Things are heating up

I have been rather slow in keeping up this summer. My brother and his family were in town for a couple of weeks, which overlapped with my father getting sick again and being in hospital almost three weeks now, so I have been barely keeping up with garden while juggling family time. Though technically on vacation, I have been gradually doing reading and preparing for my fall courses. My motivation has been much lower this summer. Between feeling generally tired, having all kinds of other things going on, and losing a lot of my early crops to the groundhog (lettuce, broccoli, peas), as well as all the sunflowers, I have not had the same level of gratification as I have in years' past.

Then the past couple of weeks, when the front garden exploded with lilies, echinacea and black-eyed susans, and this week the basil and garlic ripened. Because I am not about to leave on vacation just as the garlic is almost ready, this year I am selectively harvesting as they ripen. Based on my crash course a couple of years ago from Jasmyn and Gu, I only am taking those with 4 remaining leaves and leaving the rest to ripen a bit more. Olga came over on Friday and helped me tie up and hang about 80 heads from my first round. Today I harvested another 40 or so.

Friday night we had gnocchi with homegrown pesto. I splurged and added some cream, cheddar, parmesan, pine nuts and olive oil to fresh picked basil and garlic. It was absolutely divine!



The raspberries are producing well. On the weeks when my youngest daughter is in my custody, she eats them as fast as I can pick them. On the other weeks, I can sneak some into the freezer, and even had enough to bake raspberry tarts to celebrate my son's 20th birthday.

We have an overabundance of Japanese this year and they seem to love raspberry leaves, and something else is eating the berries, possibly snails because I am picking them along with the berries (and tossing them over the fence). There are enough to go around, so I am not getting too fussed about it.


The groundhog has set up permanent residence in my yard. He has started munching on the lamb's quarters and my phlox (just the leaves). My tomatoes are still green, but I put some cayenne on the lower leaves as a precaution in case he (she?) decides to indulge those. Happily, the ground hog has no interest in garlic and basil, and cannot reach the cucumbers.



My apple tree is a big favorite of the squirrels, who have been harvesting the apples while still green and eating exactly half of each before discarding them on the ground. Olga picked a couple that looked close to ripe to see if they were good yet, but they are still too sour and grainy so I am taking my chances that the squirrels will leave something for me to ripen.



One squirrel has been digging in the remnant of my hay bale. I suspect it is storing things for later, but will be disappointed when I dismantle the hidey hole to cover the bare patches after I finish harvesting the garlic.

A mystery has been solved! The bitter red lettuce which was the last thing to grow in the garden late last fall, and the first thing to appear already sprouted under the snow has revealed itself to be chicory. It seems to be a biennial, and although the groundhog ignored it earlier in the season when he had access to baby romaine and sunflower sprouts, he seems to have taken a liking to the leaves now that it is flowering. He has left the flowers alone, so hopefully I will continue to have more in the spring.