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!

First Harvests

The lettuces are tender and juicy, colorful and perfect. This is Red Sails. I plucked it from the 'brassica bed' and will post photos of the 'lettuce bed' soon.

This lavender was already growing in our terraces. We harvested quite a lot since it was overgrowing our precious strawberries.

Summertime seedlings

Peppers to replace the lost ones: Some-Like-It-Hot pepper mix, Early jalepenos, Mixed Colored Bells, Bridge to Paris, and King of the North. We also bought a few plants to get started a bit earlier.

These are sage and rosemary, with some succulents in front.

Double yield cukes. These didn't do very well in the Brooklyn community garden, probably because they only got 4-5 hours of sun. We'll make them happy here.

Sweet potatoes. I cut 6 slips and put them in water, each have rooted pretty well at this point and as soon as the weather is consistently warm I'll put them out.

Bonsai

The bonsai is a juniper and spent the winter 'hibernating' at colder temps, 40 to 50 degrees for a few months was the goal. We gave it some bonsai food this spring and moved it outdoors in early April. The growth is amazing and the plant needs a haircut.

We call this one year old darling 'Snaggletooth.' Its a scrub pine from Cape Cod and would benefit aesthetically from a real bonsai pot. Hopefully we'll collect more bonsai this summer.

Outdoor sink

Conor built us a beautiful outdoor sink and we christened it with our potluck picnic last Friday (lots of dishes). The water drains off into a barrel and will be used to water the gardens. The sink structure needs a paint job, but otherwise she's a beauty!