After looking online for different grape preserve/jam recipes, I decided to pass on that idea. Most of the recipes I looked at said you needed to take the skin off the grapes first, and, um, there is no way I'm going to do that. The grapes are a small variety (champagne grapes?) and it's enough of a hassle just picking them from the stems to put in little freezer bags.
We delivered bags of grapes to some of our older neighbors yesterday, and they were thrilled, both with the grapes and with us coming in and visiting a while. We should do that more often.
So the grapes have done well, but our garden has not. No gardening effort is ever wasted, though--we always learn something new from our experiment. The last garden we did was in 2006, so we were anxious to do something! We've had a bit of cilantro, and a few zucchini plants are starting to grow. One tomato plant is growing plenty of height and leaves, but we haven't seen any actual tomatoes yet. :) For starters, we'll need to:
1. Get the soil in better shape. Jason did a good job turning it over, but we hadn't added enough "good stuff" to the dirt to make it garden-friendly. It took us at least 2 years in the old house to get the soil ready.
2. Plant much earlier, probably end of March or early April, instead of the end of May.
Toby the Tortoise is still alive and doing well. He doesn't like his cage too much--when he's awake he spends most of his time pacing around the edge and pushing up against the plastic walls. Every day we try to give him a little time outside in the lawn--he takes little nibbles of the grass and weeds and goes and goes and goes. Somebody has to be out there with him, so that
a) we don't lose him or accidentally step on him,
b) ravens don't eat him, and
c) we can help him out if he flips over (so far this has happened 2 or 3 times).
One day I sent the kids out there with paper and colored pencils, so they could draw pictures of Toby. The kids really enjoyed that, and their pictures were pretty good!
