Thank You Peary Much!

Have you ever wandered around your neighborhood and admired all the lovely trees in your neighbor's garden? No? Ok, I am that strange then.

Every weekday, my kids and I walk home from school and pass by a house that has a lovely pear tree in their front yard. When I pointed out the tree to my 3 stooges a few weeks ago, they immediately wanted to pick the pears, despite the fact that it was pouring rain outside. I had to quickly remind them that it's not our tree and we couldn't just pick the fruit without permission- that burst their bubble a bit, until Lia processed just what I had said. She perked up 2 seconds later and asked "Can I go ask permission???". As soon as I gave her the OK, she darn near bamboozled a poor guy trying to get out of his car and go in to his house! He thankfully had a good sense of humor and not only chuckled at the odd question "Can I pick your pears?" from an overexcited little girl, but granted us permission to take as much as we wanted. Apparently our neighbors just have the tree because it's pretty, and don't eat the pears! My kids LOVE canned pears, so guess what I did with the 10+ pounds of pears we picked?

I even had a little help canning this time from my niece and sister (thanks guys!). The kids had so much fun picking fruit from our neighbor's tree! I however, have caught myself now eyeing all our neighbor's trees hoping to score some more goodies. The house next to us has a crabapple tree...

Garden Delights

Well, summer is quickly fading away. The kids have started school, the leaves are already changing colors, and our veggie garden is winding down. Our garden was very productive this past season, even with me forgetting to water it as often as I should and hurricane Irene trying to blow it away. Here's a small sampling of what we harvested this season:

We planted green beans, roma tomatoes, bell peppers (which are just now starting to produce), jalapeno peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins, and zucchini. The pumpkins haven't produced a darned thiing (some died off, so there's only one lonely plant and nothing for it to cross-pollinate with) so we'll be purchasing some at a local farm when we go apple picking. All in all, we got a very nice harvest. Plenty for us to eat, plenty to share, and plenty to preserve.

Ok, the yarn wasn't harvested from the garden. It's some baby alpaca yarn that I just recently finished spinning and couldn't help but share with all of you ;o) Its soooo soft and will be knit into a christmas gift for someone special.

I've also been busy canning some of the goodies from our garden. Here's 7 pints of yummy salsa that is made using tomatoes, bell peppers, and jalapeno peppers from our garden:

I also made a couple loaves of zucchini bread, but didn't get a picture before it was scarfed down. You salivating yet?



Bloody Eyeballs!

Ok, so they're not really bloody eyeballs, but they look like it , right? These are actually cherries that I canned yesterday ( I know, boring compared to eyeballs, but much tastier). Lia helped me while I was pitting the cherries, and it looked like we were in an episode of CSI- our hands were covered in cherry "blood", there were blood spatters all over the counter, and my skeleton apron had blood dripping from it LOL. Wish I had taken a picture of the crime scene, but it's hard to do with blood on your hands ;o) I was able to can a total of 13 pints of cherries. I haven't tested these out yet, but Caleb has and he declared them "yummy".

So far this summer, I've canned 16 pints of peaches, 15 pints of pineapples, 13 pints of cherries, and 8 half-pints of blueberry jam. This is way more than I've ever done previously, and I have plans for lots more. Come check back later for more delicious crime scenes!