Garden goodness

For quite some years I kept receiving the mail of another man here in our village, because he has the same house number as I have it (although the name of the street is, of course, not the same). Ž knew who this man was, so when he stopped at the local cafe for the coffee, he also gave him his mail. And at the same time I received mine. Then, luckily, we got a new postman.

This man who was receiving my mail is my father's age but over the years we became colleagues. By coincidence he offered us to have our vegetable garden near his house this year. We accepted. The location is a little bit farther than the previous one but it is far more pleasant and easier to keep the garden neat. Last year slugs did their proper job and ate almost half of the vegetables and berries. This year we don't have this problem. Usually we didn't have to water the vegetables but the soil in this garden is a little bit different. Though, the underground water is just a couple of meters from the garden itself and the watering system is in these days, when it is really hot, in permanent use.

Abundance, that's how I would describe our garden this year.

From the garden

At least seven of such lovely pumpkins were eaten by slugs this year. I don’t count all the salad that they had eaten. A real pest, I tell you and it is very hard to fight them. I don’t kill them, so maybe they come back ... I hope that winter will be very cold and that the weather next spring will be fatal for them, otherwise we will have to find some other way to get rid of them. It takes absolutely too much time to pick them every day. The other day I found more than five of them in one single pumpkin flower! It is nothing special if I pick hundred of them on a single day.

I know that one kind of duck eats them (some say that chicken, too) but with having these comes another worry as they eat vegetables, too. We would need a fence and most probably a dog to guard them from foxes. We are actually caught in a vicious circle ...

The garden

It is beautiful, this garden of ours, every year different but each year more beautiful. This year I (or I could say, we, gardeners of the neighborhood) have a big fight with slugs and snails, trying to protect the little or even bigger plants from them. I have never seen so many slugs or snails in one season as this year. I picked even more than 100 slimy creatures in just one morning in a rainy weather (it seemed that it was so the whole spring). Yuck!

Now the plants are a bit bigger (this doesn’t mean that I don’t pick the snails from an almost ripe pea every day) and it is joy to watch them grow.

Carrots, red beets, salad, cabbage of two sorts, garlic, onion, cucumbers, cuccini, pumpkins, broccoli, kale, leek, celery, pea, eggplants, paprika, kohlrabi, magnold, strawberries and raspberries; all this grows in our garden this year. One can find among them also herbs and spices like parsley, marjoram, oregano, basil, chive, chervil, thyme, chamomile, peppermint, balm-mint, calendula and tarragon. There are also some exotic plants growing there, like peanuts, pak choi and one I like most of all – milk thistle (Silybum marianum). Its seeds are the only herbal medicine for our liver.

Oh, I am so excited every day when I walk among the plants and watch them grow! Well, the weeding is another story that I will not talk about today…

Start anew

Okay. So things aren't as great as you'd like, and in fact, life feels like a big mess right now. Not to worry - simply bless your mess and start over.
~ Sonia Choquette

Life goes on. My lack of posts is mostly because all batteries for my camera were mysteriously always empty, my computer is so filled up that I hardly work on it, besides not much has happened in the meantime anyway. Our garden has given us the first vegetables and we have become like rabbits trying to eat all salad before it starts to bloom. It is also an ice cream time and I keep wearing summer dresses whenever it is warm enough. Oh, how much I like this time of year!

It is time for an ice cream. Yes!

Most peas will go into the fridge for winter. We can't eat that much of it at once.

It is my last day at work on Friday, after that I will be on vacation. At first thought this is not bad but I would much prefer enjoying these free days with knowledge that new job is waiting for me at the end of July. Though, I have accepted the fact that losing my job is in some way good. After all it was time to start over. I just hope I won't be hopping from one job to another for years because this is way too much tiresome. At least for me.

Friday goodness

I took a day off on Friday and spent one of the most pleasant days this year. I needed it. It was a day for:

- buying lots of packages of seeds and some flower bulbs, too. Finally I sorted out the last year's stock and replaced some packages with new ones.

- planning. First we will plant garlic, onions, peas and salad. So, it was time to find a proper place for all these seeds. We are a little bit late, I know, but there's one of the worst droughts in years in our country.

- admiring the first green leaves in my garden. Daffodils will be in bloom soon, tulips too. Frankly, I forgot what kind of bulbs I planted in autumn. That will be a wonderful surprise! :)

- enjoying the nice smell of the violets that had spread in our backyard.

- making lace. I keep enjoying in this activity, although it might seem that I make useless things. Actually it is a relaxation for me.

Friday was indeed a good day.

Fruits of autumn

I've been cutting rose hips for the second day in a row. It is a slow work, and a messy one too. I use plastic gloves because those little hair inside of the hips are rather stingy. What I do reminds me of those days spent at my grandparents' when we were all sitting behind a desk and doing similar work. Preparing and storing food for winter. I gathered a bucket of carrots and other goodies from the garden yesterday, I shared some with my colleague at work. This is how it is done - I get plums from her and she gets vegetables from me. A good barter indeed. It feels like in the old days when there were no shopping malls and computers and mobile phones. Days are passing by quickly at this time of year, there's lots to be done around the house at the moment. Like mowing grass for the last time this season, cleaning the mower and the tiles and the flower pots, wiping away spider's webs from the front of the house, cleaning windows, gathering and cleaning and storing vegetables from the garden. This all takes time, more time than one can imagine. I hardly wait to move inside; I have lots of plans for rainy and gloomy days.

