Maybe I should start a series?  So now we are getting several cucumbers a week.  Cucumber salad, cucumber sandwiches, cucumber with soy sauce, plain cucumbers, etc.  If you have a recipe, send it my way, I'll let you know how it turns out, haha.  It turns our that the green beans are starting to grow plentiful too.  I only noticed the flowers, but my mom pointed out a couple of them on the vine so when I went to harvest them, I ended up with a mini basket full of them.  The other plants are starting to bear fruit too, so I am just waiting patiently to have them grow into something yummy!  Hopefully something won't happen to the fruit along the way.

Pumpkin                                                            Sugar snap peas

  Baby watermelon

Oh, and along with a lush garden comes interesting critters I'm not used to.  Ewww...

I've taken up gardening.  It started as a pet-project for me and TJ, using a strawberry plant we bought at the farmer's market.  We thought it would be good for him to learn about gardening (and, eventually, about being mindful about our planet).  It's a fun way to teach hard work, patience, and respecting nature.  Well, I really got into it and now we've got a garden!  Here are pictures of what our garden looks like.  We got some star jasmine plants to put along the fence (hopefully they'll grow nice and tall), to separate the parking area from the garden/pool area.  The fruits are starting to come out of some of the plants and Thing 1 and Thing 2 love finding them and picking them.  Thing 2 seems to have a "red radar."  She'll pan and scan the garden and as soon as she spots something red (tomato, strawberry), she'll swoop in for the grab.  The really neat thing about the garden is the kids are starting to like fruits/veggies that they normally won't eat.  Thing 1 who doesn't eat tomatoes, will eat the cherry tomatoes out of the garden.  The same thing goes for Thing 2 and cucumbers.  It has encouraged us to grow an even bigger variety of fruits and vegetables.  Not shown in the pictures are our lime and lemon trees, which are in a different area of the backyard.  Oh, and we've got an herb garden on our back porch too.  Costs the same for a plantling at OSH as it does to buy one of those plastic packs of cut herbs at Ralphs.  We'd rather have it growing and useful for months, rather than only fresh for a week in the fridge.  So far there's jalapeno, cilantro, basil, thyme, oregano, dill, and rosemary.  No picture of herbs yet.

How gratifying it is to grow your own food!  It is healthy, yummy, and organic.  We have already started sprouting our fall plants.  I use the window sill in the kitchen as my sprouting area. 

Some of the "fruits" of our labor, hehe.
 

Thing 2 enjoying some tomatoes

Tim got the kids these T-shirts in Orlando last month.  I think we'll use these names when talking about them in this blog from now on.  Guh-Guh is now "Thing 1" and Mei-Mei is now "Thing 2." 

"I will pick up the hook.
You will see something new.
Two things. And I call them
Thing One and Thing Two.
These Things will not bite you.
They want to have fun."
Then, out of the box
Came Thing Two and Thing One!
And they ran to us fast.
They said, "How do you do?
Would you like to shake hands
With Thing One and Thing Two?"

 ........................................................

Thing Two and Thing One!
They ran up! They ran down!
On the string of one kite
We saw Mother's new gown!
Her gown with the dots
That are pink, white and red.
Then we saw one kite bump
On the head of her bed!

Then those Things ran about
With big bumps, jumps and kicks
And with hops and big thumps
And all kinds of bad tricks.
And I said,
"I do NOT like the way that they play
If Mother could see this,
Oh, what would she say!"