Getting Outside

It has finally cooled off over here.  The heat wave came during the time of month that we have lots of errands to run.  So although were "out" in the heat, we weren't outside actually playing.  We had a cold front move in yesterday and that made it possible to get out and play!

The boys always have a blast on the trampoline.  Aubrey has reached the age of being able to move around on it all by himself (being completely supervised of course).  I have to say there are always those items you buy that don't live up to your expectations, and then there are those items that go way above and beyond your expectations and more than pay for themselves.   Our trampoline has more than paid for itself ten times over with all the use it has gotten!

The cutie pie in action.  Excuse the messy face.  Between dirt and markers....

I convinced all the men in my life to sit still for 30 seconds for a group shot :-) 

Our front garden!  We had all of our tomatoes take off.  Lots and lots of tomatoes.  I had read somewhere that tomatoes do better if they are planted close enough to touch each other.  In our case that is working out to be true.

Little tomatoes.

Nothing like seeing something actually growing in your garden :-)

I planted lots of roma tomatoes as they are supposed to be good for making sauces and paste.  We use a LOT of tomato sauce and tomato paste around here!

We have not learned the art of making a secure tomato cage.  We found some hefty branches to keep the cages from toppling over.

Cucumbers...on the ground.  They should be up on a trellis, but we waited too long.  I am hoping that the cucumbers will be ok laying on top of the mulch.  That is...if we can keep the chickens from eating them!!!!

This is a bad chicken, one of many :-)  In the above picture she is eating a green tomato.  I am sure they have eaten their share of bugs from the garden, so maybe we count this as payment for services?  So far they have only eaten the tomatoes that have been on the ground (some of the tomato plants have branches on the ground).

Flannery made this cute little sign for the herb garden.  We've been very fortunate that none of the VERY pervasive weeds have come through all the mulch.



Behind the chickens you can see the herb garden.  The one with basically nothing growing in it.  Although the weeds haven't come back in, we also haven't had any luck growing herbs.  Our sunflowers still sit at 6 inches tall....with no flowers.  The green onions never came up.  The cats got the catnip.  And our oregano and basil are dying.  Sigh.

A totally random picture thrown in.  The girls (I think mostly Flannery) have been making a bunch of bow and arrows.  I find them lying around the yard.

In other news we got around to getting our male goats tied out in our side yard.  Lots, and lots of greens for them!  We were hoping it was going to help with the nasty taste of our goat milk.  Nope.  I had the idea of milking each goat into a separate container.  Bingo!  Only one of the three has the problem.  Unfortunately at the moment we don't know why her milk tastes so yucky.  They all eat the same food.  A friend of mine says it could be stress.  This particular goat is lowest on the totem pole.  I have to find a way to separate her (with a companion) from the others to see if that helps things.  In the mean time this goat's milk goes to the dogs, or cats, or both :-)  They love it!!!