Mud Pit!

The children had a blast yesterday when their cousins visited from out of town. They chose a classic homemade form of farm entertainment.

MUD!

Hannah the Amazon girl

Muddy girl trio

Muddy boy duo

Rachael trying not to get too muddy

Gianna the mud baby...

Vegetable creatures

The children made vegetable creatures for the fair.

Then again, maybe the children themselves are the vegetable creatures.

Today

Sometimes driving with dad I see my life flash before my eyes as he whizzes through traffic on the freeway just squeezing between semis and other vehicles at 75 miles per hour. Tonight I was nearly sure he was trying to run the semi in front of us off the road! We made a quick trip across the mountains to Renton this afternoon to pick up a riding lawn mower to replace the one we just killed last week, I was along in case he needed a hand with loading. My payment was a chocolate milkshake at the end of the day. Yes, I know the tires are flat...we had to let the air out so it would fit into the back of our mini-van.

This past week we had quite a load of entries at our local fair. It took about 10 hours on entry day to gather all of my entries and fill out the forms...thankfully it only took one and a half hours to remove the items from display. Not counting anyone else in our family I entered about 75 items, mostly vegetables from my garden. Rivers and I both won the vegetable combination exhibit for our age groups! They kinda look sad after a week on display...

Though veggies are normally where I have the most fun, my favorite entries this year were my sewing projects. I didn't win all blue ribbons but it was nice to get the feedback from the judges on the forms.

Take a walk with me

Every day the first thing I see when I come out my door is sweet little Mimi laying on the back porch.

...the bird bath rock garden that dad built

some echinacea...
and my first greenhouse habanero

From the back yard it's not far to the goats and the orchard...as we walk along the east side of the orchard you can see how dry our property gets in the summer when we don't water,

that dead tree on the hill used to be a play fort for the children. When I turn around I see the green grass of the orchard and the cool shade.

North side of the property we have a lovely shaded walk way.

Some things you just have to give up on...the photo of the 2 wild overgrown trees used to be the entrance to the rose garden.

Bonato tomahto is CLOSED....The ducks come waddling especially if it's breakfast time.

Now on to the food section of the garden. Purple snapbeans and parsley.

Interspersed with the veggies are snapdragons, cosmos, marigolds, nasturtiums, and many other flowers and herbs. I thought with our cool summer this year I wouldn't get much but I see that I've got some lovely melons on their way.

We've already picked a lot of cabbage, green beans, green onions, leeks, cucumbers, zucchini, acorn squash, tomatoes, peppers, swiss chard, kale, lettuce...did I miss anything? Praise be to Yahweh for His abundant provision!