Labour Day really is "day of labour" this year

In the past I have spent labour day lounging about on the beach with my best friend, building sandcastles and eating my mom's homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. Not so much this year. This year, I will be looking longingly at the mess in my garden (it's amazing how uruly it looks after neglecting it to go on vacation for a week) as I get up and prepare to conquer yet another day at the hospital.

Janine and I took a vacation down to Whidbey Island, where my family owns a very tiny piece of property in a "members only" campsite. But it's a small piece of paradise. It's so beautiful there. In Coupeville, which is so awesome, there is a garden store. Janine and I visit this garden store everytime we go. They have amazing stuff. I actually dragged out Janine's iTouch and made a list of all the plants we found that we wanted to insert into our garden. A couple of particularly lovely specimens caught our eyes, as did the stunning mini water gardens (set in a pot with a small pump and then some pond plants, so so cool and something we have wanted to do for awhile).

Good news on the garden front, our landlord came over the day we were leaving for Whidbey and put up the lattice to block off under the deck area. It looks a MILLION times better. Now to acquire some landscape fabric to smother the weeds! I will take a picture and post it, but probably not until I am finished working, as it is now dark out when I leave for work, and dark when I get home.

My new favourite sandwich involves cucumber and basil from the garden, along with whatever sandwhich meat (organic and gluten free!) we have in the house, vegan cream cheese and rice bread.

The zinnias took over. And the gladiolouses bloomed some more, and some of them are white! Which means we have beautiful delicate, frilly looking pink and white, plain white and these gorgeous deep red ones that look like velvet. I picked a giant bucket of tomatoes, Janine is going to make another batch of oven dried tomatoes. Very very tasty.

Oven Dried Tomatoes:
Slice cherry tomatoes in half, spread on large baking sheet (so that they're only one layer deep), drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme if you wish, and put in the oven at 200 Celcius for 8 hours. Although check on them every 2. They are done when they dry out, but before they burn!!! If you have really good tomatoes, these things taste like candy. We stuck them all in a bag and put it all in the freezer to enjoy when it hasn't stopped raining for 40 days and nights.