Here’s some pictures from around the place the last few weeks.
The nettles patch is taller than we are these days.
The nettles are all going to seed. I think they look so beautiful right now.
We’d like to collect many seeds this year
Also going to seed is some chard.
Here’s Jeff showing that it’s taller than he is. (He even let me photograph him in his jamis.)
Then I asked him to peek out from behind the celery like a little elf.
The celery we let go to seed is taller than we are also. Jeff loves to save the celery seeds to grind up for seasoning.
This is a picture of Jeff’s bean trellis not too long ago. We had runner beans coming up from last year so Jeff put these branches around for them to grow up. I loved the way it looked (very hobbit-y.)
Now it looks like this.
The runner bean flowers are so pretty.
I love the way they wrap around.
Next, we need to get a trellis up for the cucumbers.
Jeff’s been tying up the onions that are flowering, when they get tall, so they won’t fall over. We’re still waiting to harvest the onions. And waiting to harvest the garlic too.
The summer squash is getting big fast. We planted three varieties of zucchini this year. A green one, a yellow one, and a striped one. The yellow ones haven’t been very happy, but the other varieties are doing good (although the moles disrupted them some.) Speaking of moles, Jeff has caught three so far. And there’s still mole activity. Usually they say the most you’ll have at one place is three.
Bracken thinks opening and shutting the garden gates is quite fun.
He thinks picking apples is fun too and has picked all the baby apples within his reach (unfortunately they’re not ripe yet.)
A mushroom he found and proudly showed mama.
More mushrooms Jeff and Bracken found. (I love that you can see both of their feet in this picture.)
Basket of herbs Jeff and Bracken harvested.
Lovely yarrow.
We’ve got two varieties of grapes in large pots that we grew from clones, waiting to go in the ground.
We’re still harvesting calendula every day.
We have some lavender ready to harvest.
Yesterday and today, we’ve been delighting in the sunshine. Jeff’s been making herbal sun tea (you can see my reflection in the jar) and I’ve been hanging clothes on the line.
Jeff’s been splitting, hauling, stacking firewood.
A little something to make you smile. Yesterday Bracken handed me a hair thing to put in his hair, like he sees me do in mine. We’ve been letting his bangs grow out so we can tuck them behind his ears. This little “whale spout” worked well for keeping those pesky bangs out of his face. Adorable and hilarious all at the same time (who doesn’t smile when they see a “whale spout”?) Here are some more to make you smile:
Seeing these pictures, you’d think we spend all our time outdoors. We don’t, but that sure would be nice, wouldn’t it? We take breaks throughout the day from our indoor tasks, to be outside. Lately we’ve been spending a few hours before bedtime, all working together in the garden, as our end-of-day “treat” to ourselves.
Our most recent project is this. We had a long bed lined with rocks that Jeff made before I moved in. It was planted with a variety of flowers and hostas. Beautiful, but all non-edible and taking up prime garden space (that we need more of.) We decided we’re going to transplant all the flowers and hostas to other locations. This spot we want to use for blueberries. We both worked on pulling out the rocks along the edge, then Jeff dug up the grass. We put the chunks of sod in an area where we wanted some grass. We’re widening this bed, enough to fit blueberries, then we’ll put the rocks back. I’ll show pictures when we’re finished. You’d think it’d be a pretty quick project, but they always end up taking longer than we expect.
.
(I’ve written this post while Bracken was napping next to me. Now he is just starting to stir. Good timing.)
.
What have you been up to outdoors lately?
What’s growing in your garden? Or windowsill?
Have you been harvesting? Working on any projects?
Leave a Reply