Our 2012 Container Garden

I don’t know about you, but I love checking out other people’s gardens. I thought I would share what we planted this year and how things are looking so far.

We have been container gardening for a couple of years now and it works for us. Since we may move in the next couple of years, we have decided not to invest in a raised bed garden.

This picture shows our tomatoes (roma, early girl, cherry and yellow); cilantro and a red pepper plant.

In the last week, two of our tomato plants have been growing like mad. Both were started in a greenhouse by my green thumbed brother.

A week ago, I prepped the soil and my husband planted the kale seeds in four pots. We are seeing the seedlings now, which is so exciting! I see lots of kale chips in my future. I also need to find some new kale recipes, so if you have any you would recommend, send them my way.

It’s unpictured, but our strawberry plant is still thriving and we have had two strawberries from it so far.

Do you have a garden?

Photography fun

I’ve been having a pretty good week and it’s hard to believe it’s nearly over. How has yours been?

I was happy to receive all four flavors of the newest Larabar, ūber, this week. I had purchased the bananas foster flavor a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed that bar.

Tried the roasted nut roll today as a snack and I liked this flavor more than the bananas foster one!

I finally learned how to take a screen shot of my iPhone and took a photo of my favorite podcast, Dishing up Nutrition, which I was listening to on a lunch break.

I went over to my brother’s house on Tuesday to give him some info on interviewing for a job and get a copy of his resume. In return, we got three different types of tomato plants from my green thumbed brother! Can’t wait to have a garden again!

Last night, I had to make a quick meal for dinner so I poached two eggs up in the poached egg pan I love so much. I can’t imagine poaching eggs without it and it’s my favorite way to eat them.

My sandwich included lettuce from my bro’s garden, tomato, Frank’s Red Hot and some cheese.

Then I dashed off to an Advanced Digital Photography class through the Milwaukee rec department. I learned so much in two hours!

I was happy to finally know more about taking pictures with our Canon DSLR. I wish I could share everything I learned, but it’s all so very technical. If you’ve always wanted to learn how to get into manual mode with your camera, take a class and you’ll be happy you did! It helped that our teacher was excellent and he is a newspaper photographer, so it’s something he does every single day.

We “went on assignment” and he taught us how we would adjust the camera for action, a beach scene, portrait, etc. It was a good approach for helping us learn directly about why we would adjust the camera that way and how pictures can turn out poorly if you don’t.

Have you ever taken a photography class? I hadn’t taken one since getting an A in my college photography class. That was when film still existed and digital was just coming out on the market! I loved developing film and experimenting with the camera.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crunch

Like I said earlier today, I had other things get in the way of blogging over the last two days. It didn’t help that I worked 10 hour work days yesterday and today. So, I’ll catch you all up on my Sunday post, which I intended to write until the lightning storms started!

On Sunday, I forced myself to relax a bit more before I cut our grass. I read Water for Elephants outside because it was so beautiful out.

I also ate lunch outside, which was nice. I need to take advantage of eating outside more before the mosquitoes come!

After lunch, we went to my brother and sister-in-law’s house to pick up tomato plants! My brother has a huge garden that takes up most of his backyard. He already had broccoli, brussell sprouts and asparagus planted. I wish we could have a huge garden like that! We also got a ton of rhubarb, so I came home and thought about making a strawberry rhubarb pie later in the week and then it struck me that I should make a strawberry rhubarb crunch instead because I most likely had all of the ingredients for that, and I did!

I used this recipe and it turned out really well. Kind of sweet, so next time I make it, I will use less sugar.

I’ve been eating the crumble for dessert all week and piled on top of Chobani vanilla yogurt for breakfast.

I also bought some pretty flowers on Sunday!

I don’t normally plant flowers, but I love the sight of them so much and wanted cheerful, summery ones that would last all summer, so I got daisies and Celosia.

On Sunday night, we experienced some really bad thunderstorms and had the scariest lightning strike close to our house. It shook our whole house and freaked everyone out, especially the cats. I decided not to blog because it wasn’t a good idea to have my laptop plugged in at this point in the evening.

Today was pretty typical and so was yesterday. I decided not to take pics of my food and post them since I was behind anyway in general.

My workout yesterday was on the Cybex and I lifted weights. Tonight, I biked and lifted weights.

Wow, this week is flying by and I only have two more days of work left and then a long, glorious four day weekend! Tomorrow evening, I probably won’t blog because I am going to the Taste of Home cooking show. Should be great and I will share everything I learned!

What is your favorite way to use rhubarb in a recipe? I need ideas to use the rest of the rhubarb up or it’s getting cut up and put in the freezer!