If You Carrot All For Me...

...My dear, we cantaloupe, lettuce marry!  

We are just having the most bountiful garden this year!

It's such a wonderful blessing, after a couple of dry, lean summers.  

But if I think about it too much, I verge on a panic attack.  There's just so much to do to get the harvest in AND take care of house and family.  So I try not to think about it, take it one task at a time, and keep refocusing on enjoying the summer and my sweet, funny, little people.  And fall into bed aching and well-tired at night.

I have to say, the garden is so much more enjoyable now that I have kids to enjoy it with.

They just love to be out with me in the garden.  They're happy to work along side me, however helpful or not helpful that may be.  It really is delightful (most of the time) to have them with me, so excited about everything they find.  And it's just so much less intense and more peaceful outside than inside.

They're even more happy to eat all our pickings.  The boys are just overjoyed at the nearly unlimited apples, carrots, cucumbers and green beans they get to eat these days.  The other night at supper, I actually heard Nathan tell Evan to stop eating so many cucumbers and eat some on his main dish.  What kind of crazy parents are we, anyway, that we have to tell our kids to STOP eating their vegetables?  They could happily make a meal of sweet corn and fresh milk.

As tempting as it is for me to let them live on green beans and dropped apples, I realize that they actually need some protein from time to time, thus the panic attack when we come in from the garden at 6:18 and there is no supper yet.

And then there's this sweet little apple dumpling whom I can pretty much characterize as "negative helpful" but that's okay, we love her an awful lot anyway!

And lest you should (for some strange reason) think that all is perfect in paradise, here is a picture of my herb bed.  Yeah, what herbs?  I weeded it quite soundly a month ago.  But then I got busy picking beans and making pickles, and when I turned around again, I couldn't find the herbs.  It's pretty disgusting, and I need to stop thinking about it now before I have to go find a paper bag to breath into.