Off to camp!

Yes, I'm off to camp today, with my good cousin Madison! I'm so excited!! We leave after church, and the car ride to camp shall be very interesting. :P I have a very fun car game called Rubberneckers. It is interesting. Camp is going to be fun as well. :~) I love the hymns and the swimming and the hiking and food and the camp store... it's all so wonderful! This is my second year, but Madison's first. Please pray that we'll have a safe drive up there, and that all the campers have a good time, and stay safe! I've been shopping and packing like a mad woman to get ready. I'm bringing my camera, so be sure to check my blog once I'm back. There will be pictures. Lots of pictures. TONS OF PICTURES!!*Slightly evil chuckle* Mwahahaaa. Tehee. *Giggle* :~)

On another note, here are some terrible pictures of my new Square Foot Garden! (Yes, I took them at night... and I hate using flash... and they are all really dark.)

Hey, I know! It can be a game! Try and guess what is in each picture.

1.


2.(This one might be hard)


3.


4.



Now some pictures that you CAN see. :) (I grudgingly used the flash on these...)
(By the way, it wasn't THAT dark outside when I took these. I was still walking around barefoot. [something that I'm terrified of doing in the dark] My camera just makes everything look like it is 1 A.M.)



My WONDERFUL WATERMELON! I am so excited at how it's growing! Last year we planted a watermelon plant, and it grew a watermelon the size of a (rather small) fist. And then it stopped growing. This watermelon is already bigger, and growing, and grrrowing, and GROWING! Yay!

Wonderful random news!

I've been pretty busy lately with no time to post! Our family had a blast on the 4th, when we traveled out to my aunt's house to swim and eat good food. (As you've probably already read on my cousin Madison's blog.) Madison and I are headed to a camp soon, and that will be AWESOME! We are both really excited!! And still more exciting information, is that my father just read Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening, and the very next day took me to Lowes to buy all the material's for building a square foot garden! He (my father) was raised a farm boy, son of a county extension officer (someone who helps farmers with bug/disease/varmint problems). He has tons of experience with gardening/farming. It's what he majored in at colledge. He read the book, and immeadiently wanted to try it out! There are so many benefits to square foot gardening! A sfg is easily protected from deer/other varmints, you don't have to walk on the soil that covers the plant's roots (that harms the root system), you don't have to plant or cull so much, it's a portable garden, there are virturally no weeds, and there are many, many other benefits. Check out Mel Bartholomew's website here. We've finished building the first frame, I can't wait to plant my seeds!

Peas and Bees

Interesting news today.
The nice news, is that I was able to harvest my pole beans and cow peas yesterday, and they made MORE than enough for dinner. We even have enough for lunch tomorrow! I was so excited, because I've read that peas take so much work to grow and shell and cook, with so little gain, that they aren't really worth growing. Some of the peas I got were a little under-developed and green, but they were all right. (Just REALLY hard to shell.) Anyhoo, they tasted wonderful, and we had a great meal.










(All the scraps!)

The not so nice news, is that I stepped on a bee or yellowjacket this morning and got stung on my foot. I was watering my herbs, and I decided to remove the little bitty mamosa tree that was trying to grow in my dill planter. Being so kind hearted towards plants, instead of just ripping it out and throwing it away, I gingerly dug it out, planning to replant it in a heap of old potting soil behind our house. A few feet away from it, practically before my foot even hit the ground, I pulled it away with a yelp. I immediently hobbled away crying, so I never got a look at what stung me.
I've been stung by yellow jackets before, but never a bee, hornet or wasp so I don't even know what those feel like. My mum gave me a Benadryl right after it happened, and I kept an ice pack on it for a while, so the swelling isn't TOO bad. There wasn't a stinger, so I didn't have to worry about that, but my foot did swell up enough that I can't walk on it right. I've been an invalid all day, which is kind of fun! :P Hehe, I'm just kidding of course, I've still been helping around with what chores I can. I would post a picture of my foot for you... ... ... tehehe... but it looks a little... erm, well... FAT. :P Hehe. I told my mum, "If this is what it feels like to have fat feet, I'm surely never gonna be fat!!" The few times I've tried walking flat footed, it's felt *really* weird. And it hurts, so I don't really try.

My Garden!

Hey all! My computer has been having a little internet trouble for the past few days. I'm having to play catch-up on commenting and posting! (I also lost my camera for a few days...) :P

I'll hopefully do a post on all my knitting projects soon. I'll take pictures of my stash. It's been growing... and grooowing... and GROWING... I really need to stop buying yarn!
I'd love to hear your silly stash stories, those of you who knit, so be sure to comment on my next post!

So I'm FINALLY getting around to posting pictures of my garden! I've been meaning to do this for forever. So, here they are. (Now that my computer works and I've found my ever elusive camera!)

Watermelon climbing the fence

Teeny tiny watermelon. Just a little bigger than a pea.


Cucumber plant (No sign of any cukes yet though!)


Cow Peas! I'm really excited about these this year! We have a great crop, and there are NO YELLOWJACKETS!! Last year all the cow peas came in at different times, so that we'd only have a hand full of them ready for eating at one time. AND they were always COVERED with yellowjackets. I'm ALLERGIC and deathly afraid of yellowjackets.


This is what color they will become.



Here are some pole beans. There probably won't be enough to make a meal out of, so we'll just combine them with the cow peas!


Another shot of the pole beans. Next year I want to plant Sugar Snap Peas.


Sandy carrot leaves...


One of our weird, pitiful crook-necked squash. We usually have TONS and TONS of squash, but this year I've only picked two I think. The reason being, we had a nasty, rainy, wet week where several of the plants got powdery mildew. We've grown squash every year of my LIFE I think, and I don't ever remember having such a small crop of squash!


The hideous mildew...
(And maybe some dirt...)


One of our many bell peppers. (We have red, yellow and green.)

Banana pepper. My attempt at showing how big it was by using my thumb as a scale failed... my thumb is closer to the camera than the pepper, therefore, bigger.


Cherry tomatoes


A tall tomato plant (taller than I am...) (looks taller in real life.)



And a small tomato plant. (The size of my foot.)


Sideways watermelon plant and cucumber plant.


My precious pole beans! (I love them!)


My precious pole beans eaten by horrendous june bugs. I despise june bugs. The only organic way I know of to control them is to pick them off one by one. Or, shake them off into a jar. And let them die slowly and painfully. (Lol, not really. I hate to see ANYTHING suffer. EVEN june bugs. So I throw a couple of hydrogen proxide soaked cotton balls in with em' or fill the jar with water so the little buggers drown fast.)


And the adorable, semi-evil snail in my garden! I named him Dill. Isn't he cute?


And a picture for scale. Yes, that is my pinkie. :P Dill is small and cute. :)

Herb Pictures

It'n this cute? I thought up this little idea because there were three basil plants in the one container I bought, and I had run out of pots! I did another cement block with extra dill.
Parsley


Dill

Pinapple Sage (My two favorite colors! Purple and dark green!!)

Basil

Oregano.


Bee Balm



Anyhoo, these are my herbs! I'm gonna (hopefully) post some pictures of my garden soon! (My pole beans and cow peas are finally in!!)