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| Beans are beginning to climb |
The moon is full tonight and you know what that means. Another month has slipped away here at Thistledown Gardens.
The weather this month has been quite trying. Very much rain, cloudiness, heat and humidity. Our garden has been set back by too much rain and too little sun.
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| Short corn |
Many plants are small and turning yellow.
We hope we've now seen the end of the overly wet weather.
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| Aduki beans and squash |
Still, some parts of the garden are looking pretty good.
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| Cranberry beans on towers |
We've finished with lettuce and peas. I've been freezing parsley, celery leaves, kale and chard.
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| Cabbage ready to pick |
I've begun harvesting my cabbages. I don't have luck with fall cabbage, so I plant in the early spring and harvest now. We eat part of each head fresh and then freeze the rest. It freezes very well.
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| Shallots (left) & garlic (right) |
The garlic and shallots have been pulled and are in the attic drying before being stored for the winter.
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| Red and black currants and raspberries |
What we've had the most of this summer is the "small fruits": raspberries, currants and blueberries. I've frozen quite a bit of this fruit for winter use.
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| Blueberries |
The blueberries have done the best ever. It must be the perfect combination of conditions coming together. I've decided to practice the discipline of "enjoying the moment" with these. Having grown up with food insecurity, my tendency is to squirrel away every last tidbit for use later. It's good to provide for the future, but balance is needed. So, I've put away "enough" and now we're enjoying them in the "here and now". It seems very decadent to munch down a bowl of fresh berries, but not to enjoy them fresh is a loss of sorts. No preserved berry has the flavor of a fresh one. You miss out on a lot of life by only looking at the future. Living in the present seems to take on increased significance the older I get.
The back deck today
Bob has finished repointing the foundation and is on to his next project: deck repair.
We have a large deck (28'x18'). As I mentioned last time, structurally it's in pretty good shape - just a bit of improvement so we can add handrails where needed, etc. The decking however, is suffering.
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| Warped hand rail |
Boards are warping...
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| More warped boards |
...nails are popping out (they didn't use screws, the ninnies)...
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| Rotted boards |
... and some boards are rotting.
Bob has begun dismantling a smaller portion already. He wants to add more support structure before laying the new decking and adding handrails.
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| The work begins |
I'm sure this project will take the rest of the summer and some of the fall, too.
We had a visit from some Minnesota folks this month. They were in New York on their vacation and stopped in to visit with us. We rarely have visitors, so this was a real treat, especially with such affable people. We're so glad you came to see us. There was a lot of good talk about alternative energy possibilities. This leads me to our final topic this month.
There's a moment in time which is crystalized in my memory. I'll share it here.
I was sitting in senior Earth Science class (about a million years ago), and I suppose we were discussing alternative energy systems. (This was during an earlier time of energy concerns.) At any rate, I remember thinking how cool (we said that back then) it would be to live in a house with solar power, geothermal heat and maybe even earth berming or under ground. Wow! That would be something!
Well, here we are. No earth berming or underground structure, but with solar electric and now... a soon to be installed geothermal heating and water system. We've been working on the possibility for a few years, and have finally gotten word that the State has approved our project. With all of the State programs, we will be paying just under half of the project cost. The system will provide all of our hot water and house heat. We'll keep the woodstove as a backup and for when the temperatures are super cold. (This rarely happens here.) The heat pump will replace our oil fired burner and will run through our existing hydronic baseboard system.
We are very excited about this. No more need to use fuel oil! Our materials have been ordered and we're just waiting for a start date. You can be sure we'll take plenty of pictures to share with you.
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| Some of my garden flowers |
I'll leave you with a picture of some of the flowers in our garden. My Grandma Wise was a remarkable gardener. Now there's only one other person left besides me to remember her gardens. She always had flowers growing in and around her vegetable plants. I don't know if she just did it because she liked them together, or if she did it to increase biodiversity. It's a tradition that I gladly continue in this, my twenty eighth garden.
Till next time,
Kathleen and Bob
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| The last head of lettuce |
