This last week the full moon setting was really pretty, and seemed very large in the sky. I was awake very early to take this picture.
Clear skies at this time of year usually means hot weather, and so it was. Today the temperatures are way down and it's just delightful.
We’ve been spending a lot of time playing with the garden, harvesting things and preserving what we don’t want to eat fresh. Especially berries. Lots of berries have gone into jam this last week, and even a pie.
There were enough pie cherries on the tree to make a jam, when combined with the morning strawberry and red currant harvest.
Next year we will most likely have enough pie cherries to make a cherry pie. In the picture below I picked raspberries and pie cherries and made a pie; the combination was actually pretty good.
First much anticipated harvest of gooseberries. 9 cups went into jam.
We also harvested the rest of the peas and those were blanched and frozen for next winter. And we picked the first two garden salsa peppers. They were a little milder than I thought they’d be, but good regardless.
The Napa cabbage grew properly this time around, and was really good in stir fry. I still have a lot of this left to be cooked.
The second picking of gooseberries yielded 12 cups which went into jam as well.
And I picked the chocolate mint for herb teas. It is drying in a paper bag in the pantry; walking into the pantry you get hit with the smell of mint.
Another much anticipate first harvest of black raspberries. We mixed them together with red raspberries when we were picking them.
This morning I separated them into their respective varieties, and made three small jars each of black raspberry and red raspberry jams. There are enough black raspberries on the vines to make another three jars of jam. We’ll be picking red raspberries until it freezes.
We picked one head of salad from the row of mixed salad greens we planted, and our first slicing cucumber.
There is another slicing cucumber almost this same size still on the vine, and more are setting. The pickling cucumbers are also setting, and we’ll be able to start making pickles in mid to late August. Not sure the dill will be big enough in time, but oh well. Something about where we planted the dill seeds doesn’t meet with their approval. We’ll try to figure out why for next year.
The clematis is almost at the top of the lattice, and covered with large purple flowers on both sides of the arbor.
The grape plants aren’t doing well here; either the soil doesn’t meet their approval or something. But we’ve given them enough time to get established, and bought plants twice. Next year we’ll yank all the grape plants out and replace them with clematis, which will cover the arbor with flowers.
Right after I took this picture a hummingbird flew over and took a drink, and then flew off towards the bushes.
The tomato plants are way past the top of their cages, and somewhat over powering the pepper plants in front of them.
This next week Dan will remove some branches which are interfering with the pepper plants. We have three tomatoes turning color and in a week or so we’ll get to have our first vine ripened tomato to add to a salad or scramble. Down at the end of the beds in the garden, the raspberry plants are seeking entrance. It’s so thick at that end of the garden we can’t even walk around the end of the beds. We’re going to have to something to corral those plants as they are getting out of control.
- The tiny melon plant is tiny no more, climbing the wire mesh and escaping out the door.
There are several melons that set and they seem to double in size almost every day. The slicing cucumber lives next to the melon plant and it is fighting for space. It is also climbing the wire mesh and setting cucumber up where they will be easy to see and harvest.
This last week I also made a batch of black cherry conserve, and some black cherry and vanilla syrup for pancakes, and several jars of red currant jam.
I always said I wanted more fruit than I’d know what to do with in our garden, and I suspect next year I will get my wish. There are two gooseberry plants and only one of them produced anything this year; the blueberry bushes haven’t done anything hardly, and the black berry vines have not produced any fruit yet.