Can you even see it?
My only booming lilacs…
Category Archives: Gardening
My lilacs are coming!
Goodbye lillies!
We decided where a shed needs to go and these lillies were in the way. Anna said people would love them and to offer them for free. So we did. And now they’re gone with no work on our part! Yay!
Picking up our plants from the sitter!
Anna and David watched our buckets o’ plants while we were moving so we wouldn’t have to remember to water them! So tonight was the night we finally went and picked them up!!
Green onion experiment!
A friend told me that green onions would sprout in water so we tried it. And whaddya know? It worked! It’s not enough if you need a bunch of them, but if you just need a few tiny pieces for a garnish, this is perfect.
Our ghetto garden!
Obviously we normally just plant the things in the raised planters, but since we’re moving mid-summer this seemed like the best plan. It also came in handy when we were expecting frost one night!
Unripe tomatoes? No problem.
These were all from a tomato plant we didn’t plant but that came up on their own from seeds the Chipmunks dispersed last year…so they got a late start and will never fully ripen. I hated to waste them so tried roasting them. DELISH. They turned out sooooo good. I ate a bunch straight from the pan and froze the rest.
Before & After: Garden Veg
I’m not sure exactly what this is going to turn into, but I know it’s going to be delicious. How can you go wrong roasting red onions, garlic, and garden fresh tomatoes, banana peppers, and serrano peppers? (The serrano peppers were from our friend’s garden.)
After roasting I decided to just grind it all up into a paste. I think maybe bruschetta or on pizza? It has a little kick to it!
And then I just sliced and froze some jalapenos because we can’t use all these before they go bad!
Today’s garden haul!
I went out to grab a few tomatoes and ended up with a shirt full!
Damn Chipmunks.
The last of our tomatoes are finally turning red. Fun fact: We didn’t plant these. They came up on their own from seeds dropped last year thanks to the chipmunks who were assholes and ate them off the vine.
Winging it in the kitchen…
Holy crap! I just winged the most delicious tomato soup from some old roasted tomatos/onions, some leftover “chicken water” (from those chicken breasts I cooked in the instant pot last week), and a few seasonings. I want to eat this all RIGHT NOW. Maybe this will be dinner…except I doubt either kid will eat it… 😣 How come they don’t know how good they have it to have a mom who cooks real food?!
And yes, that’s a tomato seed in my hair. 😂 I’ve also been chopping the last of our tomatoes for more roasting.
3pm edit: HA! It’s now being turned into goulash!! I put noodles in it…and they kept growing and sucked all the liquid out! So now I’ve added leftover hamburger and a few more spices! And it’s still delicious!
I’m just your friendly neighborhood tomato and basil delivery service.
I went out to casually pick a few tomatoes and ended up with an entire bucket full. So I decided to share the wealth with our neighbors. I also took some basil because that’s overgrown as well!
I’m channeling my Grandpa Hank tonight.
His setup was much more precise…but then you had to be when doing two or more bushels at a time.
These were tomatoes from our own gardens! We’ve been picking them consistently but we can’t eat them fast enough so I had to make something…and pretty much everything starts with peeling the tomatoes.
Our garden a month later.
Whoops! I meant to post this on the 4th. Pretend I did. 🙂
Okay, just over a month. But still. I feel like we need to replant some things. I knew they’d grow, but I didn’t think it would be this fast.
The convenience is worth it.
Time to make guacamole with jalapeños from the garden!! I’m sure I’ll spend more overall than if I went and bought them but the convenience is worth it. 🥑🌰🌶🍹
Our Gurnee Garden
They had flowers in these raised beds but we decided to put in something useful… so we’ll have basil, a few varieties of tomatoes, jalapeños, rosemary, onions, and Owen’s cabbage he brought home from school that we brought back from the brink of death (he left it in his backpack for a week).
Helping daddy plant veggies. In hot pants. Because of course.
Our tree from Halley!
The second graders all brought home trees for Project Plant It. We planted it in a temporary container so we can take it with us when we move this summer!
Our new landscaping.
We’ve hated the front bushes ever since we moved in and we finally got rid of them! Everything else was old and overgrown, too, so we convinced our landlord to buy the new stuff if we removed the old and planted the new stuff. He was game…and especially thrilled about the end-of-season prices…so we now have a full front yard of sod and way too many trees and grasses (but we don’t care because we’ll be long gone by the time they get overgrown).
We’ve been wanting to do this for two years.
Be gone, huge overgrown tree and nasty cedar bushes!
Now we have to get the landlord to purchase the agreed upon replacement stuff so we can get it planted!
Helpful little flower girl
Katie helped Gramma prune her flowers.
My hard workers!
Tom planted the new bushes today as well as put out new mulch! It looks a lot different but I love it and think it’s awesome!
Bushes be gone!
Our bushes have been needing a major trim for quite some time but Tom has just been too busy. He promised me when his night class was over he’d take care of them. Well, he finished his class Tuesday night, so tonight he started trimming them. Katie and I were two doors down hanging with the neighbors. And then I turned around…and saw one entire overgrown bush completely GONE! He said once he started trimming it, all that was left was twigs! And we’ve never liked it, so he just pulled the whole thing out! (We would love to pull out the other ones as well but that’s a lot of work and a lot of expense to fill the space again.) Owen even helped clean up to earn some spending money.
Here’s a before picture (from an old blog post):
The boys and their tools. (Tom just let Owen hold the saw—he didn’t actually get to use it.)
Last of the basil…
We had frost and freeze warnings so I picked ALL of the remaining basil—which ended up to be about eight cups! I made two double batches of pesto for the freezer…then wondered what the hell to do with the rest of it!
I searched my recipes in Evernote…and ended up with Basil Salt! It’s just equal parts basil and kosher salt, ground and then dried in the oven.
The kitchen smelled wonderful!!!
It’s time to freeze the pesto!
I’m finally getting around to harvesting my basil to make pesto for the winter. I picked less than half…so I’ll get to do this again!
This time I made a roasted sauce.
Since we’re not eating as much as we used to (plus Tom is gone for work this week), we can’t keep up with all of our tomatoes…so I made roasted tomato sauce today.
I forgot the onions (doh!) so I had to do another tray. And then it all went in the blender with some fresh basil and whole milk.
Yum!
Tomatoes aplenty!
I picked tomatoes today.
Then added them to what we had left from previous days (on the right). Holy wah.
I had to do something with them before vacation…so I did my first crock pot tomato sauce! With our basil, too!
Then blended the crap out of it with the stick blender because I didn’t skin the tomatoes…and it’s really tasty!
My tomato picker.
We’re still working on making sure she ONLY picks the ripe ones, but as long as we’re guiding (reminding) her she does great!
She’s in there somewhere!
I can taste the bruschetta already!
My first harvest of the season!
The extent of our garden this year.
Back to pots only this year since we’re moving… One tomato plant and four small basil plants (that are already going gangbusters).
