Just have to brag about today's shopping trip! This was at a normal grocery store. All this for $3.25...and would've been $2.25 if I hadn't misplaced one of my coupons! Regular (inflated) retail was $40.

Other than wheeling and dealing, I've been keeping busy with gardening and (gasp!) schoolwork. I've been (slowly) working on the comprehensive exam essay questions that I was supposed to have done last fall. Well, so far pretty much just doing background reading, but eventually that will turn into writing. But that's boring, let's take a look at the garden!


Sorry about the zoomed-out-ness, but the point is, it looks nearly empty. Sad. The green beans in the middle are still humming along. The corn and cucumbers off to the left are still small. There's one cauliflower I haven't pulled out yet. Off to the right, formerly the pea area, will now be potatoes.

The other big bed (not pictured) is also looking whimpy. The hot weather made all the lettuce bitter, so I had to pull it all out. I think I'm going to put potatoes there too (they'll keep into the winter if stored correctly). In place of the turnips are pole beans and a second wave of soybeans. The carrots and onions are still growing slowly in their original positions.

The real action nowadays is along the sides of the house! I present, THE BEAST:
To exacerbate its beastliness, I didn't even plant this! I did fertilize using stuff from the compost pile, so perhaps the seeds came from a grocery-store fruit? It is freaking enormous, so I'm training it to grow up the railing instead of into the driveway. Up close, you can see that it's a yellow squash:
That's the biggest fruit so far, but with all the beastliness it will probably only take 3 or 4 days to reach nomnomnom size.

The other beasts, also accidental in nature:
These are mini pumpkins that sprouted from the seeds of last year's Halloween decorations that I threw off the porch once they started rotting! (Off to the far right, the soybeans are waist-high and the pods are starting to fill out) Mini pumpkins are cute, but also edible. I had one oven-roasted last week, and here are its about-to-be-eaten friends:
In the front? My first bulb of garlic, from one of the cloves I planted last fall! After its impressive early growth, it died back over winter. In the spring it sprouted again with the spring bulbs, but recently died back again, so I decided to dig it up and see what it looked like. Voila! Not for the impatient, though, as apparently they're supposed to overwinter before plumping up.

Love, love, love my garden! And my slick deals. And my kitties. And I guess to make the list complete I have to throw the husband in there too :P

I didn't remember until today, but yesterday was my 5 year blogiversary! 5 years minus a couple days ago, I wrote about attending the Fourth of July pirate party at Ryan's mom's house, pre-coupledom. This year- our first married FOJ party, is superhero themed. Yay. Peter will be turning 11. I wonder how many more years until he becomes a "too cool for this" teenager. It's a long drive and gas is expensive, plus we already saw them a lot around the wedding.

With the fancy-shmancy digital scale off the registry, we weighed the cattens (by holding them).
Jib: 14.5 pounds. Big catten. No surprise there. He's proportionate, though, since he gets the most exercise jumping over fences and after birds.
Choco: 12 pounds. Pretty big catten. His frame isn't as big as Jib, but he has a big belly.
Grem: 9 pounds. Whoa, mama! But she looks so tiny! 9 pounds is "normal cat" size, though. I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

The garden is humming along nicely. I'm replacing the early crops with the midsummer ones: the broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, and spinach are gone. In their place are corn, soybeans, watermelons, cucumbers, honeydew melons, more green beans, and more potatoes taking their place. I really hope the watermelon and honeydew are a success- we have plenty of veggies but it would be nice to have some fruit. The other day we ate home-grown zucchini. Tonight we're having red potatoes and green beans, both from the garden, and chicken. Once we eventually move to a bigger lot, I'll have to see about raising chickens...