I was warned , but dude... SO. MUCH. ZUCCHINI.

We are living and breathing zucchini over here. The garden is coming to life and recently we've been able to enjoy something OTHER than the "green stuff" and the little hoarder in my brain that tells me I must not waste any of it has gone on overdrive, SO that means zucchini muffins were in order: compromising my WAISTline in order not to be WASTEful. (Don't worry, I'm here all week!)

I found a recipe online from Simply Recipes. Appropriately titled, these Zucchini Muffins were scrumptious and used 3 cups of shredded zucchini (I dumped in a little more for good measure.)

See all that shredded green goodness....just screaming HEALTH! (Nevermind the 1 1/3 cup sugar)

The recipe calls for dried cranberries and walnuts. (I like myself a muffin packed full of goodies.)

Begging to be gobbled up by my little crazy muffin monster, Mazzylicious. (Maxton could care less about these, frankly I think the dried cranberries scared him as well as the "green stuff".)

Perfect snack to be eaten OUTSIDE, on a pool break with the kiddos. (The one thing I love about summer is that most of the kids' meals can take place in the open air. Dining alfresco suits my needs and the needs of the usually always littered kitchen floor.)

Speaking of which, here are my kids after both eating an ice cream sandwich OUTSIDE:


How does that happen? They each manage to slop some ice cream  on their face as if they're penciling in a mole. Weird kids, indeed.

So, zucchini anyone? Please. Pretty please? I'm BEGGING you.

A not-to-be-named-energy-providing-company came out to install our new meter and totally wigged out our oven in the process, the clock flickers and the timer is not "timing" as it should. I made these muffins originally when we attended a brunch with some friends and the muffins were good but darker than I would have liked, so I just had to try the recipe again using the microwaves trusty timer. I popped these babies in the freezer this time and they make for a perfect snack for when I'm feeling lazy.

***
Mini Garden Update:


I let Mazzy take a stab at uprooting our leeks.



She thought I'd have better luck.



I have to say my daughter is quite the little photographer, always stealing the camera out of my hands...which makes me smile and sweat at the same time. Anyway, here is me  posing for Mazzy with our leeks.



Latest harvest: Zucchini (of course!), Sun Gold tomatoes, lemon cucumber, and our leeks. I have yet to decide what to prepare with these summer leeks...

Garden Variety

Then: Planning stage...

Planting stage...

My best friend and I took a photography class this past week to celebrate our July birthdays (I'll post on that a bit later). So. This is me practicing being in "M" mode...

Now: Overgrown stage (I mean, really? Keri, get a second box next year, alrighty!?)

Butternut Squash

Lemon Cucumber

Zucchini

'Black Beauty' Eggplant Blossom

Sungold Tomato

Grape Tomato

'Canary' Bell Pepper

First Fruit

You see that right there!? That green thing. We growed that. ( Note: I  used the word 'growed' in a sentence, to my daughter, just this evening... "Hey, Maz, we GROWED that right there!"  I wasn't kidding either, it just flowed right out of my mouth like I stopped attending school in the second grade.)

Aaaanyway....back to the 'Cchini. Here is our very first fruit from our garden and we are super excited about this little baby. Now, if I  can only learn to really appreciate zucchini we'll be all set!

Oooooo....shiny! (Can you tell I'm a newbie in the Vegetable Garden  Growin' Club?)

Peeking in to see it one last time.



Josh caught this of Mazzy and I had to include it because I'm her mama.



So proud.



Just a cute little moment.



Weekend "Fun"

Now, especially as a mother of two,  my days during the week are spent mostly inside our home: cleaning, preparing meals, picking up after meals, sorting laundry, folding laundry, wiping down the floors, sweeping the floors, washing crayon off the walls, picking up the 823746573673 toys that litter my floors. When the weekend comes the very last thing I want to do is clean the bathroom. Or the kitchen. Or my bedroom. I want to take all of us outside and never go back in. SO. This weekend we did just that and it was just what the doctor ordered. I was relaxed and at peace and the kids played right along side us asking to help on several occasions. After a family trip to the nursery we went to work:

Potting our baby blueberry bush.

Meet Rosemary and Sage. My sad little herb plants needed room to grow and mature into the men and women they've always dreamed of being! (My mom handed down these pots of hers to me...gotta love hand-me-downs, in all shapes and sizes).

I decided to go ahead and use the cocoa hulls that I used in our garden for our flower beds. It seems The Felines are less inclined to dig around in it. In the past, the flower beds have attracted every stray cat on the West Coast and it's about time they find a new beach to bum around on.

Also: My rose bushes have been ailing for a number of weeks with aphids galore and diseased leaves. I pruned and thinned them out quite a bit AND I bought chemicals to help. There, I said it.

Our Star Jasmine which is just starting to bloom.

My two baby seedling tomato plants now have their new and improved pots.

Speaking of tomato plants, DIE APHIDS, DIE!



I have to admit something: EVERY time I check on our zucchini, I feel embarrassed lifting up it's leaves.



My husband mowed and edged the lawn. I remember growing up and never even thinking about not having an edged lawn. These days, it would bug me until the end of time. Once the grass along the raised garden bed gets above an inch I start to twitch.

These trees here are actually a type of shrub. My mom raised them to be trees and I'm so thankful that she did because we have shade at all times of the day and it makes our hot Sacramento summers bearable. However, the things shed leaves at all different times of the year which drives my husband a little bat-blank-crazy. He raked and pruned the higher branches back so we can get some Frisbee throwin' in this weekend.

