the weekend is here

YAY!!!

We have a busy weekend ahead of us and it includes celebrating my birthday! yay! This also means i need to wish Alana a happy birthday (along with my aunt Erin). My birthday isn't until Tuesday, but we have tickets to see billy elliot and I am super excited for it.

I am still fighting this cold, though sleeping in today has help tremendously (that of the cold had run its course).

Yesterday Bill went with me to my semi-formal event. He got to meet a bunch of the people I have been talking able for the last week and a half. What was amazing though was how many people I didn't know at all. It feels like all I have been doing is meeting people every day, and still I know so few people in my class.

I am all signed up for classes, and have started looking for my books. Bill and I are taking two classes with the same books and I am taking a class he took last quarter so book wise I am hoping we can overlap a lot.

On the home front, I am awaiting my garlic (yay) and starting to think about taking apart my garden (boo) next year we will probably cut back (let the soil rest) so Bill and I have been discussing what worked and didn't.

We really liked the garlic. most of the work is done the fall before and I am loving my yummy garlic in stir fry and tomato sauce, in soups and basically everywhere else

The Swiss chard that i planted by seed was super easy and resilient. I literally sewed the seeds and we have been picking leaves and enjoying them all summer.

I really have liked the Cherokee purple and Hungarian hear tomatoes, but i think from now on I will pass on cherry tomatoes.

My peppers were a bust this year along with my cuckes I thing that was more the weather than anything, so I would probably just do less of them and hope for greatness.

The lettuce always seems like a better idea at the beginning of the summer. we did eat a bunch of the red leaf ice burg that i planted in the garden and in the early summer i enjoyed some of the lose leaf mix. I still have seeds and will try them again, but i am not buying any new ones.

the beans and beets are probably passes. for the amount that we eat beans it is easier to buy then at the market, and we really only consume the beet greens and they are so similar to chard that i don't see a point in both.

Basil is a must every year as is parsley. My perennial herb area got out of control too early in the season and I gave up on maintaining it.

I also have my asparagus bed which is a tangle of ferns and weeds at the moment, but I hope to be able to eat some next spring.

Over all, I think that I am still very dependent on my local farmers markets, but given my time and interests in the cooking and preserving parts of the process I don't have the space to grow enough for the two of us. I like the process of a garden. I love looking out at it and tracking the growth, and that satisfaction is worth all the juicy tomatoes in the world.

This post has ran way too long so I'll sign off. have a great weekend!!