Garden in review, and some corn

When Mark told me he wanted to plant a garden this year, I said "Let's not." I knew I wouldn't be able to do much (any!) work in it, and I didn't want all the weeding and harvesting and work to fall to him, so I thought we should take a year off. He really wanted to do it, though, so we decided to go for it, but only plant a few things. The few things we planted were: romaine, spinach, chard, butter lettuce, basil, carrots, corn, cucumbers, pumpkins, and butternut squash.

We enjoyed our lettuce whenever I remembered to go out and get some. I love having lettuce in the garden for salads.

We made lots of pesto from our basil.

Our carrots were never thinned and I'm sure there are some out there but good luck getting them out of the ground; they're all so crammed together. *sigh*

Our cucumbers are awfully happy and growy right now. Do you want one?

The pumpkins are coming along nicely, though I think we have fewer than previous years. But the fact that we're going to have pumpkins makes me so happy-that-it's-Autumn and I really am positively glowing about the leaves and the weather changing and pulling out the slippers and the rice bags again and candles and sweaters and boots and tea and cocoa and EGGNOG LATTES!!! and all the wonder that Autumn brings. LOVE it. Okay, total tangent. Moving on...

Mark tells me the butternut squash is growing and I cannot wait, because I love that stuff.

Oh, but the corn? We got two ears for the four full rows we planted. (To be fair, Mark says "there may be more". But they're small and- it's all just a little disappointing.) Ugh. We have had some good corn years, but that's twice now that our corn just hasn't taken well. :(

So my mom called me up this afternoon and asked if we wanted corn. My grandpa plants a HUGE garden of corn every year and he had plenty to spare. I said "Yes!" She brought up six bags- sixty ears, she said- and there is more to come on Thursday if we'd like (yes, we would).

We rounded up the troops and began shucking corn. The neighbor boy came over to play and I told him the kids weren't playing, they were working. But if he wanted to work right along with them, he was welcome to the back yard to shuck corn with the family. He did.


It didn't take long with all of our helpers. [Sans Adelia. When I handed her an ear of corn to get her to help us, she promptly threw it on the ground and said, "All done." That was before she'd tasted it.]

I set to work blanching the corn while Mark followed up by cutting the kernels off the ears. I love this guy. I could never do these things without him.




The older kids played outside with the neighbor boy while we were in with the little girls. Audra was on my back in the Ergo:


(and nearly asleep, here!) and Adelia roamed around trying to take a bite of every ear of corn available to her. Mark told her no several times. After a little while she disappeared and when I went looking for her, I found that she had shut herself in our dark closet with an ear of corn she was happily nibbling on. (Little rascal!)

Into the pack-n-play she went.


Then we called the kids in and sent the neighbor boy home with a bag of corn. Isaias' job was to put the lid on the tubs of corn, Isaac's job was to wipe off the lid (I'd just washed them and they were wet), and Ella's job was to write on the lids. (Guess who was REALLY excited about their job?)



When there was lag time they took the full tubs to the downstairs freezer.

Mark kept cutting, I kept blanching, Audra kept sleeping.

And we let Adelia loose.



(Daddy said it was okay.)