Munch, crunch, munch

Day 3 of the Rabbit Wars. Epic fail. Moving on to Plan B.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 12

Welcome to our garden on THURSDAY for a change. It's nice to chat on the right day and stuff has been happening around here.

Matthew saying, "Cheese."

Miracle of miracles, Matthew became interested in watering again.

I'd been so proud that in 100+ weather I was able to nurse my lettuce along and had high hopes of being able to pick a fresh tomato and harvest the lettuce finally. Those dreams are dead. Thank you rabbits, hope you feel better.

Matthew behind his tomato plant. I wish the tomatoes would hurry up and ripen. The leaves are curling, which I'm afraid is bad news.

Finally, a welcome visitor to our garden!!!

Nope, no blood has been shed here yet....for now it's just tabasico sauce. Hopefully it encourages the rabbits to not eat our beans. The blooming parts of the green beans have been pretty much munched off.

Except for a plant or 2, all the purple green beans have been mowed to the ground. And 3 of my noodle beans vine was munched through so now their vine is in a glass of water in hopes they can mature and be eaten.

And the best growing tomato volunteer has been heavily munched by a horned tomato worm. It was his misfortunate day to also take a nap on it.

Thankfully the red noodle beans are really blooming. If their vine doesn't get munched, we might have some beans. I picked these 2 and will eating them tomorrow. Yum!

Silver-ish tray

Last Thursday we got up early and drove to KC so that we could be one of the first people in the doors at the Schlepp Sisters Antique Show. There was lots of pretty items, but very few I could justify buying. By there was one I was willing to buy...

This giant silver tray. I use silver loosely as I'm don't think it's truly sterling silver. Maybe plated very, very thinly on the top...

It has little legs, love that!

It even has a little rust in the corners. That makes me like it even more!

I can't wait to have a coffee table again. It will go right in the center to show off whatever it is I want to show off. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas will be particularly fun!

After shopping we got to see my aunt for a few hours which was fun! Well worth getting up for.

What we've been doing for the last month (cause it hasn't been blogging)

Well, I'll tell you, we watched them harvest the wheat.

I've been running after beautiful butterflies trying to get the right shot.

We found the most precious, perfect blue egg. It lasted 3 days till Matthew grasp it too hard.

Taking photos of beautiful flowers.

Working on clearing out clutter and making Matthew's room, Matthew's.

Finally this month, I've started making the rounds to see friends. I've visited 3 cities and hung out with 7 of them now. This particular friend I haven't seen in over 7 years and by chance he was going in, as I was going out. I had to stop and take a photo, cause it's not everyday that some takes you out on the lake and whips you off a tube so hard that when you land you think you must have broken something. But that's another story.

One particular girl, I won't mention names, cough *ANGELA*, thought she could hide behind a shorter girl.

It's been a full month. One day I'll get the photos off my phone of Matthew and I's trip to see the Lego exhibit.

Summer Reading Program Party

This year when the summer reading program was over, they decided to throw a party and announce the winners at that time.

Drumroll please...

"And for the 3-6 age group Matthew read the most minutes!" Over a 1000 in 6 weeks, but I don't remember the exact figures. He was speechless and looked confused. They gently dumped his bag at his feet. He won the bag, 3 hard back books and The Land Before Time movie. What a haul!

They painted and ate yummy foods and made balloon animals. This is Matthew's pink mouse.

They brought an author in to tell them a story. She acted out the story from her first book. Matthew was totally enchanted. It was a great party.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 11

It has been truly hot and miserable around here. Matthew hasn't had any interest in the garden, except to add more dirt that he's dug out of the dog wallow.

Which has really made our participation a sham in this contest, but that's how it goes with high temps and 4 year olds.

I believe all the radish infestation is aphids, not that I've ever had them before. But it was truly gross. Many plants (10 at least) have said adiou and been burned, along with single leaves. I think we have the situation under control. Some squash plants have more light and I have seen good bugs like ladybug larve and ladybugs and assassin bugs tooling around, so things seem to be going along alright, for now.

The new variety of green bean is blooming prettily. The 1 plant of the old variety has given us some green beans. We might have enough to have a couple beans each now.

Boy, the garden really looks small with me in it. *photo by Matthew

Here he is doing the only other thing he likes to do in the garden right now, get wet.



We have yard long noodle beans growing. I should measure their growth, cause it's fast too.

Here's our macro shot. I can't wait for the 20+ tomatoes to mature.

We are getting sunflower heads growing. I'd say the sunflowers are around 6'5" tall. But that's a guess at this point.

Although aphids seem to love these plants, I love them too for their beauty and the fact that every time I find a squash bug, they are camping out on the radishes. Different plants have different bloom colors, white to dark purple.

I'm in love with the noodle beans blooms too.

I'm officially throwing up my hands with the strawberry seeds. I've gotten them all to sprout and grow and then try to burn up in the sun and heat and now I have a tree frog wallow in the pot. Obviously this isn't my year for strawberries!

To see what other families are doing in the garden go here.
To see our post from last week, that we didn't get linked in time, go here. It talks about the beginning of the aphid saga.

From our house to yours...

Happy Belated 4th! We didn't do much this year, but we had fun anyway. I hope everyone had a marvelous 4th.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 10

Well, we are almost a week late posting this week. It's been so hot out lately, we've been hiding out inside tackling projects. Chiggers have been out in full force causing me to avoid grass like the plague. I never had a single chigger bite until I was pregnant.
We do sneak out to the garden in the evening, after I've doused myself in bug spray from head to toe. This week we discovered some of our small squash plants have grown and are starting to flower.

Last week was my Mom's birthday. Our family bought her 2 kinds of morning glories and some beautiful dwarf zinnas. Matthew helped dig their holes.

This is my one closeup for the week. My camera was not cooperating.

So here is what it looks like now. The yard long beans are flowering. We harvested 7 purple green beans this week. The volunteer tomatoes are flowering. Matthew's tomato bush has over 17 green tomatoes on it. The peppers are flowering and have increased in number. The basil is big. The carrots are still crowded. Some of the radishes are nearing 5 ft tall. I had to pull and burn 5 radish plants because they were covered with little baby bugs. I've seen 2 squash bugs and both times they were on the radish plant (and then squished.) Since the squash all seems to be free of pests I guess the radishes are working out! I discovered I let some radishes go so long they set seed this week as well. Marigolds and nasturtiums are beginning to put on a color show. And last but not least, the sunflowers were 69" and are now taller then me!

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 9

This week our assignment was to send our kids out to the garden to snap photos. Well, except for the 1st 2 photos they are all Matthew's. The first 2 I took because we had our first harvest. Other then that, nothing much has changed in our garden. Things are still growing along, but not producing much yet!


Laying them out carefully for photographing.

Very proud of his tomatoes, that he still thinks are yucky. We have over 12 tomatoes growing. Maybe the lettuce and tomatoes are going to be ready to pick at the same time!

Very excited to call his Dad every few days to tell him how huge Daddy's salsa peppers are getting.

Beautiful butterfly visiting each and every radish bloom and his sunflowers. They were 37 1/2" last week (forgot to mention that.) This week they are 53 1/2". They grow fast!

Rosebush outside the garden.

Very closeup coneflower. Hope you enjoyed Matthew's tour. (He wasn't as into it week as last. He was more interested in dogs and yard and things not related to the garden. Oh well!)

To see more kids perspectives in the garden, go to Kim's post here.