Who will win, me or the laundry? And the garden, early July.

I love this rose. I would never have picked it out myself (I worry about killing anything as fragile as a hybrid rose-- my benign neglect plus the Maine winter is not a good combination for something delicate), but it was already in our garden when we moved here. And despite me just cutting back dead growth, doing some erratic weeding and tossing some compost in its direction periodically-- it has done pretty well.

This has not been a banner week for our clothesline challenge. Wednesday I waited for the thunderstorms that never came. Yesterday I got the laundry started very early... and it got rained on. It dried, but it took all day and now I am behind. Our family just got home from the funeral of a friend from church, and everyone is sad and the sky looks alternately sunny and ominous. The drier is going right now and I am okay with that.

Finishing our CSA share is going well this week. The taco salad we made last night was delicious and the kids ate large handfuls of kale chips. We make them like Smitten Kitchen. It really makes me unreasonably happy to watch them eat a dark leafy green.

The garden is mostly looking good. This week we staked the tomatoes and fertilized the pepper plants. They look a little better but are still small. The green basil is doing well but the purple basil is not. All of the tomatoes have flowers and the yellow cherry tomatoes have set fruit.

None of the pictures I took of the little sunflowers and zinnias came out well, but they are up and thriving. The little cilantro plants are also up, and I need to seed another row of those, since they don't last very long. In a few weeks it will be time to plant seeds for the fall garden-- this will be the first time we've tried that.

The back of the yard does really well with benign neglect.

Gardening, Late June

we wondered what this was all last summer because it never bloomed-- turns out it is a biannual and worth the wait. 

6-23-- tomatoes are doing well and the cherry tomatoes are starting to set fruit. The sunflowers are about 2" and the zinnias are about 1". The cilantro has just come up. The basil is doing quite well, but the peppers don't look especially good. I think they need some fertilizer.

Sunflower. This one is Adam's "favorite."

Rock garden area-- the hen has had chicks.

Zero Waste Food Challenge: Day 1

Well, we did fairly well. Everyone ate every bite of breakfast, took one food item at a time, and finished drinks. Half a dish of fruit salad came home from Rachel's lunch, but I know that often the kids don't get enough time to finish lunch. I ate leftover mashed potatoes and fruit salad for lunch. Adam finished his dinner (very petite servings, sometimes I feel like I am that guy on the food network who plates food in tablespoon portions, only without the beautiful garnishes). Rachel spent thirty minutes eating a peach and a tortilla while waxing poetic about Maine history and then refused to eat most of the rest of dinner. The kale and cheese burritos rocked (and I am not a huge fan of kale. but how can you go wrong with lots of cheese?). Well, only Ben and I would endorse that statement.
Food waste for Day 1: 1/4 c. milk that went bad (although it was a couple of days before it's date), small amounts of dinner, about a quarter cup of fruit salad, and 1 crust belonging to a nameless peanut butter eater.

The garden is coming along!

Gardening: Spring

Well, since spring came kind of late this year, I'm posting this in June. We just got our garden planted over the last two weeks, which is crazy late. There are no pictures with the kids because I was so busy whenever they were out planting with me (planting in Sam-nap-sized intervals).

I decided to focus on just a few things this year, mainly herbs and tomatoes. We will also do a fall garden of greens: spinach, lettuces, and arugula. I decided to start one small new area of perennials: a rock garden with succulents. I always bite off more than I can chew with perennials so I wanted to keep it simple. I got a hens and chicks plant and some sedum at a neighborhood sale, and added some portulaca. The kids added the rocks.





Rachel planted a lavatera from the same sale, and we added a chive plant to our herb area from our friend Cynthia's garden.






We got our tomato and pepper plants from Snakeroot Farm at the Orono Farmer's Market.  I'm excited about the mostly heirloom varieties we picked for this year, with the exception of the sungolds that are kind of like an addiction for me. Here are the varieties they grow at Snakeroot: from these, we will be growing Black Cherry, Frosty's Heart, and Paul Robeson. We are also growing Joe E. Parker peppers, which are apparently hot when raw, but mellow when roasted. We planted the tomato plants with basil, marigold and dill seeds to do some natural bug repelling.

this was a hot, dry day... unlike most of the days lately.

I could not find any herb starts at the Orono Farmer's Market, so I ended up at Sprague's because I did want locally raised plants. I got lettuce leaf and purple basil and  bouquet dill. With these, I planted cilantro seeds.

 
What did Picky 1 and Picky 2 want to grow? Sunflowers and zinnias. So I went out and bought seeds, a variety pack of sunflowers and zinnias (pumila, or cut and come again-- an 18-24" tall variety with big blooms).

Here is a map. We grow our garden in rough quadrants so that we can rotate the tomatoes each year. Ben already dug our compost (and some extra) into the plot, before we added the tomatoes. We'll add some more in a few weeks.