Bounteous Summer Garden

We planted a great garden this year and have has some wonderfully fresh veggies to eat. My mom and dad were here when Tyler was born during the summer and my dad was instrumental in getting our garden in the ground. We had been growing our plants from seed in the green house and dad kept telling me we needed to get them in the ground since it was the end of May. So one day he and I worked on getting up all the weeds and getting the plants in . We had fifteen tomato plants, holy cow. They have been giving us wonderful tomatoes since the end of the summer. We also planted zucchini and yellow crooked neck squash, which have been so yummy and gave in abundance. We have frozen many bags of cut up zucchini and squash.

This year I planted a whole packet of Basil and have been thrilled by the success. I have made so much pesto that I put in ice cube trays and freeze. We will have pesto for the entire year to eat on pasta, meat and anything else we can think of. It is fantastic and super yummy. I also gave some to friends. It has been an abundant harvest. This year I decided to plant an eggplant as Joseph's favorite dish is egg plant parmigiana. We got too great eggplants off of that, I still have not made his favorite dish but will do so very soon.

All my kids love tomatoes and we eat them constantly, Jennedy is so funny, anytime we are outside she is over in the tomato patch eating cherry tomatoes off the vine. She eats them like they are grapes and eats a ton of them.

We also have a black berry patch in our back yard and we had a ton of black berries this year. We froze a bag of those even, it was hard getting them in a bag as they were so yummy that all we wanted to do was eat them. When the kids were in the back yard during the summer and I was not out there they would gorge themselves in blackberries. They would come in covered in blackberry juice. They would stay stained for quite a while too. The worst part is that many a shirt and pant got stained. I have been through a lot of stain remover this year due to that black berry patch. Oh well, they are good for them right. I do love having a garden. I don't think that we will have so many tomato plants next year and hopefully we will get the garden in earlier next year, hopefully my dad will be in town again and will help me.