Garden Update: Day 196

Friday, was day 196 of my garden update.

While on vacation, my brother took care of my plants.

My squash plant was all dried up and dunzo.  I kinda figured before I left that it was done but I waited it out.

I went ahead and dumped the plant in my compost pile. I then cut of dead flowers and then just cleaned up a bit on my deck garden.  I then made sure everyone got a nice afternoon drink of water.  My potato plants have big white flowers.  :)  YEY

My pumpkin plants aren't doing good.  :(  They are kinda dried up and there's lots of brown.  :(  I'm guessing some sort of insect has been destroying the leaves.  There's still a bunch of pumpkin flowers so there's still hope that I will get a pumpkin.  We'll see.  I'm not giving up on them yet.

My lemon tree is doing wonderful.  A lot of new green leaves and the lemon is actually starting to turn yellow.  :)

I harvested a bunch of grape tomatoes and I found this guy on a stem on the plant.  I'm guessing the white things on her back are eggs?  GROSS!!!  I put the stem in the compost pile.  Hopefully, she'll make her new home there and off my deck.  :)

My pepper plants are doing great.  I couldn't believe how much the yellow petite pepper plant grew while I was gone.  There's a bunch of little peppers and flowers sprouting.

It's hard to see in this picture but they are there.  :)

I still have my bell peppers growing.  One pepper is actually turning red now.  YEY!  They are all about the size of a baseball.  There's five peppers in total on the plant.

OBX 2013

Last week, we were on vacation in the OBX.  We reserved a beach house a while back with our friends.  We had a great time and the house was awesome.  It has a pool, hot tub and every room has a king size bed with it's own bathroom.  YEY!  It's not ocean front but it's within walking distance to the beach.  We're already thinking of reserving the house again for next year.

I walked down to the beach just about every day to admire the ocean.

Over the steps.....

Beautiful

Shell

Sand Crab

We had a mamma deer and her two babies visit us everyday.  Who knew there were deer at the beach?

I loved the pool.  This is where you found me most of the time.  :)  Here's Nate and me.

Here's some snails I found at the pool.  I kept them by the ladder.

Here's some more of my favorite pictures.

Kristen took this picture for me.  It's a sand heart.

Here's my feet.  I'm sitting at the beach.

This is one of my favorite shots I got.  :)

The only jellyfish we saw.  

We saw a picture on pinterest of these girls spelling love with their bodies and Nate thought the guys cold do this and make it so awesome.  

NAILED IT!

Another pinterest idea is everyone's flip flops making a heart.  :)

My sunglasses in the sand.  Kristen took this picture for me.

Here's Nate being silly on the boogie board.  (Kristen's pic)

I'm on the stairs on way back to house to swim in the pool and here's a picture of everyone at the beach.  Nate is out in the ocean.  LOL

Here's a picture of a sunset.  I took this at Miller's Waterfront Restaurant.

We had a good time.  It's nice to be able to get away from work and real life even if it's only for a week.

RVA Swappers Meet

My friend, Kristen was telling me about a Food Swappers meet in Richmond (RVA) that a co-worker she knew had gone too.  It sounded like a lot of fun so we figured next time there was a meet we would go and see for ourselves.

A few weeks ago, RVA Swappers made an announcement about having an anniversary meet on 8/26. Kristen, Ashley and I all signed up to go.  :)

Once we checked in we bought some raffle tickets to try to win some cool prizes.  (Ball jars, gift certificates)  We didn't win anything.  Ah well.  It was still fun to try though.

We set up our items on the swap table.  You basically bring 6 items.  One for tasting and five to swap/trade.  The items are either homemade or homegrown.  Anywhere from jams, baked goods, garden veggies etc. 

 I decided to bring my homemade vanilla extract.  I know it's good stuff.  It's the only extract I use and I've sold a ton of it so I know it's a good product.

Here's my bottles set out on the table.

Here's some other items.  In this picture you can see fig jam, blackberry jam, peach butter, and taco seasoning.

