Day of Photos?

Well, not exactly a day of photo's, just things that grabbed my attention (and my frustration in our camera and my lack of photography skill ~ tired of blurry, grainy photos). 

           Had hopes of capturing some good photos of our barely colored carnations.  With a bit of work in trimming the stems and cutting them, we did get some coloration.  Down side, there are only tiny veins of color.  Hard to capture a good photo of that, for me anyway.

Anyhoot ~  here are a few others that turned out fairly well, some with a few retakes.

 The boys had played outside for awhile this afternoon.  Thing two really wanted

popcicles today and really seems like a good day for them.  We had none though.

I offered to make yogurt fruit ones and use the popscile forms we had.  They weren't

to keen on the fruit I wanted to use, but being mom, I stuck to my guns to get berries in them.

After letting the berries thaw a bit and get mashed, I set the potato masher in the sink.

Loved the color left in the sink.
Equally love using bleach in my white sink to maintain the white.  It will

get cleaned later.

 Remember our Resurrection Garden post from a few days ago?

I noticed today we have grass growing.  It's like baby hair right now, but

still very cool to see.

 Another view of the grass.

 Not one of my best photos.  This was rather hard to get a

good shot, but this is the best.  These seedlings are basil.

Hoping for an explosion of basil this year!

(and tomatoes too, which we haven't started yet)

Around Halloween last October, we ended up with 7 little pumpkins.

We saved the seeds from one pumpkin and get them planted.

Going strong, reaching for the sun, about ready for a larger pot (just

not sure if it is time to put them outside yet!)

What are you growing?  Let me know, maybe we can compare notes!  Any suggestions on camera's?

 

Summer Garden, first installment!

Gearing up, for hopefully another good season of tomatoes.  Last year's was awesome, we were eating homemade tomato sauce until March!

This year we have two Early Girl, one cherry tomato, and I bought a basil plant already started!  We have blossoms too!

One of the Early Girl's have blossoms

Cherry Tomato plant blossoms!

Basil planets are looking good!

Beautiful Things

"Beautiful Things" by Gungor was running through my head this mornings as I began to make tomato sauce.  I had all these beautiful tomatoes just waiting to be consumed, some how, in some way.  What became of this fuzzy logic is the following:

Began by grabbing a good pot to heat up some olive oil in.
Set the burner to about medium heat and moved on to the next thing.

 

Started with about a half inch slice of onion and

couple large cloves of garlic.

Also grabbed some of my Rosemary (that had been

drying from one of my 3 bushes) and began to chop away.  Love my
Pampered Chef chopper ~ got through all of that quickly.
These went into the pot, with heated oil.  I then began dicing up the tomatoes.
Some were chunks with a knife, some got diced with the chopper.

Everything in the pot.  Just an occasional stir and let the heat & time

do it's thing.  After awhile, I'll puree a portion of this to get the

seeds and skin blended well.  Let it cool further and then into some

sort of freezer worthy storage container.  I've deliberately not added basil

or oregano yet.  These tend to be more tender herbs and should be added

in the last few minutes of cooking.  They'll get added later, when I am making

a sauce, soup, or stew later.

The one tomato not chopped or diced.  It was probably

the most sandwich worthy one out of the bunch and we're

having sandwiches for dinner.  Yummy!

What has probably helped the tomatoes the most, is that I

compost just about anything that can be composted.  As I tell our

boys, "if it came from the ground, it can be composted", meaning

fruit, veggies, untreated wood shavings, paper w/o to much writing

on it.  Other things, like dairy and bread type products, just don't

decompose easily and tend not to be good for the soil.  I know some

will compost with certain animal waste, but that just seems yucky to me!

I've also heard you can compost newspaper (but not the shiny adds) and

cardboard as well.  Haven't tried those yet.

So, later on today, more tomato will be bagged and frozen for later use in spaghetti or pizza sauce.  May even use some to make home made tomato soup.  Another yummy food!