The Garden Is Growing and Producing

After the little over 2" of rain we (finally) got last week, the garden has burst forth.  It's curious (and a little frustrating) that no matter how much watering one does (during a drought) with sprinkler or hand-held hose, it's just not the same as the rain Mother Nature gives us.  The rain that falls from above has so many more nutrients in it than our well does.  We could still use more moisture but are very, very thankful for the much needed rain we recently got.

 

Our strawberries are producing and we are harvesting now every other day or so.  The above is the first harvest of a combined weight of 16-3/4 pounds of luscious berries.  The closest bowl is from the new strawberry patch and the other two are from the old patch.  What a bounty.  As we speak, I have my second double batch of strawberry jam burbling on the stove.  That will give us a total of 18 pints so far.

 

The cabbages are growing nicely.  Heads are just beginning to form.  This bed holds four red and four green.  I stuck a spinach plant I needed to thin on either end of the bed but they're quickly being pushed out.

 

Our pepper plants are doing well and starting to form blossoms.  I kept them covered with hot caps for quite a while but are out in the air and on their own now.

 

 

You may not be able to clearly see it with all the greenery in this picture but the Scarlet Runner beans are doing a great job of climbing up the hoop trellis with no help from me.  In the past I've had to coax them to grab onto the trellis by tying them up!  Why did they decide to do it themselves this year??

 

Bush beans have been slow, really slow but are now starting to look good.  These are the yellow wax ones which always seem to grow faster for me than the green ones.

 

I have a row of pansies on either end of the garlic bed.  These were plants that were volunteers from last year that popped up in various places in the garden.  I moved them to this location and I'm happy I took the trouble to save them.

 

We grew way too many potatoes last year (what a problem to have, eh?), and I attribute it to the great seed potatoes we got from Wood Prairie Family Farm.  I've cut back on the footage I planted this year so we'll see if we still get such a big yield.  I've hilled them up once and will do so again once more.

 

We got thirteen eggs yesterday.  At first I thought a couple of the roosters must have started laying, but Papa Pea reminded me that the pullets we hatched out last year have just started to lay.  How blessed we are to have such a plethora of homegrown delicious eggs! 

Appreciative of Our Bounty

Blessed we are to live where we do, to have the garden space and soil to enable us to grow a good quantity of our food, to have each other and the help and support of an oh-so-willing, loving and capable daughter living close by.

 

An illustration of our usual breakfast lately.  Asparagus fresh from the garden, homemade rye bread and scrambled eggs with bits of bacon and parsley.  Look at the yellow of those eggs.  Shows what having chickens out on pasture can produce.

 

We've gotten close to 1-3/4" of rain in the last twenty-four hours.  (Hip-hip-hooray!)  So very welcome after hardly a drop of moisture since April.  The garden is soaking up Mother Nature's gift and seems to be growing as we speak this morning! 

I've Been A Bad Blogger

I've been an absent blogger.  No good excuse except that this summer is proving to be an extra busy one.  With challenges.

 

I've planted more of a garden than ever before using every plot of soil to grow what I can.  Have you noticed the price of food?  Of course, you have.  Plus, the lack of availability of food to purchase, at least in our area, is starting to appear.  So I'm doing all I can to grow all that is possible to feed the Hungry Hermans (as my dad called my brother and me when we were growing up) who tend to show up around here.

 

Good thing I love the "work" of gardening.  No doubt about it, gardening is work.  And if one has an infirmity that causes pain upon using certain muscles or joints, it's hard to keep going.  But I do think that if one keeps moving, stretching, bending in a sensible manner, those muscles or joints will remain in good working order.

 

I bought myself a sign last year that is hanging in my kitchen right now.

 

I sincerely hope I never have to change my mind on the sentiment expressed.

