Salmon and Souvlaki

So all this winter, I’ve had a creeping charlie next to our TV in our living room, on the other side of the room from the windows.  I knew it wasn’t thriving but I didn’t really have anywhere else to put it and so I just left it there.  It didn’t really die but didn’t look happy at all.  A couple weeks ago, when I put all of my pots of flowers on the front porch, I decided to put it out on the front porch too.  And look what’s happening to it!!

It immediately started putting out new growth.  See the good crop of new green leaves in the middle?  And then look at the leaves up close:

The plant looks variegated even though it’s really not!  So that’s how faded the leaves were from no sunlight and now, amazingly, they are changing back into green.  Plants really are incredible.  I had no idea leaves could do that.  I just figured that I would have to prune off all the old branches and basically start over.  But no, the plant is determined to live!  So this fall, I’ll have to try harder to find a place for it that gets more sun!

This week’s haul – green leaf lettuce and red leaf lettuce (1 head each), 1.5 pounds of snow peas (which Nik and I spent three hours picking), .8 pounds of sugar snap peas, oregano (which I picked while Nik was weeding raspberry bushes), and a tiny bunch of very cute baby scallions.  Those aren’t even close to all the peas – I just put a few on there for effect.  I have no idea what we’re going to do with all of those peas – probably freeze most of them.  I have decided that I will never begrudge a farmer any amount of money that he wants me to pay him for vegetables.  Four hours of working on a farm will do that to you!

Just for fun, I’m going to try to put a picture of what we get from the CSA, every week.  I’m interested in seeing how the produce changes over the weeks.  So here’s the picture from last week – strawberries, snow peas (over a pound!), sugar snap peas, oregano, and asparagus.

Happy June 1st everyone!  We have only 7 days of school left and we can taste the freedom! (Unfortunately, so can the kids!) Nik went to our church’s Men’s Retreat this weekend so Tina and I took on another task, the long over-grown rock garden.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures before Tina had gone to work on the grass so you’ll have to use your imagination:

So we cleared out a bunch of grass, moved some rocks, took out TONS of hostas (enough to plant in many other places around the garden), and planted some new plants.  I mostly worked on planting our new hydrangea bush and Tina did the rest.  Here are the results!

I’m really happy with how it turned out.  I’ll need to acquire some more creeping plants and eventually I hope to get rid of more of the hostas but it looks so much better – I think I’m happy for this summer!

Then on Saturday, I spent the majority of the deep cleaning our house, spurred on by the fact that we were hosting First Sunday Lunch today for our church – and also because the house was so dirty, it really needed it.  I found this in the refrigerator:

Any guesses on what it might be?

I did take a break to go out to pick up our first CSA harvest:

Oregano, sage, garlic scapes, asparagus, royal oak leaf lettuce, and the best strawberries I’ve had in a LONG time!!  I still don’t know what we’ll do with the scapes but it will be fun experimenting!

And finally, here’s a picture of our vegetable garden box in progress:

We finished it when it was almost totally dark (on Wednesday night) and now it’s in place, waiting for dirt and plants.  That’s this week’s goal!

I love you all!