My Garden In Mid Summer

I was going to do a part two of our day at Sea World, but both of my girls put up lots of photos, and most who read my blog read theirs too, so I decided not to do more. If you want to see more pics of our day at Sea World, go to my blog roll on the right, and visit Life In The Hass House, and  Flip Flops & Sippy Cups.  You can see all of the fun there.
Moving on to my summer garden.  Oh how we are enjoying it's bounty!!!  Making BLT's with freshly picked tomatoes and lettuce!  Grilling squash, and enjoying the crisp flavor of a freshly picked cucumber in a salad.  Making salsa with all of my own garden fresh ingredients.   My corn is nearly ready to be picked, and I have 4 more gigantic tomato plants that are almost ready to deliver the gorgeous plump beauties that should keep us in tomatoes all summer long.  I did have one big surprise in my garden this summer too.  I planted what I thought were two varieties of cucumbers.  However, one of these turned out to be cantaloupe!  Which has a very similar leaf and flower to the cucumber plant. But when the fruit it was producing began to look more like fuzzy orbs than long prickly cucumbers, I got suspicious.  The seeds were mismarked.  Both cucumber and cantaloupe seeds look very similar.  So now I have bazoodles of cantaloupe, looking yummy and getting bigger every day in the warm summer sun.  I can't wait!!

While working in my garden over the weekend, I made an odd discovery.  I have found a few eggs that have been laid in the grove by my escape artist Rhode Island Red hen.  I have solved her escaping issues now, and they don't get let out to free range until AFTER the eggs have been collected.  This egg was discovered in the herb garden.  It looked like it had been there a few days.  I didn't take a picture of it until I got it out, but it was like something I have never seen before.  It had actually COOKED inside the shell, in the soil, like a hard boiled egg.  Weird!!

In chicken chatter, my girls are all doing just great!  No more illness, and the little ones are growing very fast.  We are still quite suspect when it comes to "Ham" and believe he may very well be a ROO!!!  However, there has been no crowing as of yet.   His/Her tail feathers are becoming more and more pronounced and He/She is quite the "Cock of the walk" in the hen house.  So we shall see if our Noah was right from day one, in that his chicken was indeed the boy he insisted he was when he named him/her HAM!!!

The last time we were in the feed store we asked about how we could determine if Ham was in fact a boy.  They said that the Light Brahma's if a Roo, would have a lot of red around the eye!  Well guess what.....Ham has red eyes!

Yep...pretty sure we have a Roo!
The girls all got to come out for some free ranging for the very first time on Sunday when I cleaned the coops.  They were loving it too.  In a few short weeks, I will be having 7 eggs a day.  Here is Sammy below. She is a beautiful Americauna.  She will be laying pale green eggs.

 There is Tillie the white one in the back. She is a Deleware.  She will lay brown eggs.  And Beatrice is next to her.  She is a Brown Leghorn.  She will lay large white eggs.  And in the front is Hananh's little hen, Chicas.  Chicas is also an Americauna and will lay pale green eggs.  She is the most tame and sweet of the whole bunch!

 Here are the "Little B's"  Hair Lip Lucy and Ethel.  The Rhode Island Reds who were so ornery I had to build them their own pen.  But they love me, and they are healthy and robust.  But they are Little B's!!!!

It has been a busy couple of weeks.  During the week that I felt so rotten, our fridge died, and we had to get a new one.  I was lucky enough to find a bang up deal on Craig's List for a very nice Jenn Air that was only a couple of years old.  It is black, and while I never thought I would go with black, I love it, and now all my appliances match for the very first time in my life!  It has lots of nice features, and we are happy to have ice and water through the door again with this heat we are having!  The only drawback was that it was all the way out in Hemet.  But I knew if I didn't act, it would be gone. So Mr. G rented a trailer on his way home from work one night last week, and we rode out there to get it.  I knew he was going to be very tired.  He had gone in extra early that morning too.  So I made some Quesadilla's and guacamole and had them wrapped in foil and ready to go with us for our dinner on the road.  We had a nice pleasant time talking all the way up and back, and even enjoyed meeting and visiting with the man who sold us the fridge.  He lived on rural property in Hemet and had
chickens too.  He was a wealth of information!  It was a long night, and a busy week cleaning the fridge, and then switching them out, and switching out the one in the garage too.  But it is all done now.  I wonder what will break next?
Today Noah and I are meeting Gennifer and Jake and the girls at my Mom's to have a little picnic lunch with Mom and Nana.  I think since Jake is coming, we will probably have a nice boat ride too.
Stay cool out there.  It is going to be another scorcher!!!  See you soon.