Come closer!

When veggies are this beautiful, you just have to have close-up shots.

Our cabbage heads have been medium-sized, tasty and lovely:

This is the first garlic bulb we harvested.  Doesn't that look as stunning as anything in the Louvre?

Things look a bit wild in the garden, but the weeds are actually well under control, a pleasant surprise.

And here are some of my favorite weeders: the boys!

We're getting close to making a big batch of pesto soon.  Seems like we never make fewer than 5 pints at a time.

It is that time of year when we start processing food - freezing, canning, dehydrating.  This means it's also a good time to take a blogging break.  I'll be back reading blogs and posting in August, I hope.  :)

Are you processing your veggies?  Will you be taking a blogging break too?  Have fun with whatever you plan on doing for the next month or so! 

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Gardening - flowers and food

Some of you may have noticed that we don't spend a lot of time on ornamental gardening. We used to grow showy annuals, but with less time to spend on gardening and more mouths to feed, we've focused our efforts on food over aesthetics. If we grow plants that don't feed us, we try to focus on ones that are perennial and/or feed birds.

Hummingbirds are rather fond of hosta flowers (the deer love the leaves too, but we're certainly not encouraging that). My MIL used to grow many varieties of hostas; she had a shady yard that only shade-loving plants could do well in. The ones we have now had been dug up from her garden. It's a nice way to remember her.

My MIL knew all the varieties names, but I can barely remember my own kids' names.

I haven't talked much about the herbs that we grow by the house, so here are photos of a couple of them.  This is oregano:

The lemon balm also does well.

Garlic chives have taken over much of the space around our water garden, although I don't think you can see it well in this photo.  This space has become a bit wild in the past few years.  We used to have water lilies in the pond, but now it's mostly algae.  The frogs still love it and I guess that's all that counts for now.

Hubby, with the kids' help, fixed our old chicken tractor!  Now I have to find time to stain it.

More on the never-ending rabbit saga - see the cuke plants they've turned into stubs? 

This one is for Michelle (Blog of the Soap Pixie) because we were talking about darned deer and the damage the cause (hey, that make a good rock band name: Darned Deer and Devastation...ok, maybe not).

Yes, the peas are ready! Putting the kids to work:

I may whine about weeding and hubby may complain about having to having to foil deer and rabbits every year, but I'm very grateful to be able to grow about 40% of our own foods on our land.  There is a food shortage in many parts of the world, causing high prices and food riots.  Incidentally, some may think that food costs are high in North America, but it's nothing compared to what percentage of income it comprises for some people in other parts of the world.  A couple of good articles to read about food shortage are:
A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself
and
Where is the 21st century approach to feeding the world?
Of course, one can't really talk about changing climate and hunger without also talking about two other related topics:
Fastest sea-level rise in 2,100 years linked to climate change
and
Overpopulation: A key factor in species extinction

Now that I've thoroughly depressed you (welcome to the despair that resides in my heart), I hope you'll have a lovely weekend!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random thoughts just coz I can

Hubby was at a dinner at a professional conference this past spring, and white asparagus was served. Someone wondered what it was, and someone else confidently replied that it was parsnips. Dh refrained from going WTF? because it was a professional conference after all. LOL! No, really, he's just generally tactful; the yin to my yang. I am known for many things, but being tactful and diplomatic is not one of them.

Anyway, hubby told the person who first asked that those were white asparagus, and that we grow them. Whereupon someone else wondered if white asparagus was a different variety. I'm here to dispel that notion just like dh did that evening. White asparagus is just asparagus grown covered so that it doesn't get to photosynthesize. People who grow frisee do the same thing to them because whiter frisee is less bitter. See the white spears in front of the others? Those were covered by leaves before they were picked.

I won't even bother with a clever segue, but want to thank Robin (who writes the wonderful Rurification blog) for encouraging me to make cheese. She recommended the kits from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company so I got one and made mozzarella twice already! There were one or two mistakes in the instructions, but overall, it was a great experience and fairly easy. This was the stage where the curd formed and I cut it with a knife.

And here it is, done!  Ta-da!  Very tasty it is too.

Third random thought: we have a black snake that has decided it likes to keep company with our tools in the shed.  Great.  Don't get me wrong; I love snakes.  I just prefer to know where they are in proximity to me and that they aren't dangling over my head.  I don't like things above my head and I don't like it when people walk behind me.  Oh wait, this isn't a random thoughts post after all.  This is a post about Teresa's irrational phobias!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

How does our garden grow?

Before I get into blathering about our garden, I want to give a shout-out to Product Body's fantastic Giveaway! Head over to The Soap Bar blog to find out how to enter; Joanna's products are incredible! You can thank me later.  ;)

Thinking about the nursery rhyme leads me to suspect that Mary wasn't the one being contrary; it was probably the garden pests who were contrary!  (Unless, of course, you take it as the political allegory that it is and from the view point of Elizabeth I, Mary was rather contrary; but I hate talking politics.)

