Wordless Wednesdays

A Garden in the Rocks

For my birthday in September, Les & Kathy promised me 4 home-made garden boxes. Since it is now SPRING, here they are.


See all those rocks in my back yard? No dirt to be found! Who ever thought that I'd BUY dirt. Buying DIRT. I think that's crazy.


Alvin drilled drainage holes in the bottom of all the boxes. We lined it with ground cloth so the dirt wouldn't fall out.



The finished product. I only ended up with enough dirt for 3 so I'll have to get some more.

Alvin, the box of dirt, and my beautiful flowering tree!

Landscaping!

Woot! I'm getting my landscaping done. This is the trench that they dug on Friday for the downspout water to run from the gutter to the street.

Ah, FINALLY! A picture of my trees. Serafin is working on the ditch that will bring in the drip line.

The Crew of Ayala's Maintenance service hard at work.

Happy Birthday! That's Earthworks Landscaping here in Chino Valley delivering my 11.5 TONS of rock. It's like "leftovers" from a quarry -- stuff that didn't make the grade. Because of that, I can get it pretty cheap. Of course, it took up all $250 of the gift certificate my folks got me for my birthday in September. But, I think it'll be worth it!

Chili Relenos - Thanksgiving 08 in Tucson

Remember all those MILLIONS of chilis I grew in my garden this year? I shipped them all to Nana so she could roast them. Well, some of them, she roasted and stuffed with cheese for chili relenos! Here she is showing us how she dips them into batter.

A close up shot. I THINK it's just whipped egg and a bit of flour but I wasn't there for it.


And into the skillet. We all had some as a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody had 2. Except for me.





I had 4.





One was sweet and 3 were melt-your-face off. Guess I'll never learn.

Tomatoes

Beans!

We harvested the dried bean pods from the garden. Then, the whole family spent about 20 minutes shelling beans.


All that work -- we got a jelly-jar's worth!

Garden Harvest

Mom decided that we should harvest the garden today. That's 195 Mucho Nacho Jalapenos she's holding. Yeah, THOSE are the hot ones! The ones that melt your teeth off.


Nearly 300 peperoncini, 36 yellow hots, mild jalapenos... We sent MOST of it to Nana & Papa so they can roast the chilis and do, whatever it is they DO with them. And, my wayward catelope in the background.



Anaheim, Big Jim, Sahauro chilis. MILLIONS OF CHILIS.




In other news across the garden, we bring you this breaking story...


My big pretty watermelon? The one that would have easily won a 1st place BLUE ribbon at the county fair. We picked it! 45 POUNDS. I couldn't even carry it and Alvin had to bring it in for me.


Dad taking a tester bite. It's not as red as it looks in the photo, more a dark crumbly pink.

Sweet! Warm from the sun! Did I mention it was FORTY FIVE POUNDS????

We gave half to Uncle Dave. Along with some too-hot jalapeno poppers we had for dinner. Gotta love Chino Valley soil! I've got three other melons that are as big. We also harvested 8 cantelopes, black radishes the size of softballs, and more roma tomatoes than you can shake a stick at!

Tomatillos

I have three tomatillo bushed in my garden. Mom and I took a break on Sunday (me from school work, she from grading) and made tomatillo salsa. These are the tomatillos in the husks. You have to peel each tomatillo and then wash off all the sticky stuff.

I think we picked about half of the tomatillos in the garden; about 150 of them. Who knew that just three bushes can produce so MANY tomatillos!


Then we blanched the tomatillos. And yes, they really WERE that color. They look like little apples floating in the water.

Then, through the blender with a few jalapenos (1.5 hot ones) from my garden, cilantro, garlic, salt and onion.

SO yummy!

We had way too many tomatillos to make them ALL into tomatillo salsa so we did about a quarter into salsa. We froze the rest of the blended tomatillos for later. I took some of the tomatillo salsa to Les & Kathy. They really liked it, Les especially! Kathy gave me some mango salsa, homemade ice cream, homemade bread...

Hmmm, just because we made tomatillo salsa doesn't make us the better cooks!

Watermelon!

I'm growing Verona watermelon in my garden this year. I've never grown watermelon before, let alone VERONA watermelon! It's HUGE. Alvin didn't think this photo really showed how BIG this one is, so I've got another one below with Alvin's hand and my hand on it.

The watermelon is easily 17 lbs or so and doesn't seem to be ripe yet. The bottom is still yellow and not white. And, it's getting BIGGER.



My hand's on the right. HUGE.

This is my cilantro. I just like the way the light was hitting it.

(PS I took these photos over the weekend and am just now posting it!)

Tractor Work

Tony and TJ came over on Sunday morning to do some tractor work for Dad. We had the Ayala's dig a water moving trough (a ditch) on the up-hill side. But, it was too close to the fence so Tony came over to fix it for us.



I know it doesn't look like it, but TJ is like 10 feet in the air right now in the bucket of the tractor as Tony was working. It looked like fun.

Scary, but fun.

Ah, yes, my dad DOES know how to work a shovel.

Mama Said...

Mama said there'd be days like this!


This is Boomer, Les and Kathy's dog. Man! Have you ever had a day like that? Slumped on the couch to watch TV and read a magazine?



The second harvest:

Squash! (or Squish, if you prefer)

My winter squash plant doesn't hardly bloom let alone produce fruit. I think I'm okay with that.

Ah! The Joys of Radishes

Hello! Multi-colored Fraggles. The black ones are REALLY hot.

Getting Close!

I'm really really close to having everything done and ready to print for this year's EA Super Seminar in Las Vegas! I've got three different "trickle out" pages that will be placed on the chairs of the attendees each morning. They're each designed to get them to come by the booth, pick up some information about Identity Theft, and enter the raffle.

This year, we're raffling off a CRISP $100 bill; one for each session. And, we'll be giving it away AT the conference so that should really get a lot more people entering the drawing and create some excitement.

Last year we had, I think 12 or 15 people sign up at the conference and I'm hoping to double that or better. It's really exciting and it should create some GREAT Player's Club points for us both.

Speaking of Player's Club, I'd better get on the stick. Here is is the 15th already and I have a whole ONE point being processed. For the big trip, I'll need to average at least 16 points per month. Hurry! Hurry!

But, Jes-ka! is coming to visit me on Monday. I can't wait. Of course, that means that it's limiting to my players club points early in the week so I'd better stay focused until then. The last week in May will be full of Finals for Spanish class, millions of phone calls for Pre-Paid and getting the garden in the ground.