Pioneer Woman at Heart

Saturday's weather leveled all of my squash plants.  Over two dozen of them.     Sunday, my muck boots sank 3 inches the first step into the garden.  I still picked peas, but left the garden after that.  In the evening, Oldest Daughter stopped in so Hubby could look at her car.  She joined our front porch cookout and we had a nice visit.  She left with a dozen farm fresh eggs and a quart jar of goat's milk. Monday, I found the squash plants had straightened back up, but found one full row of broccoli leaning.  Many of the squash plants are yellowing and browning - too much rain.  Today?  Foggy, and rain later.  It's pretty bad when the front page of your newspaper reads, "Rain Rain Go Away." I am thankful for the broccoli I cut Monday morning before the rain arrived again . The family voted for broccoli salad made with homemade "marzetti" dressing.

Today I am joining Diary of at Stay at Home Mom for Happy Homemaker Monday.

The rainy day advantage was up for me once again.  I dug through a pile that was building and building.  In the process, I found a note written to me. I know Mother's Day has passed by, but I wanted to share this note I got from my 18 year-old daughter.   This one was pretty amazing (not that the other cards and notes were not). She wrote it in pencil, so I hope you can read it.  I darkened the print as best I could too.

We had pretty good day in the garden, and I am kind of glad we did not get the weeds out between the smaller pepper plans, green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, nor the carrots.   It's raining again, but today's forecast is 100% rain, heavy rain, windy, flood warnings, and flash flood warnings.  We are to get 1-5 inches of water.  Maybe the weeds will help protect the plants from the wind today? I also successfully weeded half of the herb garden.  The green onions look terrible this time of year, but I do see little sprouts forming already.   I picked more berries, cut some oregano, and had a daughter shell peas for me, and clean off the dried thyme.  Overall, it was a pretty good day, all things weather-wise, considered.

I've been having what I call "apron days" here lately.  Starting my day in the "garden" apron, then the "canning" apron, then my "housework" apron, and ending it in my "cooking" apron.  Today's my day starts with draining more cheese.  Mmm!  Tonight we'll enjoy some with either hot pepper jelly, or port wine jelly, on crackers.   What we will get more of:

Lemongrass is new to my herb garden this year.  I planted it in a pot, due to space, and because I did not want it to spread too quickly, like my lemon balm did. It was time to cut some leaves, and dry them for tea making.  I love to add this to our summer iced teas with spearmint too.