holy moly! can you say embarrassed?!?!?!?!? and some tomatoes! (now if this catchy title doesn't grab you - there is something wrong with you! bahahahah!)

what a gorgeous few days! don't believe me? my goodness you people should learn that when i say a gorgeous day - i mean properly GOR-JUSH!



oh i love my bench and pond. and the sky. and clouds. and yes PioneerPreppy - i love those saved tires. tires that will be used to hill my beautiful potatoes!



okay. it's everyone's worst nightmare. you won't even believe these 2 stories that i am about to tell but let me tell you - they really happened! i am so embarrassed that i could cry! well, not really. but i am/was embarrassed!

first one - happened a few days ago. you all know that we garden naked. except in black-fly season. some of you might know them as chiggers or no-see-ums or something. the are awful. i am covered in so many bites that i could cry. even though i cover myself in deet and a whole pile of home-made recipes including smearing crushed garlic and onions all over my body! nothing stops those black flies!!!

so in black-fly season - we wear underwear. panties for me. and bandanas because you don't want those things in your hair. so, we wear underwear because  number one - you do not want to spray deet on your privates right? and number two - you don't want black fly bites on your privates. so a couple of days ago, i am in my panties all deeted up and jam is in his tighty-whities. we are out gardening. then it's noon so i come in the house to start frying hamburger because we are going to enjoy some delicious spaghetti for supper. so i am standing at the stove, in my panties and bandana, stirring hamburger and some guy comes to the door, sees me - screeches "oh god! i'm sorry" and runs back out of the porch and down the stairs. i screech and run to the bathroom, open the window and yell to jam that someone is at the front door. jam only hears me calling so he comes around the side of the house....get ready for it.....wearing knee-high gum boots, filthy tighty-whites and a bandana. you can imagine what that looked like.

buddy turned out to be a purolater courier and he had a package that had to be signed for. he was embarrassed to death. he kept his head down the whole time that jam was talking to him and signing for the package. and then i watched that guy run down our huge driveway faster than either jam and i can run....and we can run - trust me.

oh my goodness. in my panties and a bandana stirring hamburger. i would have felt a lot better if i had have been stirring some fresh greens from the garden, ya know? but no, stirring hamburger. who knows what kind of stories this guy is back at work telling. oh and when i said that jam's tighty-whities were filthy - i really mean it. he was out making dirt in the wheelbarrow which consists of mixing seaweed, compost, manure and dirt. oh dear me. that guys knows our names. ackckckckckckckkck!

anyway, here's a good breakfast to get you going first thing in the morning:

that's some steamed broccoli with olive oil and garlic sauce and some radish and carrot kimchi. i promise to put the recipe up for this kimchi on our recipe blog soon. it's very light and refreshing and so simple to make! and you want to eat fermented food at least once a day, or better yet with every meal!

ok - on to more embarrassment! the other night we are out in the hottub and didn't take our robes with us because we didn't need them. there we are enjoying ourselves when we hear "HELLO. HELLO. HELLO." i screech and jambaloney yells "hang on buddy". the person only came around to the front of our porch, our hottub is out back. jam grabbed a dirty towel off the back of the deck, wrapped himself in it and then went around the porch to see who it was. now remember, it was about 9:30pm. i am shrunk and hiding in the hottub when jam yells "babe, it's just J coming for a visit. he's got his head turned - run in and get dressed". J is a good buddy of ours so i jumped out of the hottub naked, ran into the porch and into the house and got my bathrobe - a bathrobe is fine for visiting in up here.

we spent a good hour and a half out on the deck with our friend J. he said that he knew that you had to toot the horn at the bottom of our driveway, but because he walked over, he didn't have a horn - bahahahah! but he knew to yell out Hello several times in case we were in the hottub. he's a real good buddy - but again, another embarrassing moment!

OK, i know that PioneerPreppy and Matt are all - "what about the freakin tomatoes". keep your pants on, guys, i'm getting to them!

ok - so here are the ugly tires with holes dug in them, 2 handfulls of 5yr old manure put on top of stinky, decaying seaweed. next up, some powdered milk - tomatoes love calcium.

next up is the stakes that jam made from an old trampoline and lawn chair - both of which he found in the garbage. re-purpose and re-use is our motto!

the red bucket was filled with a gallon of water and a cup of epsom salt. tomatoes love epsom salt! as we took each tomatoe out of it's pot, i soaked the roots in the epsom salt water before planting them in their holes. then we planted, each tomatoe, 3 to a tire, filled the tire and hilled the tomatoes with the beautiful dirt that jambaloney made, dropped cages on them and wrapped them in plastic. like this:

and here are the actual planted tomatoes in their mini-greenhouses.

the reason for wrapping them in plastic is because we get such bad winds here. plus the fact that the plastic creates mini- greenhouses for the tomatoes. sorry for the blurry picture.

and here's all 12 tires, filled with tomatoes and wrapped in plastic. people have told us that our yard is junky and that we don't take pride in our land (i am not referring to PioneerPreppy here. he hates our tires and we understand! i am referring to other people.)



but to the people who say that our yard is junky - go jump off a cliff. or better yet, continue on in your stupid ways because you'll be the first to be eaten by the zombies! bahahahahahahah! that's a good one!

here's the jungle cat. i mean tiger. he's out doing tiger things and such. my friend W is always asking for updates on all of our babies. this pic is also for our favourite Marine - i hope that he enjoys seeing a true and proper jungle cat in action!

allrighty - so you are out all morning transplanting tomatoes and building weird cages for them - you need some dinner. how about some gorgeous new brunswick sardines in oil, some home-made pickles (recipe coming soon), some in-season apricots from the mainland and some delicious home-made carrot and radish kimchi - now that's a meal that will keep you working another several hours!

then you have to go out and harvest some chamomile flowers. these will produce flowers all summer long if you clip them when the flowers are fully grown.

here's today's harvest which we will enjoy every morning and evening for the next 3 days.



soon they will be coming in like gangbusters and then we will dry them to have chamomile tea all during the winter. for anyone interested in knowing more about the health benefits of chamomile tea - go here, or here or you can just google "health benefits of chamomile tea". chamomile is very easy to grow, indoors or outdoors, in a pot or anywhere. and it has so many beneficial qualities - please - if you don't grow anything - grow chamomile.

here's our ornamental apple trees in almost full-blossom. we didn't plant them, the previous owner did - but we enjoy their beauty! we still haven't produced a fruit on one so thank goodness that our brother has an orchard! we get tons of fresh, delicious apples from him!

well - my man is snoring in his computer chair - bahahahahah! i took a pic of him so i can show it to him later. he's had a long day today and that's after putting in a full day of work at LobstersRUs yesterday. he's tired, won't admit it, he's sun-stroked, won't admit it, and he's hungry. we took out some steaks that he got a steal price so he bought a bunch of them. they are ready for the grill and i will make his favourite side dish - veggie shish-kebabs. he loves shish-kebabs with his steak.

anyway, this is the last pic i took today.

it's hard to believe that we can look at such a beautiful sky pretty much every day for the rest of our lives. i send my best wishes to all of you and hope that you have had a wonder-filled week.