Our summertime harvest!

We planted our garden again this year and we have been enjoying the fruits of our labor (mostly Mark's labor) for several weeks.  We planted tomatoes, squash, zuchinni, cantaloupe, watermelon, sweet potatoes, and peppers. 

We have several cantaloupe and watermelon growing and we are hopeful that the animals will leave them alone and let them mature. Don't even get Turner started on those "pesky old deer" - she gets extremely animated as she explains that we need to, "get a gun and shoot them!" or "get a rock and throw it at them and kill them".  (Apparently she thinks shes David and the deer are Goliath?)  I grew up in a home with a hunter for a father, so guns/hunting aren't something that bothers me...but it does bother some people.  I am terrified she's really going to offend someone (and shock their socks off) with her haste to dispose of our vegetable eaters!   We do live in a neighborhood and there are houses around now where woods used to be, so we had hoped the deer issue might diminish.  No such luck!

Our sweet potatoes won't be ready for a while, but for the moment we are over-run with squash, tomatoes, and peppers!  This box below is what Mark pulled just this evening alone - and we could walk out and get just this much again in another day or so!  The entire meal below was prepared from vegetables picked late last week, and the sad part is that I threw away more than I used because it had been sitting for too long and had ripened too much!

We have so much squash that we've put some away in the freezer and we still eat sauteed squash almost every meal.  Tonight, we had our once-a-summer splurge and FRIED a meal's worth of squash...oh my was it tasty!!  :) 

The meal consisted of fresh peas from Grandpa's garden, fresh tomatoes and squash from our garden, turkey meatloaf, and cornbread.  Mmmm...mmmmm....good.

Turner kept coming in the kitchen and sneaking a cornbread mini-muffin when I had my back turned.  I taught her how to make my favorite "country girl" treat.  Squished peas on top of a tomato...Mark took it a step further and suggested she put it on a mini-cornbread muffin top - what a sandwich!  What a YUMMY summer meal!