Encouragement.

I've been feeling really discouraged with the garden lately, and indeed with all my self-reliant dreams. I've been on 10-hour days at work for some time; we've just gone back down to 9-hour days, which is pretty awesome. But, with a 1 and a half hour commute each way and unpaid lunches that makes for 13-14 hours that I'm not at home every day, which leaves me with precious little time to do anything productive, let alone manage a prolific home garden.

This spring I had measly crops of radishes and I had completely ruined crops of broccoli, cauliflower, kale and spinach. My squashes, cucumbers and peppers are looking like they might come up the same for summer. Not to mention my dead plum tree. Or the fact that there is only one pear on my pear tree. One pear! And last year all our pears were stolen, so we've never had one of our pears. The cherry harvest is weak where we can reach. The tree is too tall to get a good harvest. I was able to make a mini-cherry crumble for the 4th of July and I have some cherries ready to make into either a pie or cherry mousse. But that might be about it for cherries this year. A far cry from the 6 pints of jam, 6 pints of jelly and 4 quarts of whole cherries I was able to can last year. There are so many things I need to do for the garden to get it producing better. I need to be hand-pollinating but I don't have time. I need to be side-dressing with fertilizer, but I don't have time. Halfway through 2011 I have accomplished almost none of the goals on my list for this year:

Sew something better
Begin organic pest control
Better fall/winter garden prep
Have cold frame
Increase pickling repetroire
Dry something
Grow own herbs, preserve
Get in summer canning routine
70% vegetable growth - through winter
Set up grow lights for Spring? - at least Fall.
Make one personal bread recipe
Put in fence
Begin testing soil, amending
Start regular fertilization
Better tree pruning
Make a soft cheeseese

Granted some of those things have to wait until their appropriate season, but I am far behind. I was starting to feel discouraged, overwhelmed, like I'm going to be stuck in windowless edit suites for the rest of my life because I'm stuck in the cycle of needing the job to support my hobby, but not having the time to practice it because I have to spend all my time working for it. Feeling like I'm not very good at it anyway and I should resign myself to office life.

And then finally - some successes! The garlic harvest was more than I anticipated. And it all pulled out of the ground in good shape. I cleaned up one head that I accidentally tore while harvesting (and then I forgot to take a picture) and it's waiting in our fruit bowl, all purple skinned and plump. The rest are laid out in the garage to dry for a couple days before I braid them for storage (sorry for the blurry pic).



I spent a little time last night gathering onion seeds. Some of last years scallions were left to overwinter and go to seed. We got some awesome onion heads and left them to dry in a paper sack in the garage. I checked on them last night and almost all the seeds had popped out!



I went through and tried to get as many out as I could and ended up with a good chunk of scallion seed. Saved ourselves like $3! It's not much money to save, but it was so very satisfying.




I'm feeling a renewed sense of excitement for the garden and I'm starting get those high hopes again for fall.