Quickly. Made 25 pints of blueberry jam from Farmers Market berries and another batch from 5 quarts of berries Amie and I picked at a very locally IPM place with friends one thunderstormy afternoon. We came out of the field drenched but happy and surprised we had been picking for three hours. Our tribe will …
Category Archives: garden
First Harvests
This is one of my favorite times of the year: the first harvests are coming in. For greens, we are eating kale, lettuce, chard and good king Henry, New Zealand spinach, mache, minutina, and celery. All the herbs – parsley, rosemary, sage, etc. are ready. The malabar spinach is almost ready and it’s a lovely …
Summer Solstice Work
On the Summer Solstice we didn’t just demolish our Earth Oven, we did a lot more work. I plugged the last holes (I hope) in the rabbit proof fence around the veg garden. We swept and tidied the backyard and patio. Amie and I planted the flowers we got from the garden center. A couple …
Garden Survey
My friend and fellow blogger Kath did a garden survey and inspired me to do the same. It was getting a bit darker on an already gloomy day and everything is still covered in yellow pollen dust, but I managed to snap some pictures. We begin with Amie and the little chickens. They are now …
Mushroom Walk and Print
Yesterday Wayland Walks, a very active offshoot of Transition Wayland, arranged a long mushroom walk with author/adventurer/mycologist Lawrence, aka Larry, Millman (picture). It was packed with discoveries, learning and humor, as Larry has a great way of sharing his knowledge and is a fountain of mushroom lore. It had rained just before the walk so …
It’s Raining Down!
Over the weekend it started. The non-stop tiny patter-patter of black specks raining down from on high. You stand still and listen and it sounds like fizzing. We thought they were seeds on the patio, as much as possible under the umbrella, and didn’t think much of it, except : what fecundity! Billions of seeds! …
Garden after Planting Beans
I planted all the dry beans in between sprinkles of rain. The perfect day: overcast, a little cool, the promise of rain. All but three beds are now occupied: squashes, zukes and cukes and tomatoes, peppers and eggplants still need to go in. And potatoes.
Hornet’s Eggs
Today we took the floppy plastic off the hoop house. We want to re-bend the hoops, because most of them have un-bent themselves so much that at the top they meet in a point, which cuts into the plastic. But we’ll only do that next weekend. In the intervening week I hope the rain will …
First Seeds of 2014 are In
Amie and I finally cleaned the seedling containers, then fired up the heat mat and the lamps in the basement and sowed seeds. We’re a little late. Last year I put in the first seeds on Feb 24. We sowed: lettuce mache chard kale spinach onions leeks I need to order some seeds: celery, parsley, …
Spring?
This has been/still is a hard winter. It’s been one snow storm after another, with long stretches of below freezing temperatures. Â Three weeks ago I caught a bug which developed into pneumonia – hence the silence here – and now that I’ finally up and about, Amie caught something as well. That’s how it goes. …