All sorts of things conspire to make your garden a failure: rabbits, voles, aphids, caterpillars, chipmunks, and, yes, even birds.  They blithely nibble on your plants and berries, snipping off and killing young shoots before they have a chance to realize their dreams of becoming a full-blown plant.  The garden is a sad, rough place to raise a seedling.

Still, we persist, year after year.  Or hubby persists, and the kids and I help to nurse his eternal optimism.

So to answer "how does our garden grow", I thought I'd show some photos of the progress.  I think I took these photos Tuesday morning (June 7th).  These are by no means all of our garden beds.  Some are still empty (well, maybe just one or two are), and some I just didn't take close-ups of (example, cucumbers, squash, grapes).

A sweeping view of the south garden, outside of the main fenced garden. Our dilapidated chicken tractor is at the left-hand side. Hubby fixed it now though, so I'll have to show a photo of his handiwork some other time.

Looking inside our main fenced garden...it's hard to take in all 27 beds in there at once:

The bib lettuce, co-existing with the frisee:

The lettuce, nearly bolting, with some beets in the foreground, not quite big enough yet. Interspersed are dill that keep self-seeding in our garden.

Speaking of self-seeding, here's a volunteer lamb's quarters:

The cabbages are doing beautifully...

In fact, dh used one for cole slaw:

...but the broccoli is just getting started:

One day soon, we'll get some peas:

More frisee, cohabiting with the celery this time:

The asparagus are still going strong, amazingly:

as are our garlic, which won't be ready for harvest for another month:

Our strawberries are pretty much done:

But other things are just getting started, such as eggplants:

and sweet potatoes:

Regular potatoes:

Lima beans:

Peppers:

Tomatoes:

And green onions - front - (this is the half bed inside the main garden, and not the six beds outside the fenced area) and basil - back:

Dh made some yummy meals again. This was a faux gyros with brown rice instead of pita, and our tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes (since our tomatoes haven't ripen yet).  Complete with my homemade Greek yogurt and homegrown asparagus:

This was just using up some left over dilly new potatoes.  Dh made a homefries sort of concoction, topping it with one of our eggs.

We're actually low on eggs right now.  The heat shut most of the chickens down, and one hen went broody so she's not laying.  *&^% freeloaders.  We might have to dispatch with this current group and get a bunch of new ones.  Unfortunately, ds#1 is rather attached to one of the hens, Licorice...actually most of the hens except for Four of Five...so we may have to keep them for longer.  I never knew he was quite so sentimental. 

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Something creative, something blue

Seems like my kids' friends are so busy with homeschooling stuff that they rarely have time for playdates anymore. Some days, I feel like I have more playdates than they do!

Once or twice a month, I have lunch dates with my girlfriends (now that the boys are old enough, I can leave them unsupervised for a couple of hours occasionally). I got together with my neighbor/friend, Allison, this past week for a jewelry-making/lunch date. It was fun! I got to work on something I never allow myself the time for at home because something else is always more important. My poor writing is sometimes relegated to the same low status on my to-do list, unfortunately.

Anyway, I got to finish off a necklace the string of which had broken many years ago and that I had never gotten around to re-stringing. Here it is, with the matching earrings I made:

Since that didn't take very long, I also had time to make a couple more pairs of earrings. Well, sort of - I didn't bring enough findings over to Allison's house and couldn't put the hook on this pair of earrings:

But, here it is, all finished (and blurry):

The other pair I made was blue. I don't make too many blue things, nor do I wear many blue things, except for jeans. But, I do like the myriad shades of blue:

The kids, well, they do get to see their friends, but often only in the context of their co-ops, clubs, fieldtrips and classes lately. A dear friend of mine organized a field trip to Angel Mounds, in Evansville, Indiana, also this past week. Being the bad mom that I am, I rarely remember to bring my camera.  Luckily, having an iPhone means never having to say "I'm sorry" or going without image-capturing capability again.  So here are some poor quality pictures of a fun day.

A photo of part of the site, with one of the mounds in the far distance:

The kids descending from stairs that go up one of the mounds, supposedly the one the chief had used:

The kids also got to try out some flint-napping, which, predictably,  I forgot to take photos of, and some soil-sifting for artifacts, very similar to panning for gold:

Close-up of ds#1's butt:

Not only did the kids get to play archaeologist for a day, they are also now officially Canadians!  Having jumped through the long, somewhat arduous hoop, of applying for proof of their citizenship (because I'm Canadian), we now have their citizenship cards!

YESSSS! Hubby told them that they will have to learn the Canadian anthem.  ;)

And speaking of kids, we've been trying to find ways to get rid of household pests...just kidding, kids...sort of.  Here are a couple of links for you in case you're also plagued with ants (or some other vermin):

Repelling pests the natural way (via Natural Home and Garden) and Natural Ways to Get Rid of Ants from Your Home from Care2.com. 

Well, I had better go finish writing a story for my SF critique group.  No rest for the wicked.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams