And that's it! part one!

Where did the summer? I've been asking myself this question the last few days as the nights become cooler and the mornings are taking a little longer for the sun to peek over the horizon.

We have had a glorious summer. I'll try to recap as best I can.
Our yard has been a-buzz (haha) with activity since about June. We have some neighbor bee/honey farmers so we see and encounter a lot of honey bees. Thankfully they are very attentive to their work and mostly inattentive to us in the yard. They do wonders for our rose bushes, cherry trees, apple trees and garden. Thank you bees!!

I feel that for a first "real" attempt at a garden we have been mostly successful. If you want to know about our first attempt... don't ask. Epic fail! But this year we had a good supply of lettuce, peas, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, green onions and strawberries. Our cherry trees rocked it out and I have made 3 batches of jelly (only one batch was a dud) and pitted enough cherries for about 3 pies for the winter and I've already made 2 pies. Love Evans cherries! we'll have enough potatoes for the winter as long as our cold room works out and have a few peas blanched and in the freezer! I definately had to google about blanching (90 seconds for peas... FYI!)

Plans for next years garden:

• double our strawberries, a handful a day is NOT enough for this family.
• double the peas, I would love to have a bunch frozen for winter
• try onions again, this time from seed and hopefully it will work out
• try to grow spinach
• attempt to transplant a neighbors amazing raspberry bushes even though i'm skeptical. Every one says raspberries grow like weeds but we have yet to make it work

Between home and gardening, we went south to relax and visit family.

Waterton lake with Zander, Jil had a sleep over with Oma and Opa camping!

My amazing men at waterton

We spent many hours at Henderson Park, the swimming pool, playing in  Oma and Opa's backyard, playing with Cooper and a visit to Pincher Creek friends!

Also stopped at Calaway park!

 

Jil was grinning for basically the entire day, expect for that time they had to stop the mini roller coaster for her. Yup, we were that family, the little terrified child screaming for them to stop the ride! And they did, I was rather impressed

 

Once we got home, we had enough time to do laundry, weed the garden and head out to Whitney Lake Bible camp to help out. Jeff did maintenence and bible teaching and I was in the kitchen helping. We had a blast and were exhausted. Despite our hard work the kids and i still had time to go to the beach, swim, play at the park and get in some water skiing! Too bad I forgot our camera and have to pictures to show for it! The camp nurse and I hit it off and hung out a lot as did her little guy and Jil. A wonderful way to end July!