COVID-19 Quarantine Day 142

We've been working on the garden a bit more lately.  Harvesting, cleaning areas up for new plants, pulling weeds, planting new seeds, pulling old plants, drying herbs, making and canning, and today: pasta sauce!!!  😁😁😁  Yesterday I had a blast being Susie Homemaker and preserving my harvest!  Today I'm looking forward to putting together my own base recipe for pasta sauce using my own tomatoes and herbs!  We're going to the Farmer's Market this morning, so I'll get some garlic, and maybe pasta there, plus homemade tortilla chips to eat with a fresh batch of salsa tomorrow at Mama and Daddy's house.  I haven't been to the market in what feels like a year!  I'm very much looking forward to going!  We're going to try out a new one we haven't been to yet, but I hear is much bigger, at the 4H building near the zoo.  We'll see how it goes.  I came to know and love the Old Town Farmer's Market, so we'll see how I feel about such a change...  In the meantime, here's our gardening pics from yesterday! 

I wad shocked when I told her to pull her carrots and there were some actually in there!!  😱  She was shocked too!  But also VERY excited!!  She's been growing these babies from seed since February!  I think next year we'll plant them closer to the front of the box (3?), and I might try the carrot tape it's a little more expensive, but it's already got the seeds embedded and spaced.  I figured we might as well give it a try.  🤷🏼‍♀️  We'll see!  Also, the end of February will probably be a good time to start planting them, they didn't do much before then.  Although I believe the package says as soon as the soil can be worked...  I need more of those type of items this year!  They sprout up first and make me so happy! 

The kids worked together to harvest Avery's bounty!  They're tiny, but we have carrots!  ❤🥕

Avery's carrots!  She cleaned and scrubbed them all!  Seed to cleaned carrots, she did all the work!  I'm so proud of her!  She ended up with enough carrots to fill about a sandwich bag.  😂  But this project was all hers.  And she could not be prouder!  ❤🥕❤

My project yesterday, after cleaning up some of the garden, was herbs!  My basil plants have been amazing this year!  I cut a few back and had about 7 long stalks to dry.  The first batch I dried in the oven and they were perfect and fast!  The second batch is hanging in the breakfast nook to dry naturally over the next couple days.  I want to see if I can taste a difference in the way they're dried before I settle on a method.  In so pleased to be able to dry some of my herbs and keep them for later in the year!  ❤

The parsley is a bit more delicate, so I'm going to just hang it for now, not try the oven.  I don't want to risk burning it, and I don't have nearly as much of it to spare.  I'm having lots of fun with my herbs!  I'm very much considering being them indoors over the winter!  We'll see!  🤷🏼‍♀️

This isn't garden related, but yesterday, my friends at BuyICT released a new August challenge!  Last August I shopped small exclusively for the month.  This year they're doing a Bingo!  I'm going for a blackout!  As I mentioned, we're going to a new Farmer's Market this morning!  I'm looking forward to checking out new places and practicing shopping local again.  I did good during the height of quarantine at sticking to local restaurants, and I feel I've stuck with that pretty well, but shopping local is important too, and they need my help now more than ever.  ❤  So stay tuned as I work through this board and try new things this month to help local business owners!  ❤