smoothie… or pudding

So the smoothie this week isn’t really a smoothie.  It’s more of a pudding, but still jam packed full of good fats and yummy flavors.  A few months ago, there was an avocado-chocolate pudding going around pinterest and it was amazing! Anything with chocolate and honey can’t be bad. Well, I wanted to use up some avocados and whipped us up some pudding.  It is super easy to make! We use three ingredients:

2 avocados

cocoa powder

honey

Throw the avocados in the food processor, add a couple (few) tablespoons of cocoa powder and honey to your liking (we like it sweet) and blend.  Give it a taste,

(or three) and maybe add some more honey.  Taste again on some raspberries for good measure. I just love those chocolate covered little lips!

The pudding straight up is amazing, but I really wanted to freeze it and see how some Popsicles would come out.

Pretty yummy lookin’, no? Starr Lil’s thought it was tasty!

And gobbled it up! I do like to eat these outside and a bonus to these pudding pops is that in this 90 degree heat they don’t melt quite as fast as our other Popsicles.

On a side note, the garden got a much needed weeding and check out our harvest! (Upon reading this, the hubs insisted I give him more credit, haha.  He was out there with his dad for 5 hours! And they pulled out 4 garbage bails of weeds, yep, 4!  Good job honey.) This gardening business is definitely a lot of work, but we love it.

Yums! Anyone want some squash? What kind of puddings do you do?

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The un-garden

Our garden is growing like, well, like a weed, haha.  We went away this last week for a few days and came back to this:

Those sunflowers are c.razy! They’re actually blocking our tomatoes a bit, so we’re planning on moving the little guys out from underneath the mammoth sunflowers to get more sun.  But we’re not talking about our garden today.  We’re talking about the “other” garden.  Last year we started a compost pile near the other side of the yard that had a bit more shade and just threw in all of our grass clippings, leftover veggies, egg shells, leaves, oranges, avocados, coffee grounds, peals, everything. And just let it do it’s thing.  We don’t really do anything to it, except maybe toss it once a year? Well, color us surprised when plants started growing from it!

‘native plantings’ love it.

We have some gorgeous squash/zucchini looking plants. Some tomatoes and maybe a pumpkin?

it’s like a surprise every time you harvest!

And we already started harvesting and the squash is yummy!  So note to self for next year’s garden: Don’t worry about planting time, starting seedlings, hoses and irrigation set up, weeding, and weeding some more, and soil tests.  Just throw some garbage out in a pile and let it grow!

Do you have a compost pile? Want to help us weed our “real” garden?

Tending to the garden

We’ve been working a little at a time on the garden and it’s looking great. We even have a few strawberries!

mmmm….any problems with birds?

Thankfully we’ve had some rain so we haven’t worried too much about the irrigation system.  We’ve just been watering everything on the dry days.  Have I mentioned that we have a couple of rain barrels? Our county offers a great program where you can pay a minimal fee and they help you build a rain barrel (all supplies included). I’m glad we have them! After dinner, Morgan and Starr Lil’s fill up their watering cans and water everything in the garden, plus all the planters around the house.  I love to look out the window and see them playing in the dirt, pulling up weeds.

But watering the plants by hand every night isn’t always feasible so we finally got around to laying down the irrigation system!

Charlotte would love to come ‘help’ and remove all of your flags!! 😉

It looks a bit like a construction site, no?  Ha ha, those flags are pretty handy for labeling our seeds though.  We used 2, 75 foot soaker hoses in the garden. It was what was recommended on the packaging and after laying down three hoses last year we thought we might follow directions this time!

They connect very easily and then all we had to do was put a 150 foot hose from the house to the garden.

Morgan–run a trench and some pipe!!

Did you know you can buy a timer for your hoses so you don’t  even have to turn it on? It’s like magic! Seriously the best garden invention ever.

I agree, magic. We have one for our garden too and it’s amazing.

You set the time you want it to run and  bam! Done. On rainy days we just make sure to turn off the timer.

The tomato and been trellises went up too.

Last year we waited too long to do this and had tomatoes all over the ground. The little plants are getting bigger – I hope we gave them enough space. It doesn’t look like the peppers are coming in, so we might use that space for some volunteer tomatoes that are springing up now. I’m excited to have lots of tomatoes this year and try out some canning for next winter.

Our flowers are also growing beautifully. Starr Lily’s little garden keeps growing and the hanging baskets are so pretty.

In love! I need some of that chartreuse in my baskets…

And here is our first harvest!

yum!

Some yummy strawberries and herbs!
There seem to be a ton of slugs this year too. Any tips on managing those little critters? I’ve heard coffee grounds work, but they also change the ph of the soil so I’m looking for a better alternative.

The garden is more or less on autopilot now.  We weed occasionally, harvest if things look like they’re ready and wait for some goodness to sprout.  How is your garden doing?

In the garden

How is the weather where you live? It has been crazy here! Last week we still needed coats and gloves and this week we hit the 90’s! But I can’t complain. The cherry blossoms are blossoming and look beautiful. Don’t they just make you smile?

Ah, seasons. I hear those are nice.

 

The birds are out merrymaking, daffodils are popping up everywhere and there is so much freshness in the air. Spring definitely makes me happy. With the last frost (hopefully) behind us, we are ready to start our little garden. Last year was our first attempt to grow some veggies and boy did we learn a ton! This year we will be sure not to grow 10 zucchini plants because really there are only so many zucchini muffins one can eat! We’re taking a much more laid back approach and planting things in stages so we can harvest at different times. Here is a rough sketch of what we are planning on doing.

Very official. Turns out you CAN use geometry after high school.

So far we, umm, I mean my hubby, has cleared off our little patch and is getting it ready for planting.

I saw the before. Morgan earned a back rub.

The irrigation system needs to be rearranged a bit (more on that later) and the soil needs to be tilled. We did have some strawberry plants survive the winter though and we’re looking forward to some berries!

mmmm….strawberry ice cream is just around the corner….

Apparently you need more than one strawberry plant to actually make strawberries 🙂

In the meantime, I’m working on the window boxes!

Every good after needs a sad before, right?

Interesting light placement….

They look sad and depressing now, but soon we’ll have flowers and maybe some butterflies.

We had some friends over today and our littles were able to garden and play in the dirt.

“What Mommy? You want the dirt everywhere?”

They had so much fun scooping and pouring dirt! Nana sent us some seeds in Starr Lily’s Easter basket and I’m excited to see my little one take care of her own mini garden. We also planted some herbs in the window box near the kitchen window and a few pansies and geraniums in the hanging baskets.

Can’t wait to see it all done!

There is something so soothing and rewarding when you work your hands in some dirt and end up with something beautiful looking back at you. How is Spring time in your neighborhood? Have you grown your own garden before?