Lost in the Garden

This time of year is lovely. The sun is still warm during the day and the birds are still singing in the trees.

There is still lots of time for trips to the lake on the weekend or the park after supper before the sun goes down.

My daughter started kindergarten today. She was SO excited and she had a great first day. She had her school supplies ready to go and we went shopping for a "first day of school" dress. That is something that we always did growing up too. We always had a new outfit for the first day of school. Her outfit is a dress with a pink top and a pleated plaid skirt. It even has a little sequined pocket for a little sparkle.

This time of year the garden is a wild tangle of greenery, flowers and vegetables. Our garden is about 20 by 20 feet and it produces really well. We planted some of our usual staples; peas, carrots, onions, sunflowers, sweet peas and tried out cucumbers, pumpkins and green peppers this year. We lost the pumpkins but everything else is doing quite well and we should have quite a bit to freeze or can for the winter. We even got a few tomatoes from our plants for the first time ever this year!

In addition to the produce from the garden, we will stock up on corn on the cob, potatoes and sweet peppers from the farmers market. We are also hoping to make a trip to the farm to pick apples in the fall.

The extra corn on the cob, carrots,  sweet peppers, peas and onions will be frozen. We use the food processor on the onions and then freeze them in ice cube trays so they are easy to store and easy to use later on. The apples will be dried into apple chips and we also usually make up bags of apple pie filling for the freezer. It makes it really easy to make a pie when you want one. We just use our regular apple pie filling recipe and seal it in freezer bags. It does work best if you freeze it flat instead of in one big blob.

Our garden has been a lot of fun for our whole family. This year my daughter and her friend helped me plant a few things and we all love eating the vegetables fresh from the ground. It has also helped to teach my daughter how things grow and she likes to help us take care of our little slice of paradise.