Our garden...

Our garden is coming along very nicely!  The above picture is from last year.  I love looking back and seeing how the garden is compared to last year.  The rest of the pictures are from this year.

Every year God blesses us with a "mystery" plant.  These come up all on their own...meaning we did not plant them.  This year we have a pumpkin.  There are 3 separate plants growing in the front of our house.  YEA!

Our tomato plants are starting to produce fruit.  I get so excited walking out in the garden, looking down and seeing this!  OH I can just smell the wonderful sauce these will make, or the salsa, chili sauce....OH the possibilities are endless!!

We went to the garden center the other day.  They had grape and cherry tomato plants on clearance!  We picked up 6 plants for ONE dollar.  The plants are not that big yet but already producing tomatoes.  YUM!  I told my kids feel free to pick the ones that are ready now...they looked at me and ran out the door.  Usually I tell them H.A.N.D.S O.F.F! LOL!

I love seeing the yellow peaking out from under the sea of green!  This is one of our cucumber plants.  We planted 4 hills of cucumbers.

One of our 40 hot pepper plants.  OH I can not wait to make Cowboy Candy, pickled hot peppers, hot pepper jelly and hot salsa!

Here are our green, red and yellow bell peppers.  Well not all on one plant! :-)  When we went to the garden store and bought the tomatoes they had purple bell peppers that we planted as well.  I had never seen one.  We can't wait to start harvesting these.  It has been SO dry here.  We are going on 3 weeks of no rain.  We have been watering with the sprinkler over night.  We are praying for a couple of days worth of rain! 

Summer squash.  It always amazes me...we wait and wait for these but then are very tired of them after about 2 weeks of them non stop.  I'm planning on making pickles with the ones we don't eat.

Last but not least is our zucchini!  Just like the summer squash we wait for it then are tired of it.  I'm going to do the zucchini relish again this year.  Also, I will shred it for the freezer. 

Gardening Tip:

My grandfather taught me a great way to keep critters out of your garden.  Take hair clippings and scatter them around the outside of your garden.  The human scent will keep them away.  We live in the country and can tell you this has worked like a charm!  It's great since I cut the guys' hair here.

Another tip I learned from our former pastor's wife...take grass clippings and use them around your plants.  Not only does it keep the weeds down, it acts like a mulch.  I have only had to weed a small portion of the gardens.  Thank you Joyce!!

So with the above tip....this has become our favorite tool this year....

This is a lawn sweeper.  You push it through the lawn and it picks up the clippings for you.  Love love love this!  We got it from Lehmans.  If you have never looked at one of their catalogs...You are really missing out!!  This year we are on a quest to use less electric, gas ect.  Their prices are wonderful and this sweeper works like a charm!!  We bought it for about $170.  The bag comes off for easy dumping of the grass.  Since we have a very large lawn this was perfect.  I get a good workout and we are using less gas. 

Now if only we would get some rain so our grass would grow, we will be doing good.