Thy Bountiful Care

How is our garden growing? It is finally growing quite well. We're about a week or two behind though, due to the cool days we've been having. Now it is a race against the first frost for some of the crops. We need some good hot midwest days to ripen up those cantelope and watermelon.

This was even better to eat than the picture makes it look.

The cool weather is really producing some great raspberries. This is a great year for them.

We went blueberry picking about a week ago. We picked 40 pounds.

Deb's purple beans are producing prodigiously.

Last Monday we had a major food processing day. All this was processed.

That's eight half pints of blackberry jam, nine half pints of raspberry jam, nine pints of pickled green beans, and 20 quarts of green beans. See why I'm behind on my blog?

A Study in Contrasts

Deborah in her charming Kirsten braids

Deborah's purple green bean blossums

Deborah's Hollyhocks

Deborah's goofy brother

Now which one of these things doesn't belong?

Stephen's Golden Sweet Peas

Take a gander at those peas. They are as tall as Stephen. Their flowers and their pods are a pale yellow. I've used them in a couple of stir frys and they are delicious.

Happy Fourth of July Part II

We had a pretty quiet Fourth. I made this very pretty July 4th salad for lunch.

We did go into town to see the firework show with some friends. It takes a long time for the sun to go down nowadays so we brought things to entertain ourselves with while we waited. We played frisbee and some read.

We taught our friends to play Phase 10.

We had some great seats for fireworks and I got a couple of good pictures and one arty one (by mistake).

Fourth of July Part I

My husband's workplace had their annual Fourth of July family picnic the Monday before July 4th. My dh as usual was the grillmaster, assisted by his able bodied intern Adam.

There is a huge playground near the picnic area and Teri and Aaron and Deborah played hide and seek with the other children. Right now they are hiding out from Aaron who was it.

Nathan was thrilled that he got to play in the annual Ultimate Frisbee game. He's in red in the picture.

It did rain off and on during the picnic. The byproduct was two great rainbows. This one went clear across the sky.

Summer is OFFICIALLY here!

About a week later from the previous host, the same family by the lake had a Welcome Summer Party on June 22. We were met with festive punch drinks and little umbrellas.

There was eating...

and swimming...

and fishing!

What's a party without a chance to hit someone? I mean, without a pinata?!

Summer is finally here!

Remember those cold lake pictures from Memorial Day? Well, it has finally warmed up here. We were again invited back to the lake and this time we brought water guns.

Swim boards make good shields.

And who were these brave boys shooting at? A lovely young girl in the lake. Who was shooting back at them.

Deborah preferred the sand and stayed there most of the time we were at our friend's house.

Eventually we had a contest on who could build the highest sand pile. The children in the foreground of the picture were convinced that the other group of children were "cheating" by putting a stick in the middle of their pile.

The Last of the Baseball pictures

Here is the last batch of baseball pictures for the year. First is a great game in which Nathan pitched well and batted well. They won as you can see.

During one of the last practice and games for the boys, the minor league player that came to last year's baseball picnic showed up to watch the boys again. Nathan was thrilled when he hit fly balls out to the boys in the field.

After Aaron's and Nathan's game, he talked to all the boys.

At the end of the season, we participated in the All Star Team Tournament. Nathan pitched all three games and pitched well.

Aaron playing second base.

Our teams didn't do too well but the boys still enjoyed being on the teams. They even got All Stars shirts that they can keep.

So farewell to baseball until next year!