The garden is in full swing! We got some much-needed rain last week and the kids were pleased with the puddles it left on the driveway, but the flowers were even more pleased. The zinnias especially are showing off, as they seem to every year, and the bees love them. Our compost pumpkin is starting to turn orange and sending off more female flowers, the amaranth is beginning to flower, the cucumbers, squash, and zucchini are producing (more than the last two years combined from the latter two!), and I'm doing my best to kill the squash bugs before they can take over. Between the amaranth and the radishes planted around the cucumbers, those are doing pretty well without a single cucumber beetle spotted on any of the plants.
The meat birds had their last happy days and were butchered on Saturday - 47 out of 51 birds made it to maturity, and thanks to equipment borrowed from Andrew's boss, everything went smoothly! We had a couple of families over to help, letting the kids run around (and help a little - sweet John Paul was on lung duty when it came to organ removal, because his was the only hand small enough and deft enough to reach into the cavity) while the adults took care of things. It was really lovely, actually, and I'm trying to see if we can do more community-based events like this because it makes things like canning/saucing/jamming/whatnot so much more pleasant!
I looked outside one evening and saw that John Paul and Cecilia were giving the twins piggyback rides and then racing each other through the yard. It was hilarious and amazing - they're not THAT much larger than the twins!! The photo evidence isn't the best, but the memory will keep making me smile for quite some time.
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