ginger and currants

Good morning! 

Bright and early at 8 a.m. I am up and at 'em. I'm tired, but the dogs can't walk themselves and now that I am up, I get to share my pictures from yesterday evening. In one afternoon/evening I managed to take about 170 pictures! 

So here we go!

We made candied ginger and ginger ale syrup again, the recipe is found here.

 See that syrupy goodness down there? Well ok, more like juice really. You could boil it down to more of a thick syrup if you wanted to though.

 They dry for a while, overnight is good...

 

End result was about 1,5 liters from a double batch.This was just the pretty bottle, lol!

While that was brewing, I had some more photo fun...

And then my parents came to pick us up for a garden trip. Photo fun continued...

I took so many lily pictures that I think I have to create a post for them. It's just too much for one, ya know. 

I looked up from my currant bush to see where the rest of the folks were... they were in bushes too!

 That is my dad in the raspberries...

That was my hubby in the currants...

Here is my mom picking currants...

This pansy above has ALL the colors of a pansy. I think if you click on it, you can get a bigger picture of it. Sit there and marvel at the colors!!! :)

Our currant bounty, to be made into juice.

The cucumber patch is INCREDIBLE! In all of our years gardening here, we have never had such a successful cucumber year. 

I think my dad is tickled. 

They even had to prop it up a bit to be able to walk through to the zucchinis!

The zucchinis are way to big this year... I don't eat them (I ate so much in 2009 that I still think of them and gag) and the hubby doesn't cook them on his own...and my parents only eat so much... but they are fun to grow. They never disappoint and they turn into missiles like this... Anyone want some zucchini?

After gardening, the hubby made BLT's and I made a big salad with homemade ranch dressing from Joy the Baker. The ranch was a bit hard to make, since (the mayo here tastes weird to me) we had to make our own mayonnaise first and it was a bit on the vinegary side. I think maybe if I add a little sugar it'll balance out? 

It was still tasty though, looking forward to eating a bowl of ranchy salad here and there this weekend! :)

Now I think we are going to have to tackle packing some more (ugh)...

Thanks for reading!