Harvests!

There's nothing like a long, lazy, quiet Sunday morning. The heat has broken and a cool wind blew steadily across town all morning and afternoon. We spend the day picking and weeding in the community garden and at home. Does life get any better than this?

Bounty

We ate some, and gave some to visting friends: Black Beauty Zucchini, summer squash, Golden Purslane, Ruby Chard, Banana Peppers, young Yukons and Kentucky Wonder beans.

Harvests

Lots of harvesting is happening these days. An area about 1.5 feet by 1.5 feet in our freezer is filled with turnips and greens, escarole, beans and peas. The big beautiful tomatoes are almost ready and I've been plucking little orange cherry ones to munch in the garden with a basil leaf. More dilly beans to put into jars tonight. We've been holding off on the pickled beets because its going to be a big job to process them all and its been so hot.

Eggs

When we returned from the Vineyard last weekend a single mini-egg was nestled in the chicken's bedding. Over the next few days two hens worked valiantly to lay our first 6 eggs, clucking vociferously and generally fidgeting in the nesting boxes. Again, we're away for the weekend, this time at Jazzfest in Montreal and our neighbor is collecting the lovely eggs.

Beans, trees and grapes

After a long lapse with no photos, we have so many to catch up on. With the hot humid weather interspersed with rain, everything grows so quickly. The beans are just about ready to be picked. We tasted a few and they were delicious.

We have a bundle of new happy trees, mostly firs from Maine. We are trying to convince all visitors from the more rural regions to bring with them some trees to add to our arboretum. Ted and Mom took this request seriously and brought many beautiful little trees to add to Sweetpea Hill Farm.

Our grape vines are happily producing new leaves and I picked off a tiny bunch of grapes from one of the 'White' vines to improve the vigor of the plant.

Ornamental lettuces

The lettuces are actually starting to bolt, despite giving away grocery bags to neighbors and eating salads every day. We've got a few other varieties that will hopefully resist the heat. The photo above shows the Red Sails, Belgian Endive, escarole, Rouge d'Hiver and Forensclaus in all their glory.

The sugar peas are almost finished now but the shelling peas are just starting to fill out. They had a nice run of perfect weather and produced enough for us and our freezer.

The hops is growing up the deck after a slow start. We have two kinds: Willamette and Cascade. We've never brewed with whole dried hops before so this will be new and exciting.

Kayaking on the Charles

These are photos from a recent kayak trip we took on the Charles where the river cuts through Cutler Park. Its only 15 minutes from our house so we headed over at around 6pm, meandered down about 3-4 miles of river, then walked back through trails in the park. Ducks and ducklings, geese and goslings, and turtles laying their eggs punctuated the trip. June is such a happy month!