Our Favorite Exchange Student!

We had the best time this past year with our friend Laurel's foreign exchange student, Seema.  Seema comes from Pakistan and has been a great part of our lives.  Alex and I are most excited about her knowledge she has gained over this past year.  Seema is going to be a great success with anything she does.  As well as doing a lot of "firsts" she has also given us a lot of firsts.  Thanks Seema! 

Check out our latest adventure when we took Seema golfing.  Men are allowed to golf in Pakistan and Seema showed those men that a Par 3 is not that hard.  There are many other stories and pictures of our fun at their blog, www.exchangeinthehive.blogspot.com  

Seema holding Martha Stewart.

Seema is always a good sport for canning at any time of day or temperature outside.

Halloween is a very big deal in our house.  Seema had just a small sampling of what we do for Halloween.

 

Garden in Mid-June

We have been working a ton in the garden this past month.  Everything is growing and will soon be in full glory.  This has been the place for some great parties these past weeks as well (maybe more pictures to follow).  Anyway, enjoy these pictures of our little paradise and if you want a tour, come on over! 

Our very own pergola which lights up at night.

The Meyer Lemon is in full bloom and smells amazing!  Come January we will have about 10 pounds of lemons.  When life gives you lemons...

Peppers, peas, tomatoes, onions, squash & herb garden.

Standard and purple tomatillos are already in bloom!

80 onions in the middle on each box.  We will trellis the squash up the sides.  We have blue and green Hubbard, spaghetti, zucchini, Casper pumpkins, and butternut. 

Garden peas with string beans coming up right behind.

Something new, potato box.  The box progressively gets taller as the potatoes grow.  We grow them in straw to keep them clean and for easier harvesting.  They are super late in the ground but I hope we get enough. 

More Garden Photos

The shade garden has been a life savor on hot days.  It is a nice  and cool seating area. 

Another view, we can't wait to see this in mid-August and the end of the season.

All together we have 34 different tomatoes.  Mostly heirlooms and a couple hybrids.  We love heirloom seeds because they are easy to keep from year to year.  That is another blog post for sure.  Plus this year we should have red, pink, purple, orange, white, black, and green tomatoes.

Small cherry tomatoes of the back door. 

A few of the herb garbage cans made it to the new house as well and are in full glory. 

Our first harvest of peas.  Our favorites are Lincoln Garden peas.  They are dark green and sweet.