On Friday evening Jeff told me that we were going to be getting another round of mushrooms. He showed me in the greenhouse and sure enough- tiny white mushrooms were starting to sprout up. What amazes me is just how fast they grow. It’s kind of crazy. Yesterday morning we harvested a whole colander of large white elm mushrooms. This morning we went out and harvested another basket full. We also harvested our first three cucumbers. They were small, but we were excited and ready to enjoy them. (We ate them with lunch and they tasted so good.) There are so many tiny cucumbers on the way and every time we see the bees pollinating the cucumber flowers it makes us happy. Zucchini and green beans are making their way inside. There’s so many greens to harvest right now, mostly collards and kale. We eat some blackberries every time we walk out our door. When Bracken saw that I was about to take a picture of our harvest basket today, he added a calendula flower.

There’s a few oregano plants that were here before I moved in. They have hardly any flavor so we never harvest them, and we’ve since planted some varieties of oregano that we like, but the bees love those plants so much when they are all covered in purple flowers that we’ve left them be even though one is sort of taking over our pathway. We see bees on those oregano plants all day long, it’s probably one of the most popular bee plants in our garden.

I have some serious catching up to do in the kitchen. Beets are baking in the oven. (We traded with our neighbor for some beets. Yay!) It’s a start. The fridge is full of food for me to process. Last weekend we looked at how much we made at the market and then how much of it was spent on groceries. It didn’t leave much for paying bills. The largest part of our income goes towards food. We love good food. It’s important to us. Our health is important to us and eating delicious food is one of life’s greatest pleasures. We love being able to purchase food from local farms and friends. But I have been brainstorming ways that we can stretch our food dollar a bit more, yet still be enjoying many of the foods that we love. Trading for food and growing our own helps immensely! I’m glad we’re entering the season of our garden where our grocery list shrinks drastically. It’s so appreciated. Saving money on food is just one of the many, many things that we love about gardening.