The last couple of months we have been extremely busy. I have tons of pictures to post, but haven’t had time to get them organized. It’s on my to-do list.
The middle of June we went to Glacier National Park, and visited the Trail of Cedars, a low altitude grove of old-growth cedar trees near MacDonald Creek. We saw the two bird species we were hoping to see during our trip, and wandered up and down the North Fork valley adjacent to the park, where we used to live. And drove up to Bowman Lake in the park, the road to which makes the road to our house look downright civilized.
When we returned home again we got into a knock-down drag-out fight with the local rodent population over ownership rights to our garden. We were afraid this year was going to be a total loss but all of a sudden we got the upper hand and now things are growing splendidly.
We have made several adjustments to the greenhouse in terms of ventilation, to try to keep the temperatures down to levels the plants will appreciate. Next year a shade cloth is mandatory, it has just been too hot for the plants to produce to their full potential.
I’ve been re-learning how to sew using a sewing machine. And I have a couple of spinning projects, and knitting projects for my spare time, should I ever see any of that. The garden is taking up a lot of time these days.
We have been picking berries since late June. The strawberries have all been picked and eaten, for the most part.
One of our bowls of strawberries, with a few stray raspberries just as they were starting to ripen.
The new strawberry plants are looking great, and we’re very much looking forward to next year for the June bearing plants to have their first crop. The ever-bearing strawberries are small but sweet.
And I’ve been making jam, lots of jam, mostly raspberry, with some peach, cherry, red currant, and strawberry/cherry. And more jam making is in my immediate future.
Raspberries, pie cherries, gooseberries, josta berries and black raspberries.
We’ve only gotten a total of 1.5 cups of josta berries off the plants so far. They are getting ripe in stages. So I’m freezing them as we pick them, until I have enough for a batch of jam.
We’ve gotten so many raspberries this year, it’s been fantastic. They taste like sunshine to me. I’ve made lots of jam and now I’m going to freeze the batches as we pick them, for winter desserts.
I’m also pitting and freezing the pie cherries for desserts. In the freezer I also have a bunch of bing cherries, for jam later on when I have time.
This is the first batch of black raspberries (Black Caps), that we picked today, and it was 10 cups! We’ll get at least this much again with the second picking. Those also ripen in stages. The plants are very well armed, with long and extremely sharp thorns. Dan has racing stripes on his arms. He picked these. A lot of the berries are up way above where I can reach.
The gooseberry plant has gone crazy. I have picked as much I picked all last year from the whole plant, and that is on less than 25% of the plant being picked. I have achieved my goal of too many gooseberries. We called Susan today to see if she wants to come do some combat berry picking. She’ll be here on Wednesday. The gooseberry plant is also well armed.
And I learned that playing with a predator can be dangerous. It started out as an innocent game of peek-a-boo around the wood pole in the living room. It’s his favorite game.
Mishkin accidentally snagged a vein with a tip of one claw and caused internal bleeding. It made a hell of a bruise, which is all gone now. I was a tad too slow when boxing with him. He just thinks we're both big cats.
So I have lots of pictures from the last two months and will get around to sorting them out one group at a time.
Glad your arm is ok. That was bad looking. Bad cat.