A walk through the garden

Front yard garden this morning

This spring, my cabbage seed failed to sprout so I have none... and I had to replant my corn -- so it will be late. The strawberries fared poorly with the mulch I got from a friend (I suspect it was treated with something, but she wouldn't have known that). The heat withered most of the blossoms on our broad bean plants, but there are a still few precious beans coming for my favourite salad... 

As is usually the case come August, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed when I think about all the work I'll soon be doing to harvest, preserve and freeze veggies from our garden. I've put away plenty of berries already, but there's a lot more effort to come, and with the price of produce where it is, I'm grateful to have a garden, period! I'm also loving this season of just walking outside to bring in supper!

So here's a little video walk through our back yard for anyone who is interested (mostly me as I sometimes look back on how our garden has grown and changed over the years). If you happen to be in the neighbourhood and want to come for an in-person visit, you're welcome anytime! And I'd even be happy to make you a homegrown tomato sandwich!

Cornelia stands alone

Well, not quite. At least, not right away.

This morning when I dismantled Cornelia the scarecrow's three sisters' raised bed (of "corn, beans, and squash the patriarchy," as my friend Quinn's hoodie says), I discovered the rest of the produce that was growing at her feet. I was also amused to see that one of the bean plants grew right around her compact disc left hand!

Cornelia's collection:
One large field pumpkin, three pie pumpkins,
three spaghetti squash, three kabocha squash, 
the last pail of scarlet runner beans 
and a few little leeks that lost sight of the sun!

We enjoyed several feeds of peaches and cream corn and lots of yummy scarlet runner beans thanks to Cornelia's vigilance, and will also have some good pumpkin soup and baked squash over the next while. Maybe I'll make a pie.

Now that her "charges" have moved indoors, Cornelia deserves a rest from her labours. She's moved into our sunny greenhouse space, where she can keep an eye on the birds' comings and goings through the winter.

Good work, Cornelia. Just so you know, the sparrows are already missing your garden domain's many hiding places.

Cornelia's pumpkins

Cornelia the scarecrow has done her job very well, and we have enjoyed peaches and cream corn and scarlet runner beans for several suppers. And today I found these two at her feet.

There are more hiding among the corn and bean stalks. I guess we'll see how big they get.

July-August 2023 garden report

My plan to show readers my garden at the end of each summer month got away on me. So here's my July garden video, which was made yesterday, August 3rd. A wee garden tour in just under four minutes! Come visit at the end of August and we'll eat lots of wonderful produce together, God and weather willing!

A ten-minute walking garden meditation

If it's not raining, most summer mornings you'll find me outside with my cup of tea, wandering my garden paths and moodling/meditating on the beauty of growing things and the Creator who silently and secretly somehow makes them grow.

So instead of my monthly garden report, before the harvest begins in earnest, I thought I'd leave you with this morning's ten-minute walking garden meditation, done in silence (well, as silent as my neighbourhood is on a workday morning) so you can see the beauties of creation found in my backyard. I especially love the beautiful things birds and wind planted here and there.

Enjoy!

August 2021 Seven-minute garden tour

Things have definitely progressed since my July 2021 Seven-minute garden tour. We've been away for the past two weeks, and I'm always amazed by how much things grow in such short periods of time. Especially those squash plants!

The weather has been pretty warm since we got back from the mountains on Wednesday, so I haven't done much more than water and pick a pail full of vegetables ready for harvest. Gotta love my 50-foot diet! 

These next few days will be good gardening weather, so in the mornings, I'll be weeding, trimming, harvesting and drying garlic, and collecting whatever else needs to be picked -- and hopefully, sitting under the shade of the pear tree in the afternoons, enjoying the sound of the fountain and the antics of the birds.

If you're in the neighbourhood, come join me! (and maybe you can take some organic veggies home with you!)

https://youtu.be/f7VS1pR3oJ0

Grandma, it's not as easy as you made it look...

Last night, my sisters and I reminisced about picking the raspberries in Grandma's garden. She had approximately 100 rows of bushes, each of them stretching at least a mile to the back Saskatoon berry hedge. Or so it seemed to us three little girls. And no matter how fast we picked, we couldn't keep up with Grandma, who always seemed to have a full pail to our scant handfuls (and I don't think we were eating more than we were picking...)

Today I made my first-ever batch of raspberry jelly. Yesterday I picked a lot of backyard raspberries, and though I usually freeze them for breakfast smoothies, I thought that people might want ice cream and raspberries for dessert at our family barbecue last night. But my mom brought a bee-eautiful rhubarb/apple/saskatoon berry crumble, and my raspberries were forgotten. In the middle of the night, I remembered the pail on the counter, and decided that today I'd have to try a batch of raspberry jam or jelly.

Realizing that my family would probably prefer not to have raspberry seeds stuck in their teeth at breakfast, I started researching how to make jelly online, and as I did, some dimly lit corner in the back of my mind flashed that I had inherited some cheesecloth for straining juices. When Ruby, my oldest-ever neighbour -- who lived in her home until she was ninety-seven and kept on for five years after that -- moved into seniors' housing, her niece passed me a lot of Ruby's canning jars and a few other things. So I went hunting in our cold storage room, and glory be! There was a whole forgotten collection of berry juicing equipment from Ruby in the far back corner!

Once I washed everything and figured out how to put the antique WearEver aluminium strainer together, it was just a matter of time before I would have enough raspberry juice to make a beautiful batch of jelly. I was so excited! But of course, I had forgotten two important things:

#1 It's a good idea to reinforce the seams of ancient cheesecloth bags before using them.

#2 It's an even better idea to wear dark colours when making raspberry jelly.

Somewhere at the halfway point of the juicing process, as I was squeezing the raspberry pulp left in the cheesecloth bag, a seam gave way. Raspberry seeds and pulp sprayed across the room and my lovely flowered t-shirt. A passing stranger looking in our front window could have easily called 911 to report a mortally wounded woman standing over a berry press because it certainly seemed that way. My left side looked as though I was a victim from a chainsaw massacre.

Fortunately, no one looked in at that moment. I changed my clothes, scrubbed the floor and walls and fired up the sewing machine to reinforce the damp cheesecloth bag's seams, and the rest of the canning process was uneventful, thank heavens. The jelly set beautifully, and it tastes like summer. So if you're in the neighbourhood, drop by and we can have raspberry jam on toast anytime, at least for as long as it lasts.

Some days, I swear I can feel my Grandma laughing with me as I try out the things she used to do so effortlessly. And I suspect that just as she would chuckle with me over the big red blotches on my shirt and the floor, she'd also be pleased with this first attempt at raspberry jelly.

This week's garden tableau

Here's the garden tableau this week... always something to be picked, so it's no wonder my moodling is all happening in the backyard instead of at my laptop these days.

We've been feasting on corn this week, yum. There are plenty of tomatoes, scarlet runner beans, cucumbers and kohlrabi. The snow peas and wax beans are blanched and in the freezer. And the squash! It made me laugh out loud. I saw some in among the corn plants, but one runner took off behind our greenhouse, and there were two more back there (I've left one to ripen a bit more).

Unfortunately, a miserable summer cold arrived last night, so the harvesting of onions, kale and chard will have to wait. And I have a box of my 91-year-old neighbour's wonderful Italian prune plums to turn into a yummy loaf. All in good time.

Gardens are a good time, in my books!

Anybody need some free kohlrabi?