The O-Zone

This is the question being asked by our new pet hawk.

Came close to catching a ground squirrel but missed. And wasn't happy about it either.

Very tame, this bird didn’t mind me opening the door from the sunroom and stepping out on the porch to take a picture.  Looks better than through a window which is still in desperate need to cleaning.

An eventful couple of days.  Lots of thunderstorms, close lightning strikes with down pouring rains and cool weather.

We picked our first batch of pickling cucumbers on August 3rd, and made four quarts.  In another week or so we’ll get to do this again.

The pickling cucumbers are so much smaller than the slicing cucumbers for salads. Both kinds are starting to kick into high gear as far as production goes.

Today we’ll pick lettuce for a salad and use up the cucumber, along with a pepper from the garden.  Tomatoes are starting to turn red again but it will be another couple of weeks before we can pick any of those.  The dill is setting heads and those should be ready for the next batch of pickles.  This was all from just one plant for the pickling cucumbers and we have three plants, all of which are starting to set pickles.

The melon plant continues to amaze us.  It’s huge and trying to escape from the greenhouse as well as climbing the wire walls which support the plastic.

Black and red raspberries. That's the end of the black raspberries but we'll have more red raspberries in a couple of weeks.

I made three more jars of black raspberry jam and four more jars of red raspberry jam.  The black raspberry plant only produces fruit on 2nd year canes, and we only had three canes this year.  There are a dozen new canes that grew up this year, and next year we’ll have fruit from them.  Can’t wait.  We need to do some serious work in corralling those plants.  They have impressive thorns besides totally delicious fruits.

I really do need to wash this window one of these days! A juvenile Red-Railed Hawk perching on one of the posts Dan put up for the bird feeders to attach to in the winter. We're going to put a bird house on this post for next year, see if we can attract a blue bird pair to set up housekeeping.

The posts are nice and tall, and should keep the feeders out of the reach of the deer who dearly love the sunflower seeds and learned the trick of standing under the feeders and hitting them with their heads to dump seeds.  This one doe in particular is teaching her babies bad habits!

Yesterday morning this young hawk caught a ground squirrel or pocket gopher in our front yard.  We all watched him making sure his kill was successful and then picking up the rodent in his talons and flying off with it.

Mish in particular was entranced and then he was halloween-catting all around the living room for a while afterwards.  We weren’t sure if he was celebrating living through the experience (he could definitely tell this large bird was a predator), or celebrating chasing it away with his bravery.  Could have been both, but he was sure full of himself for hours afterwards.

The hawk hung around all day, looking for rodents.  And the word got out, evidently. We haven’t seen any chipmunks or ground squirrels running around all over the front yard yet today.

In the late morning, a couple of people came walking up to the house in full firefighter regalia, carrying shovels and axes, etc.  They were asking about a gate up the hill from our house, how to get through it as there was a report of smoke seen up there.

When I went out on the porch to talk to them, I told them they had scared our pet hawk away – they were impressed by the bird which flew off as they got close to it.  Most people don’t get to see hawks from 15 feet away.  I was wearing a red shirt and standing next to a hummingbird feeder and I had those little guys buzzing all around me while I was talking to the fire fighters.  They were kind of impressed by that as well.

It was totally foggy and there wasn’t a chance of seeing anything, but we also went out to look and see if we could smell anything.  Too foggy.  The firefighters walked up the private road past the gate, and climbed one of the small hills to sit down and wait for the fog to lift.  When it did, sure enough, a tree was on fire, smoldering, on another hill top near our neighbor’s place.  They walked to his house and he happened to be here visiting, and told him he had a fire.  He was busy doing something else, looking down, and hadn’t noticed the fire.  Imagine his surprise!  He came to tell us about it in the afternoon.

The fire fighters were up there for several hours making sure the fire was out.  That makes two fires from the storms over the weekends, even with the torrential rains it does show just how dry the woods really are, and explains why we had helicopter and trucks running around all over the mountain for the last couple of days.

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.

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.

Today I fixed a batch of vegan Italian Sausage and my favorite part of that whole process has got to be preparing the spice mixture.

From the bottom up, a layer of garlic powder, crushed fennel seeds, crushed black pepper, salt, sweet paprika, red pepper flakes, chipotle pepper flakes, smoked paprika, ground oregano.

I almost hate to shake up the spice bottle and mix it all together.  It’s so pretty and looks like layers of rock.

Here it is all mixed up and ready to be shaped into logs to be steamed.

Today was a cooking day.  Yesterday we picked the rest of the first batch of peas we planted.  We pulled up all the plants, weeded that part of the bed again, and then planted 5 rows of carrots, and 5 rows of golden beets and red beets where the pea plants used to live.

I shelled the peas, then steamed blanched them, and spread them out of a piece of parchment paper and froze them. Here they are all frozen, and ready to go into a freezer bag.

