Here he is!

All 9 lbs, 8 oz, and 22 1/2 inches of him.

He's so precious!!

He's here!!

After 2 days of labor, Ri and her hubby finally had their son very late on Saturday the 8th, missing my birthday by a mere 9 minutes.  He's 9 lbs. 8 oz. and 22 1/2 inches long.

Hands down, the best birthday gift ever.

Pictures coming soon!

Update on kitchen scrap gardening.

Last year I made a few posts about gardening with kitchen scraps.  I had read about it somewhere on the web and wanted to try it for myself.  You can read those posts here, here, and here if you like.  I had great success with the green onions, but at the time, was not as pleased with the celery.  I'm happy to report that the celery ended up doing quite well.  We harvested stalks off of it several times last year, leaving a few on it each time.  At the end of fall it still looked fairly healthy, so I decided to leave it alone and see what it would do.

Here it is.  It's looking pretty good so far this year.  This picture was taken about 2 weeks ago.  It's much bigger now, and starting to go to seed.  If I end up with a dead spot or two in the garden this year, (and I may if whatever creature it is doesn't stop digging up my plants) I may put a couple more celery bases out to grow.  Although we didn't tie up the stalks last year in order to blanch them, I may give that a try this time around.  We just used them as is in stock a few times last year.  Since failing to blanch them produces much more celery flavor, it didn't take very many stalks to lend a good amount of flavor to the stock.  

I've linked this post with the "From the Farm" blog hop over at Fresh Eggs Daily.