On Friday, we harvested our garlic. Jeff rinsed it all off with the hose and then set it out to dry.

 (Bracken holding a strawberry he just picked, in the morning, before his haircut.)

 Homegrown garlic makes us very happy! We want to plant much much more this fall.

 This shows you how large the head of broccoli is compared to Bracken’s finger. 

(He saw I was about to take a picture of it and so came and pointed.)

After taking this picture and seeing it on the computer, I noticed a little slug on the leaf. I wish I would have seen it at the time so I could have brought it over to the chickens.

 It’s been a few years since we’ve had broccoli growing in our garden and I’m so glad we planted some this year. The heads are fairly small, but thy are tender and so delicious. We’ve been enjoying them with our meals. In fact, Bracken usually comes over to my bowl and asks for all my broccoli (then over to Jeff.)

 Bracken came over to show me the strawberry he found. Whenever he finds one, you can hear him from across the garden, saying “Yay!!” The strawberries are starting to slow down now. 

Luckily, the blueberries are starting to ripen! Bracken gets to them as soon as they start turning blue. Our plan was to buy bird netting this year, but as fast as Bracken gets to them, I don’t think we’ll put any up this year. 

 A chamomile harvest. (Using my shirt for my harvest basket again.) We dry the little flowers to make tea.

I love the way they smell. Subtle and sweet.

Every morning we go out to harvest ingredients for breakfast. Usually greens (kale and chard lately) and a broccoli or two thrown in the mix. And we harvest lettuce for that day’s lunch. (We make it a part of our daily routine since we have forgotten to harvest the lettuce until mealtime rolls around, when it’s too hot. When it’s picked in the morning it’s so fresh and crisp.)

 Even when we are just bringing in a few things, looking at the harvest always fills me with joy.

I took this picture of a cucumber in the middle of the day today, when it was really hot out. We are having a heat wave here right now. We wanted to get all our plants in the ground before the heat came, to give them a good start. Especially the heat-lovers, like the cucumbers. We’ve been doing our best and planting as much as we can each day. Jeff goes out in the morning and waters, fertilizes, plants, and builds trellises before the day gets too hot. I get breakfast going first thing (since when Bracken and I come downstairs, Jeff has already been up for quite awhile and needs some nourishment.) The laundry has been drying on the line so quickly! Bracken’s pool has been getting filled up every day. Even when the water hasn’t warmed up yet, it feels so good to put our feet in. We don’t have air conditioning, so we open windows and started using a few fans. I open the windows that have screens in them, but I don’t like to open the windows without screens (we have quite a few of those on this old house) because too many flies come in, among other things. During the day, it gets too darn hot to work outside. We come indoors and do our indoor work. In the evenings, it’s absolutely blissful out. It’s still warm, but there’s a breeze. We’ve been spending all our evenings out there digging and planting and hauling compost. Sometimes we just can’t seem to stop and stay out too late. Then we come in for dinner and Bracken gets to bed a tad too late. Last night we came in earlier, to be better about that. Almost all of our cucumbers and summer squash are planted now. We still have a few more starts in the greenhouse that need to go in the ground. We have winter squash that needs to go in the ground, along with a few more sunflowers and nasturtiums. 

With this heat, some days the garden needs to be watered twice. 

A funny song keeps popping in my head “oh baby, it’s hot, hot, hot!”

You know that one? It’s very fitting right now.

P.S. Some of you have been asking how Bracken has been doing with his chicken pox. Truth be told, I’m feeling baffled right now. Saturday he was covered in red bumps. Mostly on his torso and a few on the legs. They varied in size, some small and some bigger, and in clusters too. Then yesterday those seemed to be fading and he had some new ones all over his legs. Today (Day 3) you can’t even tell he had any. They only seemed to itch him a little on the first day. They never formed blisters or scabs, like I’ve read about. They were not as dark red as the pictures I’ve seen. They looked similar to a bug bite. So now Jeff and I are wondering…. was that a very mild case of chicken pox? Or was it something else? I’ve been researching to figure it out. 

(Edited to add: Thanks for all your comments. Instead of responding to them all individually, I’m just writing here. After researching, his rash matched Roseola (although he didn’t have the high fever.)