I decided to do that with the next planting of peas, as well, and see how much we get out of the whole planting.  We already ate 3 cups of peas, and this is about the same.  My guess is we’ll end up with about 12 cups of peas, not a lot considering how much room the plants take up in the garden, but they taste good!

Another batch of jam from the garden - 3 parts strawberry, 1 part raspberry.

It mostly tastes like strawberry with just a little bit of the tartness from raspberry.  We picked the fruit yesterday, and I cleaned the berries.  I stored them in the refrigerator overnight, covered with white sugar, and then this morning I made the jam.

The cucumber plants have all set baby cucumbers, and the honey dew melon plant has set a bunch of melons.  Dan thinks the melon plant is going to escape the greenhouse and take over the garden.  It’s already a good five feet in diameter, which is bigger than any of the melon plants got to be last year after a full season of growing.  And we got no melons last year but this year I bet we do.

Red currants are getting red, and the black raspberries are starting to turn color.  The gooseberries are being harvested by a very enterprising chipmunk who lives in the wild roses next to the garden.  I kept trying to give him a shower yesterday with the garden hose, but he’s fast!!!  So I’m not sure how much, if any, of these fruits I’m going to get to play with this year.

For lunch today we harvested our first batch of peas as well as taking some of the larger leaves off the Swiss Chard plants.

A bowl full of pea pods, and a bowl full of Swiss Chard.

Once the peas were shelled, there were 3 cups of them ready to be steamed.

I kept eating fresh ones as we were shelling them.   The first planting of peas is done blooming and we picked roughly half of the pods on the plants.  The others need to get fatter, so another few days and we’ll pick the rest of the peas and replant that part of the bed with carrots and beets.

There were enough ripe strawberries today to have enough for a batch of jam. I really didn’t think we’d get enough to do that, but wonders never cease.

Six cups of perfectly ripe strawberries. Small size but intensely flavored.

I like to make jam the old-fashioned way, without pectin, just slowly cooked and reduced to the proper thickness.  Since I don’t use pectin I can use less sugar.

My friend told me about putting a wooden spoon across the top of the pan to keep it from boiling over. Thank goodness I remember to do so.

The sugar and berries foamed so close to the top of the pan before I noticed, it would have been a sticky mess of biblical proportions.

Six little jars cooling on a tea towel. I'll put them away in the cabinet once they are completely cooled off.

I was starting a loaf of gluten free bread dough, which is why I wasn’t paying quite as much attention to the jam as I should have been.  I figured if we had some fresh jam, we need to have some bread to put it on.

Hot out of the oven. cooling on a wire rack until I can remove it from the pan.

Friday we went up to the Cascade mountains, thinking about taking a walk on the Pacific Crest trail.

Nothing like looking up at the side of a mountain to put into perspective how puny a person can be.

So, we ended up just going for a drive and a picnic on Friday instead of going for a hike.  Maybe next time.  The Cascade Mountains are spectacular.

On our way home stopped at our favorite fruit stand to pick up some cherries, and whatever else they had picked.

The cherries we ate fresh, but they also had apricots – yummmm! and the first early peaches.  We bought enough apricots to make a crunch, and four peaches which will go into muffins or pancakes once they get a bit riper.  Cooking with fresh fruit is just fun stuff.

They arrived over the weekend and then we needed to call in reinforcements.

The kids ready to go to work, splitting the bigger pieces, and stacking it against the plywood wall covering.

They already took care of the first cord. This winter the plan is we’ll have to do minimal splitting, just cart it in the wheelbarrow up to the house. Will be a luxury and less wear and tear on us.

We should be able to pick a similar number of berries every other day for the rest of the summer. They are small but very sweet.

Not enough to make jam or do much except eat them. A smoothie!

Next year we might replace the plants with June bearers so we get a whole bunch at once. Haven’t decided. These are so good.

Things are really growing in the garden, especially in the greenhouse. The tomato plants have quadrupled in size and all five plants are blooming and/or setting fruit.

Humidity and temperature are high in the greenhouse which is what all these plants seem to love. I forget to wait until the camera lense unfogs before taking a picture.

It has the same effect on my glasses when I first walk in.  The tomato plants were small when we planted them and now all are above the top rim of the cages.  We ate one of the Swiss Chard plants, and harvested about half the leaves on the second remaining chard plant in the greenhouse.  It’s really growing well.

The melon plant in the corner seems to grow every few minutes! It is getting blossoms forming, and we are really looking forward to some of our own Honeydew melons from this plant in a few months.

Next to the melon plant, the slicing cucumber plants are both starting to take off and put on growth.  They are way ahead of the pickling cucumbers, even though all were planted the same day.

Dan and our neighbor Spencer hauled dirt down to hill around the potato plants. We planted two varieties and the plants grow quite differently.

