when you see the stem cracking around the base and you move it a little, the melon should just fall off. Well you know we did just that and the melon did just that.
We left it in the house an hour or so. It smelled so wonderful. It weighed two & half pounds. We sliced it open and ate it all in one sitting. We found out a couple of things today about the
" Melon Petit Gris de Rennes."
First of all, I read that if a person can grow this melon they are a Master Gardener. I know that isn't true because we grew this one and four more are on the vine. Second of all, the grocery store melons have a green line in between the skin and edible part of the fruit. Ours doesn't because we do not have to pick it early for market. We get to pick and eat at just the right time. Last, I spotted this melon when it was little bigger than a golf ball on June 26th, so I think it takes about 29 - 34 days after the flower fruits for this kind of melon to mature.
Here is a pumpkin pie. Well maybe not yet but that's where this pumpkin we harvested is off to.
Boo Boo admiring the table flowers this morning. He likes watermelon and Petit Gris de Rennes as well.

Lunch Today

What we had today for lunch and this mornings harvest from the garden. We have had about 20 cucumbers this year from the one ten cent seed pack. The fact that we were able to nurse a cucumber plant along and not have the cuke beetles beat us is amazing to me. The store here charges 1.29 for each organic cucumber and the same with the green peppers. We have had three watermelons from the garden now. The little Serrano peppers are coming in now too! What I am really looking forward to is more sweet corn. I have always bought it from the road side or grocery store. When it is picked a few minutes before boiling however it is like candy as the starches haven't had time to develop. I think I will never again buy sweet corn that wasn't picked within a few minutes of boiling. We did purchase sweet corn at the farmers market a few weeks ago. It was picked the night before we got it. I think the corn was good but I bet it was awesome the night before.

What came from the garden today.

The other day we cut that monster Tennessee Sweet Potato. I was wondering why we were not getting any female flower and only male flowers on this plant. We also were only getting one giant fruit. So we cut the monster and now I am glad to say we have at least 8 fruits growing on the 30 plus foot vine, plus female and male flowers. Who knew that a single female could keep all those male flowers to herself? Well we cleared her dance card didn't we.
Part of today's haul from the garden.
The French Melons are starting to scab over. We are so close to completion.

Three Tennessee Sweet Potatoes growing on this 3' run.

I was squishing cucumber beetles, grass hoppers and Japanese beetles between my fingers about an hour ago and I saw one corn cob ready to eat. We started the water boiling and dropped it in for seven minutes. My bride put a little butter on it and we sat saying mmmmm mmmm good. Boo Boo heard us and wanted what we had so bad. Since it was our first cob I was cheap and gave him only one kernel.

Flowers for the table

My bride put this on the table today. Down the street the neighbors are gone for a few weeks. We had permission to go cut some flowers this afternoon.

Strawberries are here

This is the second day we could harvest strawberries. We have been getting a couple a day but now they are coming in pretty good.
My bride made breakfast this morning. Real maple syrup, organic blueberries, home made bread turned into french toast, strawberries, organic free trade coffee and a glass of orange juice.

Happy Easter

My wife sets the table beautifully with alot of help from God to grow the flowers.

Pumpkin Pie

For Halloween we purchased this pumpkin for the table.
My beautiful wife cut it up today and made a few cups of
this orange stuff.
Then she poured it into this homemade crust and stuck it in the oven.

Out came the best pumpkin pie I have ever had. I didn't know pie could taste so good!

Being the seed saver my wife is she set aside all these for the garden next year.

Wow! I am so lucky.

It was a great Thanksgiving!

Our Table

May this always be a house with a table so bountiful.

Harvey for Breakfast

Harvey finally became full grown this morning and we invited him for breakfast. Along with eggs, home made salsa from the garden and home made biscuits. I must say I haven't tasted watermelon like this ever from a store.

I flipped the compost yesterday and then put it all back in to cook some more.
Our red peppers are starting to come in.

Just a whole bunch of things!

Well first of all, we spent most of the weekend painting the house, which there is plenty left to do. We did get the first coat of paint of the front door and installed a dark brown door handle that matches the brown trim and deck. A door handle can make all the difference in the world. The front door always seemed kind of cheap, but it was the handle that was cheap. Now when the door closes it has that nice solid feeling.
Harvey the Watermelon continues to grow about an inch a day. This picture is two days old, so he looks totally different than this picture here.
Harvey also has several siblings, here is one. You know it's always the first child that gets all the press.
A couple of shots of the garden on August 2nd. (how did it get to be August?)
The melon covers pulled back to allow the bees to do their thing.

Here is the enemy of our garden Sleeping with another enemy of our garden.

Here is the enemy of our garden wishing they were paying more attention to that tall skinny guy with the camera.

We have dozens of peppers, all types and sizes. The bell peppers you see here are from seeds my wife saved last year. A lot of things in the garden come from those seeds she saved last year. The bulk of our garden next year will be from seeds she saved this year. My wife is not only a seed eater but a seed saver too! She's kind of "seedy" but I like "seedy."

This is one of the favorite parts of the garden for me. The compost pile. I can put everything in here and there are millions of hungry critters just waiting to turn it into rich soil for us. Last Spring I put all the old sensitive tax papers, banking statements and such in this box. It works better than a shredder. Two months later we were feeding it to our garden. I think Harvey the watermelon could do our taxes after all that financial information went into the melon patch.

Our table has never been without cut flowers. My wife makes everything so beautiful.

Last but not least, in the kitchen this morning these three cabaleros were thinking of making salsa out of this lone tomato. I didn't want to get involved. I hope the tomato came out of it ok.

The flowers she plants

We have not really made much of a landscape plan for this place, other than pull out weeds and remove the variety of trash from the property. As we do that we are left with empty ground that we will work on later. My wife however runs around and puts flower seeds in this type of ground which turns into the following flowers.

There is a big old bumble bee on this sun flower if you click on it you can see. Wouldn't it be funny if when you click on it there is this guy that jumps up on your screen and screams, "AHHHHHH!" Go ahead click on it. lol