Island Mama

This is where we eat nearly all of our meals these days.

I love that the weather is finally decent enough that we can suddenly realise we haven’t used the dining room table in 2 weeks.

First, we made a cross with two posts. We put the shirt on the cross post first, then tied the two pieces together. (That’s Tim wearing the scarecrow’s hat, which is really actually a wicker plant pot holder thing, on the other side of the straw bale.)

We stuffed the arms with straw.

We made the head out of a pillowcase stuffed with straw and tied it around the neck. Then we stuffed the body with straw.

We added his overalls and stuffed his legs, drew his face and attached his hat.

Then we lay down on top of him and gave him a good talking to about his duties. Well, one of us did.

And ta-da!! We have a scarecrow!

He’s been on duty for a couple of weeks now, and I think he works. He works for me, at least. Every time I catch a glimpse of him from the far end of the garden, I have to look twice because I think “Hey, who’s that in my yard?”

This is Timothy inside the bean teepee I constructed from branches of an alder tree we cut down. The beans are really starting to come up now, finally, after a few very hot days. In a month or two, this whole thing should be covered in growth and provide quite the kids’ hideout.

The peas are already taller than him, he looks like he’s lost in the jungle when he tries to walk between them and the pototoes.

They’re just about ready to start harvesting, the snap variety at least. The shelling ones need to get a little bigger.

This is one of this year’s roses from a bush we discovered last fall, completely buried under an overgrown kiwi vine but still blooming.

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I’m going to try an experiment. A post a day for a month. It may only be a photo, but I’m going to try to make posting a part of my daily routine.

I already take lots (LOTS) of photos every day, of things that strike me as beautiful, of the boys being silly or clever, of projects like the garden or my sewing, or just of things that illustrate something I love about my life. And I always think as I take the picture “I’ll have to blog about this!” And then I don’t, for a few days, and then weeks, and then I feel overwhelmed by the backlog.

So, a post a day in July. (It sounded better when a blogger I read did a post a day in May, huh? Oh well, I’m not waiting til next year.) Maybe current photos and words, or maybe clearing some of that backlog, we’ll see.

The last couple of weekends have been busy with planting. We got in our brassica seeds (cauliflower, broccoli, Brussel sprouts) and root vegetables (carrots and parsnips, turnips and rutabagas), things we’ll be hoping to eat in the fall and into winter.

And now that it’s June, it’s finally time to set out the tomato and pepper starts and put in the stuff that needs warmer weather to germinate, things like corn and beans and pumpkins and summer and winter squashes. We have a whole large bed for the “sprawly” things, the pole beans and squashes that would take over our standard beds, and a whole bed for corn, as much to amuse the kids as anything else (not sure how well it’ll do in our climate).

I created this Bean Teepee out of branches from an alder tree we cut down earlier in the spring. Tied them all together with twine and planted multi-colored bean seeds along two sides of it. Hopefully in the height of summer, the kids will be able to crawl into a lush beany refuge and hide. And snack on fresh green, purple and yellow beans.

The two sides of this bed leading away from the teepee are each planted with a row of super tall sunflowers, so it should be pretty, too. And behind that, the rest of the bed is more bean tripods and 9 hills for pumpkins and squashes.

Of course, the problem with some of these most recent seeds are that the birds love them. So we tried to get creative on ways to scare them off. The bean tripods are now decorated with blank CDs. They twirl and sway in the wind, creating dancing reflections and shadows which hopefully the birds will hate.

And then there’s the corn. Using foil for “shiny” and contact paper for strength, I cut spirals like this. Then tied them onto a bunch more of those alder branches and stuck them in the ground throughout the corn bed.

We’re going to be adding a scarecrow just for the fun of making him…. but more on that later.

I finally figured out a way to make a swing using two of our trees and some rope. The hammocks are holding up well that way, so I sort of started looping and tying and with no real plan, wound up with a rope swing. It needed a seat so I stole a log from the firewood pile….

And hey, it seems to be working well enough!

Now if he could just learn to swing himself without needing pushed…

Growth has been happening at a crazy pace out there. During the week we were gone, it seemed like everything just exploded. And in the two weeks since we returned, even more so!

Before we left:

April-planted potatoes; salad beds 1 and 2 (planted three weeks apart).

Salad bed 1, for scale.

The day we got back:

April-planted potatoes; salad beds 1 and 2 (planted three weeks apart).

One week later (weekend before last):

The early-planted half of the garden: potatoes, peas, salads, fava beans, kale and chard.

And now:

April-planted potatoes, newly-trellised peas.

The excitement of watching out the window: “Plane! Plane!”

This was on our recent trip to Iowa, which has taken me a while to catch up and recover from. Six hours after these photos were taken, all four of us were throwing up in the first hotel we could find an hour into our planned four hour drive. We recovered, gradually, over the course of the week.

We’ve been back for over two weeks, but between the sickness of the trip and lingering blahs, and the must-plant-vegetable-seeds vibe going on since we got back, I’ve just not been on the computer much. There’ll be some more photos from the trip interspersed with more current stuff over the next week or two, I hope.

Picked for me by my oldest son. (Actually, pruned for me by my oldest son. He was desperately looking for things he was allowed to prune because he really really loves to use the pruners.)

We were having a frustrating morning. We were all getting grumpy with each other. We needed to go do something different.

I put a long piece of easel paper down on the ground and we splattered paint on it.

My idea was to run some of our outside cars and trucks around in it to see the wheel prints.

But that didn’t last long….. and then the shoes came off.

And my goodness did they have fun with their feet!!

And their hands. It quickly turned into a full body experience.

And after the first three sheets were filled, they wanted to do it again.