The Optimism of a Gardener

Hello, friends.  I hope you've had a good week.  Last week, I harvested asparagus, lettuce, and arugula.  The asparagus was enjoyed in soup, and the greens in salads.  I made broccoli pad thai with a combination of bought broccoli, and homegrown broccoli and garlic.  A grocery bag of nettles was gathered, and delivered to my potter friend, who recently gave me her extra vegetable seedlings.  It's that time of year.  When we begin to see the oaks drop their tassels, we know stinky, dark water won't be far behind.  I seem to remember it lasting much longer, but J says it should only be a few weeks.  I do hope he's right, but that's life on the homestead, with rain as our water source.

I mulched the carrots, beets and swiss chard.  The bird feeder experiment has been ongoing, with me moving the feeder every two or three weeks.  I spoke about it here.  The farthest fruit trees are in the pond garden, and I left a 5 gallon bucket with sunflower seeds to refill the feeder.  I placed two large rocks on it, but something still chewed the lid edge enough to make it leak, so most of the seed had molded.  As I couldn't use it as feed, I worked up a plot of ground in the main garden,  in the area which has the poorest soil, and spread the seeds.  I'm hoping there will be enough viable seeds to give us many sunflowers, and also stalks we can till in to improve that area. 

 

We had a major frugal fail.  Our large stand up freezer door was not fully closed, and not found until the next day.  Of course, everything defrosted.  Much is being composted.  Some is being fed to the dogs and chickens, such as figs.  A few things will be tried before deciding, such as GF bread, which I think will be fine.  Ah well.  At least I'd been working on clearing it out, so there was less in there than often is.  J & I divided and planted the hostas my sister and BIL gave me.  A number of wintersown containers were ready to plant out, including rudbeckia maxima, bachelor buttons, black knight scabiosa, borage and marigolds.   I got them in the ground Saturday, before a forecast of rain, along with the golden alexander I bought at a pottery several weeks ago.  Lantana and penstemon were transplanted to sunnier places, and creeping phlox that had spread out was moved to several new places.

J planted seeds of lima beans, green beans, cucumbers, yellow, zucchini and tromboncino squash in the garden, and the three gifted cucumber seedlings.  I planted basil, nasturtium, portulaca  and zinnia seeds.  A volunteer parsley was transplanted into a bed.  So many things are blooming.  I do think this may be the prettiest year yet.  J cut down two of our kiwis last winter.  The one remaining male and female are covered with many buds.  We're hoping this will be the year we finally begin getting kiwis to harvest.  The optimism of a gardener.  I'm sending many wishes you have things that bring you hope this week and this year.