When we moved into our home 7, 8 (?) years ago, my mom left us her two wooden chairs. We had NO patio furniture having moved from a  < 500 sq. ft apartment. I was happy to take them off her hands and have grown to really love them...they match the weathered boards holding up our flower beds that line the back of our yard AND they belonged to my mom which is always something special to think about.

I love having little snugly children running around the backyard and I am not wishing away these years at all BUT when I can attempt to grow grass where the play structure now resides and can do away with those hideous foam mats I will feel more at peace with my soul.



The only thing left on this year's garden project list is to put our two citrus trees into the barrels we bought. Now, where to put them?



Garden Update

I was just talking to a friend about the recent storm that has passed through town and how it has affected her little peppers in her own garden.This particular storm brought  illuminating lightening and thunderous, well, thunder.  And with it, hail. After that day's storm I went to inspect the damage the next morning. I noticed suspicious holes in the leaves of my tender little babies. My guess was that the snails came out in full force after the rains. It had been a few weeks since I had sprinkled snail and slug bait which are the white pellets you see here. I use Worry Free Feramol Slug and Snail Bait which is bio-degradable and non-harmful to pets and wildlife. So, back to my friend's garden,  she thought the  holes were due to the hail; we only live a mile from one another so that could have been the case with my babies, too. I guess we'll never really know.

Up close and personal.

Overall, I'm really happy with the progress our garden has shown. The plants seem to be thriving and I am now noticing blossoms on the tomato, pepper and zucchini plants. I believe in the beginning that I was watering a little too often. White powdery patches were showing up on the leaves of my tomato plant and I read that over-watering could have that affect. Since then I have slowed down on the watering and the patches have disappeared. The weed barrier and cocoa mulch seem to be doing a very good job keeping moisture in.

I do have one question. I have dug around in the mulch a few times and noticed itsy bitsy silver bugs of some kind scurrying all over the place. Curious as to what they are, and if they came by way of the soil I purchased. I have scattered lady bugs twice and check my plants for aphids, knocking them off if I see them glomming on for dear life. Ick, those buggers just gross me out.

My seedlings are doing well and I'm juuuust about ready to pot my Juliet Grape and Brandywine Heirloom tomatoes. So exciting!  Our Meyer Lemon tree has so many adorable green little lemons growing. I can taste the fresh lemonade popsicles now! And of course I have plans for a blueberry pie when all my plump little blueberries ripen.

Well guys, the sun is shining, so I'm going to take myself outside...toodle-loo!

Ladybugs

Here's my daughter, Mazzy, with a ladybug back in 2009 at 2.5 years old...

My son, Max (also 2.5 years old)  had quite a different experience with the red spotted lady recently. It might have been due to the fact that Mazzy was solely focusing on one dainty little bug, while my son was exposed to, shall we say, 822!!!

A little less than a week ago, I picked up a few little lady bugs to help rid our garden of the 8 million aphids that found shelter in our rose bushes. I came home happily carrying the bag of ladybugs thinking to myself what a fun little activity for the kids to help with - scattering the harmless, pleasant,  dare I say DARN CUTE insects.

Well, it started off fine. Josh went from rose to rose, merrily sprinkling away. The kids just recently were gifted bug collector sets from Grandma Kris and Mazzy thought it would be fun to try and wrangle a few ladybugs into her bug collector chamber.

Maxton watched cautiously while Mazzy managed to round up a couple into her chamber. (I could tell that he was feeling a little anxious. He would let out a high-pitched scream every so often if he saw a ladybug move a little faster than usual across the cement.) A few minutes later as Max was moving his boot away to get a closer look at a ladybug, that had crept underneath, a leaf fell from inside the boot and landed on Max. Max, thinking the leaf was a huge gigantic over sized DEADLY ladybug, started to panic - his limbs stiffened , his body shook. I carried him into my arms and took him inside. He began to calm down and I distracted him by offering to set him down in Mazzy's room to play. This lasted only a minute before he "saw" THE BIG BUG on his shirt. He went into hysterics again. I noticed his eyes scanning every inch of his clothing, the room, the house for THE BIG BUG. My son was hysterical and so very frightened. It frightened me to see him this way. The guilt set in quickly and I was worried I had created what would be a lifelong phobia of "bugs" for my Mister Man.

The evening involved a series of cuddling sessions and reassuring chats about the ladybugs going to sleep OUTSIDE FAR FAR AWAY. He went to bed much later than usual.  I had to go into his room, repeatedly, to comfort and soothe his anxiety. Gah! Both my husband and I were worried.  My husband thinks I worry too much about everything, so the fact that he was worried worried me to no end. And the downward spiral was in effect.

My Facebook status that evening.

That night we waited for him to wake up screaming and terrified that the BUGS WERE ASCENDING!! To our surprise and relief he slept soundly through the night. That next morning, I wrote on Facebook:

It seems the total hysteria over bugs has calmed a bit in our house, but I'm holding my breath. Max will venture outside (which, I have to say, I was convinced he wouldn't ever go outside again!) but when a HUGE GIGANTIC gnat lands on his arm I am summoned immediately to remove it from his vicinity.


(I'm more than happy to do that for you, Buddy Man. So sorry the ladybugs scared you.)



Buds and Blossoms



Our first two seeds have sprouted; both cucumbers.  I was dorkishly excited to see this little guy.



Recently procured: Butternut squash, lemon cucumbers, leeks, Sun Gold tomatoes, yellow and red bell peppers, and zucchini.

My early Mother's Day gift from the Roo:  Berkeley Blueberry

Meyer Lemon in it's beginning stages.

Meyer Lemon Blossom

Blood Orange Blossom.