garden tour + life lately

Hello!

I wanted to pop in for a quick minute and share where our garden is at, and also a bit of what we’ve been up to lately.  Life has been full of fun and so much beautiful sun.  I just love every minute we can get outside.  The kids and I have gone strawberry picking a couple times to Philbrook Farms.

They are both always covered in strawberries and always eat their fair share whenever we go.  Thankfully the farm says they don’t mind the little ones munching on as many strawberries as they want. 🙂  I turned our second strawberry picking trip into some amazing strawberry honey jam.

I am loving this pectin my friend told me about.  Low sugar jams are my thing and the actual recipe on the box calls for 4 cups of crushed berries to just 1/2 a cup of honey.  Perfectly sweet-tart and set just right.  I highly recommend it.

Jacob and I spent a day last weekend tackling our attic mess.  It was an embarrassing disaster up there.  So much of a scary mess we just kept putting it off until we finally could no more.  There was 7 years worth of shoving things up there and it wasn’t pretty.

We took about a 1/3 of it to the dump (all that pictured up there), a 1/3 set aside for a garage sale/donating and the other 1/3 was nicely organized into boxes and stored in the actual storage closets in the attic.  Now it’s all open space up there.

We’ve been tackling so many spots in our house to really de-clutter and organize.  It’s amazing to realize how less really is more.  Our spaces look better and it just feels better to have less around.  So much of it we didn’t really need anyways.  There are so many more spots to tackle but we’re making good progress.  I’ve spent a lot of my free kid nap time working on the de-cluttering the past couple weeks.

Now onto the garden tour!  This is definitely my best garden yet.  Every year keeps getting better.

    

Herbs: rosemary, sage and lavender + a strawberry patch the kids love to search through.

In the first garden bed I have leeks and onions, spinach that has bolted (I’ll rip out in a few days after I harvest then plant zucchini seeds), tomatillos and carrot seeds planted in that empty spot.

This was my first time trying tomatillos and I’m so happy to see some growing!

Second garden bed: kale (something I grow well!), broccoli, a cucumber plant and 2 tomato plants.  Over planted to the max!

Another first is success with broccoli!  I have one little broccoli crown I’m so very proud of.

My third box includes 2 tomato plants, a cucumber plant, beans and carrot seeds planted in the empty space (recently I had sugar snap peas there).  Again, it’s going to be very full in this one.  With only 3 boxes I like to pack them very full.

I also decided to try growing cantaloupe this year.  To not take up garden bed space he’s in his own little pot near the garden.  Fingers crossed.

Pretty much every evening after dinner the kids and I head outside to water the garden.  Hunter loves helping.  Zoe and I stay clear of his spray the best we can. 🙂

These warm summer like days have been amazing.

What have you planted in your garden?  What have been your favorite fruits and veggies as we go into summer?

I cannot wait to have fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, and of course, all the kale I can eat!

Heather