To The Surbiton Manor Born

It's just past mid-summer and the harvest is beginning. Probably the most prolific vegetable at the moment is the purple pole bean. We have pounds of them. Fortunately, they make a good stir fry. Zucchini is presenting its usual challenge: catch them when they are small, not the size of baseball bats. We've had mixed results. Fortunately zucchini fries are delicious.  We've made sweet pickles, dill pickles, pickled banana peppers.  We've harvested beets and a few sprigs of lettuce that managed to grow. The tomatoes are on point to begin. At this point, we are contemplating our options.  So far, we've always been able to eat what we grow (or give it away) without the need for canning. But our freezer is finite. Do we start canning? Is vacuum sealing enough to preserve the food until we can get to it? Do we need to buy a small chest freezer?  I have taken this coming Monday off, in part to process some of the food we're producing. As the tomatoes go from green to ...

 It's hard to believe that only a month or so ago we were talking raspberries. The garden really is a bit too much to handle right now. As Airbourne, the Greta Van Fleet of AC/DC put it, " Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast ."  They are done now, and the canes that produced this year need to be cut back. A couple of vacations happened (Pictured Rocks Nat'l Park & Charlevoix, Michigan for the marathon & the Boundary Waters). And the garden exploded. The purple beans are popping. The snow peas are just about done. The zucchini have spawned. The tomatoes are there, but green. The cucumbers are producing. The carrots & beets are pretty much ready. The tiny, sad bit of lettuce has produced. The kale has been devoured by Asian beetles. The pumpkins & squash are blossoming and climbing the trellis. The sunflowers are blooming.  Love summer.

  Bam! Strawberries! We have this tendency to go on vacation over the summer solstice. While we were gone, the garden burst into life. Just about every year, this is right when the strawberries are ready for harvest. This was no different, except that we were able to harvest right before we left instead of missing it. We only have one 4x8 bed of strawberries, so we don't get too many. But those that we do get are delicious. While we were on our road trip in our new van to Pictured Rocks National Park on Lake Superior and in Charlevoix, Michigan, running the marathon there, the garden was busy growing. Pound sign Van Life is fantastic. My whole life I have wedged my camping gear into small cars because they make sense. You only go camping rarely, and it isn't worth sacrificing gas mileage in a daily driver for a couple of weeks a year. K. and I looked longingly at fancy travel vans - Mercedes Sprinters that cost $200K. Do-it-yourself Fords that would sit in the driveway 50 weeks...

  There's a time for talking (writing), and a time for doing. It's been a time for doing over the past couple of weeks.  On Memorial Day we had some help from our friends from Dreamacres . It was a huge lift for getting the peppers and tomatoes into the ground.  As of today, we have in the ground and hopefully growing: Cucumbers (x6) Zucchini (x6) Acorn squash (an undetermined number - some have been replanted because of a failure to germinate) Roma tomatoes Wisconsin Chief tomatoes Tiny Tim tomatoes Lettuce Spinach Rocket Beets Sunflowers Nasturtiums Marigolds Sunflowers Pole beans Bush beans Sugar snap peas Yakteen squash (a favorite in Palestine, in solidarity against ongoing the Israeli genocide there) Strawberries (lots of little green ones) Raspberries (many, many raspberries) Nothing is very tall. I guess I always get nervous this time of year. It will surely ripen.

The Apple Blossoms are Out Memory has not been my friend this spring. Things were rolling along at a leisurely pace, then BAM! Spring hit hard. We've had a couple of weeks with temperatures hitting the 80's. The grass - especially the dandelions - is doing quite well. Most of the spaces that I filled in with seed are doing alright. Mercifully, the watering permit for setting those in expired on Monday, meaning that I don't have to devote 3 hrs. a day to watering them morning and night.  Zucchini, beets, arugula, kale, marigolds, nasturtiums, tromboncino squash, spinach, bush beans, snow peas, climbing beans, carrots, and pumpkins are all in the ground. Squirrels have been a nuisance - digging things up. Tomatoes & peppers from the greenhouse are in the "hardening off" phase.  The strawberries are blossoming, and the raspberries are in serious need of control. They are marching up the hill from the garden. I have a cunning plan that involves wire and giving up ...

  We are right on the cusp of spring. The grass has turned markedly greener. The trees are budding out. But we are dealing with a 7 (high wind) on the Beaufort scale this afternoon, and the sky is grey. So I did some work inside. Six of the best Wisconsin tomatoes seeded 3/14 outgrew their pots. I potted them up. Yesterday I dropped row covers over some of the beds and planted beets, arugula, and carrots.  There are points where it just doesn't seem possible that these tiny seeds will come to anything. Such is the feeling this afternoon. For the record, splitting wood for the fireplace has, at the end of April, become more a chore than a joy. Tomorrow, we are supposed to get to near 80 with humidity. And we are also supposed to get violent storms. We will have to see how the seeds under the row covers hold up. It will be an interesting test to see whether the row cover is permeable (as I hope it is) to rain as well as light.