This is the least Godiva has to put up with.

I know, Kana’s birthday was almost a month ago. I have no excuse. For her birthday we went to the zoo with her cousins, aunt and grandma.

On Mother’s day we celebrated with carrot cake. I love this next picture.

What’s the most common adjective used to describe Kana? “Busy.” Peter is convinced that she takes after the House side of the family. Not sure that is a good thing. She is always on the move and exploring and getting into everything. Godiva and Kana are fast becoming best buds… though we are not fond of the chew toy sharing that has gone on behind our backs.

2-3 months ago Kana started crawling and she is now working on walking. Yesterday, niece Ariana was playing with her and started testing Kana to see how long she could stand on her own. Here are the results:

Here are a few pictures summing up where we are at with our garden at the moment. Harvested a couple handfuls of grapes, 8 pumpkins, a lot of carrots etc… All that remains is kale, parsley, chives, salad mix and the lemon grass that is now living inside near the wood stove.

This is a video of Kana’s first real meal. She took to the spoon like a natural!!

You will need:
Scissors or a knife
Gloves (optional)
Container such as a bucket or large bowl
1 Large Pot
Oil 1 tablespoon
Salt
Pepper
Onions 1-2 medium
Tomatos 1-2 (You may use canned)
Peanut butter 1-2 tablespoons (Natural, no sugar added)

Chop down all offending pumpkin vines. Fines and leave will be fairly prickly. You may want to wear gloves. Collect all leaves (and leave stalks), blossoms and immature fruit. Place in large container.

Wash leaves then stack and roll them like a burrito. Chop your way down it with a knife. Chopped sections should be 1 inch wide or less. Chop once or twice more down the middle. Include leaf stems.

Saute onions in oil until they are slightly transparent.

Add chopped tomatoes. I added canned tomatoes that were grown in Michigan because frankly, buying tomatoes from Canada or Mexico is ridiculous and our home grown tomatoes are still green.

Add chopped greens and 2 cups of water. Let simmer for 10 – 20 minutes.

Add 1-2 heaping tablespoons of peanut butter and let dissolve in broth/pot liqueur. Salt and pepper to taste.

This is what the dish should look like once it is finished.

Now we have solved your pumpkin problem by giving you an appetite for pumpkin greens. We enjoyed eating Pumpkin greens while we were in Malawi.

After we started planting seeds we realized that our garden plot really needed to be bigger. Sadly that was also about the time that our tractor decided it only felt like running on one cylinder. Now that Amanda’s dad has fixed Señior tractor we can steak, till and plant our green manure crop in our new plots and then dream of what will be in them next year!

Amanda and I have been enjoying having a garden of our very own! We have already eaten our way through our spring greens, now we get to look forward to tomatoes galore.

In order of appearance. Bell Pepper, Yellow Onions, Basil, Last Minute Egg Plant, Red Onions, White Onions, Cayenne Pepper, Broccoli, Carrot, Cabbage, Tomato Flowers, Pumpkin Flower, Bolted Cilantro/Coriander, Potato Plant, Swiss Chard, Tomato, Lemon Grass!!, Thai Basil, And the garden plot.
Not pictured, Long Beans, Cucumber Sprouts , Kale, Okra, Water Mellon, Mint, and Parsley.