In this bed we planted a row of dill seeds on the left side, and a row of Walla Walla sweet onion sets on the right hand side.  At the back are a couple of volunteer lettuce plants which are almost big enough to pull.  We’ll have a salad from them this week, for dinner.

The early spring planting bed is already producing food.

We’ve picked some of the Swiss Chard at the front of the bed.  Lettuce and carrots and spinach come next, and then the Chinese Cabbage plants are huge!  Behind them are more carrots and lettuce.  We’ve picked all the radishes we planted, and the first row of spinach.  Peas are blooming and have pods which were flat a couple of days ago and now starting to fatten up.  We’ll be able to pick peas in a couple of weeks and then we’ll plant a second batch of Yellow Snap Beans where the peas are living now.

The strawberry beds are covered with a floating row cover to thwart the chipmunks who thinks strawberries are totally scrumptious.  Well, they are, but we want them instead.  Yesterday we each had a few sun warmed totally ripe berries, and there are lots of berries on the verge of ripening.  In a few days we’ll get to harvest a bowl of them.

One of the climbing roses. These plants are growing well. We'll need to protect them from rodents over the winter if they are to have any hope of growing tall enough to cover the rose arbor at the garden gate.

One of the summer daffodils is blooming. Very sweet smell.

Tiny cherries are starting to turn red. I hope the fruits get a bit bigger. These will be mostly seeds. But first year for setting fruit so this is an experiment at this point.

The Chocolate Mint plants is really looking nice and I'll need to start picking some for drying in the near future.

Last night we had a really beautiful sunset. Thunderstorms were predicted but failed to materialize. The clouds did yield a dramatic sky as the sun went down.

The sun was behind a narrow cloud and the effect was spectacular. I really like the soft colors on the hillsides below the horizon.

This didn't last long, just a few minutes.

Today we still have a chance at thunderstorms and rain, but less of a chance than yesterday.

This morning we went down to the garden to open the greenhouse, replant zucchini seeds which failed to germinate (soil was too cool); and plant some herb seeds in the greenhouse.

All in a row. The Gooseberry plant is weighed down by fruit; the baby Rhubarb plant is getting some size, and the baby Josta Berry plant next to it is also putting on good growth.

All three of these big fruit plants are going to duke it out for space in the years to come.  We are placing bets on who is going to win that fight (I think it will be the Josta Berry plant).

The trees against the fence are a pie cherry which has probably 100 cherries that set, and in the corner is an apple tree that has several apples starting to grow.  Behind the large fruit plants is a row of blueberry plants which are setting fruit, and some flowers for bees and hummingbirds to enjoy.   In the big pot is a Chocolate Mint which we’ll dry this winter for an herb tea.

Dan pulled the largest radishes from the first planting. We have another row of radish plants which are starting to grow, and will plant another batch in a couple of weeks.

Behind Dan’s hand are the two beds with potato plants growing, and a row of Walla Walla sweet onions.  The onions are starting to put on some new leaves – hurray, will be nice to have onions and I am starting to be hopeful.

The three remaining Blackberry plants from last year are getting green; the three new canes we planted are just barely leafing out.

Today I pulled the grass and weeds growing against the fence behind and around the Blackberries, and put down a few bags of bark mulch.  That will hold moisture in and keep the weeds more under control, or at least make them easier to yank out when they come back.  We’re going to have to make wire cages for these plants as the mice appear to relish them as a winter snack food.

The Yellow Snap beans are all popping up, and next to them the beets are also growing well. At the end of the bed is the second planting of peas. In the bed behind are strawberries. They are loaded with flowers and baby strawberries.

We need to replant some beets to fill in the row where it appears the first seeds aren’t going to come up.  We’ll do that this afternoon.

The first ripening strawberry. Need to get a floating row cover down there very soon, before the birds come and check out the progress.

If enough berries ripen at once I could make some strawberry jam.  That would be a very fun thing to do!

A row of Swiss Chard is starting to grow well. At the end of the bed, the pea plants are starting to bloom.

We planted a different kind of pea this year, not an edible pod variety.  These should all be ripe at once and I’ll have peas to freeze for winter eating.  The Chinese Cabbage plants are really growing fast, and Spinach will be ready to eat in a week or two at the most.  Lettuce and carrots are being slow.   One row of radishes has been mostly picked, and another row is growing well.

All along the fence the raspberry plants are just going crazy putting up new canes and flowering.  Both red raspberry and black raspberry plants are doing well this year.

Dan tried to restrain these three Josta Berry plants. They were threatening to take over the entire back of the garden.

There are only a few berries on these plants; next year they should produce a normal crop.

The red currant bushes are just completely loaded with fruit, and that’s exciting.  We love currant jam a lot.  I didn’t take any pictures of them because they look like they did the last time I took pictures.  The berries are all still green.  I don’t think they start turning red until late July.

And we have two tomatoes already growing on one plant, and two other plants have blossoms.  All in all this is just fun.