Oh, the ideas!

One of the perks of working at a library:

When books are not circulating, we weed them. (Interesting that its a gardening term isn't it?) This just means deleting it from our system. But what to do with the book now? We have a company that we send the books to and they resell them. However, employees get to dig through and pick out the treasures first! This is my recent haul from a stack of crafting books (I had to refrain myself from taking the whole stack!)

My Eggplant!

On Monday, I was delighted to find this small treasure growing on my eggplant:

 

On Tuesday, I was thrilled to see how much it had grown!

 

 

Yesterday, I was over the moon to find this jem!

 

Isn't it beautiful?

My Garden Salad

Consisting of produce only grown in MY GARDEN!

Spinach, lettuce, beet leaves, radish, and peas. The flavor was AMAZING!

Up Close and Personal

I have been trying a different approach to watering, rather than just using the hose and soaking everything. I went to Home Depot and picked up a bright orange bucket and lid. I fill the bucket up and leave it to sit outside all day. The sun warms the water up and (according to the book I just read) kills some of the chemicals in the water. I found a little bucket (I think it used to be a cottage cheese bucket?) to scoop the water onto the plants. Each plant (or square) gets about 1 scoop, depending on how recently I watered or how hot it has been. This technique has gotten me down on a closer level with the plants, and I have to say, I am loving it! Just look at all the textures and color variations!

 

Salad-In-A-Jar

One of my goals for this:

Is to become this:

A salad in a jar!
My favorite grab-and-go lunch!

Step 1: Collect the supplies

Step 2: Pour the dressing into the jars. As little or as much as your like!

Step 3: Start with hard veggies. I usually use carrots first.

Step 4: Add soft veggies. I added bell peppers and cucumber.

I found an interesting surprise inside one of the peppers: a pepper growing inside a pepper?

Step 5: Add the lettuce.

Step 6: Enjoy!

These will keep for 7-10 days. I made 5 jars last night. It took 10 carrots, 2 bell peppers, 2 cucumbers, and then I just stuffed lettuce in until each jar was full. Probably about 1 cup each.

Think my garden will supply me with these goodies?

The "Plot" Thickens

Gardening and skirts

They don't go very well together!

Last week I went to the first gathering of a crafting club. There are only 5 of us so far, but we are hoping to have more join us. The idea is to share our different crafting expertise so we can all learn new abilities. First up: we are learning to sew a circle skirt!

I went shopping yesterday and found some fabric:

The elastic band will be the waist/belt of the skirt. I am excited to see how it works out this Wednesday.

One of the reasons we all decided on a skirt was two of the girls are doing a no-pants-summer challenge. They want to wear skirts all summer long. I thought, hey, I could do that too!

Wearing a skirt to work=no problem.

Wearing a skirt to the garden after work on a windy day=big problem.

So I am giving my summer challenge some leeway. 

Skirts at work.

 Pants at the garden!

I did manage to get a little work done today. I got some tomato cages in:

Then I stood for awhile and admired the plants...

Look at those cabbages! It makes me so happy! 

Beets and spinach 

Radish 

Peas! 

Corn and beans