 

I'm spending a lot of time watering all my plants with either the sprinkler or hand-held hose.  We haven't had any rain since April.  Yes, that's many, many weeks lacking the blessing of adequate moisture.  I'm mulching with straw and/or grass clippings as much as I can.  The soil is dry and dusty where there is no mulch.  I'm amazed things are as green and growing as they are.  But I'm also concerned that we're putting possible stress on our always-in-the-past adequate well.

 

Today we discovered we had another challenge.  Our two strawberry patches are, amazingly enough, blossoming and forming fruit abundantly.  Earlier than usual even.  The problem?  We have several marauding crows that are stealing the half ripe berries.

 

Papa Pea and I spent a couple of hours this morning putting Agribon over both the old patch . . . 

 

. . . and the new one.  Now if I could just stop thinking of what a hassle it's going to be taking the cloth off and putting it back on again throughout the picking season.  But at least it will hinder those blankety-blank crows helping themselves to our hard-earned berries. 

 

I have a feeling the crows may like the blueberries, too, once they approach the ripe stage.

Blueberries just starting to go from

blossom to berry.

With luck, the strawberries will be done by then so we can use the Agribon to protect the blueberries.

As with all time these days, our summer is going by way too quickly.  Many folks count July 4th as the signal that the season is half over.  I can't believe we're less than two weeks from that mile marker already.

 

 

Growing Things

Hard to believe, I know, but our daffodils are finally in full bloom.  Goes to prove that if one waits long enough . . . 

 

One other thing today.  This, my friends, goes to prove that you should not doubt the vitality of old seeds.  (Or old people.  Hee-hee.)

 

I had some slicing cucumber seeds (good ol' Marketmore 76) from 2014.  I planted them down an 8' long mound in a raised bed (inside their own little quasi-greenhouse) on May 24th.

 

All I hoped for was that two seeds would germinate as those two cucumber plants would give us all the cukes we could possibly eat.  Or give away.

 

Looks like the seeds were still viable, wouldn't you say? 

What We Do For Fun Around Here

Papa Pea was doing some (temporary) repair on a fence post a week or so ago.  He was finding it difficult to pull the steel post into position while using the small sledge hammer to pound it back into place.

 

So he called in the muscle to pull the post into place with a rope.

 

No further explanation necessary.

 

Added note:  This was a day before the onslaught of mosquitoes arrived.  Omigosh, are they horrible this year.  We literally cannot go outside to do chores, garden work or walk down the driveway to get the mail without dressing in full bug shirt garb.  Everyone is saying they can't remember the bugs being this bad.  The strange thing is that we haven't had a decent rain fall in weeks, and that's what usually brings out the first batch of the nasty little biters.  But they are here and blood-thirsty!

 

 

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Actually, it was more of a loud crash.

 

At 12:40 a.m. this morning, Papa Pea and I were wakened out of a sound sleep by a very loud crash.

 

(Warning:  None of my pictures are of good quality.  I blame it on being a little upset.)

 

We have three double hung windows in our kitchen and a bookshelf over each of them.  The shelves have been there for over twenty years and have happily held a line of books on each one.  Last night the one over my desk apparently decided it had had enough and let go of its wall fastenings.

 

 

Blearily, we stumbled out to the kitchen to see the shelf balanced on top of the three plants I had on the upper part of my desk and all the books scattered on the floor.  The receiver of the wall phone had been knocked off.  Do you see that black and red roundish blob on the floor to the left?  It is a (demised?) metal rooster I had on the shelf with the plants.

 

We took the time to pile the books (and the shelf) on the kitchen table before going back to bed.

 

This morning I took the following three pics.  First, a close-up of one side (the back side) of the support of the shelf.

 

Next, a close-up of where it had been fastened to the wall.

 

Turns out the rooster wasn't dead.  He just lost his tail which we've managed to reattach.

 

All in all, it certainly could have been a lot worse.  Would I have been hurt by the avalanche of books coming down if I had been at my desk?  I'm just as glad I didn't have to find out.

 

Now to figure out how to reattach the shelf . . . and be sure not to laden it with too many heavy books.