something funny...

Cute Stuff

There's been some cute stuff going on around here this week...

Here's the kitty Vincent got for his birthday. We think its a girl. He named her Socks.

She's pretty frisky and fun!

Vincent Through the Years

Today is Vincent's 7th birthday!

Here are photos taken of him from newborn till now, every 6 months. My how he's grown!

Walter the Rooster

Well here's our adopted rooster... not exactly what you have in mind when you think of a rooster, is he? We're getting used to each other lately... he doesn't peck me near as much as he used to. A friend of mine that saw him for the first time last week kept asking me,

"what's wrong with him?". Gramps calls him the rooster from the movie Pet Cemetery. He adds a little comical humor to the chicken yard. He's as sweet as can be to our 2 year old hen, Vinny. We'll see how he is with the 3 month olds that I recently introduced to the yard. He did peck at one this morning. Just keeping the teenagers in line I suppose.

Check out Walter's crow... he gets a bit of laryngitis at the end:

Me vs. Spaghetti Sauce Canning

I won!

It all began Sunday around 3:30pm...

Actually it all began a few days ago when I received an abundance of tomatoes from our neighbor's garden.

To peel the tomatoes, dip them briefly in boiling water...

Then an icy cold bath... the peel slips right off.

Francesca enjoyed some tomato while waiting for her mommy to hold her...

Here's a portion of the 20+ pounds of peeled home grown tomato goodness...

Here's some of them seeded and squeezed of most of their juice.

I ended up with 40 oz of tomato juice.

Soon Jason will enjoy some home-made bloody mary's.

Mommy holding her precious tomato stained princess...

More ingredients to be added:

onion, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, garlic, red pepper...

More yummy natural vitamin c and lycopene...

There's my new monster of a pressure cooker! After I cooked the sauce and ladled it into the 9 jars, it was about 8:30. Once I got the pressure up to 11 pounds, they processed for 25 minutes.

All processed and ready to be put up!

Camping at Pi Pi Valley

We had a fun 1-night camp in Pi Pi (pronounced Pie Pie) Valley with another family from our Pray and Play group. It was so beautiful there. I didn't bring my camera to the water area to get pics but that was really pretty and the most fun.

Francesca really had fun gettin' dirty at her first camping trip...

A little dirt never killed anyone... right?

Beautiful trees everywhere

Bye Bye Pi Pi!

Garden Update

Here's some photos from our garden this week. The vertical gardening is going pretty well. I like how the veggies are kept off the dirt so they stay clean, mostly bug free, and are easily harvested.

Here is our pumpkin patch in the "triangle" garden area. I know I planted these too close together but I do every year. One year I will learn my lesson. maybe going back and reading my blog garden posts will help!

The cucumbers are the most abundant produce this year so far. These are the burp-less variety. I also have slicing cucumbers. One day this week I picked 9 cucumbers in one day. It seems about every 4 days or so I get a bunch.

Below is our mini-stand of corn with pole beans climbing the stalks. Jason read about this method in a book.

See the bean vine?

Black Beauty Eggplant. I made some eggplant parmesean last week for my first time.

Serrano chile peppers. These are the type of peppers Herdez uses, Jason's favorite jarred salsa. We just got a pressure cooker in the mail today so I will can our own version of Herdez.

Here was some sad news this week. A gopher got to my biggest watermelon plant. So sad... hopefully we smoked him out with a smoke bomb tossed in his tunnel. Here is a pic of the wilted plant. I thought perhaps the drip irrigation wasn't working properly in this square foot. But then I discovered the pile of dirt nearby and a hole.

Here's the watermelon that seemed to be doubling in size almost every day.

Some good melon news... the cantaloupe are doing great! Here are some fuzzy baby fruit...

Here's one quite a bit bigger...

And here's one almost ready for the picking! This is my first year with cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers.

Fragrant sweet basil.

And lookey here... that is not a hose! I found this serpent this morning, just two feet away from me pulling weeds. Yikes! Any tips on how to deter snakes from a lush garden?

Look in the middle of this photo and you will see his slimy little head. Click on any photo to see it larger.