Sweet 100's

Today Kurt emailed me photos of the tomatoes and peppers we planted on April 22nd. I couldn't believe how big the plants have gotten while I've been here in California. He ate some of the Sweet 100's tonight and said they were "DELICIOUS!" I can't wait to go home and make some BLT's!!!

Square Foot Gardening - sort of

I miss our California garden and love the square foot gardening method. This is the best we can do living in an apartment. Tonight we planted some tomatoes and peppers. Hopefully we'll have success with our "round foot" garden!

Pepper Proof

Yes, Annette, we DID plant those peppers.
Here's proof.

RED, GREEN, YELLOW AND ORANGE PEPPERS

TOMATOES!

OUTSIDE STUFF

- DAY OFF

This morning a I took a walk around our property.

Rusty and Rolly came to greet me. Who would ever have imagined that I'd learn to love a couple of goofy goats!

I was glad to see our new lemon tree produced "1" lemon this year!

Our first Satsuma Mandarin Orange!
Can't wait 'til next year!

Inside the house we're growing red amaryllis for the wedding. We're hoping the blossoms last another 2 weeks or we'll have to come up with plan B.

- OUR GARDEN

Today I picked some strawberries in the garden. I love it out there. Ever since Kurt put the drip system in, everything is flourishing. It's so fun to walk out and pick a pepper when I need one. We're loving the zucchini and cucumbers and can hardly wait for the tomatoes to ripen (they're just starting to turn red). This is the third year we've planted a garden since we moved to Placerville. We had to put up a 6 foot fence to keep the deer out and build grow boxes because the soil is REALLY rocky here. It just gets better every year.

Our strawberry patch.

There's nothing better than fresh picked strawberries!

We have 2 watermelons so far. They're about the size of volleyballs.

Two of our pumpkins. They're turning orange already. I'm not sure they'll still be around by Halloween.

Tomatoes and peppers.

Some of our bell peppers.

Photo of the garden from our back deck.

- BUSY SATURDAY

This morning Tyler came over and he and I had a car wash in the driveway. My car was still pretty buggy from my trip to Utah and he hadn't washed his for awhile either. We sure love our Camrys!

Kurt and I planted the flowers and shrubs we bought last night. We planted Alyssum and Vinca in front of the dining room window and boxwoods down below the window. It sure looks nice to have some color there now. Thanks for the inspiration Angie and Greg!!!

This afternoon Kurt and I attended a session at the Sacramento Temple. Nathan Mackey went through for the first time. Several of our ward members came to be there with him. I sure love having a temple so close by!!!

Tonight Kurt, Alyssa and I attended Cherise Wehe and Arland Baker's wedding in Camino and then their reception in Diamond Springs. Bishop Gastaldi married them. It was a really fun night.

- ZUCCHINI EVERYWHERE!!!!

So, our garden is producing zucchini faster than we can keep up. I'm serious when I say it grows 6 inches in one day! Kurt picked another basket of zucchini this afternoon when he got home from work. He sauteed some for our dinner with a little olive oil, onions and some bacon. It was SO good! I tried to do my part by making zucchini bread before I went to bed. I'll have to figure out what else to do with all this zucchini. Anyone have any good recipes????


ZUCCHINI BREAD

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon 3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil 2 1/4 cups white sugar 3 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 cups grated zucchini 1 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2.	Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3.	Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4.	Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

- MY GARDEN

This morning Kurt and I put landscape fabric down between the raised beds in our garden and covered the area with gravel. It looks so much better now. It was nearly 100 degrees outside when we finished.

Kurt, weed whacking before we rolled the landscape fabric out.

Covering the area to keep the weeds out.

Half yard of pea gravel - probably about 1/4 of what we'll need.

We completed about 1/3 of the project today. It just got too hot and then we had a summer thunderstorm. What a perfect way to spend the first day of summer! To celebrate, we picked the first zucchini of the season from our garden.