I'm ba-ack! (again)

I'm back.

I'm back with a macro lens.

It's totally awesome.

I just went strawberry picking on Tuesday with my youngest two (out of four) minions of the boy persuasion.  They older boys still had to finish up the last few days of cyber school.  We joined our friend the Science Tutor and his adorable 20 month old daughter.  I came home with about 26 pounds of strawberries. And yes, I picked most of them myself.  The boys ended up keeping the little girl distracted and happy. I think I got about a quart from both the boys together!

It was a gorgeous sunny day with clear blue skies and low 70's. A breath of relief from the 90's the week before.

I have plans for these beauties.

Cake

Jam

Cinnamon Strawberry Buns

All organic and local, of course.  I'm a bit of an organic snob. I admit it.  It's interspersed with plenty of pizza, bagels, and Chinese and sushi I assure you.  I'm not that pure, but I do try to eat mostly whole food and organic grains and dairy.

And ah! I have a garden now!

My awesome hubby built me three raised garden boxes.  I will detail them in a separate post.

We had to put up chicken wire to keep a very bad ground hog out.

He was snacking on my peas.

Notice my rogue potatoes? I use raw compost as an additional layer in the beds and some potato stuff must have snuck in there!.

I'm attempting square foot gardening. See how it's all roped off in square feet?  I admit that I didn't know too much about it myself till I educated myself on Pinterest.  Gotta love Pinterest.

It's a fantastic method that helps control weeds and gives you a guide of how many plants can fit inside the square foot depending on the type of plant. Example: one tomato, one bell pepper, 9 spinach, 9 beets, 1 cauliflower.

I do cheat a bit.

I add herbs here and there.  And a few other things.

Um.  I have like uh....22 different kinds of vegetables in one garden bed. Each one is 50 square feet.

My third bed just got planted a week and a half ago.  It's full of pumpkins, winter squash, zucchini, summer squash, watermelon and herbs.  It's gonna be very VERY full vines.  I planted these mammoth sunflowers with the viney things so I can try to let them climb up the sunflower.  It's a great idea but I'm not sure I'll be able to execute it.

Mammoth sunflowers seeds happen in my garden when you take your 11 year old with you to Lowe's.  It's amazing all the seeds we purchased that day.

But hey! This was our Science homeschooling project for the Spring after all!

Signing off.

The Lunch Lady