Apricots, apricots and more apricots

It turns out the tree in our front yard is an apricot tree. It's a very productive tree too! Over the past 2 weeks, I think we picked ovr 40 lbs of apricots. The crazy thing is that we didn't really do anything special to the tree.

At first I was really excited about being able to pick and eat as many apricots as I pleased. Greg didn't share my enthusiasm, which was fine. Just meant more apricots for me. I soon realized that we have more apricots than I could possibly eat.

So, I started giving them away to friends, family, neighbors and co-workers. I even shared with the squirrels in our neighborhood. (We'd find discarded, half eaten apricots on the ground around the trees in front of our house. And sometimes we'd even see a squirrel dart up our tree and have a picnic in the tree.)

We still had a ton of apricots! What was I going to do with all these apricots? A friend suggested that I make jam. And that's exactly what I did today. I made 14-8oz. jars of apricot jam.

It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Sugar, lemon juice, sliced/diced fruit, and pectin...lots of boiling water to sanitize the jars, lids and bands...a little help from Good Eat's Alton Brown...an online recipe...and voila....apricot jam! I felt very "Martha Stewart" as I was making jam in our kitchen. I'm quite impressed with myself and with the jam, even though I haven't tried it yet!

Vegetables!

A couple months ago, we planted two types of tomatoes, crooked-neck squash, eggplant, jalapeno peppers and yellow watermelon in your side yard. We've watched them grow, flower and product fruit. This afternoon, I harvested our first vegetables! We have crooked-neck squash, eggplant and tomatoes.

The tomatoes and squash are growing like crazy. We'll have a tons of those. (Anyone want any?) We'll probably get a few more eggplants. Not sure how many jalapeno peppers we'll get. The peppers are flowering, and you can see stuff growing. Our watermelon's not doing too well, and I'm not sure we'll actually get any fruit.

Now I have to figure out what to make with these veggies!