Recipe Tuesday Squash

Today I am feeling a little under the weather today so I am going to do an easy recipe. Sauteed squash.

Yellow squash (I used 6 but I feed four people and everyone loves squash around here.)
Butter about 2-3 tablespoons or a two inch chuck out of a stick.
3 cloves of garlic (more or less to taste)
Onions are good too
salt and pepper

Slice the squash and onions. Mean while melt the butter in a pan. When the butter is melted throw all of the ingredients into the butter. Cook the squash to desired tenderness. 5-15 minutes. This makes a great side dish for chicken or if you are a vegetarian you can toss the squash with your favorite pasta and Parmesan cheese. It makes a great meal.


So I forgot to take a picture of my squash. So I borrowed this one from here. Also it has a recipe for sauteed squash minus garlic. Google any recipe and you are bound to find a million of mostly the same recipes. I have spent lots of time comparing recipes before I decide on which one to use. Even the squash I have never used a recipe for sauteed squash but still there it is waiting to be found. I hope you try the squash because it is wonderful.

I hope your day is filled with inspiration, love, and laughter. Be well my friends.

Garden News

I am excited to show you what is growing on in the garden. First thing first the new additions to our garden. When we went to the local nursery to look for new trees, (we want to add a pecan, lemon, persimmon, and more pomegranates for our hedge row) for once Rob did not find anything he wanted and we came home with three half priced roses. I happily told him that they would add some beauty, and attract bees for the vegetables.

This has the sweetest smelling flowers!

This is an Olympian Rose.

This is a pink promise.

Let's just say I fell in love with this rose and I have never been so happy to receive flowers.

This is not where they will be planted, well maybe we will plant the pink one here so that I can open the window and have a sweet breeze to fill the house.

I hardly ever get flowers but when I do I am glad they are alive.

Sad news comes from the garden. Rob pulled out the melon plants. They were covered in aphids. Did you know Ants farm them? Once the ants brought them over to the melon vines they exploded. We planted them to late in the season. We learned a lesson and hopefully we will apply it next year.

Zucchini is still growing well. The squash are slowing down. I am incredibly happy with all the squash I have gotten to feed to my family.

I was surprised to find this lovely yellow squash this morning.

I think we will be able to have at least one more meal made from garden squash.

The boys may get an acorn squash before the growing season ends.

Jelly bean tomato, with a side of beets please. This little jelly bean tomato has flowers which means the boys may get a couple of tomatos after all.

I think these are called purple hull beans. Rob planted them with the squash. They are kind of sweet. So we have decided to plant a whole bed of these next year.

Butternut squash! It is a little bitty one but it will taste just as good as any. I am sure. We had two bigger ones but the boys attacked them and throw them over the fence to hide what they had done.

These are pie pumpkins.

I am currently dreaming of pumpkin pie.

Lots of pumpkin pie.

When Rob pulled out one our amaranth plants he shook out the seeds along our fence and two of those little seeds took root! God is good. I love a surprise.

I think that this a purple potato plant. We planted potatoes in the spring and we thought we had lost them but here they are making a wonderful entrance.

We planted more than a dozen different pepper plants and the Rats ate them all. These two some how came back. We may not get any peppers but it does add more greenery to the fence line.

Purple asparagus. This is another plant we thought was gone but it is a true picture of perseverance. It struggles because I often forget to water them but some how it keeps trying to grow.  

One day these little purple asparagus will turn into something truly wonderful. They may even make us a meal in a few years.

Pineapple pear flowers.

We have struggled with fire blight on our pear trees. The Bartlett pear is a lost cause.

Here is hope on a branch.

We spent the summer fighting the battle of tomato's. We finally gave up surrendering to the harsh elements.

We ignored these black cherry tomatoes

Now it is completely covered by little green tomatoes

Sometimes the lessons you can learn in the garden are not just when to plant. This year I have learned more about God's love, and his plan for us. I have no doubt that God is a loving God. I can see that he wants us to have hope, to persevere even when it seems as if there is no way to survive.



Miracles happen everyday, sometimes we don't see them because we are so busy doing what needs to be done. These small miracles are there and it is easy to see them in the garden but I have to wonder if I am missing some that happen in everyday life. I know God is with me and my family. I hope that I will continue to grow in his light.

I hope that your week is filled with small Miracles, Love and Laughter. Be well my friends.

Trama in the garden...

I know I said I would be busy doing school work but I took a break to water the garden. What I found is unspeakable, totally horrible, but I am going to share it with you. The cat, my Husbands Cat, has found a liking for Rats. Now I never know when I am going to find them dead in the garden. Last week I found the head of a rat, this week the back half of one. I have to clean them up so the boys won't mess with it. It is gross, very gross. I wanted to puke! My heart is racing right out of my chest. I think I need a sedative to calm down. I am forever traumatized.I did take some lovely pictures, and I did find some lovely squash ready to be picked. So one to the garden update.

This is what I picked today.

