Jordan, Martha and Lydia

Jordan decided to tackle the part of the yard that I couldn’t quite get to, right in front of the garden. Due to his allergies, he wore a face mask to help keep him from getting overwhelmed.

It was so nice to hear the weed wacker just chop down the weeds under its ruthless power. Buwahahhaa…

Sorry.

So, knowing he was hard at work, I decided to try to make him a nice hearty breakfast (usually it turns into a brunch) so that it would be satisfying when he came in. I decided to make Cinnamon rolls from the Copy Cat cookbook “top secret Recipes” for the Cinnabon Cinnamon rolls. The dough.

Here are some mangoes that were chopped up.

Some Nectarines (you gotta have your varieties in fruit).

I love doing this! The brown sugar for the cinnamon rolls. (I love how the sugar keeps the shape of the container it came out from.)

Haha! And even the measurement indentation. Just in case I forgot, right?

The filling mixture .

As I had made a double batch, I decided to try to sweeten the filling on one of the batches with honey, instead of sugar. This one was the normal one, with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon.

This one was honey and butter mixed together. It spread fairly good, but was kind of soupy.

Jordan and Lydia shelling garlic.

Lydia is such a good helper!

Okay, here are some preliminary results. These are ready for baking. These are the ones done with honey.

The two on the far left are ones done with sugar. Big difference in looks.

Here are the ones done with sugar, fully baked.

Here are the ones done with honey, fully baked. Note the HUGE difference in looks!

Covered with the sweet topping, there isn’t much difference in looks any more, but there was a bit of a flavor difference. Overall, my personal preference is the one made with sugar! Naturally, Jordan liked the ones done with honey.

We had quite a few leftover, so I think I shall be freezing them for a later time. Enjoy!

I have started a goal for myself back at the beginning July called 52 projects in 52 Weeks. It is for my sewing projects, and I have to get 52 projects (from scratch, finishing, or altering) within 52 weeks. Here is a couple of my projects:

A denim skirt for one of the girls in church.

Altering a jacket so that the ruffles don’t stand out so much.

The finished look of the ruffles.

We’ll see how I finish up. Will I be able to keep up, or will I burn up and fizzle out in the atmosphere?

Today was a very intense sort of day, from the time I woke up. Where shall I start? Oh yes, when I woke up!

I woke up with a dry, fuzzy feeling in my mouth, and as I went to explore what was going on, I experienced a very nasty flavor, and discovered I had an insect of some kind in my mouth. (I guess I was sleeping with my mouth open or something.) I got it out and threw it, and later found out that what I threw was a moth. Gross! Needless to say, I brushed ALL of my mouth that morning, not just my teeth. That flavor was so nasty! Never eat moths. Nutritious or not, they don’t taste good. I have no idea why lizards like them. Gross!

Then, later that morning, while on the phone with one of my friends from Florida, I was out walking the sidewalk with Lydia, keeping an eye on her so that she didn’t get into trouble, when I nearly stepped on the hugest, biggest, nastiest most disgusting grasshopper that I have ever seen!!!!!! I think I left out a few adjectives there.

Yes, this black, green and yellow…THING was sitting on my sidewalk. *shudder* I found out it was called a horselubber Grasshopper. (Or the people down here call it a Mexican General Grasshopper). So Gross!

So after coming back to normality (somewhat, as one can after having woken up with a moth in their mouth, and nearly stepping on the biggest grasshopper in existence), I went to go hang the laundry on the line, and stopped short in my tracks when I saw THIS hanging on my wall!!!

A bat! C’mon, seriously! As if I didn’t have enough to contend with, I have to worry about BATS hanging around my house. Gah!

After hanging the laundry on the line (and giving the bat a wide berth on the way back), I went to go calm myself in the garden. I am excited to say that I have a few watermelon plants growing.

My other melons are coming along nicely.

Two more.

The plant they are growing on.

I have more volunteer plants coming up. I don’t know what they are yet, but this is starting to get fun. Who knows what else will pop up out of my garden!

We finally had company down to visit. Jordan’s family came to visit us and to stay the night. They also brought the chicken pen (as we are planning on getting some chickens). Well, some of the kids went to see the river, and brought back some company: our neighbors dogs.

I was a little surprised to see the size.

They can check out the property and such now, cuz when they chickens come, I don’t want them exploring any more!

Needless to say, I tried to fix a nice breakfast for them the next morning. Fruit salad, made of Strawberries, nectarines, pineapple and mango.

