Pea soup recipe for dinner + blueberries from the garden

The bird netting is working since I was able to pick a lot of blueberries. I enjoyed them as a little snack today and I'll put some in my morning smoothie tomorrow.

It's great to pick a variety of garden food throughout the day for different meals, and it makes me proud.

I picked lettuce for garden wraps with other veggies and homemade guacomole in a flour tortilla. 

Later, I then picked a bunch of peas from the garden to make a soup.

For pea soup, shell them and boil them in water first. Cut up onions and carrots and add to the boiling soup. Continue adding water or veggie stock. If using water, you may want to add salt, pepper, garlic, or other herbs, but it's not necessary if using the stock. With the fresh peas, I had to boil them in water for an hour to get them soft to chew, and even then they could have been boiled longer. I added nutritional yeast and a little oil too.

Bird netting for blueberries & recycled arbor for Hardy Kiwi plants

I have been doing several different projects this week. First, I made a arbor out of an old swing set for the hardy kiwi plants to trellis. It took hardly any time to put it together by myself so I don't know why I had been putting it off for years. You can watch my mini video of them on my youtube channel.

Then I noticed birds eating at the blueberries so I covered the fruiting plants with netting. Six of the 10 blueberries are older and have a lot of fruit so I focused on covering them. I was annoyed because the netting ended up costing 52$ to only cover the six plants. 

But I digress...also this week I rolled down large rocks from the woods to use in the cob house. They were the size of boulders so I feel like my arms are dislocated or torn from my body. 

This week I also noticed my turtle buddy isn't leaving and it's completely planted itself in my watermelon patch. I remember a tarpin I took care of for months after it was stuck in our well; and the tarpins that come back to my garden, and I wonder if it's the same one...but who knows...

I've got a turtle buddy living full time in the garden

Made this arbor trellis for the hardy kiwis with an old swing set 

Put together bird netting for the blueberries 

Picking blueberries & squash, hoeing garden, making sugar scrubs today

Turning blue and will be ready to pick

Ready to pick but I'll wait so I can harvest a couple more to eat

Blue boa Agastache 

Watermelon

Watermelon patch

Cilantro and flowering arugula

Sweet potato vine seems to be bug resistant unlike the other potatoes 

Big tomato plants 

Grandpa still throwing out scraps to fertilize squash & corn 

Kennebac variety potatoes flowering soon

Hoed around the beans today 

Hoed and weeded around the beans 

Half the potatoes are growing in bags and the others in the ground

Grandma's garden table 

Made sugar scrubs today too with coconut & rose oil, vitamin E

Garden dinner + grandma's country flower gardens

For dinner tonight, I harvested kale from the garden. With the kale, I quick fried it for a couple of minutes with salt, pepper, oil, and nutritional yeast, and then served that over rice. That was a very small serving because I didn't know haveva lot of kale nor rice.

Funny enough, later in the night, James comes home and says he bought tortillas for garden wraps, so then I harvested lettuce and had that with finely chopped cucumbers, peppers, and onion (that he bought from the store). We ate that in wraps with guacomole and veggie chick'n strips (morning star brand)--and that was delicious; and a good way to end the day after swimming and planting flowers. When I get a chance, I'll show you the flowers growing beautifully now between veggies.

I swam this weekend at my grandmother's, and I love taking pictures of her flower gardens, so I'll show you what I took pics of...

Will have squash soon & beautiful parts of the no till garden

Row of Yellow squash fruiting

Rows of Tomatoes fruiting with basil

Row of peppers

Watermelon, cantaloupe and tomatoes 

Cucumbers finally flowering & beans sprouted

Beets, cabbage, lettuce, cilantro 

Hoed the potato patch + pea & lettuce harvest dinner

Made salad, creamed peas, & peas with rice curry

Hoed potatoes yesterday

Sewed more zucchini by the corn

Put the scarecrows out to prevent critters from eating the food