our garden: an update

I haven't written about our garden in quite awhile, so I'll give an update. Odin is asleep at my breast, so apologies for any one handed typing typos. We've been working very hard to create a successful garden and next year our garden will be absolutely breathtaking, but we've faced a few difficulties this year. We started a little late with our seedlings and such because we moved during prime garden beginning time. Our focus was on moving and cleaning out our old house before the lease ended. And then for some reason, many of our tomato seeds never sprouted. Luckily we were given many lovely heirloom tomato plants from my dear friend Kaity over at Fare Isle to add to our (very) few successful sprouts. I am so thankful!

We harvested all of our radishes yesterday as the weather is beginning to grow too hot for them. After harvesting them, Odin would gently bring them up to his nose and then lower them into his mouth. He enjoyed them, although he was not very fond of the greens.

Our tomato plants are beginning to flower and a recent bout of rain and some organic compost has helped them to double in size overnight. Zak and I were in shock when we saw the difference from one afternoon to the next, we sat next to them in awe wondering how it was possible that they had grown so much so quickly. I'm very excited about the tomatoes. Our local farm (the one we recently picked strawberries from) offers tomatoes for 1$ a pound at the end of the season and you can go out and pick your own. Thanks to Kaity, we may not need the extra tomatoes this year! We canned the tomatoes from the farm last year which was loads of fun and I can't wait to do it again this year. It's beautiful to have an abundant and fruitful summer that lasts through the winter. Nothing makes me feel more successful than our ability to depend on ourselves, that we can create our own food without need of a corporate grocery store. 

I'm reading Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins, and I'm not sure there's any other way to adequately explain my feelings about beets without quoting him:

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.” 

This book is excellent, by the way. Highly Recommended. 

Our strawberries are beginning to bear fruit and our herb spiral is proving successful. We have a wild bed for medicinal herbs that is also proving to be quite strong, we've even been able to put some of these herbs to use already (I recently dropped our quite large kitchen knife on my foot).

Odin is loving his time in the garden. His papa carries him around and sits him nearby. Odin will mimic all of Zak's moves. If Zak is planting, Odin will throw dirt to help. If Zak is weeding, Odin will take the recently weeded weeds and throw them in the same fashion as his father. It's really beautiful and I'm so glad I can share this adventure with them.

Our bees are also wild and seemingly content. We've been offering them herbal water in addition to their daily foraging to keep them happy and full. Zak will be opening up the hive this weekend to check on them and make sure they're successfully beginning to make and store honey as well as checking for any intruders in the hive. 

Life is very good right now and I'm so very lucky that the stars have given me this one.