Garden Update & Weathervane Table Topper

At the beginning of the season I said I'd keep you updated on my garden, so here we go. As a reminder, this is what my garden looked like at the beginning of the season.

Cute, huh? Well, I have to preface this next picture by telling you that this is actually a better-looking garden than any I've ever had. Keep that in mind. I took this picture of my garden tonight.

There are wax beans on the left here, and some sage on the bottom right. I think there may also be thyme in here...

This is the end of our broccoli (we actually harvested two little heads of these!). 

This bed was largely spinach. It was yummy, I just didn't really replant it. There's some zucchini in the top left.

There's a stripped out tomato in the back of this one. I think bugs got it. 
So the moral of the story is that I'm just not very good at this gardening thing. But I'm still planning on retrenching. I'm not giving up on gardening yet. Someday I'll be that 60-year-old farm wife with a wonderful garden. I'll let you know when that happens.


I also finished up the little tabletopper that was my giveaway prize for a little giveaway I hosted in March. It will be the design I put on my barn quilt whenever I get that going.

Traditionally I would hang it this way (square), but I'm contemplating hanging it on point, like this:

Do you have thoughts?


Lastly, for those of you who want more pictures of my little girl on this blog (Don, I'm talking to you), here I am reading to her. We do this a lot, and she will grab a book and then climb into my lap and sit down. This particular book is from my childhood and is about moving, but the little girl in it has a little gray cat on almost every page. Therefore, my daughter has decided that this is the "find the kitty" book and she finds that little gray cat on every page of the book.

Raspberry Hunting & Poll Ending

Yesterday Ryan mentioned to me that there was a small patch of raspberries in the pasture that he had the sheep graze around that might be ready for picking. His directions to find it went like this: "You know that one big soft maple with the overhanging branch that's about to fall off? Follow that branch and it's the next tree west of there."

After a couple of clarifying phone calls to Ryan, I found the small patch.

I had the baby on my back in her Chicco carrier for a little outdoor adventure.

This picture's actually a little out of date, but it's the one I have on file.


Anyway, we got to the raspberry patch and found a very unsurprising surprise: Poison Ivy. It's all over the place on our farm. So now it's time for a little game! Can you spot the poison ivy vs. the raspberry plant? Hint: the poison ivy has a 3 leaf pattern. Oh, wait. So does the raspberry plant.

Well? How did you do?


Here's the raspberry leaves:

And here's the poison ivy.

So the poison ivy and the raspberry and I played a game of "touch this, not that," only complicated by the whole "raspberries have thorns" thing. Everything good is worth working for!

A meager harvest, but completely delicious. There weren't enough to make anything with them, so I just ate them. Perhaps in the future our patch will be big enough to make jam!


On a separate note, my poll ends tonight and so far it looks like my readers want to know more about my farm and home life. I definitely think people who read this blog at this point generally know me personally, so they are more interested in my daughter than I thought people might be. I will try to adjust accordingly. In the meantime, thanks for reading!