Hello Squash!

I love this kid.

He is cute.

He is still cute too.

I love him too.

We had a wind storm. It beat up the squash beds.

It is still going strong even though it is beat up and sad looking.

I don't know what kind of squash this is. It is happy.

Melon. Yum Yum Yum

A bigger Melon. I hope they make it to full size.

The boy's beans.

Acorn squash in the boy's bed.

Another squash bites the dust.

Baby Kale! I hope it gets big.

Surprise purple Asparagus. We thought this didn't make it but God is good.

Look! Look! A baby pie pumpkin.

We have a lot to learn when it comes to gardening. I am glad we are getting some squash. When these plants are done we are going to be making some changes in how we garden. We watched this amazing movie/film that changed how we look at the soil.  http://backtoedenfilm.com/  I want to encourage you to watch the film on this website. It is about the importance of trusting God, and mulch. I am simplifying it but it is an exciting movie on how to garden. You'll see as we get ready to set it up early next year. We will put it in God's hands.

I hope you have a wonderful week filled with love and Laughter. Be well my friends.

Garden news. . . October 6

So for our weekly garden update I have lots of pictures. Some of them good, some of them okay, and maybe a few that are not. Believe it or not I am not posting all of the pictures that I took of the garden this week. I went a little crazy with all of the baby squash that we have growing. It is exciting to see something growing that we will be able to really eat and maybe we will have enough to freeze some for later meals. I hope you don't mind my excitement. We may not, will not retire here so it is encouraging to grow something in the mist of the worst drought in history, and in clay soil with nothing living in it except for ants. I have also noticed bees flying around and landing on flowers in the garden. I did not take pictures of that yet. It is nice to see the yard slowly transform from the barren landscape we bought to a garden. We still have a lot of work ahead of use in the three years we are for sure going to be here. So I hope you can join us on this journey, and that you might be encouraged to plant a vegetable garden of your own. If we can do it here, so can you where ever you are.Now for the pictures of the garden.

First up is the boys' garden bed.

 Peppers

 I spy a carrot top.

 Radishes popping up

 Jelly bean Tomato

 More radishes they are happy little plants

 Green beens I think.

 Here is a picture of their whole bed. A lot has grown since this picture.

 Now to the squash. I just love this picture.

 This is all from one plant!

 Even with so many squash growing I still love little baby squash

 Almost as much as these big squash. I might start picking them next week or so.

 Zucchini. You are lucky that I didn't post more then this picture of these lovely plants!

 Our melon patch has flowers, I hope that they will fruit for us too.

 They are creeping out into the path

 This is a female flower. The only flower that has the potential to fruit. I hope that is a baby melon.

 We had a storm roll through here and we lost one melon plant.

 We have two grapes growing on this arbor. This grape is happy, the other one is growing slower.

 This crack is in the middle of our yard. We have a lot of them hidden by the grass. It is from the drought, the deeper clay dries out and causes the ground to open up. All we can do is water, water, water. We found on next to the house. So our water bill will be going up. So we will be praying that it works. Praying for this drought to end. Praying for rain. I guess the frogs that live in these cracks are happy where they are. I would find them new homes.

 Remember the stick in the ground I claimed was a fig. Well this year it has grown branches and a few inches taller. When our grass isn't mowed for a couple of weeks it is taller then this poor tree.

 Bleeding heart amaranth and pie pumpkin plants

 Another sad looking tree, The Persimmon. Around we are growing onions. We did get on persimmon off of the tree this year. The boys shared it and loved it. You can see the vegetable garden behind the little fence. That squash looks nice from here too.

 This is a Pomegranate tree. It has grown but with the drought everything is slowly growing.

 We put this orange tree on a drip system and it just started to grow. It is still small but it is happy. After we got the snow last winter we thought it might not make it.

 This is some kind of winter squash. I let you know more when I know more. They are pretty.

 Pumpkin plant.

 Rob planted two new baby fig trees.

Now all we can do is fawn over them and water and hope.

We also planted the Gogi berry outside and it seems to be doing okay. I didn't feature our pear trees. This winter Rob is going to take out our Bartlett Pear because the fire blight is in the lower branches. It can't be saved. Really the only reason it is still there is because I wanted to give it a chance and I thought it had survived the attack. I am a hopeful soul and I always try to think of the best of everything. Also I can be a little looney and I didn't want to kill the tree. I wanted it to grow. We ordered a mulberry tree which will becoming in December, we are planning to plant another persimmon, a couple of lemon trees, and pomegranate in a hedge row along our fence line. We also want to add a nice deck where our patio is now, and more importantly a sprinkler/water system. We have big dreams and plans. We are going to try to do as much as we can before we have to sell the house. Like I said before we are guaranteed to be here another three years and we could end up here longer then that. It all depends on what the Air Force decides for us. For now this is home.

I hope that your week is filled with lovely fall colors or bright yellow squash flowers, and as always Love, and Laughter. Be well my friends