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This Year’s Garden! July 26, 2012

Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, Dinner with TCR.
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Gardening this year has been an uphill struggle; The Ladies built raised beds last year, which has helped tremendously by containing the produce and excluding the weeds, but the lack of rain has necessitated putting a chunk of each day into keeping my efforts from turning to dust.

So Tuesday’s rain was a great relief, and the garden rejoiced:

The watering system I rigged up sat blissfully idle today.  Thank You, Father Sky.

Our garden is a mix of what we planted and the “volunteers” which appeared as a result of last year’s reseeding (we’re going with a no-till model, and just being grateful when Free Stuff shows up!  🙂 )

Among the volunteers are carrots (which provided nice white flowers but no carrots to speak of,) onions, garlic, leeks, some kind of vining things which might or might not be pumpkins (half the fun is the expectant waiting,) and two little trees in the mid-ground which I think are apricots – again, time will tell!  😆

So far we’ve harvested and enjoyed rhubarb, asparagus, lettuce, radishes, snow peas, beans (green, yellow and purple,) squash (summer, delicata and zucchini,) purple potatoes (more volunteers!) cucumbers, broccoli, kale and rainbow chard – I’m growing leaves!!

And we have flowers interspersed, some (such as the marigolds and aliums) as companion planting for pest control, and some just for eye-candy.  Glads:

…and zinnias:

The rain really freshened them up, and they were a joy to photograph:

We’ll have sunflowers later on, but right now they’re just buds:

We’ve been sharing our bounty with a fat little woodchuck (she and I have a love/hate relationship,) but there’s still as much as  I can eat and more.

Thank you Mother Earth; Thank you Father Sky.

The Garden, So Far. May 22, 2012

Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, Dinner with TCR.
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Our garden is slowly planting itself, using my enthralled hands.

In the west yard:

In this photo, Brussels sprouts, onions, tarragon, broccoli, sage, strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, lacinato kale, rainbow chard, celery, radishes, carrots, several squashes, dill, leeks, peas, beets, beans and garlic.  That leaves two and a half beds for the rest of our summer guests…

In the dooryard, the new raised beds now hold garlic, basil and five kinds of tomatoes:

It’s not done, but it’s getting there.

Flowers to follow, and there will be lots of them.

Work Hard, Sit Loose. May 7, 2012

Posted by littlebangtheory in Dinner with TCR.
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I spent the weekend building raised beds in the dooryard, a place to grow tomatoes away from the nightshade blight which haunts our garden.  I got 2X12s from a local sawmill yesterday, real  2x12s, not the planed down sissy-boards they sell at Home Depot.

Jeezus,  they were heavy!  Took me 45 minutes to get the four twelve-footers on top of my ride!  Crushed the roof rack and stove in the roof on the way home, despite my gentle driving.  Guess that’s what you get when it’s growing one day and boards the next.

Anyway, I diced up the wood and assembled the boxes, toasting my drill along the way:

…and got one of them filled with a mixture of top-soil and composted cow manure before I bonked.

I had just enough of a reserve to light a wood fire and grill dinner in the yard as the light faded:

Viande a la Ronde,  served with pain grille,  kim-chee and spicy brown mustard, plus a suitably classy libation.

Now it’s off to bed with me.

G’night.