Finally a decent harvest.

Harvested yesterday:

• A few shelling peas
• A lot of snow peas
• A lot of sugar snap peas
• 1 head lettuce
• A bunch of onion scapes
• A large bunch of garlic scapes

We had a big salad for dinner last night; lettuce, radishes and scapes from the garden. Plus homemade flour tortillas with red chile and cheese on the side.

Spring's first harvest.

Even though it's high summer for most of you, up in these parts we are just now starting to get Spring. I can't believe it's already June! The weather here is more like early April. Last week we had our first harvest of this year's veggies:

• Two full bundles of radishes
• Three full heads of lettuce

The center bed is simply not producing much of anything. Terrible, terrible soil management on my part. Though I read over and over again about the importance of soil quality and fertilization I've been slacking in that department. I think in the back of mind I figured I would go on what I'm doing until it doesn't work anymore. Well, it only took a year. It doesn't work anymore. Here's to some dedicated studying of soil fertility...

Final harvest.

Even now, in the final days of the year, we still have fresh produce coming from the front yard. Harvested today:

1 bunch kale

6 carrots

1 bunch arugula

Weekend Update.

Harvested today:

• 2 tomatoes
• handful of beans
• handful of blackberries
• about 5 pounds of onions
• 2 pickling cucumbers
• 1 lemon cucumber
• 1 bell pepper
• 3 chile peppers

Planted today:

• 2 rows garlic
• 2 rows shallots
• 1 row arugula

Other notables of the weekend:

• Went to the ReBuilding Center, Home Depot, Lowe's and IKEA in search of a screen door and a bathroom lighting fixture. Returned home with new water glasses, a mixing bowl and a drill.
• Stood in the rain for five hours to see Willie Nelson in concert. It was worth it.

Now to make that apple pie...

OMG-The Patio is Done!

Yesterday was a very long and tiring day. We started about 9:30am and finished about 4:30pm. But we finished and now there is an awesome patio in the backyard!

First, we dumped gravel into the patio hole and spread it out and rolled it flat.

Then we started laying bricks and pounding them in.

As we went we added sand and packed it in with the big water rolly thing.

Then we were done and took a shower and drank beer on the patio with the dog.

The cats really loved the giant pile of bricks we had in the yard the last month. It stayed warm long after the sun went down and they would lounge on it about dusk. Tim is sad the pile is gone. There are just a handful of bricks left, but he's still sitting on them.

Late summer harvest continues; harvested today:

• 2 big tomatoes
• 6 yellow pear tomatoes
• a handful beans
• 5 pickling cucumbers (this is the last of them, the rest of the small cucumbers are rotted on the vine)
• a few pounds more onions
• 1 bell pepper (first of the year! We'll be lucky to get three total)
• 2 zucchini

As a side note, I am officially gainfully employed again as of tomorrow. Time management is going to be rough. I'm already trying to figure out my canning schedule for next weekend. Let's see how I fare keeping up on all this while working full time!

Late harvests.

It has been a weird and unseasonably cold summer in these parts. Actually, I have been hearing that from a lot of parts this year. It's already September and the clouds have rolled it and it's chilly and wet. And just today I got my first tomato, and my first good Lemon Cucumber, and the first good batch of cherry tomatoes, and the apples are finally ripening. Summer harvest comes in the fall.

Attack of the green onions.

You just don't find scallions like this in the supermarket. It's gigantic!

Harvested today:

• 1 giant scallion
• 1 head butterhead lettuce
• 1 perfect carrot
• a few dragon tongue beans
• 1 yellow pear tomato
• 5 pickling cucumbers
• 2 peach colored roses to sit on my kitchen table

Green harvest.

We had a good haul today. Harvested from the garden this afternoon:

• 1 head Romaine lettuce

• 1 head Salad Bowl lettuce

• oodles of green onions

• 2 heads broccoli

And the other day we harvested another batch of sugar snap peas and we got our first good batch of shelling peas!

Planted in the garden today:

• 1 row Dragon Tongue beans

• 1 row Empress green beans

• 4 pepper starts (bell and chile)