Serious eating

As the lilies go into serious bloom each year, the serious eating also starts.  We had pancakes this morning with raspberries and saskatoons from our yard, I had our strawberries for snack, and supper was a taco salad featuring our greens, our tomatoes, our zucchini, and our single ripe pepper (thanks greenhouse). I also picked two types of cucumbers, beet greens, dill, and onion stalks today.

Anwyn and I were sitting out in the backyard this morning just soaking in the beauty.  The peonies are finishing up, but there are lots of other things blooming, particularly roses, lupines, delphiniums, sedums, and lilies.  The front has four colors, all versions of orange and yellow, with a mix of day-lilies, tiger lilies etc. The back also has some errant orange which I should dig up, and lots of pinks, whites, and maroons. Lilies are such great cut flowers, and  they will bloom in various forms for the next couple of weeks, ending the time when massive swaths of perennials bloom in the yard.

My sisters start arriving with their families in the next several days, and almost everyone will be here except my parents.  Mike made a video for you, Mom, so you can see what is up right now in the yard while everyone else is here in person. I hope I get to see a picture of the garlic you just dug, even if it was a bad crop due to heat.  I need to dig mine this week, too, and I am expecting the same crummy state for my early garlic.

The cherries are changing color, and one of the trees has an infected branch that I need to cut off once it freezes.  I always want to eat them as soon as they change color, even though they are much sweeter later.  We'll see how all the small cousins do with them, as they are very low hanging fruit. The apples are higher, and the ripe raspberries and strawberries should give the grazers a focus.  Teela is hoping to arrive in time for the peas, and it is looking good.  I think I will have my first pods later this week.

Mike is busy laying down additional soaker hoses for watering.  He set up our two boxes on the south side of the garage and house last summer, and is irrigating the strawberries and one front bed this year.  We have so many beds now that the three rain barrels only keep up for 4 days without rain, and we've had little rain for a couple of weeks.  Hopefully this will reduce serious time spent watering, and focus more of his time on the serious eating (and, of course, video production).

My only unhappiness is that our local rabbits have finally discovered our yard.  We found scat, and one sent of my bean plants went from blooming to stubs in one night.  You can see it in the video. Hopefully the bunny doesn't find a way into the backyard where most of the veggies are, or notice the north bed of salad greens. It is exactly the sort of place that Peter Rabbit would pig out.

Finally, fruit

Every year I wait for my strawberries to come in. For years, some would look ready and the birds seemed to get them just before they were ripe.  I was super sad until it became clear the birds were actually Leora.  Then with ordering, cajoling and constant vigilance it was possible for the others in the family to get berries (although still not usually the first ones).

Leo is getting ready to graduate and leave home after the summer, and she just got her second ever job.  Although all her plays have finally finished (I have never seen her care more than playing Juliet at the Persephone), she still has lots going on. Mike and I got home last night and we ate the first two berries.  It made it so clear, and bittersweet, that Leora is leaving.

The yard had another good week this week. Last week asparagus was completely done, and I picked a bit more rhubarb this week, but now I will wait till the fall.  We are eating lots of greens off the shade bed I grow in the driveway, and the herbs are awesome.  I really like watching the garden bound forward in growth - reminds be of the early teenager years. This week I did a lot of training plants on vertical growing surfaces, and I pulled out the last of the major baby elm seeds.

Perhaps the most exciting part (other than the first new strawberries in 17 years) is the flowers. My backyard is right in its best stage, and the front yard is about take over and show off for over a month. In the back, irises, bell flower, roses, daisies, geraniums, and a wide variety of other flowers are blooming. Mike and I have counted over fifty different types. In the front, Mike is excited about his orange irises and orange roses, which hang out side by side in the heart shaped bed. Soon the lilies and  money wart (ground cover) will be out. My favorite in the front right now is the thyme path (predictably purple instead of the warm color palette). All photos can be viewed here.

I (and in this case I mean Mike) have been taking videos of the yard once a week this year to chronically changes. Check out this week's video.

Rainy day lull

It was a late spring, and the last week has been a hard one. Lilah has been very sick, and the human parts of the family have been, too. I was home two days last week, and Mike and Anwyn were each home three. Leo is just getting sick now.  In the midst of all that mucous and vomit, it has rained.  In the last two weeks, there have only been two days where it didn't rain most of the day. When you are sick, though, it doesn't mater as much that you are housebound.



The rain has slowed garden production, which means it is the right pace for my ill family. The asparagus just finished, and we have been eating herbs and a variety of greens for a couple of weeks. Mike ate one cherry tomato today and I made a nice brochette with the fresh basil yesterday. The big star, however, is the flowers.

It was a hard winter and I lost some perennials.  Because things were late, however, my tulips, narcissus, flox, iris, chives, anemone, and lily-of-the-valley are all blooming at the same time (check out Mike's June album of garden pics to see all the purple and pink). The yard is a sea of pinks and purples and the rain has kept them all frozen together for a protracted period of time.  Mike and I look out our window in the rain and admire the view. Everything looks incredibly lush, and it is cool and humid.

In breaks in the rain in the last couple days (typically no more than 40 mins.) we go out and do a bit to try to keep the yard under control. Mowing, weeding the garden and picking rhubarb to freeze all occur in these little windows of time. That is also about right for sickness, as we need to recover for about 2 hours for each 1/2 hour slowly pushing the mower. As you might imagine, we've been mostly eating out of the freezer as no one was hungry and no one was well enough to cook except Leora, who is writing finals.

Today we finally felt well enough to make all our meals: blueberry pancakes in the am, veggie soup and rhubarb crisp for lunch, and a fresh garden salad for supper later tonight. My greens and brasicas (think cabbage and kohlrabi) are happily co-habitating in a square foot bed on the driveway that tolerates all the damp very well.

All things considered, the misfortune has fit together so well as to actually seem like a pleasant lull combined with feeling crummy.

All Decked Out

Mike, the girls, and I finally finished the deck today. It seemed to take all of August, although we rarely worked on it. It was actually only three days, but we needed several dry days in a row to paint and we couldn't get them. I'm delighted with the deck, which integrates well with the yard now that it is the browns of the house.

Leora help slowly and carefully. Anwyn, like her mother, is a fast, motivated and somewhat imprecise painter. Mike helped them paint the deck yesterday while I was at work, and I did the touch ups today. I really like the combination of the darker and lighter browns.

Today we picked 3 more pumpkins and our weird yellow squash. Our raspberries are finally finished and I completed freezing the last of the 15 gallon pail of basil. We are still eating beets, kohlrabi, beans, strawberries, rhubarb, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, tomotillos, zucchini, eggplant and chard. Our peas finished a few days ago but I have left the roots in the ground to keep fixing nitrogen. I think lettuce is done too, but will plan fall spinach and garlic soon.

I got my box of bulbs from Mom and they look beautiful. I'll be putting them in after the first frost in September. Mike also picked up and put together our reel mower today. I'll be sure to rant about that soon.

Today I spent most of the day in the yard and loved it. Here's a gallery of pictures with my comments about them.