Well I'm not really going to complain about my work schedule. I am a part time employee that just happens to be filling in a lot. My days off seem to be pretty rare and the schedule for me is a bit brutal. Too much swapping from day work to overnight work for my tastes.
Anyway, yesterday I woke up at 5am and literally bounced out of bed. It was my day off for the week and I wasn't going to waste a moment of it.
I made some coffee and looked out the window to see the sky. It was overcast and glum looking. I waited for my coffee to brew and then on a whim grabbed my camera bag and headed for the ridgetop.
At first it didn't look like it was going to be very interesting, but I thought I'd have my coffee and enjoy the solitude and the sky anyway.
As the sun began to rise, it did get more beautiful.
The colors became brilliant and the fog started to creep across the low lying areas.
After I got home from the short lived but rather stunning sunrise, a light rain moved in.
We really need rain badly, the pastures are beginning to show stress along with the corn.
We experienced a few brief showers and during one of them I went to the garden and picked some summer squash and zucchini along with some green beans.
For some reason the garden that my neighbors planted is doing wonderfully. The squash has taken over and it looks like a bumper crop!
Squash soup, squash pie, squash, squash....!
And then I took a shot of the climbing beans that were planted. They are literally climbing anything they can wrap around. The blossoms are pretty but what I found while zooming in was more interesting.
Some sort of spider.
After I took this, I heard thunder close by and headed back indoors.
I took my garden goodies and made up a batch of cooked zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, green beans, onions, a bit of dill, and carrots. It was sort of a sauteed veggie delight.
Very delicious too.
Today we go to Madison for hubby's two month check up. Then tomorrow it is back at the strange and convoluted hours that I have been working.
I have been assured that my hours will decrease by the end of the month. I am looking forward to that.
I want to have some time this fall to ride Siera, hike, and enjoy a bit of the fall.
Morris says he'd like it if I had some more time to spend at home also.
I'm not going to preach growing your own food at anyone, but after not having a garden for a few summers and then...having a fantastic garden this year, well I'm going to say this:
It is a delight to sit down to a home cooked meal that is all grown on your own place. This includes the wild berries picked from the woods for dessert.
Not everyone can have a large garden. And many people tell me how they are too busy to have even a small garden. Or they don't like to garden, they are too old to garden.
Look at the health benefits.
The food is fresher than anywhere else.
Yes.
Fresher than the Farmer's Market.
Straight from the dirt to the sink, to the table, how much more fresh can that be?
Organic? Well if you grow it, you'll know it!
It can't help but taste better!
to this:
...and of course this.
The vegetable garden can also provide things of beauty...
Carrots tops:
Of course there is always the exercise too. Bending over, pulling weeds, and harvesting.
And there is processing what you harvest. Right now I am freezing many of my vegetables in perfect sized packages for two people. Green beans, carrots, and tomatoes get frozen in the same container or vaccumed sealed bag in perfect portions for those cold winter nights when we crave a nice good stew or soup.
Add some homegrown Dexter to it, and you have a fine meal.
Again, all grown on our own place.
Last night I picked crab apples from a real crab apple tree, not those that nurseries sell as decorative trees...but good old fashioned hearty red crabs.
And they make lovely juice for jellies!
Of course last year when I was helping my neighbor weed her garden and she was handing me some zucchini to take home along with some tomatoes...
When she mentioned wishing that she had a better place to make a bigger garden.
Her yard is sloped. Their house in on a hillside that slopes steeply down towards us.
We share the driveway and the well. And since we get along together so well I just blurted out.
"Well, why don't we do a big garden at my house next year? I have plenty of room but just no motivation."
And so we agreed to do a garden together.
The nearer it came to planting time, we chatted about what they wanted to grow and what I wanted to grow. Our lists were similar and we prepared the ground.
We planted both seeds and plants around the start of June.
June 7th.
A monsoon of a rain poured down 2 1/2 inches of rain in 40 minutes.
I watched as the rain created a small flash flood through the garden. I was pretty sure that nothing would survive.
But as the photo shows, my neighbors had made 'mounds' for all of the rows.
The spiral was to become a Sunflower Spiral with runner beans climbing them.
To our surprise the garden did not wash away. Some rows did have seeds wash into other rows and as the plants sprouted, we re-planted.
By July 2nd things started to look like a garden.
Even with another few storms and cool weather things finally started to get underway.
We began to eat lettuce and radishes, the green beans didn't sprout so we replanted them.
The carrots started to poke up in the rows with radishes. My neighbor planted them together and said that the carrots would start coming on when the radishes were done.
I was a skeptic.
But not any more.
The squash was planted on the edges of the garden so that they could creep into the yard.
The neighbors were afraid that the mules would eat the squash if it crept into the pasture.
I assured them they would not.
They were skeptics.
Not anymore!
The mules leave the squash plants alone and let them grow into their pasture.
The sunflower spiral is nearly as tall as me on the East side. This was the side that was not put under water 3 times since we planted the garden.
A word about weeding. I was skeptical when my neighbor said that we should leave certain weeds. Now I used to call it 'creeping jenny' and they called it Purslane.
And you can eat it!
Anyway, apparently you can eat many weeds. Of course I knew that. I've dined on Lamb's Quarters and had Nettle greens and Nettle Tea.
I've even found uses for plantain that grows in the yard but has some wonderful qualities.
I have found also, that purslane helps keep the moisture in the ground so that the veggies can grow when it is dry.
When I try some to eat, I'll let you know if it is any good.
So tonight we dine on some of our wonderful goodies from the garden.
I must say that raising our own little beef and having a garden has its real advantages.
There is something very satisfying when you sit down to a meal and know that not only did you grow all the vegetables in the meal, but you've raised the meat too.
Tonight we are having a fresh salad with cucumbers and the last of the radishes. Along with a couple baby carrots that I thinned out of the carrot row.
Beet greens, young red beets and a 'golden' beet, zucchini and summer squash mixed up with some green beans from another neighbor.
I must say that I may have been skeptical at my neighbor's un-traditional way of gardening, but I'm not any longer.
In fact I like the Sunflower Spiral, and the fact that everywhere I turn in the garden, I am looking at fresh food.
