Look what Silvia made! We are all set for our first year of winter gardening. Way to be on top of things, Silvia.

After the squash bugs decimated our pumpkins, zucchini, and cucumbers, they moved on to our watermelons. It has been a sad summer for anything in the squash family.

After trying in vain to fight them off by hand for several weeks we finally gave up. Silvia and I spent nearly an hour every day ruthlessly squishing as many bugs, eggs and creepy spider-looking babies as we could find, and they still seemed to multiply while we weren’t looking.

So now that it appears our watermelons are also doomed and we have given up the hand-to-hand combat, we are attempting one last weapon in the war against the squash bugs: fencing the chickens in with the watermelons and letting them eat as many bugs as they can get. The watermelons are being stomped and pecked to death, but they were going to die anyway. At least this way we are hopefully ridding the world of a few more squash bugs and the little bastards are getting what they deserve.

Harvesting my basil plants to make homemade pesto. I used this recipe, which involves a lot of chopping, and a lot of Parmesan. 

I grew this!

Roasted okra.

okra + olive oil + salt & pepper + 425°F for 10 minutes = delicious.

I feel lucky since many people have told me they have had bad luck with growing okra, and our little okra plants are doing great out in the garden! I saw this okra at the grocery store though and got excited, so I decided to try out an easy recipe that I can use once ours are ready to harvest. Who ever thought of roasting okra? Not me, but it’s a winner for sure!

We are growing things!!