Garden Fun Winding Down...

Well, fall is definitely here. It's been quite cool the past week. Thankfully, no frost yet in our area. So, I've been putting off pulling out the garden. I get a pretty big harvest today.

Plus these two butternut squashes that the kids wanted to hold. :)

Philip kept holding his and saying "Oday! O-day!" I have no idea what he was trying to say... Then he thought he was supposed to throw it in the garbage after we came into the house... not quite sure why he thought that either! haha! At least he asked me before he did so. :)
As you can see in the first picture we got a lot of peppers! I made some southwestern stuffed peppers today. I stuffed the peppers with a quinoa, corn, black bean, tomato, mayo, cheese mix. We'll have these on Friday and maybe I'll get around to posting a recipe... Here's a pic of some of the stuffed peppers:

 Then I made some Italian Wedding Soup with the tomatoes I harvested today and last week, and some leftover ground beef. I was quite productive today! haha!
We still have some more veggies out there. I'm hoping some more tomatoes will ripen before frost hits and I have 3 eggplants and some more peppers I need to pick. Can't wait to make some yummy eggplant parmesan with the eggplant! We also have a bunch of swiss chard I need to cook up and freeze. Also I have some lettuce that's getting more ready. I need to pull out the broccoli plants so that they have more sun and room to grow. Hopefully we'll get a few more salads out of that lettuce before it freezes... not holding my hopes up too high though. haha!
I've had a lot of fun (and hardships too) with my garden this year. Gardening this year was way more successful than last year. Thanks be to God! I'm excited because I have a new plan of action for next year! haha! Next year I hope to grow lots of veggies and make lots of soups and meals and freeze them instead of canning. Unfortunately, I don't know how to can... I'm not sure I really have time to can. I'm sure I do, but I don't know how, and I don't have time to read about canning and figure it out. Someday maybe. I actually don't like canned vegetables, but I love soup. I like to make soups too and I like to think soup is frugal. This Advent and Lent when I try to make only soups for meals I want to see if our grocery bill goes down. :)

Anyway, I wanted to just post some pictures of my random bigger harvests this year and other garden fun pictures. Special thanks to my mother-in-law for taking pictures of Mary and I in the garden when visiting in August. :)

The story of eating our first (and only) watermelon. Haha. Hopefully we'll have better success next year! :)

Mary was VERY excited about the watermelon. I was too! :)

Cutting the watermelon

Eating the watermelon

Picture of the pretty slice of watermelon. :)

 My mother in law gave me 10(!) blueberry bushes for my birthday. That's a pretty awesome present that just keeps giving (as long as I don't kill them!). She took this picture of a blueberry. There were like 5 and not really edible. Hopefully we'll get more next year. It takes a while for them to really establish and produce.

 And just for fun. Here is a picture of one of the humungous caterpillars I had to contend with that were eating my tomatoes. My mother in law could not believe how big they were!

 

Picture of a random harvest in August:

This was one from September:

Broccoli bouquet! Mary said I looked like I was getting married. LOL!

                   

I hope you had a wonderful summer and now that the weather is cooling down and we aren't outside as much, maybe I'll have more time to post. haha! We'll see. We've been busy with homeschooling and now I'm teaching piano lessons again so it's been very busy around here! We are celebrating Mary's birthday next weekend and I hope to do a post on their birthdays shortly afterwards!