Our Week in the Garden

Let us apologize for not keeping the blog updated. If there is a problem, it is the garden. We live on a city lot; our Spread is 44 feet wide and ... maybe ... 100 feet front to back with everything behind the house a steep uphill climb. The house and the front lawn presently occupy the streetside half of it. If this nation continues on its present track, one of these days we will put in a front fence, ideally securing it where plain traces of an earlier fence remain in the retaining wall, and dig up the lawn too. Sure, we know full well that growing our own is definitely a non-profit operation; still, it's worth it for the reward of having really fresh vegetables, free of pesticides and all the rest of the toxins that abound in the environment.
So far this year we've had four feeds of asparagus and three feeds of rhubarb; we've lost count of the feeds of snap peas (mange-tout or eat-'em-all or snow peas) and green beans--many of which now reside in the freezer section of the fridge after being tray-frozen.
Today we're cooking up the first batch of plums off the two trees we planted, and we'll probably have harvard beets with lunch. The small beets from the thinning of the rows go well in that recipe. This besides the ongoing supply of tender young beet greens for salads.
The first tomatoes have come in, of what promises to be a very heavy crop.
Birds are wreaking havoc among the raspberries, having previously had a go at the strawberries. We find that feeding the local cats is an enormous help in vigilance over berries of every sort. So long as they loiter around the yard, the birds take their appetites elsewhere.
Between all that, and putting a new roof on the conservatory, and painting the back of the house, it's a good thing we're "retired" (ironic smile). Otherwise we'd never manage to get any of it done.
Yvonne has to go now. She's about to time the blanching of another batch of mange-tout peas. Oh, and did I mention the gooseberries and the apricots?
The compost bin has become even more of a shrine for certain creatures, and the volunteer toad is doing his part to restrain the airborne population. Talk about a squatter ... It's all a beautiful demonstration of the Mother's bounteous cycle, with us gratefully functioning as enablers or custodians.
Blessed be those who walk respectfully on the Earth. Gavin and Yvonne