"Pond" and Play

This last week Douglas, Teela, Peff, Merlin and Viola have been visiting. It has been a real pleasure to be in the yard with them (check out some of Mike's yard pics from this week). I have enjoyed my flowers and veggies as I always do, but it has been great to have new eyes to share it with.

About two weeks ago, Liz gave me an old fountain of Gary's. I filled it up and have been enjoying the trickle of water ever since. Viola, Leora and Anwyn, however, has put me to shame. Anwyn got me snails to clean my algae (one is even still alive), and Leo decorated the floor of the pool with polished rocks. Viola takes each rock out and carries it around the yard happily. Predictably, Merlin only likes the rock with writing on it, although he was a huge help finding rocks hidden in the sandbox, which he took to the fountain.

Teela and Peff did an admiring yard tour and made nice comments, and Teela has been writing an article about my front yard. She also grazes happily, eating mostly peas and raspberries. Viola likes to graze too. She picks green tomatoes and white strawberries, earning "No" is a deep voice from her otherwise fun Aunty Wendy. Yesterday she ate most the remaining red currants and quite a few raspberries as well. I really enjoy the enthusiasm of the kids, but Teela enjoys the yard the way I do. She likes to look at the growing things, relax in the hammock and pick things to eat.

Douglas was positive about the yard in general as it fits his hobbit hole vision, and he helped pick peas and raspberries, but his main interest was in open space for sword fighting. You can read Mike's blog for pictures and commentary on that.

Both Merlin and Viola enjoy the girls' revamped play fort. Merlin for climbing, sliding and other high up activities, and Viola for going in and out of the lower floor and swinging in the hammock. We also refilled the sand box for their amusement. It hadn't been filled since daycare days and was getting pretty empty as you can see in this picture.

For my records (sorry Gus, I know this is the boring part) we are currently eating:

• cucumbers (slicer and pickler)
• a few tomatoes and baby potatoes
• chili and hab. peppers
• all fresh spices
• beans (purple and yellow)
• peas
• zucchini
• raspberries (Mike made jam and raspberry sauce, and we froze 18 cups this week alone)
• red currants
• beets (greenhouse started only)
• greens (chard, spinach, lettuce, beet greens)

Currently blooming

• day lilies (7 types)
• sun flowers
• holly hocks
• yarrow (3 colours)
• astilbe (2 types)
• bell flower (3 types)
• salvia
• orchids
• roses
• nasturtiums
• coriopsis
• lilies (4 types)
• poppies (2 types)
• daisies (2 types)
• wild violets
• delphinium
• lupin
• clover
• lots of veggies
• a variety of ground covers
• spider wort
• sage
• silver brocade (artemisia)
• veronica
• rudbeckia (looks lots like yellow coneflower)

Groceries

Going for groceries is a weekly trip for me that starts with menu planning.  This time of year it is challenging because I don't know when I will have guests and the garden is producing so much I tend to cook based on what is available.  When I went shopping yesterday I bought almost no vegetables by my family's standard (they are normally our main staple), just tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers.  My own tomatoes and peppers are just starting to be ripe, as I have harvested only one green chili and a cherry tomato, and I only grew oyster mushrooms once with help from Greta and Gus.

Fruit is a bit more extensive, as less grows here. I bought cherries, melon, plums and nectarines.  We grow our own sour cherries, but no plums, and we can't grow melons and eating cherries.  Still, we currently have sour cherries, a few strawberries, rhubarb and raspberries. This turned into great rhubarb-raspberries bars for breakfast.

At lunch today we had peas, beans and kohlrabi with a homemade potato soup (not our potatoes yet) and homemade bread. Yesterday we had our own greens as the foundation of a salad, and a curry with rhiata (I am using up cucumbers and mint). As a result of my impromptu menu, we run out of dairy products, but still have lots to eat.  It is hard to know when to shop, but somehow I manage to spend $200 anyway. 

Teela, Peff and the kids arrived yesterday and I showed them around the yard a little and sent them home with peas before they went grocery shopping.  Hopefully, they will have the same issue. Merlina and Viola loved the yard and spent a while grazing on raspberries and peas.  It was fun to have them, and I hope I'll get to be a grocery store and garden  for them a number of times this summer. Makes me feel like a great grandma, even though I am just evil Aunty Wendy.

Happy Frenzy

Well the garden is in full production just in time for me to leave it and go camping.  We have a ton of company coming to visit starting on the 24th, so we are trying to get as much done as we can before then.  Here's the guest list:

• Teela, Peff, Merlin and Viola (staying in Liz's suite for a month)
• Heidi N. (5 days ish)
• My dad (? extended stay of a couple weeks)
• Douglas (3 days)
• Maybe Greta, Gus and Max for a week and/or Jodi and Brad

Seem a bit overwhelming?  We think so too, and the stress is so much we had to leave town (we are actually excited to see people, but have planned some camping in this time slot for a long time).

We have been very busy with our summer projects this week.  Anwyn had basketball camp, and Leora ran her own dance camp using materials from the library to teach herself. In last few days we finished the repairs to the walls in the girls' rooms so we are ready for new windows, and we repainted their rooms and moved them back upstairs. Today, the girls and I went Saskatoon berry picking after camp in the am. I froze 26 cups of berries and and have that amount again ready for Mike to use in canning tonight when he gets home from work. Saturday and Sunday I'll do the packing for camping and Mike will build a rack on the trailer to carry the canoe (also after work - he's crazy.  I like the relaxed lifestyle that all James girls prefer).

Naturally, the whole garden is ripe in time for our departure.  The strawberries are producing a handful a day now, but the raspberries are started, and so are the cherries. The rhubarb, beans, kohlrabi, greens (lettuces, spinach, chard and beet greens) and cucumbers are still going, but we've added peas and zucchini.

