June 2008

Rose

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.

blogging
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More planting

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.

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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.

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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.

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

gardening

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New swing!

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….

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And hey, it seems to be working well enough!

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

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Garden Progress

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:

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

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Salad bed 1, for scale.

The day we got back:

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

One week later (weekend before last):

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

And now:

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April-planted potatoes, newly-trellised peas.

gardening

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Boys on a Plane

Boys on a plane

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

Boys on a 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.

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