Here is a better look at the serving tray, with a tray of just mangoes on the top.

The Pineapple top, with oranges.

Apples and oranges.

And a family favorite: Hashbrown quiche.

After a big breakfast, everyone helped clean up, and then they left. It was sad, as it had taken almost a year to get them to visit, but as they had company themselves, they had some places they wanted to show the company. Maybe they will come to visit again soon.

Usually, I don’t manage to capture my projects that I like doing on camera…at least the before pictures, as I start my project, then realize that perhaps pictures would be nice. It almost happened here. So, Jordan invested in a weed wacker. I am quite thrilled. We discovered that he has a hard time operating the weedwacker due to allergies (and being at work), so I donned his old work boots, a long skirt, a wet, long sleeve heavy shirt (it is cooler that way, believe me), a hat and sunglasses, and tromped outside to do my lady of the house duties. 😀

Due to the summer rains (and no weedwacker) this is what the front yard near the house looked like.

A closer look at how thick and tall the weeds are.

This is what it looked like afterwards.

Quite the difference, huh? Man, it sure felt good.

This is around one of the trees on the West side of the house. Those weeds are about waist high, at least.

Afterwards. My, how satisfying it felt! Weedwacking has such a nice sound to it too. Hearing the motor, and the sound of the twine ripping up the overbearing weeds. Ah…makes me want to go at it again!

Getting into the back yard. Mostly grasses.

Ahhh…gone!

Gone!

The North side of the house. Still back yard. Look at how green those weeds are!

The most annoying part of all, how grown up those weeds are around the trees and the clothes line, which is very economical in the summer!

Gone! Gone! Gone!

Weeds in the garden bed on the North side of the house.  I hate walking on the path when the weeds are so overgrown.

YES! Vanquished!

The  northeast part of the house. I didn’t like looking out of my bedroom window because things were so overgrown! The weeds are a little wilty looking because of a lack of rain.

Yay…I can see the ground again!

It looked so nice! And yes…I have an electric weedwacker. lol…I felt almost like it was a little sissified because it didn’t have horrid smelling exhaust coming out the back end like the gas ones do, but I was satisfied with the job it was doing!

To the east side of the house, at the garden.

(oh yeah, my wild pet lizard friend.)

Back by the garden/kitchen door. Note my lizard friend.

To the southeast.

This was as far as I got for now. I felt so good. It looked so nice. And I only spent about 2 hours doing it too. Ahhh…

I saw this flower outside of my garden, and decided it needed to be captured in digital form. 😀

And then discovered that I had a garden visitor: a desert tortoise. I was concerned that he was stuck and wouldn’t be able to get out, but when I came back later he had disappeared. No issues there!

I told Jordan about it later, and he was very surprised. He said he had never seen a wild desert tortoise in all his years of living in Arizona.

Then later in the day, I went to go help a friend of mine (Sharon) pick her green beans. She has a beautiful garden so I brought my camera along. 😀

Here is an heirloom variety of corn growing behind her tomato plants. The corn was probably a good 10′-12′ tall!

I think this was the carrot going to seed. Looks like Queen Ann’s lace to me!

More tomatoes. You can see the green tomatoes hiding inside the foliage.

Under the shade that is set up are lettuces. They are being protected from the heat, as lettuces really don’t like heat very well. They enjoy frosty weather. To the right of the picture is a large strawberry patch, and behind the lettuces on the fence are the beans that we were going to be picking.

A good look at the strawberry patch.

Look at how luscious and green that this garden is. They have it on a drip system, but for those of you not used to desert views…this garden is gorgeous.

While Sharon and I were working on the beans, Lydia and Sharon’s children were playing together. They were following her around.

I’m very inspired to make sure to grow a good garden next year! I need to plan ahead what I want growing and focus on making it work! Sharon says that during the summer, the only produce that she needs to buy is bananas. Wow…that’s amazing!

Lydia loves helping me whenever there is water involved! I was doing weed pulling in the front yard and I gave her the hose to have fun.

She decided that there was watering needed by the garage door. Such a serious expression! lol

What the weeds look like near the front door, and what they had looked like in the front garden bed.

What it looked like after I got done.

I found a plant growing in my garden! Yay! We are undecided what it is at the moment. It is a gourd, and I’m thinking perhaps cantaloupe!

Lydia is very conscientious of making sure that the garden gate is closed!