Usually Anna would come berry picking with me and take some garden produce off my hands, but she's in France, so I was over at her house mowing today.  I did some maintenance on her deck boxes and now have more greens and spices to use up. What a great problem to have!

All this work has left little time for yard sitting, but I am always able to squeeze in the moments. I am particularly enjoying an old fountain of Gary's that Liz gave me, my delphiniums and my lilies.

Thinning and staggering

Mike and I were talking about how there are many people, who after years of gardening, just plant a garden in the spring and eat from it in the summer. If that is how gardening was for me, it would be really boring. Our basic approach is to keep learning as much as we can and then experiment with what we grow and how we  grow it each year. This year I am really feeling the benefits of two things I have been learning about in past years, thinning and staggering.

My parents used to thin their garden as necessary (usually peas over planted by children), but not as a mater of course. That was how Mike and I started. Now I deliberately over-plant things like beets, peas, and greens and then thin when the shoots are delicious, keeping the best plants with ideal spacing. That means my crop is better, but it also means I have a lot to eat this time of year.  My favorite at the moment is beet greens - the baby beet plants.I use them in all types of salads for more color and flavor, and use them like spinach in any dish that has cooked greens. Last night for supper beet greens were cooked into our panini and were the greens base for a bean salad.

I have also really benefited from learning to stagger crops. We are currently picking and eating beans, for example, and because of staggering, I will have yellow and purple beans all summer long, even before my climbing broad beans are ripe in August. The same will be true with new beet greens, chard etc.

Currently eating:

• rhubarb
• strawberries
• saskatoons
• all herbs (oregano, basil, sage, chives, rosemary, mint)
• romaine, spinach, chard, beet greens
• beans
• green onions
• cucumbers

Currently blooming

• bleeding hearts
• day lily (orange)
• yellow asian lily
• nasturtium
• sun flower
• roses
• bell flower (purple, white, tall white)
• yellow and white daisy
• ground covers (8 types)
• peppers
• pumpkins
• cucumbers
• squashes
• potatoes
• tomatoes
• purple sage
• yarrow

Lots of food and a little hope about Cabbage Butterflies

This week marks the beginning of the time when there is a lot produced by the yard. We have been getting about 4 cups of strawberries a day for the last week and have picked 16 cups of rhubarb. Now the Saskatoons are ready, and we are eating kohlrabi, cucumbers and beans. The peas are also getting ready to produce, but I think we are a week away on them.  We are also eating beat greens, chard, spinach, lettuce and a myriad of herbs.

All this food has produced the typical seasonal eating. This includes lots of types salads, pesto, strawberry pie, tabbouleh, strawberry rhubarb crisp and a great new rhubarb BBQ sauce Mike is making. Since the Saskatoons are ripe in the yard, we hope to go and pick what we'll freeze at a U-pick next week, as our two small bushes just make a few handfuls at this point.  I think we'll also be picking raspberries in the next week, and this looks like it will be a great summer for them.

My biggest organic triumph of the year is the kohlrabi, but I am still nervous about them. Last year they were decimated by cabbage white butterflies, who lay single white eggs on the underside of the leaf. These hatch into nearly invisible green caterpillars, who hide on the underside of the leaf and munch the leaves. I have a few holes in the leaves this year, and have seen some white butterflies, but the floating row cover I made seems to be working so far.  I am worried the mesh is too large (I have caught butterflies inside it so I have good reason to be concerned), and I don't want this to turn into another negative lesson learned. So far this seems a much better year than last year - almost everything in the garden and most flowers are ahead by about a week.

War of the beds

I have two beds to talk about this week. The first is my hammock.  It was a Christmas present from my brother-in-law Gary a number of years ago, and I usually spend all possible minutes in my first week off school reading in that hammock.  The second is the new bed we put in during the rain storm last week, which requires lots of digging, watering, transplanting etc.  I am sure you can see the set up for this conflict. Luckily I have found that doing a bit of work in one bed followed by laying in the other is actually a delightful combination.

It was rain that got me started digging up more of the front yard, but it was actually Mike's surprise completion of the bed that readied it for planting.  We got almost all of the sod dug as a family, and then Mike finished the rest, added compost and turned the bed using a pitchfork so it was ready to plant.

I started by adding mature foundational plants transplanted from other beds. My first plant was a day lily. Almost all lilies transplant well, so they are a great place to start.  Because my bed are viewable from all sides and I want to walk through them on rocks, I plant large anchor plants in each of the main zones of a bed - in this case the two half circles and bottom point of my heart shaped bed.  I add one large focal point plant in the center, and then build rocks around my large plants.

My last step is to add ground covers. In this case I used three types of ground covers (two types of sedum and some golden moneywart) that were perennials from other beds and I filled in with some annual flowers for added colour. I spent about $6o on flowers for the bed from by spending money, but I was really happy with the result. I have two tomatoes and 5 vines hidden among my various flowers. I added new perennials including a yellow daisy and two roses, one yellow prairie rose and one orange rose called Mordant Sunrise.



Last year I lost all my tea roses to a viscous thaw and frost cycle that also killed a bunch of my strawberries, so I wanted to add a few roses to my collection again. This is one of the few tea roses I have had that really is hardy to zone three, so I am excited to have it back with me.

Today I rose from my hammock to get Mike to take some pictures of the yard and so I could finish a mini rock wall that prevents the hundreds of thousands of dutch elm seeds produced by my neighbour's tree from blowing into the bed and sprouting. The end flower bed was definitely worth getting out of my hammock bed for.