Category Archives: Uncategorized

Carrot Lace.

Queen Anne’s Lace was my favorite flower as a child. It grows wild in the Willamette Valley. Some years plentiful, some years scarce, but always it grows. The center blossom, usually, a dark blue or purple. Occasionally, a scarlet center (those are the ones with extra magic, you know.) I loved those blossoms for their delicate nature, their bold center, and their stubborn stems. More than once I would try and pick one only to end up on my butt in the dust with the flower only slightly worse for wear from the battle.

Even the fact that eventually it meant picking cockle-burr after cockle-burr from my socks when the petals turned to seeds didn’t turn me off to their brass nature cloaked in dainty appearance.

And so, when one carrot, the largest carrot, the center-most carrot, decided to shoot to three feet tall overnight, I let it.

It lacks the bold center and the gentle upward curvature, but hits the soft spot in my heart all the same. My hypothesis is, I didn’t plant cockle-burrs to get carrots, so perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’ll have smooth tiny black seeds in a little while. My first saved carrot seeds. If I’m lucky.

The year of the tomato.

I thought I got a huge harvest on June 8th. Look at all those bigger guys out of focus in the background!

And then, on June 14th, I put the 8th to shame. Nearly twice the harvest as before!

Sunday, for Father’s Day Birthday, DH’s family came over for dinner and afterward wanted to head to the garden. It was really neat walking around the gardens with them. Oooh and Aaaahing over the giant gourd squash, the comically huge sunflowers, the beautiful squash flowers, and the mystery corn-grass in others’ plots. It was also fun to hear them get excited over all of the ripe tomatoes in my plot like I do. Once again, the harvest left the previous harvest in the dust. Once again, the latest harvest was double the previous.

Want to see what (at least) 10 pounds looks like?

Why only “at least”? Well, the scale broke. I thought it took regular batteries, and knew it had been dying slowly. It finally died, and I go to replace the batteries…giant watch-style batteries. Crap. So we’re guessing on the weight this time.

That morning I snapped a shot or two  of two of the large varieties in the early light. The Black Prince (so named for the dusting of darker green/purple shoulders) and the Zapotec (the pink wrinkly one.)

Big dreams…

As the spring wandered off to make way for summer, the garden was still going strong. Now that summer’s tight grip has taken full hold of our air, I find the cabin fever setting in. Last year it took until August for the fever to hit. Today, it hit hard. I knew I needed to go out, and despite the blanket of steaming humidity, the imposing sun, and the absent breeze, I went out.

I stuck to the shade as best I could. Spraying the strawberries with some compost tea. As the shade traveled across the land, I started work in my backyard garden. Clearing out the blossoming arugula (that we never eat, but that keeps coming back). The long-since-bolted, seeds collected, and re-bolted lettuce made their way to the compost bin.

Just like that, I was out of shaded tasks. Having spent the entire day yesterday on the river (coated in SPF 70) I didn’t wish to subject my skin to another day drowning in sunscreen, and dare not go without it. So the tomatoes still need higher trellising on their posts. The peppers still need their caging. The melons still need netting and the last squash have likely lost to the borers and the bugs.

I headed indoors. I pulled out my graph paper pad. I pulled out my pencil and eraser. I set to work drafting my winter garden.

That’s right.

In a week or three, I’ll sow my brassica family veggies, my kales and my chards, and other winter garden varieties into seed trays indoors. Last year I direct sowed seeds October 1st and found my beds lagging behind those of the Farmer’s Market Farmers. This year, I’ll do my sowing in the comfortable 75 degree housing we occupy and let those cooler weather crops get a head start before dropping them out into the 90s it will have cooled down to by October 1st (I hope.)

And with that, I sigh. Sure. I have a long growing season – October through June – which is the inverse of most vegetable gardens I know about who have their three month “can’t grow” season during the winter months. It doesn’t change the fact that I miss the summers that mean playing outside all day. In my sighing. I start to dream. DH may be done with school as soon as two calendar years from now. It feels so far away sometimes, but I’m learning all too well how quickly time moves as you age. What used to take forever to pass (summer vacation as a child, anyone?) is now gone with the exhale of the wildflowers. Over. Spent.

A dream of ours, when he finishes school, is to see about moving. Last summer, we fell in love with Boulder. Sometimes, when I get frustrated with various frustrations, I take a peek at Boulder. It has yet to fail to make me yearn.

Case in point? 20 acres are for sale. That we could afford. That looks as picturesque as I only dreamed we would find.

 

Sometimes, the beauty of the world just makes my heart ache.

There are so many decisions to make in one’s life. So very many.

Tree thirty.

DH has been the driving force behind the trees in our lives. He hopes to have an orchard someday that is a testament to his love of a good medley. Almonds and plums and avocados living in harmony? He’d like to try it anyway.

Being as we don’t plan to stay in this home forever, he limits his tree fixation to landscape trees. Except for when I give him keep-in-a-pot-as-long-as-necessary varieties for his Someday Orchard.

You met the Mexican White Oak and one of the pecan trees already. Let’s check in on Bill the Lime Tree. He’s been outside for about a month now, and after our serious storm last week, I had cause for concern that perhaps all of his little limes had been knocked off.

Never fear, they hung in there. He’s even taken the time to make some more buds and stick out some new leaf shoots.

You’ve also met June before. She did lose some plum blossoms in the storm, but hurried some new ones out in no time!

And what you can’t see here, is that so far one of these little flowers has already made a teeny tiny little plum! I had no idea a potted plum tree, roots to tip only 5 feet tall, would make a plum (or more)!

I also have a new introduction to make – the Mulberry tree. When we moved in, we had no idea what kind of tree it was. Then it started making fruit and my gut told me they were mulberries, but my brain said not to eat them until I had confirmation. So I waited. And waited. And then we had DH’s folks over for dinner – both of whom had known mulberry trees in their childhoods – and they both promptly popped a berry off of a branch and into their mouths. I quickly followed suit. Last year, the berries were a bit small and tart. Not knowing what it was, I hadn’t watered it. Since it didn’t rain more than a half an inch between mid-January and early June, the tree made do as best it could.

Now it’s actually raining, and I’m watering it between, we may have some mulberry jam in our future – fingers crossed!

We’ve all been busy.

I’ve been busy lately, busier than usual, with work and also with training with DH’s mother for a mini-triathlon. Work takes most daylight hours, and then the training often took the rest. Now that Daylight Savings Time has come (or gone, as it were) the evening hours stay lit until nearly 8pm. Who else has been busy? The plants! Look how they’ve grown!

I’ve had a lot of catching up to do, can you tell?

This is my overgrown backyard garden, surrounded by an overgrown lawn full of overgrown weeds, two weekends ago. Last weekend, the lawn got a buzz cut, the weeds did, too, and everything got cleaned up with the edger/weed-whacker.

More to come!