Beginning of School and Lots of Gardening

We had a busy month in August! We arrived home from our trip and next thing we knew the kids were starting school! (Then Josh and I left for another vacation to celebrate our anniversary!)

Anyway, here are some takeaways from August, mostly gearing up for school and working in the garden/canning!

I've mentioned before how much Dave loves to cook...here he is helping Josh make jalapeno poppers.

Ike has always loved the sunflowers that I grow every year. This year was a rough one for them but a couple grew pretty tall!

Before school started I took some of Dave's friends to the city pool one more time. 

Back to school night, had to get a picture with Dave and Alec!

A little before and after comparison. I think this was 2018.

First day of school! Both boys were really excited to get back to school this year. Dave switches classes a lot in 6th grade and he's enjoyed that. He has started band (percussion) and is on the robotics team again this year. Ike was super excited to have a student teacher in his class this semester. He's playing soccer again and made the robotics team for the 3rd grade!

We hosted some of the boys' friends one Saturday afternoon for some basketball and outside games.

Garden Update!!

When we got back from Michigan we had lots of wild blueberries still so we made some jam out of it. It's quite good, but it didn't set up quite as thick as normal jam. 

Here is the state of my garden in mid-August. We had a great year for cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers. My poor zucchini really struggled this year! Oh and the lettuce and carrots did pretty well (not pictured, they are in the other beds!)

One of my neighbors had an abundance of roma tomatoes so one Friday I made spaghetti sauce! She also let me borrow her fancy tomato grinding/deseeding machine. So cool!

I grew one volunteer cantaloupe. I'm assuming there was a seed from the manure I received from White's cow pasture :) This was delicious!

I grew Josh some super hot peppers this year...pictured below are habaneros, scorpion peppers and I think serranos? 

These scorpion peppers are so pretty when they turn colors! 

Josh and Ike both tried this scorpion pepper. Ike's reaction was so funny. He said, oh it's not that bad and then started running all over the house because it was so hot!

Pickles!

Last pictured is my frog friend. He hung out with me throughout my gardening this summer :)

Well that about wraps up our August. I still need to post about our trip to Door County Wisconsin but I'll do that one soon!