What’s Growing?

 

My life has been incredibly hectic since theaters were allowed to re-open, so things like blogging have completely languished.  To be honest, things were so unsettled during the time theaters were closed that I just didn’t know what to say.

During this entire time my garden was a great source of comfort.  No matter what else was going on, I knew that things were growing in my tiny urban garden.  Bees would be foraging, and the scrub jays would be seeking out mischief.

Because of the 4th of July falling on a Monday, I actually had a long weekend, and I spent every bit of it in my garden.  I had recently rearranged some of our vintage lawn furniture, which has been a great success with cats and humans alike.  The chickens circle like sharks when Robb and I eat outside, but we selfishly do not share our meals with them.

We’re currently in a glorious time of year for backyard fruit. The red currants are just finishing up, and the pluots are ripening.  

I’ve already made jam with the green pluots when I thinned the fruit in the tree. I tried this as an experiment last summer and resolved to make it every year. 

The squirrels obviously enjoy the fruit as much as we do. However, I wish they’d eat fewer of the unripe figs.

This has been our best year for figs and I hope yields continue to increase as the trees mature. It’s still astonishing to me that we’re eating fruit off of trees I planted as twigs. 

The cherry tree, in the other hand, continues to disappoint. Only three fruits ripened this year. Robb mixed two of them into muffins without telling me. I was irrationally annoyed by this. If we’re only going to get three cherries, I believe we should savor them rather then losing them among the other fruits in the muffin dough. 

I may have been a bit of a jerk about this. 

Likewise, I may have been a bit grumpy because Robb has cooked all the beans I’ve harvested before I got a photo. The beans we grow are extremely colorful, but turn green once they’re cooked. 

I really need to let this go. There will be plenty more beans to photograph this summer. 

And really, complaining about home cooked meals is the definition of churlish. 

This was today’s lunch. Robb baked the bread. The pesto was made with garden kale, beans were grown from seed, the figs came from our tree. The stuffed grape leaves were canned. I haven’t contrived a way of fitting a grape arbor into our tiny space. Yet. 

I finally completed the massive project of tidying my cymbidium orchids.  I repotted most of them, and moved them into a shadier location for the summer. They appreciate winter sun, but do much better in the shade in summer. 

Another long-overdue task that I tackled this weekend was an inspection of the beehive. This colony was not doing as well as I would have liked. And once I opened the hive up, I saw why. The bees were battling wax moths. Thankfully, the infestation was not as bad as it could have been. I removed all the affected frames of wax, and let the chickens feast on wax moth larvae. 

I was not proud of myself for not discovering this problem earlier. 

On the other hand, I am very happy that my vegetable garden is turning out how I’d always imagined. It really is a beautiful mixture of edible plants, dye plants and flowers. 

In a yard as small as mine, I think it makes sense to intermingle everything I grow. 

Garden in the foreground, henhouse in the back. 

This year, I added a second fenced area of official garden. Between our no-rain-in-summer climate and the marauding hens, there’s no point in trying to maintain a summer lawn. So I might as well expand the area devoted to food and flowers. 

Isn’t the sky wild?  I didn’t edit this photo in any way. That’s really how it looked. 

Calm before the storm, really. I’m writing this as the all-night cacophony of illegal fireworks rages on.  Robb and I stood in the middle of our street and watched a 360 degree display of professional grade fireworks until it got too cold to enjoy.

I’ve got to be at work stupidly early tomorrow, and even with high quality earplugs, I’m anticipating a sleepless night. 

 

At least there’s home baked pie on the counter if I need comforting at 3am. We did not grow the strawberries, but the other fillings — rhubarb, figs and pluots — are all from our garden. 

As I said, I really can’t complain. 

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This is my first contribution to Harvest Mondays in years. I can’t wait to read what the other participants have been growing!