First week of June » Family Photographer Aldergrove

Post #1 of Personal Project 52 weeks.

This is going to be somewhat of a personal project. I love the idea of personal projects but often flounder on the execution. I’m an idea person. My idea is this: every week I’d like to document with photos our daily life. My format will be 1 square collage per week and I hope that after a year (yes, this is slightly ambitious) I will have 52 pages to place into a memory album.

Our life is simple and relatively uneventful but I find so much beauty in the day-to-day living. We are truly blessed

It’s the first week of June. Half way through the year. Beginning of summer. Backyard entertaining, bare feet and bountiful gardens (we hope).

* Art built me a raised garden bed 2 weeks ago in the pouring rain and then filled it with soil on Saturday. So, so, so happy with the way it turned out! I tried seeding about a month ago but the seeds were old and most of them didn’t come through. Off to Devan Greenhouses to buy plants.

* We planted: tomatoes (4 varieties), cucumber, pepper, lettuce (2 varieties), spinach and then tons of herbs: peppermint, basil, oregano, cilantro, sage, french lavender and parsley. We also bought butternut squash and broccoli, however, the garden is already full and there was no room for more. I’ll probably plant them in the old garden. One of my watermelon seeds sprouted. So hoping that we have a watermelon crop!

* We already have a plot of strawberries. Every year we get more and more and the variety we have produces strawberries from June to September (with some breaks). I have no idea what kind it is but it’s perfect for a family garden. We spotted our first beautiful red ripe strawberry. The four of us shared it. So delicious. There is NOTHING like a strawberry straight out of the garden and popped into your mouth. It was still warm from the sun.

* I like to try new recipes. I saw fresh artichokes on sale. I once had an artichoke appetizer at a restaurant with a whole artichoke and dip. The leaves were for dipping. So I thought I would try something similar. The recipe I found required  1 1/2 hours of roasting. I only had 45 minutes so I steamed it first for 20 and then roasted it for 30. And it was bad. Well, not bad, just undercooked. And really not tasty either. Oops. I have to say it’s not very often that something I make is inedible but there it was. Oops.

* Mattias is on the move. He is at the point where I can only catch glimpses of him because he is rarely still.

* Noah. Our 3-year old Noah. He is starting to play so nicely by himself. Lego, cars and trains are his favorite. He loves to set up his Lego on the shelf in his room and he makes up stories for all the ‘guys’. Often imitating our conversations or something he sees on TV or what he observes from older children. So cute. He’s at the age where sometimes he still looks toddler but other times he looks like a boy. He can play uninterrupted now for about an hour.

* Our Saturday morning ritual is pancakes at the moment. The kids LOVE them and it’s just a special treat to have breakfast altogether on Saturday morning without rushing.

~ K