Summer's here and the bees and butterflies are out. Unfortunately, I managed to step on a honey bee a few weeks ago that was busy in my clover. It hurt like crazy. I had totally forgotten how bad it hurt to get stung...and then it itched like crazy for a while after that. I think I felt worse about killing the honey bee than I did about being stung. Do they always die after they sting? I imagine they do, but I didn't find a corpse when I went back later...maybe she made it. Here's a photo of one of our local butterflies on my purple coneflowers. Enjoy the rest of our summer-so-far photos...
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| Black swallow-tail butterfly showing off in my garden. |
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| Rory playing in the pool in our front yard. It's great because it is in the sun in the morning, and is shaded by our ash tree in the afternoon. |
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| Rory's first official fireworks show. We went with our friend Kara and her little boy Rylan. By the time the fireworks actually started, Rory was tired and bored and didn't even seem to notice. |
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| What's better in the summer than playing in the sprinkler (naked) in your backyard. Look at that little white butt... |
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| Some beautiful, free-range (not just cage free), eggs from our local food co-op. Well, the green and brown ones are...I added in the white one for contrast. From a not-so-free chicken. I was getting ready to make Chad a few loaves of his gluten-free sandwich bread. |
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| One of my favorite things of summer. Fresh basil. I wish I could add a smell "caption" for you. It's amazing with pasta, fresh tomatoes, olive oil and fresh-grated parmesean cheese...yum. It's also great for bruschetta. And on pizza. Especially with a homemade crust. |
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| Some of our first ripe tomatoes from our garden. These are heirloom Arkansas Traveler tomatoes that stay a little pink when they ripen. We also have a bunch of our other heirlooms, Illinois tomatoes, on the vine waiting to ripen. Unfortunately tomato plants apparently do not like to set fruit or ripen well when the temperatures are above 95 and don't get below 75 at night. Welcome to Arkansas...Later in the season, we'll be looking forward to our Cherokee Purple tomatoes to start to put out fruit. I forget that they are late fruiters, but they're worth the wait. |
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| Rory looking like she might actually want to eat our tomato that we just picked...but not really. I haven't tried it lately, but in general she tells me she doesn't like tomatoes. She does love to eat zucchini and carrot "coins" so we'll take what we can get. I love pictures of Rory with our harvest. |
I hope this post finds everyone well and staying cool. We're getting out when we can and just got some hot peppers, sweet corn and red onions from the farmer's market this morning. Can't wait to boil up some corn tonight for dinner. With lots of butter and salt of course. We've also been enjoying zucchini. The recipe "Disappearing Zucchini Orzo" from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is amazing. So are the chocolate-chip zucchini cookies on her site. They come out cakey and delicious...you'd never know there was zucchini in there. (www.animalvegetablemiracle.com)
I was totally finished with my blog entry when I came across this. It's on a list of the top ten books parents need to own. We would love to get some of these. This one was by far my favorite. (You can click on the photo to get to the Amazon page for the book. You definitely need to Click to Look Inside!)
Enjoy!
1 comment:
Dawn, you and Rory should come by some time. My number is 5307371, and I'm right in the Johnson part of Fayetteville.
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