Photo time.

Two new rows of tomatoes/peppers/basil/tomatillos.  My seedlings didn’t get very big – next year I’ll need to mess around with my seed starting mix a bit.

Kootenai tomatoes and purple basil.  They like the garden’s soil. 

First tomatoes I’ve got, and the pretty purple basil.

The last batch of strawberry jam – I made it with honey instead of sugar.

Salad bed.  The lettuce is coming along.  Yes, I got heat tolerant stuff.  I plan ahead.
 

I believe I have carrot sprouts. 

Potatoes seem to be doing fine.

The garden from over by the apple tree.  Looks like an actual garden!

The grape vine.

And in the front:

Onions, cucumbers, marigolds, chives.

Lilies, roses, chives.

Zucchini, radishes, roses, more zucchini.

Roses, lemon thyme, zucchini, chives, three volunteer tomato plants.

In case that’s not enough, I’ll be back later after more weeding, mulching, and adding trellis netting.  Oy.

• Dh out of town.
• Lots of jars to wash (and some from the scary people that I’m just going to toss).
• Was gardening by camping lantern until 11:22pm Tuesday night.  Yes, you read that right.
• Mowed straw for mulch today.  I do it better than dh if I may say so.
• In our second week of 90*-100* temps.    This is Idaho, not Arizona.  Not cool.
• Kids are cranky as hell, mostly because of the heat.
• Made Grandma B’s chocolate waffle cookies.  Yum.    Now I know why she made these during the summer – you use the waffle iron instead of the oven!  Yippee!
• Pictures of the two “new” tomato/pepper/basil rows in the garden sometime soon.  They’re about 2 feet wide by 13-15 feet long with a nice little walkway in between.  That I mulched today with my nicely mowed straw. 
• Think we’re going to a pool playgroup tomorrow to at least be wet during the scorching heat.  Need to look up those directions and print ’em out.
• In the meantime, need to fold an assload of laundry and finally bring the stuff in from outside that’s been on the clothesline for almost a week.  In related news, the shower curtain is completely free of any ick from so much sun!  Good thing for me to remember.

Well, I’m still alive.  And now I know how/why Grandma needed new hips all the time, my left hip is *killing* me.

So, to recap.  I spent 3.5-4 hours out at that farm picking strawberries and tayberries (a cross between raspberries and blackberries).

And after I got home and vegged for a few hours, decided to go plant/transplant the entire salad bed.

Four kinds of lettuce, four kinds of carrots, parsley, two kinds of radishes, green peppers, sunburst squash, green onions, beets.

Checked on the green beans and peas.

And the potatoes (these are the red potatoes).

Started hulling and pureeing fruit.  Realized I hadn’t gotten to the store, and the sale ended at midnight last night.  Went and got my chicken and Sierra Mist along with a few things for grilling today for lunch/dinner.  Limped around like an old lady, because of the hip.

The leftover “good” strawberries (i.e. not crushed/smushed, still in darn good shape) and leftover puree.  The puree will make at least one more batch of jam (thinking of trying honey as the sweetener!) and I’ll freeze the rest for dh and his strawberry lemonade.

What I was up until 3:45am today finishing up.  Apparently the foam tricked me, as you can see on that jar closest to you.

Last week’s freezer jam – the purple lids.  There’s another layer underneath.

And a totally cute photo I found on the camera.    He’s getting his canine teeth in.  Ugh.

I am now going to veg the day away in between watering the garden several times (up to the 100’s today!) and eating strawberries.