The deer love summer as much as we do. Each year, it seems, they eagerly await the time when apples from the tree in my parent's backyard begin to fall to the ground. My dad often sees deer sleeping under the apple tree in the early morning when he gets up for work. We don't make it up that early, but we've been treated to several daytime deer sightings since we've been here. 

This young buck was so excited about the tasty apples. 

It was amazing to see the photos Dave captured of the young buck through his camera lens. His photos were much clearer than what we were able to see by eye from the window. In almost every frame, the deer has a mouthful of apple.

As if one deer wasn't wonderful enough to see, two very young deer, still with their spots, approached the young buck under the apple tree. Clearly, he was not happy to share his apples. He lowered his head to the ground and snorted at the smaller deer. 

Once the young buck scared the other deer off, they retreated back into the woods behind the house. The deer population seems to be very healthy here; we have lost count of how many young deer we have spotted in the yard, all varying ages and sizes. 

And of course, we always enjoy watching the birds. We just hung a humming bird feeder up, as well, and saw our first humming bird yesterday! We are hoping he comes back soon, with all his friends. 

Today, we got another abundant harvest from the garden. 

Dave and I with the first two eggplants of the season. The whole family has really enjoyed watching the eggplants grow. It is amazing the plants support the weight of the heavy vegetables. Their speedy progression, from delightful lavender flower to glossy purple eggplant, is also amazing. 

We decided to make eggplant parmesan for dinner tonight. 

We combined about three recipes from the internet to make the eggplant parmesan to suit our tastes, one of which included directions for a no-cook sauce. We used all the ripe tomatoes from our garden and placed them in the food processor with two cloves of garlic, some black pepper, fresh basil, rosemary, and thyme, and 1/3 cup of olive oil. 

We pulsed the fresh mixture until liquid, and voila! I would love to also do a minced version of this as a bruschetta topping. 

The final dish turned out wonderfully. Our family ate the whole pan. I'll share the recipe here, though I'm not one for exact measurements. Happy eggplant season! 

Baked Eggplant Parmesan 

Total time: about 2 1/2 hours, start to finish 

Ingredients 

1/3 cup olive oil 

Fresh basil, thyme, and rosemary 

Sea salt 

Black peppercorns 

Enough tomatoes from your garden- cherry, grape, Big Boy, and variety- to nearly fill up your food processor 

2 cloves of garlic

2 eggs 

Good italian breadcrumbs  

2 eggplant, about the size of your hand 

Good mozzarella cheese

Fresh grated parmesan cheese 

Directions 

1) Peel your eggplants and cut them into about 1/4 inch slices. Layer the slices in a colander, salting each layer. Put a plate and something heavy (I used two acorn squash) on top of the eggplant slices to weight them down. Let the eggplant drain for at least 1/2 an hour. *This step is important! The salt draws the moisture out of the eggplants, ensuring better flavor and a non-watery final product. Some reviews on other online sites suggest this makes the dish far too salty. I did not find that to be true. Don't go overboard with the salt; the eggplant slices do not have to be coated. Also, I did not add salt to any other part of the dish, including the sauce, to ensure the final product would not be too salty. This method worked perfectly for me, but feel free to experiment. Others suggested washing the salt from the slices before patting dry.* 

2) Pat the eggplant slices as dry as possible with paper towels. You will be amazed at how much moisture comes out. 

3) While you're waiting for the eggplant to drain, you can make the sauce. As I mentioned earlier, we used all the ripe tomatoes from our garden and placed them in the food processor with two cloves of garlic, some black pepper, fresh basil, rosemary, and thyme, and 1/3 cup of olive oil. Blend until liquified. 

4) Many eggplant parmesan recipes call for frying. Our family doesn't like fried foods, so we opted to bake the eggplant, instead. Beat two eggs in one bowl and dump the breadcrumbs into another bowl. Make sure to have plenty of baking sheets ready to lay the eggplant slices on. Also, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

5) This step is more fun as an assembly line with someone. Dredge each slice of eggplant in egg, then breadcrumbs, and lay in a single layer on the baking sheets. 