There was some fabulous refreshments.  The deviled eggs were delish.  I don't really like chick peas but the two squared bowls in the front were fried chick peas and they were AWESOME!  I really loved them.

I tried the yellow cheese. It was very good and creamy.  :)

Here's the swap table with some more goodies.  There was a salted caramel sauce, truffles, bbq sauce, and some cookies.

Here's the truffles.  One was made with champagne and the other with red wine.  

I tried the champagne one and it was good.  I wanted to trade but by the time I went to ask the lady had already traded all of them.

Ashley, made and brought lactation cookies.  They are good for women who are breastfeeding b/c it helps you produce more milk.  If you're not breastfeeding then it's just a normal cookie.  It's sorta like a granola bar.  They are really tasty.  I love them and I think they would be a good breakfast cookie.

Kristen, made taco seasoning.  Homemade taco seasoning is the best!  

It's so much better than using those packets.

Towards the end there was cake.  The icing had coffee in it.  I don't like coffee and I could taste it right away.  The cake was good.

Here's the group of swappers.

Here's a picture, I took this morning of all my goodies.

The chewy coconut lime cookies were really good.....and they are all gone as I type this.  haha

My other goods.

We had fun.  Now that we know how the whole process works we know the next one will be even better.  I hope to be able to have one in my own town.  I have so many ideas of items I could make to trade for.  :)

Garden Update: Day 184

This past week was a crazy one.  It's one that I would rather not have to deal with ever again.  

On Wednesday, I was stopped in traffic at a light on my way to work and was rear ended, pushing my car into the vehicle in front of me.  My corolla was sandwiched between a suv and a pickup truck.  :(  I'm okay but sore and I have a sprained neck.  When I saw the car approaching I knew it was going to hit me and I tensed up and grabbed the steering wheel and closed my eyes and braced myself for the impact.  Tensing up is normal instinct when you see you're going to get hit but it makes your muscles hurt afterwards which is what I'm dealing with now.  It sucks.  :(

Now I am waiting to see if my car is going to be totaled or if it's at all fixable.

Now onto some happier things......My Garden.

On Friday, I picked my number 15 squash.  :)

I decided to take some of my harvest into work Friday morning to share with others.  They didn't last.  They were grabbed up within minutes of setting them on a table.  :)

This is my butterfly bush/tree that my mother-in-law planted in the front yard.  It's doing really good.

It's covered with lots of pretty purplish flowers. 

Now onto my container garden.  I cleaned up some stuff and checked over everything.  I got rid of the other big boy tomato plant.  No more tomatoes were going to be harvested so it was time to clean it up.  Some of the ones left on the plant had tomato rot so I put the plant in my compost pile.  I also dumped the zucchini plants into the compost pile.  The plants was all dried up and there wasn't anymore zukes on it.  I figured it was time to get rid of it.  I also got rid of the 4 small potato pots.  They smelled horrid.  It was nasty.  BLECH  So, I dumped them in the compost pile too.

Here's the compost pile.  I have the pots sitting out to dry up a bit.  I need to wash them out before I put them in the shed.

My pie pumpkin plant is doing good.  The jack pumpkins are good too.  All 3 plants have flowers.  I haven't seen pumpkins yet but I have my fingers crossed.

My yellow gerbera daisies.  :)  You can see my grasshopper friend on one of the big squash leaves.  :)

Here's my grape tomatoes that I've harvested over the last few days.  :)

I will probably make my chicken risotto with these tomatoes this week.  I'm going to save the seeds and add them to my seed bank and plant them next year.  

These grew from seeds I saved from a batch of grocery store bought grape tomatoes.  :)

Do you think I have enough water jugs?  :)

My rose plant.  It's weird that they are different from each other.  The rose on the bottom is more like a common rose and the others look more like a carnation.  hmmmmm

My lemon tree is happy.  My lemon is still green.  I hope it turns yellow.  The plant is very healthy and it continues to get new growth.