Summa, Summa, Summa-time

drivin the tractor at the zoo today

Like I said in my last post, I love summers in Portland and am so looking forward to enjoying a few weeks in a row here. 

The plants are in full bloom, we have enjoyed several pints of home grown blueberries, our zucs are going nuts, the pole beans are ready and the tomatoes are getting red.

The roses are on their second big round of blooms and that is bringing humming birds, butterflies and bees to our garden-I'm luvin' it!  And I can't forget to mention gorgeous sunsets.

I love all the outdoor BBQs and other types of celebrations as well.  We got to celebrate our friend, Heather last weekend at her baby shower.  The theme was baseball as her husband is a coach.

A little picture of her opening the quilt I made for her baby girl.

Forgive me on this video being shakey, but if you want to see a cute toddler enjoying the summer, here you go. :)  I might just be a bit opinionated on the cute part. And you probably are wondering how we ever got such a monstrosity of a plastic toy in our yard-well, I offered to sell it for my work (I am a pediatric occupational therapist) as we did not have room for it, and, well, I guess I didn't need to travel far for a buyer-me.

Enjoy your day and hope you get to enjoy some time outside.  I'm off to research kitchen stuff while the tots sleep!

Summer Harvest

We have shared a garden with our next door neighbors for the past 3 summers in the grass (now dirt) strip that divides our two driveways...it's the perfect use of space and gives us some super yummy summer-time food. I am still wondering if we will be daring enough to try some winter crops this year as well.




Picture of the garden...a great use of virtually unusable space

Our first large crop of the summer includes:

• walla walla onion (a left-over from last year, funny being that none of the onions grew lat year-this one was supper tasty)
• lettuce (we just planted the 2nd crop)
• green beans
• zucchinis
• cucumbers-they are amazing and super easy to grow
• tomatoes, all varieties, probably ready to start picking next week
  
• carrots-they are only a couple inches long right now
• cilantro-it died, I did not cut it fast enough
  
• mint
• basil
• blueberries, these we just planted on the north side of the backyard so we'll see if they survive the 107 degree heat we have today! A Portland tie record