The Watermelon Mystery

We have a small watermelon patch in our garden. We have several growing and one day I decided to cut one open and see how it was doing. It was starting to get ripe, but they still have a long way to go. I have been worried because most of the watermelons seem to be staying about the size of a softball and not getting any bigger.

Well, today I went out to the garden and saw this huge, ripe watermelon. It looked like it doubled in size overnight. I ran inside and told Riley he had to come check it out. I was pretty excited that my watermelons were starting to grow better. Riley came out and was impressed, but then said, "I don't know how that can even be possible." Then we both looked closer at the watermelon and realized that it was not attached to any of the vines. We did some thinking and made a few phone calls and found out that my dad was playing a joke on us! He bought a watermelon after he left church yesterday and then snuck over to our house when we were not home. He strategically placed it in our garden so we would think one of ours had grown! We got a good laugh about it! I only wish that I could have seen my dad sneaking around carrying that big watermelon! I don't think we will ever forget this watermelon mystery.

I had to have my watermelon in my daily harvesting photo, since technically we did get it out of our garden. It tasted really good with dinner. I just hope the rest of my watermelons can get that big!

Veggies, Veggies, and More Veggies

We have been having lots of fun finding things to do with all of the vegetables that we have been growing. We were very proud of our dinner last night. It was all food that we provided for ourselves. We had venison steaks that Riley shot, roasted vegetables that all came out of our garden, and sweet corn that we were able to pick out of a friend's field for free! The Country Gibb's can survive... (Thank you Hank William's Jr.)

Riley made a yummy salsa a few weeks ago. Next year we want to try canning it.

We have been freezing most of the vegetables that we don't use right away. The green beans in this picture actually came from the store. My green beans did not grow this year, but we found fresh green beans on sale. We bought a few pounds and froze them.

Happy Birthday Riley

Riley turned 33 last week. He celebrated by having a cook out with his parents and sisters and another dinner with just us. He had carrot cake (carrots from our garden of course...) and the boys decorated it. They made green and red light sabers on it. Easton has been really into Star Wars lately.

More Stuff I've Grown

a day's harvest

another day's harvest

yet another day's harvest

(The green beans in the bag are from the store. We didn't have any luck with green beans this year.)

and another day's harvest

I am pretty proud of my garden. Can you tell? The majority of the pictures on my camera right now are of vegetables!

These are my best carrots yet. I have been surprised at how well my carrots have done. They have not gotten very big (the biggest one so far is the one in the middle and it was about 8 inches long), but I have had plenty of them. We have put them in stir-fry and in with roasted vegetables. Anytime I need a carrot, I just head out to the garden and dig some up!

I love growing sunflowers! Most of them are starting to get seeds so hopefully I can do something with them. I mostly just love watching sunflowers grow, so that is why I planted them.

We dug up the potatoes this week. They didn't do as well as I had hoped, and some sort of animal ate several of them. We cooked some last night and they tasted great. (Nothing like a dirty baby in a wheelbarrow, right?)

I also dug up my onions. They did good and we should have enough to last us until next year, if I get them properly stored. I am just learning how to store and preserve things as we go along.

This year's garden has mostly been done by trial and error!

Random Shots from the Past Few Weeks

Jaylee and Chewy

Easton found this bug crawling on my Marigolds.

When we went to the fair this year, Easton really wanted to ride on the Ferris Wheel. Riley went with him on the ride and Easton said that he liked it. He was very brave!

Easton and Jaylee being robbers.

Brady and Daddy taking a walk.

Jaylee and Daddy

Storing Up for Winter

I have been looking for free or cheap sweet corn that I can freeze for winter. Well, I found some! There is a member of Riley's parent's church ward that is doing his PhD on corn here at Purdue. When he was finished with his research on his sweet corn field he let people come pick some for free! I was so excited about this. We loaded up the kids and went and picked 20 dozen ears of corn!

I was surprised when we got home and saw just how much we picked.

Riley was my cornhusker...

and corn cutter!

After about 3 hours of blanching and cutting corn off of the cob, we ended up with 31 bags of corn for the freezer (not to mention the hour of picking and two hours of cornhusking)! It feels really good to know that we have all of that saved up for when we need it.

Jaylee and her Fluffy Dress

Jennifer bought Jaylee this fluffy skirt when I was pregnant with her. It is so cute and I have been wanting to try it on her, but it is a 2t, so it has been too big. Jaylee's Nana just got her a new shirt and it matched the skirt perfectly so I thought she should start wearing them. Jaylee was super cute in her fluffy dress, though I had to take it off of her to fit her in her carseat!