6) Bake the eggplant in the oven for about 15 minutes per side. Other recipes suggest cooking for less time in the oven, but I found 15 minutes per side to be just right. You want your eggplant to be nearly cooked through and the breadcrumbs lightly browned when they come out of the oven. 

7) Now, cover the bottom of your glass baking dish with your homemade sauce. Then, layer eggplant slices, mozzarella, and sauce. Repeat. I did two layers. Top with fresh grated parmesan cheese and fresh basil leaves. 

8) Bake in the 350 degree oven for half an hour. Serve with crusty homemade garlic bread and steamed beans from the garden. Enjoy! 

This week, we decided to make homemade bug spray and tick repellant. We really try to avoid the chemicals in things like Off, but natural bug sprays can be pricey, so crafting our own made sense. And it's just fun to feel like an alchemist in an ancient apothecary.  

The blue spray bottle in the back center is what we mixed our bug spray in. For a base, we filled the bottle halfway with boiled water, then filled it almost to the top with witch hazel. People often use a carrier oil, like grapeseed, coconut, or olive, for something like this, but we opted to find something other than oil to use since it sounded greasy in the hot summer sun. We stumbled across a blog that suggested using the witch hazel and water mix, and decided to give it a try. 

For our oils, we used about 30 drops each of tea tree, peppermint, citronella, and neem. We've read that neem oil is an excellent natural tick repellent. The other oils are good for mosquito and general bug repelling, and they smell nice. 

Dave giving our new bug spray a try, complete with his beloved bug netting hat, one of his way over-prepared Ebay purchases before this trip. 

Dave was able to capture this woodpecker on a tree in my parent's backyard. 

Especially with the recent rains, our garden has really taken off! It was so cool to literally watch the beans sprout out of the ground overnight. It's like magic. 

We are clearly planning on having the tallest tomato plants in the neighborhood! These 8 foot stakes were a great price, and the 4 foot stakes just seemed too short, so my Dad and I brought these home, giving everyone a good laugh. 

We have so many small tomatoes already! In just two weeks these tomatoes have gotten bigger than our  poor blight riddled Florida tomatoes ever got. 

These tomato plants were happy to be staked today. 

The weeds also have been happy! Dave did a bunch of weeding after this photo was taken, and now that all the sprouts are coming up, my Dad is going to put down newspaper and more dirt to choke out the weed growth. 

The bird feeder in my parents' backyard gives me hours of entertainment. There's been lots of binocular using and bird book searching. Most recently, we've seen male and female boat-tailed grackles, a pair of house finches, a red-winged blackbird, and, of course, some beautiful cardinals. 

We've had a few days of sporadic rain, but we've managed to get almost everything planted in between the storms except for the lettuce, carrots, and beets. 

We planted our tomato and basil next to each other since they are good companion plants, and put crushed egg shells in the bottom of the tomato holes since they like extra calcium. 

There are snap peas and garden beans planted along the middle rows. 

There are eggplant, broccoli, green and banana peppers, onion, and parsley along the sides of the garden. We are really looking forward to a lovely bounty when we come back to Pittsburgh this Fall.

Unfortunately, there's a chance of frost tonight, on Memorial Day weekend when it's nearly June! Hard to believe. Tonight all our poor little plants are well covered with sheets and blankets. Hopefully they make it through alright. 

Dave's on-going spare time project this week has been patching up this old pair of jeans. He finally finished today. 

He even sewed in a new pocket! I'm constantly impressed by Dave's ability to sew...it's just something I'm not any good at. 

Hope everyone has a lovely Memorial Day weekend. We're busy planning and cooking for a family gathering we're having at our place this weekend. (Looking forward to seeing you all soon!) The two things I'm most excited about cooking are homemade baked beans, and strawberry shortcake from scratch. Yum! 

Yesterday Dave was busy plotting out the new garden! After our botched community garden experiment where we didn't plan ahead and did not give things appropriate space, we're really sensitive to the importance of a little forethought for a successful garden. 

