Garlic Harvest

 Yesterday I harvested the garlic. For my first time doing this, I think I did okay. There is one head still lost amid the nasturtiums, I snapped the stem off and then couldn't find the bulb. Some of them had migrated 8 inches deep into the earth, others were near the surface. As per my instructions from my father-in-law Abraham, to pick them dry than wait for the rain, I got 82 heads out of the ground with more effort than I expected because my earth has been reverting back to clay. I left them to dry in our wood drying rack, and had planned to bunch them and hang them in the shed today but I ended up making more tomato cage levels because the tomatoes are now over my head and showing no signs of stopping. So tomorrow Josh finishes the last four tomato cage levels, and I hang garlic.

While I worked on the tomatoes, Josh made a fantastic dinner of fresh picked green salad, and egg salad, cuke and tomato salad and hummous flavoured with herbs from our herb tubs.

It started to rain last night and through the morning. It poured, and there was thunder and lightning (it seems this summer it never rains but it pours. Seriously). My garden and my lawn look much happier now, but the slugs have come out of stasis and they are medium sized now, as if the rain inflated them. Maybe it did. Josh says he will pick up more slug bait. One of my sunflowers was beheaded, and the culprit left it half eaten on the sidewalk. I marked my sunflowers with fox urine (the animal, not Fox urine!) yesterday morning, but I am sure it is well washed away now.

Josh visited our friend and garden guru Alex on Sunday, and came home with more of those mini-irises (a huge clump which I split with Iulia and planted in three separate clusters). My mom says they are not irises, but a variety of grass. Alex says they spread like crazy and are very hardy but they are not doing well up at my mom's Laurentian garden. The patch I planted last year went from looking half dead and straggly to being the healthiest cluster in the front yard now. The three new patches look like they are dying. I am patient though.

My mystery lily front and centre in my yard turned out to be red! I had planted a broken, not very viable piece of lily bulb that came with my offerings from my friend Laure's shade garden, and despaired that it would not survive. Now I have a nice clump of red lilies which seems to be taking hold, and started flowering after all the other lilies did. My centaurea are blooming again, having cut them back following Chloe's recommendation. Iulia's came back without cutting. My nasturtiums are huge and in full flower and adorning my every salad. I gave up on the advice my mom gave me to put them in bad, sandy soil. They are in my best vegetable garden soil, with loads of sun and they are doing fantastic. I am learning to take advice with a grain of salt.

J'ai maintenant quel qu'un en France qui lit mon blog. Bonjour!