Updates and a coupon :)

Well, I feel terrible.  Every day life has taken a nose dive into the deep end it feels like!  I've been busy as a bee.  Over this last weekend I did Senior pictures for the daughter of a woman who works with my husband (well isn't that a mouth full?).  They  turned out extremely well!  I've also been working on getting a shop set up for my photography!  Now you can buy prints of my photos :)  To celebrate with you, my wonderful blog viewers, I have made a coupon just for you!  Visit my photo gallery and store front here!  After selecting your purchases, enter the code michwife11 and you'll get 10% off your entire purchase!  This coupon expires 10/31/11 so enjoy it while it's here!

What my harvests are beginning to look like!

The garden has gotten huge!  It doesn't seem to stop growing these days!  (this makes for a happy me!)  Both my zucchini plants and my tomato plants (the non hanging ones) are getting to where they reach near my shoulders when I walk into it!  This heat wave here in Michigan has made spending time out in the garden a bit harder (plus I have to water every single night! and twice a day for Lulu), but the plants seem to love it so I can't really complain too much.  I've been freezing green beans and zucchini.  I even made zucchini bread (at the request of a friend) and zucchini and ricotta tart!  (This recipe can be found on Rachel Ray's website and is divine!)  This is the first harvest where cucumbers have been high in number so I think tonight or tomorrow I'll be working on making my first batch of pickles to store.  I think my green bean plants are coming to an end in their production, but we certainly have gotten quite a bit of them if you ask me!  Once this heat wave ends and I'm not so busy (my schedule exploded a bit for this week) I'll go out and try to get some pictures of how large the plants are getting.  It's a very pretty and comforting (for me anyways) sight.  The only complication we've had lately are June bugs (nasty buggers) and the zucchini near the potato plants are having blossom rot issues.  I guess that's it for now!  I'll be back soon I'm sure :)  Good luck everyone and have a great end of the week!

Getting Ready for the 4th of July!

Things have been crazy around here.  I've had a bit of a bug (sick when I eat or drink but otherwise fine) that finally seems to be going away and we've  had a friend in the hospital.  I finally got to get out to my garden to take inventory and to really look at it!  Lulu is so much happier now than she was before!  Look at this picture!

Look at all the new baby tomatoes!

I'm excited.  the one tomato I've been nursing on her (you can see it in the background) has some pretty serious blossom rot.  Is it bad that when I look at this guys I see fried green tomato blts? 

At the end of the yellow blossom you can see the beginnings of the first baby zucchini!

While on the topic of baby produce, I've found my first baby zucchini!  I'm very excited to see these taking off so well!  I haven't dug around through all of them yet to see how many "baby" zucchinis I have, but with as many flowers as I've seen, I should get a good turn out!

A Honey Dew Blossom

The Carrots

My honey dew is growing like crazy!  It keeps sending out little vine tendrils like the cucumber plant does, so in order to contain it, I'm considering putting it in a upside down tomato cage so it can grasp onto something and grow up a bit instead of just out.  I'm not sure.  This is the first time I've grown a melon.  I just watch it grow up, up, up, fall over from the weight of itself and do it all again with the little vine tendrils just laying next to it straight.  I'm going to do more research, but that's my best idea at this time. 

The carrots are so happy!  I'm really excited to eat them!  Well, I guess I can say that about my entire garden.  ;)  Me (being the strange person I am) can't help but look at carrots and be reminded of cilantro.  The leaves just look so similar to me!

Alona is beginning to have leaves bud!

Our little rose bush is finally growing leaves of her own!  I'm glad.  I was really worried about her.  She wasn't in the best of shape when we brought her home from the store and then I was worried that she wasn't getting enough light, but she's growing.


Our friend who was in the hospital was mugged and attacked early Monday morning.  He's out of the danger zone after the surgery to see how bad the skull fracture was and to fix it, but he sadly has no health insurance to pay for this and (since he was mugged and his car stolen) now has to deal with a stolen identity, and a slew of other very hard things.  We're working on getting a charity/benevolent organization together for him to help him.  I'll update you all with more once that happens.  In the meantime, This is my crafting blog and the craft I put together to cheer him up while he's in the hospital.  I'll post again soon everyone!  Have a safe and happy holiday to those of you here in the US and everyone else, have a great weekend!  (if I don't post again before that)