Bloom Where You Are Planted

Hm, that is what I strive to do - "Bloom". I so love this time of year, I become re-energized and excited. Plenty of sunshine, but not the blistering heat of summer and winter is still far enough in the distance to push it to the back of my mind. This picture is of my small flower garden outside the kitchen window, it seems to take most of the summer for the flowers to grow and mature, deciding which ones are going to take over and which ones will struggle to survive. I have no rhyme or reason to the design - whatever I had at the moment was planted. If I had only known how everything was going to look maybe I would have rearranged a little. I guess I am so amazed that I can actually keep these beautiful flowers alive I don't care where they are :) Maybe the Guardian Angel in the middle helped. Perhaps that is how we should all view our lives, we are where God planted us and whatever the circumstances, or whomever we were planted with - we should just all "BLOOM"

End of Summer .......

Well here we are at the end of summer, a new school year begins. We have so many nieces and nephews, friends kids and the oldest grandson starting school. What this means to me is the start of fall - my absolute FAVORITE time of year. Now if the weather starts cooperating and cools down just a smidgen I will be happy. I want to enjoy my flowers for a couple more weeks then I will be dragging out the fall decorations - I can't wait!! Busy week coming up and I am so looking forward to the Labor Day weekend. Adam and Salena will be here (unless the Marines pull something stupid) Hopefully we can spend most of it at camp. Then Sunday we are having Raymond's 7th birthday here. (How can I possibly have a grandchild this old??) The pics are from our weekend of work, we canned tomatoes, marinara sauce and froze corn. When I came home from work Friday night my hubby and oldest son had been shopping and there were 7 bushels of tomatoes and 4 bushels of corn on the porch - no such thing as a relaxing weekend around here. Tonight we are making home-made chili sauce.

Early Harvest

We are well in to the garden season and exciting it has been so far. This photo shows some of our early harvest; first pick of peas (hubby is shucking them while I blog), turnips that grew very fast this spring, and some samples from the first batch of strawberry freezer jam. I was busy all week with Vacation Bible School so my Mom made the freezer jam for us :) I missed getting a picture of the early spinach before it was done - hopefully I am on the ball the rest of the summer. Looking forward to a banner crop this year !

It Is That Time Of Year Again...

Hard work profits much :)

Mm Mm Good!!

Hubby's "man room" doubles as a nursery.

It may be cold out and the threat of frost won't be gone for about eight more weeks, but it is the perfect time to start the garden. For my family members who may read this blog, don't cry when you see Grandpa's rototiller, smile because you know he is in heaven telling Ray how to do it just right. He already has the spinach, beets, carrots and peas planted. We really have a head start this year and hope for a banner crop. The second picture is my beautiful strawberry plants peaking out from under the hay that hubby covered them with to protect from late frosts. The third picture is not just dirt - it is tomatoes and green pepper plants germinating and we are anxiously waiting for them to poke through the soil and become hale and hearty enough to transplant.