The engineer in Dave came out and he made this diagram to scale. 

Little cut out circles for each crop. 

We're planting beets, carrots, garden beans, lettuce, and snap peas from seed. We also have started plants of broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. 

The finished plot! Dave did a really fantastic job. We're planning to plant over the next two days. 

One of the things I'm really enjoying about being at my parents' home is the ability to read magazines, plan menus, make shopping lists, go to the store, and cook. These were pasta bakes with homemade sausage from my Italian aunts...thanks for sending them home! The sausages were delicious. We also had some of them in a chickpea, rice, and veggie dish I made last night. 

Dave's artistic interpretation of a sign I got my mom for Mother's Day, "I love you to the moon and back." Aww. 

We've arrived in Pittsburgh, where we'll be staying at my parents' home for the next two weeks or so. There are friends to visit with, graduation parties to attend, wedding plans to work on, and parts of the city to explore. After traveling since March 3, it's nice to see some familiar faces, and drive on some roads where we don't need to use the GPS! 

One of the things we're working on together as a family is putting a garden in the backyard. My dad got most of the groundwork done for the project before we arrived, so Dave and I have been helping with the finishing touches. Yesterday, we bought some seeds and a few small herb plants. We're going to plot out a garden diagram and get everything planted this week. My dad and I used to plant a garden when I was younger, but it's been ages since we've found the time to plant. It's nice to get back into it again. Also, since we'll be home again at the end of the summer for the wedding, Dave and I will get to enjoy some of the delicious fruits of our labor! 

Dad cutting one of the stones we're using to edge the bed. 

Mom helping rake out the dirt. 

Even Gigi the family dog is helping. 

Dave and Dad taking some measurements. 

These are the rest of our photos, continued from Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Part 1. 

One of our favorite spots was the bird observation hut in the Native Plants section. (They had, by the way, 900 species of native plants alone, all labeled with tags in the ground. And that was in only one section of the 4-section garden, to give you an idea of the scope of this place. Incredible.) 

Scratching squirrel! 

We sat and watched the birds for a long while. We didn't even need the binoculars here because they were so close. We were treated to a pair of Golden Finches, several pairs of Cardinals, a Red-Headed WoodPecker, and many more happy birdies, along with the squirrels who have equal love for the bird feeders. 

We also enjoyed the large pond in the Asiatic garden, populated by geese and a wide variety of ducks, who all honked and paddled happily after the rain, and turtles, who happily lazed on the rocks. 

Also, I feel the need to share this, because I learned it relatively recently and it seems like many people are unaware. Don't feed bread, crackers, or other snack foods to ducks, geese, or other water foul. It has very dangerous consequences: changing the PH balance of the water, damaging the intestinal systems of the critters, and eventually killing them. There were signs posted around the pond asking people not to feed bread, but I overheard many people talking about wanting to bring bread back another day. It's amazing how often people don't read signs, or care. We are part of nature, too, and its irresponsible to ignore rules like these that protect the wellbeing of the critters and nature. You can buy duck food, or even bring lettuce, if you'd like to feed the animals, safely. Pass the info on to your friends and family, too! 

Quack quack! 

We have special love for the geese. 

We had already seen most all of our favorite critters-geese, ducks, squirrels, birds, and turtles- when we got one final treat: chickens. Tucked away in a corer was the entrance to the exploratory gardens, which was essentially a homestead in the middle of the gardens. They had honey bees, an edible forest, gardens, rain collection systems, compost, and, of course, chickens. Chickens make me the happiest and I can't wait to have our own, so seeing them always makes me squeal with glee. They were the perfect finish to our lovely garden walk. 

After the gardens, we hopped over to the Ackland Art Museum at UNC, which also had free admission. (The gardens were free, too!) We spent the last hour or two browsing their permanent collection, which featured a lot of neat ancient pottery, and their current exhibition, More Love. 

So, today was pretty much perfect: nature, birds, meditation, chickens, and art. It was a great last day of free roaming before we enter about 2 months of work exchanges, beginning tomorrow at the vineyard. Can't wait!