And Abraham Went Out . . .: A hot summer day . . .

Today was the quintessential summer day. . . High of 94 degrees. Sweating it out in the heat all morning at the swim meet. Chatting with friends around the pool. Picnic in the park. Spending an hour watering the garden. Mowing the lawn. Slip and Slide. Ice cream. Brats on the deck.

Here are some pics uploaded off my camera. I didn't rearrange them for any sort of logical order.

Oh, one of my favorite things about summer: an abundance of fresh herbs! Makes me so happy.
I've got a ton of cilantro and basil this year. Yum!

Popsicle-making has commenced. Here's watermelon kiwi. (with a great kid to demo them)

Doug is showing the deck who's boss. He's ripping off all the old decking, replacing it, and adding some
great structural support. I'll upload an updated pic sometime soon. It's looking good.

The kids were so very happy with this dinner. I'll have to make it again soon. So wonderful to have
all that fresh lettuce again!

Working on some STABILITY.

A little evidence that mom and dad get some laps in too. :)

Getting ready for backstroke.

Good, good friends. They are so generous to share their shade with us.

Gabe's on the left. He's been really doing well in freestyle. The only thing is that he's been having
some goggle issues. So I'm going to make a special trip to Madison this week to go to the swim shop to get him properly fitted for goggles. We've gotta get this figured out.

This year's garden. Overall I'm pleased with how things are going. My main concern had been our major issue with squash beetle decimating our squash (and cukes and zucchinis) the past couple years. Squash beetles overwinter, so they can come back year after year. Also I may have mentioned that they like to hide in straw, which we were using a lot to mulch around the plants and to slow down the weeds.

This winter were able to take out some trees that were shading the garden, so enabled me to build some extra rows and move our squash to another area of the garden. My hope was that if I could move all the squash, zucchini, and cucumbers, then the beetles wouldn't be able to find what they wanted to eat and move on out. Also, as you can see from the pictures I am trying to use way less straw, and go mostly with plastic. I'm trying some other things as well: flowers that help the cause and a perimeter of beans and dill around the squash.

I hate to say this for the record and then be wrong but (*in a whisper*), it seems to be working. Oh, I hope!

I've also struggled with our tomato plants getting diseases every year despite my doing what I had read online. But this spring I was talking through the issue with the farmer that I buy most of my plants from at the farmer's market and I think that conversation really helped me figure the issue. I was mulching our tomatoes with straw so that the rain wouldn't splash off the ground and get on the leaves. Excessive water splashing up on the branches and leaves getting can be a major source of disease. She suggested that instead of putting plastic in the aisles and straw around the plant, to do the opposite. The tomatoes need heat and the light color of the straw is reflecting the light. The plastic will absorb the heat that the tomatoes need. It seems to be working beautifully. So far my tomatoes and peppers are healthy! Yay!

Anyhow, I don't want to bore you. I'll finish off briefly. New plants this year: Beets, leeks, and green onions. The kids are going to be stoked about the beets. My family LOVES our traditional borsch soup in the winter.

Squash, cukes, zucchini. The only problem is that we didn't get all the trees down, so we still have some major
shade in the back of the garden. One of my squash (and a new kind too), just isn't growing because of the shade. Same with the peas. Oh well, next year! I may have to bug Doug to get those trees down.

Tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplant, herbs (I finally moved the sage, rosemary, thyme out of pots on the deck and down to the garden. They love it here!).