today: 27 June

Today we have potatoes. Purple Peruvians.
Steamed and mashed, served with fresh dill, salt and pepper. Yum.
It's hot here, hottest it has been all year, but you won't find me outside in less than jeans, knee high socks and long sleeve shirt to garden anymore. The mosquitoes find me quite delicious, apparently, and somehow manage to bite me even through all this protection.

Yesterday's haul: 2 zukes, lots of chard and green beans. Today's haul looked like this, but 2 cukes and 2 yellow squash included. We are not sick of squash....yet.
Lots of stuff growing and growing and growing. Here the cherokee moon and stars watermelon is climbing high. There's already one melon the size of an orange and several more starting to grow. Think we'll start pinching back the vine to focus on three or four good melons. We will slip these melons inside old nylon stockings and support them on the trellis. This way should keep the birds away. I won't believe it until I see it, for we have several fearless deep crows hanging around the yard. They've already attacked the neighbor's tomatoes...

the squash are in

....seven weeks after planting. It's nice to keep records so I can determine this sort of thing for the future. Now if only we had written down the day we planted the potatoes. I'd like to say it's almost time for them to come out, but all I see when I dig around in the dirt are tiny wee taters that seem smaller than the seed pieces we put in. Any advice?

hidden treasures

The fun part about gardening, especially if you are trying it out for the first time in years and have forgotten all the cool bits, is going out each day to see what nature has created for you.

Our first snap beans! mmm... purple.

To think that Nature has created this bounty as a byproduct of normal plant growth, and my family will harvest and sustain ourselves from it is incredible in its synergy. Particularly when warped ideas about where food really comes from abound in today's removed society.

Our favorite part of the garden has been tooling around first thing in the morning, still in our pj's, cultivating what's here, dreaming about future plans.

Having a snack or two to munch on is helpful, of course. The bean with a bite taken out of it was nommed by the C-bear. If I told you none of the peas we harvested this year ever made it to the table, barely into the house, would you be surprised?

a favorite passage

Removing the weeds
putting fresh soil about the bean stems
and encouraging this weed which I had sown
making the yellow soil express its summer thought
in bean leaves and blossoms
rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass
making the earth say beans
instead of grass-
this was my daily work.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

fast grow the weeds

First, a question for you uber gardeners out there: I have read that tomatoes actually enjoy being planted in the same place in the garden year after year. Fact? Or Fiction?

I am always surprised at how fast the time rolls by, and with a small child the adventures are ... new! Yet the garden, it never sleeps.

We started out this year with the Square Foot Gardening method. I'm sure you might have heard of it. While the book sells like a Ronco infomercial, the logic behind it seems sound. Yet we have discovered that having plants spread out among six beds and the upkeep of the "squares" just isn't our style.

And that's okay.

We are drowning in a sea of lettuce and spinach, chard and kale. The cabbage worms have struck, the thunderstorms have pelted, and now the sun shines brightly. Even as I become tired of all the greens I am eating the tomatoes and squash eagerly shoot out of the ground, promises of the summer harvest.

did you have a good easter?

We did. And a good vacation to Florida, my birthday was awesome, and oh, mother's day. Check and check.

So, how's things with you?

It has been crazy around here. I'm excited that we are heading into summer and the garden is picking up full steam. I have never grown a full blown vegetable garden from seed on my own before so we're learning this year what to plant when. The chrisasaurus has described the current state of it, and I have just realized my last pictures of the garden were from oh, March? Clearly outdated. We're expecting a thunderstorm soon so I'll take myself outside here with the kiddo in a few.

For now, back to the jamming that's going on in the kitchen. Not the musical kind, the strawberry kind. We went berry picking with the small one and are now knee deep in strawberries. As soon as we got there I realized we took her strawberry picking for the first time ever and I. Forgot. The. Camera. I wish I could say this bonehead move was an isolated event but it seems that it's just par for the course for me these days.

I bought a calendar with no 7's...

Ok, so it's been longer than two weeks.... But I promise we've been busy. Much progress was made on the garden, so...

Now weighing in with 6 4x8 and 1 4x2 Herb bed... is the garden. Once we get photos off the digital camera we can post some. I leave that to my lovely and talented wife. Our potatoes are huge and ready to flower, as are the first plantings of peas. I'm also pleased to not that my trellis strands are working out for the pea plants; I was concerned (yes Tim Gunn finger and all) that is was a little too far away for them to climb, but they found them, with a little help.

Yesterday was our first application of DE, which is not unlike flouring. Hopefully it takes care of whatever the heck is eating the heck out of our veggies. After a brief invasion of cabbage moths, it's hoped that our broccoli and other related plants will recover. Some organic coffee grounds from work will hopefully keep the rest of the moths away so we can eat the stuff and not them.

Also, we started taking musical instrument lessons. For me, guitar and for TW, fiddle. If I find a jug of shine and some overalls it will confirm that she intends to turn me into a hillbilly (not that that's a bad thing mind you); either that or I'm trapped in a horrible episode of Hee-Haw.

As I said, pictures will be hopefully forthcoming...