We went hiking along the Chattahoochee River a couple of weeks ago and came upon a huge patch of blackberry bushes just loaded with berries.  I happened to have a gallon sized ziplock bag and so we spent a few minutes grabbing a bunch.  Here is the result:

I used my Cuisinart Bread Machine to make this jam and it was soooo easy: just wash the berries throw them in with a couple of cups of sugar and a packet of pectin and some lemon juice.  An hour and a half later the machine beeps at me and I poured the jam into a hot jar and voila!  Now I just need to eat it in four weeks.  I don't think that will be a problem.

Oh, the cucumbers are actually from my garden--I think they wanted to sneak into this picture.

I spent more time working in the yard today.  I'm trying to remove all the weeds that parade as a lawn in our yard and replace them with some nice fescue.  Without using chemicals.  It's very hard work.

~

Here is what our "lawn" looks like prior to weeding:   

~

~

Here's what it looks like after weeding: 

~

~

Since I can't weed the whole yard at once I've been doing it in spots.   Hence the wheat straw spots where I have dumped a load of fescue seed in hopes that some of it will sprout and take root and keep the weeds from returning. 

~

~

When this batch of "spots" needs to be mowed I will put down more seed in the newly weeded areas and hopefully my yard will turn green in concentric rings.  That's the theory anyway. 

~

~

One day when I'm old and grey I want to have a nice GREEN lawn.  I might have to wait until all the dogs are gone before I achieve this.  Harry has worn a number of paths from one side of the house to the other.  He doesn't want to miss an opportunity to bark at the UPS man, the garbage man, the mailman, joggers, walkers, people walking dogs, women walking by with strollers, kids on bikes, kids playing in the street, and any vehicle with a diesel engine. 

~

As I was taking these pictures, I noticed that we had a very pretty visitor at Rebecca's Butterfly Bush.  Unfortunately, she is sick and flatly refused to come rushing outside in the 247 degree weather to look at the wonderful visitor.  Silly girl.  Fortunately her mother happened to have a camera handy.

~

I started to say, boy, I've been soo busy yadayadayada, but I've already started out a shameful number of entries thusly, so I've decided that I'm going to simply proceed as if I had not neglected my poor blog and just say what I want to say. 

I have been spending a fair amount of time working in the yard and garden this summer.  There is sooo much to do and I can stand the mosquitos for only so long, so, alas, the progress is muy slow. After spending some time viewing "before" and "after" photos I am quite heartened however!  The grass sod that I got gratis is doing much better than I thought and has taken root in several spots, some quite large.  I added a flower border and it is looking very nice if I do say so myself!

Here is Rebecca laying some of the sod:

Here is a before:

And an after:

As you can see, the little border thingy is not complete.  That is because this particular spot seems to collect water and is not dry enough to dig in the soil without completely making mud pies, so I'm going to wait until the grass is as established as it's going to get and then I'll let it dry sufficiently to finish the "wall". 

Harry has already checked out the new bush as a back scratching device.  Luckily it did not meet his exacting standards and he has gone back to utilizing the much larger, more established shrubbery in the yard.  Hopefully this poor baby will recover and not live out its final days shaped as a triangle.

And I just had to throw one of my dear Elizabeth's latest church outfit.  Sometimes I must bite my tongue multiple times, but one must experiment and this is fairly harmless.

I killed it.  I left the grass in that honkin' big pile tooooo long and I killed it!

On a brighter note, after FOUR trailer loads of dirt, and another tomorrow, I think we can finally plant the sod.  The dead sod.  The stinkin' yellah rotten sod!  Well, everywhere that wasn't covered is a beautiful green, but if it was covered by another piece of sod....it's DEAD!  I think.  I'm hoping all this effort is not in vain and that with sunshine and air the yellow and brown will miraculously be green again, but I'm not holding my breath.  We spread all the bits and pieces out for the night and in the morning Pop will go get one more load of dirt and then we will officially lay that sod.  Somehow that's not as thrilling as it was on Friday when I acquired this gift. 

See, here's one of me working really hard!

Elizabeth made dinner tonight.  My favorite part was the homemade ice cream (although the baked salmon runs a pretty close second).  I just had to have a picture of her with her treat.  She is trying really hard not to roll her eyes at her bloggy mother. 

I just had to throw this one in because this is how good that ice cream tasted!  Tonks is locked up on the deck while the gate to the backyard is open to unhitch the dirt-filled trailer from Pop's truck.  She is anticipating all that new dirt in which to dig.  Bad dog!  Baaaaad Doooog!

