Goal Wrap-Up

Warm weather is definitely here to stay for a while.  The garden is loving it, as am I.  Strawberries are finally ready (as of a week ago) so I picked up a slab of goat cheese for a really delicious snack.  It also really spruced up my salads this week - add some dried cranberries, walnuts and chicken over some homegrown greens.  Delish.

Check out the goal list for the month of June!  Things have been BUSY, but the best kind of busy.  I love summer.  Have I mentioned how much I love summer?  I really love summer.  And I’m a little sad that the first third of it is over.

• Get the boat out.  Incidentally, I went on three boat rides and none of them were on my boat.  My boat launch has become a mess of mud, lumber and a silt fence, and launching the Sunfish has become nearly impossible.
• Eat something from the garden.  Garden salads!  I’ve been eating them for like three weeks straight now and they are DELICIOUS.  Lettuce, arugula, spinach, radish greens, radishes, etc.  Also great with the aforementioned strawberries and goat cheese.
• Farmers market!  It started slowly but surely, with just a few plants and herbs.
• Read a book.  Read TWO books.   Count it!  Quitter by Jon Acuff and Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew (picked up the 2005 edition at Goodwill! Score!).  Both are incredibly interesting and highly recommended. 
• Go camping.  Well, I had great intentions to go this weekend and it just didn’t work out.  That’s not saying I’m NOT going camping this weekend, but if I do, I won’t be going very far.
• Find a campfire and go enjoy it.  I did!  There were a few fires, in fact, with different people at each.   
• Start some rhubarb wine.  Well, I chopped up the rhubarb I needed.  But then I realized I was lacking wine yeast.  I picked that up last weekend, so now I’m ready to start fermenting.

Well dang.  I feel pretty accomplished.  And I love that all of my goals had to do with either gardening or social events.  If that isn’t summer in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.  I should also mention that I attended TWO first-day-of-summer parties.  Neither of which were referred to as solstice parties.

So, Independence Day is upon us.  Last year’s was pretty epic, and I’m not sure this year can live up to that precedent, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try!  

July goals:

• Start up Stir-Fry Season with style – some homegrown summer squash, maybe even zucchini, peas, and dare I say some pear tomatoes (yes, pear.  I had heard of cherry, plum, and grape tomatoes, but this year we got some pear tomatoes to keep on the porch.  Apparently they turn yellow, not red)?
• Recipe Round-up:  I’ve been blogging for quite a while, possibly even enough time to amass enough recipes to do a recipe round-up.  So look forward to collection of good summer recipes.
• Camping is on the list.  Camping is always on the list when it comes to summer.
• Ice cream from Tasty Treat.  There, I said it.  Sometimes you need to travel for the ice cream you love.
• Exercise:  in typical summer fashion, I started being too busy with summer activities to keep up my workout routine, so it’s time to bring that back.  Now that it’s so light out in the morning, I’ve been naturally waking up earlier, so it’s a perfect opportunity.
• Smoothies:  I froze a lot of fruit last year, intending to use it in smoothies.  As it turns out, I’m just not a big smoothie person when the weather is cold.  So I need to use up some fruit!

Have I mentioned how great arugula is?