Pickles!!

I am so proud of myself!  This past weekend I made pickles for the first time ever!  The best part is the cucumbers came from my very own garden!  That's right!!  I grew them myself!  I only ended up harvesting enough to make 4 jars of pickles but it was super exciting.  We have to wait a few more days before we can try them but the boys are excited to be my guinea pigs.  For Christmas my wonderful hubby bought me Food in Jars so I could get more canning tips and try some new recipes.  This is a fabulous book and the author has a wonderful blog full of tips, tricks, recommendations on equipment, give a ways, and more. 

Since I started my hand at growing vegetables, I have wanted to grow pickling cucumbers so I could make pickles.  I finally did it this year.  To my surprise it was super simple.  I didn't have great luck growing them.  I expected to get a much larger yield than I did, but I'll cut myself some slack as it was my first attempt. 





Hopefully they will meet my expectations and taste fabulous!

Going Green

I'm not sure if this is a sign of going green, or going cheap.  When we bought our house 16 years ago, my father-in-law gifted us his precious Honda lawn mower.  This thing has been the best lawn mower I've ever seen!  Hubby remembers as a young kid going to the Honda store with his dad to buy this mower so it's been around for a while.  We have enjoyed it for 16 years but everything has a life span.  The Honda has finally gone on the lawn mower heaven.

There was healthy discussion about how to replace it.  Do we get the green and cheap push mower?  or another loud, gas mower?  Of course I liked the push mower idea the best but I felt I didn't have a leg to stand on with this position since I haven't pushed a lawn mower since I was about 14!  Honestly, they intimidate me. 

Hubby broke it out of the box last weekend and gave it a whirl around our very small patch of grass. 

It seems to do the job, although I think hubby felt like he was pushing one of these instead.

New Garden Boxes

Our little yard is quite a challenge.  It has been since day one when we bought this house 16 years ago.  Back then, the yard was very sloped and had huge trees covering everything.  Thru the years we have removed the trees, built retaining walls, a large deck, re-leveled the yard and built more retaining walls. 

Last spring hubby built a few raised beds for me to try my hand at vegetables but they weren't in a spot that received enough sun.  Needless to say, not much grew last year.

This past weekend hubby moved the boxes, made them deeper and added a little spot for my potato planters along the back fence.  It's the only place in the back yard that gets good sun. Now if the rain would let up enough I could get outside and get these beds planted!

Yes, that's a bulldozer next to my potato sacks.  Didn't I mention I have three boys?

Here's hoping the weatherman is right and I'll be able to finish my job of putting rocks around the beds to cut down on the weeds this weekend.

So much work

 

Living in the Pacific Northwest has it's advantages, and it's disadvantages.  Two weekends ago it was finally decent enough to get out in the garden and what I mess I found!  The number of unfinished projects is overwhelming at times and it's really not that big of a yard.  There are wall caps to be cut and stuck in place, raised garden beds to move in anticipation of starting seeds, ground to be prepped for new grass, a playstructure in need of repair, and weeds.  Oh the weeds!  Big ones, little ones, ones that climb on rocks!  Grass growing in the strawberries!  It's absolutely endless!  Sometimes I just want to take a back hoe to the yard and start over.  Oh wait!  We already did that!