I absolutely despise Facebook's Farmville, so I'll show you what it really looks like ;) Billy and I are on a health kick - that I hope lasts...This year, I started bringing salads everyday to lunch - thanks to Tami! This Spring, I was telling Tami about our dilemma of budget vs. health. She suggested that I grow my own salad tomatoes since a quart is $4! That is where this began...
I took Billy with me the day we decided to start our garden on our itty bitty back porch of our condo. Walmart has a great selection of vegetables and herbs, so while I picked out the type of tomatoes I wanted, Billy found zucchini and yellow squash plants he wanted me to try. I didn't realize at the time that plenty of land and soil is the key to a good garden. We bought a nice window planting pot and figured we'd put all of the five plants in that pot. As I was planting all of the vegetables, I began to read the directions and realized that I might want to plant less than 5 vegetables in that small amount of soil. I found myself buying more pots and spending a little more $ than anticipated, but eventually it'll be worth it...
Above are the blooms of my zucchini plant. At first, I thought I wouldn't get anything except beautiful flowers from these plants, but apparently (as I have found with the tomatoes) the vegetable comes from the bloom. Unfortunately, the blooms above fell off after a storm, and though my zucchini plant is producing more blooms, I haven't seen a vegetable from them yet. My mother-in-law says they have to be pollinated by a bee from another plant - which makes sense except when the plants started to grow so big, I separated the zucchini from the squash and the squash are in the front of the house. The zucchini is lonely, but I've noticed several sprouts (hopefully of more zucchini plants) coming from the soil around it, so maybe the bees are doing something right!
This is the bloom from one of my yellow squash plants. The bloom is beautiful and Lori, Tami's sister, says that some chefs take these blooms, fill them with cheese, and fry them...mmm, mmm, mmm...anything fried sounds good to me!
These adorable little sprouts are my little miracles. Mom and Cathy are getting vegetables from the local farmers co-op. I love the idea, but didn't buy in this year. Anyway, one of the things they got in their box last time was a Sprite Melon. Apparently, a hybrid between a pear and a honeydew. Mom gave me several seeds to try to plant. Cathy said she doubted anything would happen since they probably weren't fertile - since they're a hybrid. After only a few days, I started to see sprouts. The above photo is after about a week. Not bad!
These next few photos are from "start" to finish of my proudest accomplishments. The above and below photos are my first red tomato!
And then there were 4!
On the 4th of July, I tried my first homegrown tomato!
This Asian chicken salad doesn't look particuarly appetizing, but it featured my tomatoes - a success story!
Wow, this is an incredible couple with amazing hearts! Meg is my coworker and I'm truly grateful for how easy she is to talk to. I usually found myself backing her into a corner with a hundred things to get off my chest, but she is always welcoming! Recently, Drew and Meg have done an even more wonderful job of welcoming little ones into their family.
Four months ago, they adopted Charli (Charlotte Grace) into their family. Charli is absolutely beautiful...
Meg told me that Drew is so excited to be having a boy, but that Charli has him wrapped around her finger...that much was obvious to me in the short time we all spent together.
Even though she's only four months old, Charli is a big sister!
I love this photo, because it shows a glance of realization of what is to come for this family. They are already so in love with Charli and they have plenty of more love for the next little one!
