What's growing?

It's already summer and I've not done a garden post in a while. In fact, I can't remember when I last did one, but, then again, I can't remember what my kids birth dates are either sometimes.

So, here are some random photos of the garden.

lots of garlic (right) and onions (left) with tree nursery in front

kale in the foreground

alpine strawberries that some people claim are full of flavor, but I think they mealy

various lettuces

trying out a special weed cover made from paper

banana peppers

eggplant in the greenhouse

nopal (that we hope will grow big enough to eat one day)

Asian pears in the orchard

black raspberries

These photos were taken over a couple of weeks of end of spring and beginning of summer, so there's a mix of spring and summer veggies.


And finally, because I've preempted "My Favorite Scene" today, I feel like I should at least have a video, so here's one of the guys and the chickens:

So, how about you? How does your garden grow?

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

There are berries, and then there are berries

Had just finished reading Cake's latest blog post about differentiating between wild black raspberries and wild blackberries when my boys came back from their walk with the dog and handed me a handful of both! So, I took some photos to share the difference.

From the back, you can already see minor differences between the two. The one on the left is the black raspberry and the one on the right is the blackberry:Aside from the fact that black raspberries ripen about a month or so earlier than blackberries (we have, obviously, a few early blackberries), once you pick them, you can see their difference from the inside. The black raspberries are hollow inside:Blackberries retain vestiges of the stem:Hey, this qualifies as a Random Tuesday fact! ;)

Have you been harvesting wild, or otherwise, berries too?

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

The passing...of a chicken and of the week

I missed my Tuesday and Thursday themes, obviously. Between being out all day and the internet connection not working, blogging just never happened.

I was going to recap the week with a few photos, but first, I have some sad news to report. Our favorite chicken, Alpina, died this morning. It looked like she suffered from an impacted egg. Alpina was the smartest (I swear she was smarter than some dogs I've met) chicken with a spunky personality - would never let one of our roosters mate with her, would be the first one to come running when you have a bug for them, and would try to knock food out of your hands if you don't feed her fast enough. It's always fun to watch chickens, but doubly so with watching Alpina. We'll miss her a lot.Remember the dill we were drying a few weeks back? Here it is, dried and put into a jar. It smells wonderful!And here is some of our dill on buttered new potatoes that we just harvested a few days ago:Speaking of harvest, I can't remember if I showed you the one measly strawberry harvest that we got this year:I hope that next year's harvest will be less pathetic. We've put in a new bed this spring.

This is the first wild black raspberries harvest of the year. We put them on the pan to flash freeze before putting them into freezer bags.And last, but not least on a random thoughts sort of theme, this is one of the plates that ds#2 made that I had wanted to sell on Etsy. But, it was sold to dh's uncle when the crew came to visit last weekend. Guess we'll have to make more!Speaking of Etsy, I noticed a lot of people have started ArtFire accounts as well. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me the advantage of one over the other, if you have a preference, and any other thoughts you might have on this. Thanks!

I hope everyone's week was a good one, with no sad news. Any good plans for this coming week and the Fourth of July 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