Cold

I hoped that today would be a nice sunny day like yesterday's (when I had to stay in bed from morning to late afternoon because I felt so bad). But today skies are gray. I prefer staying indoors on such days although I know that it would be good to go out for a walk and see what nature hides behind its curtains. Frost caught me unprepared and I was bringing in on Monday afternoon lots of what was still not touched by frosty morning. I have no photos of paprikas, pumpkins and turnips (like SouleMama does), I felt too exhausted to do anything else than fall into bed after I had done what was most important to do. I covered with fleece some vegetables that will be able to survive more frosty mornings but still, they won't hold on much longer. Soon time of rest will come, for plants and earth, and hopefully for me too. I know that I will be resting this afternoon. And maybe doing some bobbin lace again. It is an addiction. And a nice Zen activity as well, good for mind and soul.

* Those words on the picture are written by Nicola Chester in Birds magazine (by The RSPB).

At home again

Finally I spent a weekend at home. It felt so good although I was very tired at the end of each day. There was so much to do but not even half of it has been finished. I was:
- enjoying some time in my garden again, gathering some paprika, parsley and thyme. I cut paprikas into small pieces and froze them. They will be used in sauces later in winter. I also froze parsley while thyme was spread out to be dried on a baking tray.

- using the first Hokkaido pumpkin for our lunch. I just cut it into slices, sprinkled it with some salt and baked it in the oven at 180 degrees C. Simple as that and very delicious.

- spending lots of time in a kitchen yesterday, preparing an apple-plum-cranberries crumble. As Vlijtig said - sweet and simple although I found it quite time consuming. Especially cutting all those plums into small pieces. I will use more fruit and less crumble next time. And maybe less sugar too.

- a bit sad seeing mountains covered by snow. I don't think it will melt before next May or June. I will miss them, my refuge from an everyday life.

- gazing into the stars on Saturday between 7 and 8 p.m. hoping to see some of those promised 1000 shooting stars per hour. I saw only a few, far less than were promised. But the night was magnificent, quite warm and the skies cleared just in time. I have always loved stargazing. I thought of being an astronomer when I was still very young. Later I found out that you have to study physics to be that. A pity that we always had bad physics teachers. Though, I am not a night person, I go to bed early and prefer to wake up early.

This were the weekend happenings at home. I switched the heating on for the first time this season. And the warmth makes a home so much cozier than it is. I hope you had a nice weekend too.

Garden season

During the summer season we eat lots of vegetables. Because there is plenty of them in our garden. The vegetable beds look rather crowded and chaotic compared to my neighbors' but I found out that I grow more varieties of vegetables than other people. This is one third of the whole vegetable garden: Different sorts of cabbage and kale: Mangold: Chinese cabbage (at least I think it is): Leek: Our first eggplant this season. I planted them (too) late: Two sorts of basil and kohlrabi: Parsley (I need to freeze some for winter): Paprikas: Turnip and black radish (I don't know if this is correct translation but this is how we call it here): Chicory (Ž will have to eat it, I don't like its bitterness): Dill (bees love it): Pumpkin (I forgot what sort):There's much more to show; but maybe some other time. I visit the garden very often to admire the results of my hard work in spring. It was worth it.

So, after three days at home admiring the garden and resting on a shore of a creek (counting dragonflies, fish and birds), I decided to go on a short vacation. A few days in the mountains and a day or two at the beach. I am looking forward to these free days before the rains cool our land again. It usually does in the last week of August. And you know, it is fig time! Yum!

Have a good time while I am away! :)

At home

The sky is dark today and it got a lot colder. I already miss the heat of the previous days. I love summer. People are whining over the heat but I enjoy in each hot day that there is. I hope there will be some more soon. Summer is so short, too short in my opinion. I try to spend some afternoon hours in my garden but this seems to be an impossible mission since there are so many mosquitoes and horseflies living in our "moorland". As the wind was blowing yesterday in the afternoon, it obviously blew away those little stingy animals, so that I could cut some echinacea blossoms. This is the essential plant for my winter herbal teas. They are hanging upside down to dry, then I will cut them into small pieces and store them for winter. The tomatoes that I grow in the pots are ripening, and I see my neighbors checking on them regularly. I wonder what's so special about them. So, lots is happening around the house these days, without much help from me. And I like it this way.

Herbs & spices

After so much rain the garden has become lush and beautiful. Plants do grow, I can see them being bigger every day. I gathered chamomile blossoms a few days ago, and they are almost dry. I will gather more of those, just for fragrance not so much for tea. I cut oregano yesterday, it will be dried too, for winter months when I won't grow any fresh herbs. I use quite a lot of oregano, thyme and basil (and lots of other spices as well), so I plan to dry some more of each this spring and summer. And look what I found on my mum's strawberry patch: They taste so much better than those from the market... Yum!

Karma for today: Loosen your grip on what is always changing, let go of struggle, and let go of suffering.

Vegetable garden

So, here's another promise to be fulfilled, to a friend I have never met in person. Let's look at my vegetable garden today, let me show you what I grow there this season.

Carrots: Red basil: Chives: Salad (chicory): Paprika: Cabbage: Peanuts: Peas: Raspberries: Chervil:Parsnips:Beetroots:

And lots of weeds, of course. :) There are still more sorts of vegetable growing in the garden but some of the plants are still very small, and I might show them to you when there will be something to show at all.

So, if we are not flooded again, there will be lots of delicious food in summer and later in autumn. I rejoice at this already.

Karma for today: Share often and much.