Every year I wince at the high cost of seedlings so this year we started seeds inside with moderate success.  They were fairly neglected with the busyness of the first part of this year, but we had something to put into the garden.  Today I ran across a blog that talked about recycling the tubes from toilet paper rolls to make planting pots and for some reason this really intrigued me.  With three females in this house we use quite a bit of toilet paper!

Here is what you will need:

• Empty toilet roll tubes
• scissors
• rubber bands
• an old pair of pantyhose or tights that have a run in them or are of such a color that they've been sitting in a drawer for so many years they are beginning to disintegrate

1. Cut toilet paper roll in half.  The site I visited told you to just use the whole tube and fold over the ends to form a bottom, but that didn't seem too practical (I'm thinking these will not lie flat and I worry about root rot), so this is my improvisation from here on out. 
2. Carefully cut off the very tippy toe of one leg of the pantyhose and then whack about an inch and a half off.  You needn't be tidy here.
3. Cut that inch and a half into two pieces.
4. Stretch out one of the pantyhose pieces across the end of a tube piece (not the end you've hacked through) and secure with a rubber band.
5. Proceed with whatever method you usually use for starting seeds.

Disclaimer:  I have not tried this yet, but I will let you know in a few weeks whether this is worth the effort of collecting tubes and assembling the parts.

This took approximately ten minutes to put together and was completely FREE!  I really, really love free.  And to the blogger who posted this nifty idea, I'm sorry I don't remember where you live and so I can't thank you or give you credit for giving me this great idea which has been knocking around in my head and finally took fruition because I walked through the gardening sectioning at Wal-Mart this afternoon and decided that this would be a really cool way to use those Dollar Store seeds I purchased at the bargain price of ten cents each!  Whew!

Yesterday I took the girls to a Girl Scout activity where we received orientation to becocme volunteers at a horse rescue farm.  Rebecca did not want to go because the service project she voted for (Riverkeepers) was voted down in favor of Save the Horses and she was being a bit of a snit about it.  She had a pretty good time, however, and is now resolved to scooping poop and mucking stalls as oppopsed to doing whatever the Riverkeepers do.  I told her if she investigated the group on line, we could possibly volunteer as a family, but she hasn't made the effort yet.

After we returned from the horse farm we stopped at Home Depot to pick up some manure and  we also found the cutest little concrete turtle.  Upon arriving home we discovered that we were locked out of the house.  I had failed to put the ring of keys with the house key back in my purse after returning from Las Vegas and after sending the kids around the entire house trying doors and windows, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were not getting in.  Fortunately the door to the carport closet does not lock and there were a number of tools inside and so we simply starting doing some yard work. 

At this point I would normally place some pictures of our accomplishments, but since I murdered the camera and have not yet gotten around to replacing it, I will have to draw these images with words.  First we raked out all the fallen leaves and pine needles from the small area next to the driveway where we usually plant annuals.  This actually took a whlle becasue I haven't done it in about two years and there was a lot of muck.  I ended up raking everything, including the decorative rocks out and then tossing them back in (the rocks, not the muck) a few at a time as I knocked the dirt and whatnot from them. 

Papa returned as we were finishing this project and so Rebecca ran down to the basement and brought up some of the seedlings we had planted a few weeks ago.  (They are HUGE now!).  She planted a bunch of flowers, Canterbury Bells and Convolvulus, in the now pristine bed.  While she did that Elizabeth and I headed around back with our manure and went about preparing the strawberry bed. 

I had decided to start with new plants this spring because I've been strategically placing runners each fall for about eight years, but last year we didn't get all that many strawberries.  So last fall I turned the earth over and then covered it for the winter, but when we uncovered the raised bed yesterday, there were six healthy plants already flowering.  I figure those brave soldiers deserved a chance so I dug them out and replanted them after the manure had been added to their bed.  By the time we finally tucked the last strawberry plant into the soil the sun was setting and we were done for the day.  It was a good day.

This morning, however, I woke up and could NOT get out of bed.  Is there such a thing as delayed jet lag or something?  I felt achy all over like I hadn't had enough sleep and my vision was crazy like I was going to have a migraine, so I crawled back into bed dozing off now and then and stayed there until 3:00 this afternoon.  I feel all right now, but ready to go to bed soon!  What's up with that?!?

I checked on the wee seeds today and lo and behold after only three days we have babies!  Yay!

Aren't they cute?